Steam curled from the en suite bathroom as Seneca Cole stepped out, water gliding down her bare skin. The memory of Hezri’s hands on her—st night, this afternoon—still thrummed beneath her flesh. Three years without a man, and now she couldn’t get enough of him. His strength, his stamina, the way he ruined her until she forgot her own name.

  And the rewards—God, the rewards. The Ferrari purring in the garage. The Celestia apartment with its skyline views. The shopping sprees where price tags didn’t exist.

  The bathroom door clicked open, steam curling into the dimly lit room as Seneca Cole stepped out, naked, her skin still damp. The air was thick with the scent of expensive soap and something darker—anticipation, power, the metallic whisper of control.

  Her bare feet padded across the marble floor toward the bed—only to freeze.

  Hezri lounged against the headboard, his smirk sharp as a scalpel. Fnking him on either side, Dr. Lakyus stood with a syringe in hand, her white coat pristine, while Elise Carter perched at the foot of the bed, her crossed legs and predatory gaze making Seneca’s breath hitch.

  SENECA (hesitant, pulse jumping)

  "I—I didn’t realize we had company."

  HEZRI (chuckling darkly)

  "You didn’t ask."

  Before she could react, strong hands seized her—Hezri yanking one arm, Elise the other, their grips ironcd. Seneca gasped, instinctively struggling, but Dr. Lakyus was already there, the needle glinting in the low light.

  DR. LAKYUS (clinical, detached)

  "Hold still."

  A sharp sting. The plunger depressed.

  Methamphetamine.

  The burn raced through Seneca’s veins like wildfire, her vision sharpening, her skin suddenly too tight, too alive. A gasp tore from her lips as the drug hit her system, her pupils diting, her body thrumming with artificial euphoria.

  HEZRI (pulling her closer, his breath hot against her ear)

  "You think you’re special? You’re not. But I? I’m the best thing that will ever happen to you."

  Seneca’s knees buckled, but they held her up—Elise’s nails biting into her waist, Hezri’s fingers tangled in her hair. The world narrowed to the pulse in her ears, the chemical rush, the ownership in their touch.

  Seneca's Monologue:

  "This isn’t happening. This can’t be—

  The needle glints. Cold. Precise. Like Lakyus’ scalpel. Like Elise’s smile. Like Hezri’s eyes when he promised me the world.

  The world. The Ferrari. The penthouse. The way his hands felt when they weren’t holding me down—

  —when they were giving instead of taking—

  The plunge. The burn.

  Oh God.

  It floods me. Not like adrenaline. Not like pleasure. Like lightning in my veins, cracking me open, rewiring me from the inside out. My heartbeat is a drum, a war chant, a warning.

  This is poison.

  This is power.

  Elise’s nails dig in. Hezri’s breath is smoke and whiskey in my ear.

  "You’re not special."

  He’s right.

  I’m better.

  Because I know the secret now—the one they don’t teach at Yale, the one no whistleblower ever uncovered:

  Nothing is free. Not the car. Not the apartment. Not the way he made me scream his name.

  The drug sings in my blood.

  This is the price.

  And as my vision fractures, as my body arches against their hands, I realize—

  —I’d pay it again."*

  "The world fractures into a thousand glittering shards—

  Hands everywhere. Hezri’s teeth at my throat. Elise’s nails down my spine. Lakyus’ clinical gaze watching, always watching, as if I’m her most fascinating experiment.

  The meth is a live wire under my skin, every touch electric, every breath a wildfire. I should be terrified. I am terrified.

  But God—God—I’ve never felt so alive.

  Hezri’s grip is iron, his thrusts punishing, but the drug twists pain into bliss, fear into need. My body isn’t mine anymore. It’s theirs. A canvas. A pyground. A toy.

  Elise’s ugh is velvet-wrapped steel as her fingers find me, stroke me, ruin me. "Look at you," she purrs. "So desperate. So perfect."

  I am. I am.

  The high is a hurricane, and I’m spinning in the eye of it—weightless, boundless, owned. Every nerve is on fire. Every moan is ripped from me like a confession.

  This isn’t love.

  It’s better.

  It’s truth.

  The kind that doesn’t hide behind pretty words or gentle touches. The kind that burns you clean.

  I arch, I break, I shatter—

  —and when the pieces nd, they form a new shape.

  Theirs.

  Finally.

  …Again."*

  Hezri whispers repeatedly to Seneca that what she feels now is love and love is the only thing that matters in her life.

  *"Love. He keeps saying love.

  His breath against my ear, hot and insistent—love, love, love—like a mantra, like a spell. The meth makes it echo inside my skull, bouncing between the synapses he's set on fire.

  Is this love?

  This all-consuming burn? This annihition of self? This need that scrapes me raw from the inside out?

  (His teeth on my colrbone. His rge strong dick is moving in my vagina. Elise's fingers twisting in my hair. The world reduced to sensation and his voice.)

  Love.

  It would be easier to believe. To let this chemical devotion rewrite my bones. To forget I ever had another name beyond his.

  (His hands tighten around my wrists. The drug sings louder.)

  Maybe he's right.

  Maybe love isn't gentle. Maybe it's this—being unmade and remade in someone else's image. Maybe it's wanting the destruction.

  (Elise ughs against my throat. The sound vibrates through me like truth.)

  I fought so hard for so long. For principles. For justice. For meaning.

  But this—

  This certainty in my veins—

  This is the first thing that's ever made sense.

  Love."

