ᴀᴘʜʀᴏᴅɪᴛᴇ // $ᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇʙᴏʏ$

Chapter Forty Eight

SCOTT

They say it's hard to light a candle, easier to curse the dark instead. They say light travels faster than anything else, but what they don't tell you is that darkness was there first and is waiting patiently.

And it never leaves.

The cold suffocated and smothered me every day, all day long. And even when the lights were on occasionally shining in the middle of the day, the darkness within the prison destroyed it each and every time. No amount of light could tear the dark apart, no amount of hope could cure crippling despair. Trapped in Vadik Fotos' hidden underground prison on the land he owned in upstate New York, I felt like I was losing my sanity.

Six weeks in there felt like a lifetime gone to waste. There was never enough food, barely enough water. The other few prisoners left me alone for the most part.

Trapped there against my will, I feared the grip of insanity.

Before I was brought there, one of Favero's men stabbed me. It was annoying to stitch up the small incision on my side where he jabbed the knife between my ribs.

Don't forget about me.

Aphrodite didn't want me to forget. But how could I forget her, how could I forget my time with her? When I needed a grip to reality, I thought of her. When I needed to remind myself, when I needed an anchor, I imagined her face, her voice, the very way about her that made her the woman she was. Sienna used to be my anchor, but now she could never be anything more to me than my past.

And now, six weeks later, still trapped, still tortured, I wondered how much longer I had before I would be killed. It had been six weeks.

I sat on the floor of my cell and tried to ignore the sting in my side from the infected wound I stitched together with filthy tools, dirty string from the cot because it was all I had to use. I hunched over and looked off into the distance as I thought about what the future held for me. It was only the timing that was questionable.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes against the sharp burn from the cut along my ribs as I heard a few men's voices shouting off in the distance. Where was that coming from? The shout was so faint that the words were inaudible. Other men in their cells sat up and looked around. Then there were a couple of gunshots and more men's voices yelling.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. More gunshots, then silence, and then footsteps on concrete. Two bodies came through the entrance to the hallway by the cells.

Completely shocked, a wide smile spread across my face. That woman, that aggressive little woman who had begun as such an annoyance, such a pain was the one to set me free. Sienna had left me to die, and she was once so important to me. Aphrodite had once again returned even after I made her leave me.

And standing next to her was my cousin, both of them holding AR-15s.

They unlocked my cell and I was free.

Weeks had passed and it felt like years. I raked my eyes along her body, took in her black pants and black shirt, her familiar painted red mouth. I stared at her hair, the waves billowing down. I stared into her unique green eyes. Looking at her now, she seemed to be lighting up, seemed to be glittering before my eyes.

"I thought I told you not to follow." I muttered.

She smiled at me. "And yet I keep coming back." Aphrodite held her hands out to me and waited for me to step into them.

I stared at her and felt my eyes lowering as she placed her hands on either side of my neck. I looked at her red mouth, at those green eyes, and set my forehead onto hers. Then we pulled away, and I looked my cousin in the eyes.

He watched my face with his usual blank stare. "Don't apologize to me. I don't want to fucking hear it. Let's just go." He held his hand up to me.

I couldn't help but smile and then I pulled him into a hug. His arms hung limp at his sides as I hugged him, and then he slowly lifted them and put them on my back.

After gathering their packs and guns, Aphrodite and Ruby lead me out of the prison.

"What happened to all of your hair?" I asked my cousin, and then roughly tousled his hair with my hand.

He glared at me and grunted. "Well what the fuck happened to your dreads?"

"They cut them off in the prison." Was all I said.

The three of us walked through the forest away from the prison.

It had been a while since we had to face terrible truths about the people we loved, and about life itself. Acceptance was cruel. Heartbreak was death but our hearts were still beating. Happiness was an illusion. And the world...

Somehow, after so very long, the world felt oddly... balanced.