A/N: The rest of this book will be in Collin's POV unless otherwise noted. Enjoy!
I walked through the forest, away from that terrible house that I had been trapped in for four miserable years.
Ethan had hurt me so many times. When I was younger, he would push me to the ground and punch me simply because I wasn't strong enough to stop him. He used to slip tiny amounts of poison into my food. Not enough to kill me, but enough to make me feel very sick for days. He even molested me.
He treated me so much worse than all the other children he kidnapped. I never had any idea why. He would mostly just keep everyone else for a few days and then murder them. I honestly don't know if he kept me alive because he liked me or hated me more than the others.
All those years of pain, fear, and hatred of him and myself, and now here I was, just walking away. I don't even know how many times I'd dreamed of this day, how much I'd longed for it every second I was in that basement.
Honestly, though, this wasn't nearly as glorious as I thought it would be. I let a little girl get murdered. You'd think I would be numb to murders by now, considering I had watched Ethan murder countless teenagers, but this wasn't the same. Ansley had a fighting spirit inside of her. She deserved more than anyone to live. I wanted her to have a chance to grow up, get married, and have children of her own. She probably had dreams for her life, and I wanted her to accomplish every single one of them.
But no. She died at twelve years old. And it was all because I ran ahead of her instead of protecting her the entire time we were trying to escape.
To top it all off, Ethan let me go. I really didn't even escape. He had a gun in his hand. Obviously, if he wanted to kill me, he would've. He wanted me to get away. He probably had a plan all along to kill Ansley and let me walk out alive, just to add another horrible memory to my already traumatized mind.
Ansley's body was laying in Ethan's yard, and I was just walking away.
YOU ARE READING
Locked Away
TerrorWhen Ansley, a 12-year-old orphan, is kidnapped by a man while she is on an outing, she is terrified. Then, she meets a 19-year-old orphan named Collin who was also kidnapped by the man and has been living in the man's basement for four years. Now...