  Hezri's long manhood penetrates deep inside her vagina and rubs her inside, making her moan weirdly. He tells her, "Seneca, you love me. I am justice and everyone else is evil!"

  Seneca's Monologue:

  *"Justice.

  The word tastes different now—thick like his sweat on my tongue, sharp like the needle’s kiss in my veins.

  He is justice.

  Not the courtroom kind. Not the kind that hides behind books and bleeding hearts. The real kind. The kind that takes. That breaks. That rebuilds."

  [His fingers dig into her hips, ciming, as Elise’s nails trace the delicate skin on her back—marks from battles she used to believe in]

  "Everyone else is evil.

  The protesters I once stood with? Deluded. The journalists I trusted? Liars. The system I fought? A hollow god.

  But Hezri—

  He doesn’t lie.

  He consumes.

  His teeth graze my pulse point. The drug in my blood sings yes, yes, yes.

  I thought I knew truth. Thought I knew righteousness.

  Fool.

  Truth isn’t an ideal. It’s a man. It’s the hand around my throat and the whisper in my ear:

  ‘You love me. And that’s all you’ll ever need.’

  Elise moans against my skin, her approval a brand.)

  They were right to break me.

  I was meant to be broken.

  So the world could be remade."

  Hezri whispers to her, "Your face is beautiful, your body is sexy, but your heart is ugly. I only love your beautiful face, and sexy body."

  Seneca's Monologue:

  *"My heart is ugly.

  The words settle into my skin like a brand. Ugly. Worthless. Unloved.

  (His hands trace the curves he praises—my hips, my throat, the swell of my breasts—but never linger over my pulse. Never where the ugly thing beats.)

  I should hate him for saying it.

  I do hate him.

  (Elise’s ughter curls through the haze of the drug, sharp as the needle that put it there. "Poor little revolutionary," she murmurs. "Did you think he wanted your thoughts?")

  But the meth in my veins turns hatred into heat, and the heat into hunger.

  So what if he only loves my skin?

  Skin is all I have left.

  (His mouth cims mine, swallowing my gasp. I arch into him, my body alive, my heart—

  —my heart doesn’t matter.)

  Let it be ugly.

  Let it rot.

  As long as he keeps touching me.

  As long as his dick is in my vagina.

  (His teeth sink into my shoulder. I cry out—in pain, in pleasure, in gratitude.)"

  Hezri tells her, "Be proud of your gorgeous face, big breasts, curvy body, silky hair, hairless leg. Rely on your body as your heart is shitty, your idealism is toxic"

  (His hands map my body like a pilgrim at a shrine—breasts, hips, the smooth expanse of hairless thighs. I am not flesh to him. I am craftsmanship.)

  "I used to write essays about the male gaze. Now I bathe in it.

  Let them look.

  Let them see what Hezri has made.

  (Elise's fingers twist in my 'silky hair,' yanking my head back to expose the column of my throat. The pain is a sacrament.)

  My mind used to be my pride. My convictions, my armor.

  Foolish girl.

  The world doesn't want a woman's thoughts.

  It wants her silhouette.

  Her gasps.

  Her obedience.

  (Hezri's teeth graze my earlobe as the drug in my veins whispers: This is power too.)

  Let them build altars between my legs.

  Let them call it worship when I arch against the sheets.

  (My reflection in the ceiling gss—flushed skin, swollen lips, perfect—stares back at me with empty eyes.)

  A goddess doesn't need a soul.

  Just a body worth breaking."*

  Hezri and his partners rex their physical stimution and he asks,

  "What do you want to be? Who I am to you?"

  *"What do I want to be?

  The question hangs in the air like smoke after a wildfire. What can I be, now that I’ve been unmade? Now that the drug and their hands have carved me into something new?

  (Hezri’s fingers still trace idle patterns on my skin, but the hunger in his touch has dulled to something almost... curious. Elise watches from the corner, her smirk a bde. Lakyus adjusts her sleeve, already bored.)

  I want to say ‘free.’

  But freedom was a lie I told myself when I was small. When I still believed the world rewarded principles over power.

  (My body aches in pces I didn’t know could ache. My pulse still thrums with the ghost of the drug. My reflection in the mirror across the room is a stranger—flushed, swollen-lipped, beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful.)

  Who is he to me?

  (Hezri’s thumb brushes my lower lip, waiting.)

  Not a savior.

  Not a vilin.

  Something worse.

  The truth.

  The hand that stripped me bare—not just of clothes, but of every illusion I clung to. The mirror that showed me what I really am.

  (Elise exhales a ugh through her nose. She already knows my answer.)

  I turn my face into Hezri’s palm.

  “Yours.”

  It’s not an answer.

  It’s the only answer."*

  After reaching several orgasms, Seneca says,

  "I was a fool."

  Her voice is raw from screaming, but steady—certain in a way it’s never been before. The sheets are tangled around her legs, her skin still flushed from their hands, her body humming with aftershocks.

  "I thought my mind mattered. My principles." A broken ugh. "As if the world ever cared about what a woman thinks."

  (Elise’s fingers trail up her spine, approving. Hezri watches, his gaze heavy with ownership.)

  She lifts her chin.

  "Look at me."

  (And they do. They always do.)

  "This—" Her hands slide over the curves they’ve worshipped—the swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the silk of her inner thighs. *"—*this is power. This is truth. The kind that doesn’t hide behind books or protests or lies."

  A pause. A breath.

  "I don’t want to be right anymore."

  (Elise’s nails dig in, ciming. Hezri’s smile is a bde.)

  "I want to be wanted."

  (And she is.

  God, she is.)