Chapter 3

The next morning, sunlight cut through the gap in the curtains and stabbed into the room.

I hadn't slept a wink. Every time I closed my eyes, the image of Teresa and Nora scheming at the foot of my bed coiled around my neck like a snake.

My body ached everywhere from being braced tight for so long, but with those two pills out of my system, I could feel it plainly now: two fingers on my right hand could bend freely again, and even my tongue, pinned down for so long, had regained a little of its old flexibility.

It only confirmed what I'd suspected. That so-called "imported miracle drug" was nothing but poison, meant to waste my muscles and deaden my nerves.

Footsteps came from outside the door.

I shut my eyes at once, evened out my breathing, let the muscles in my face go slack, and even let a thin thread of saliva slip from the corner of my mouth. A flawless performance of a stroke victim stripped of all dignity.

The door pushed open, and Teresa came in carrying a bowl of steaming chicken soup.

Today she wore a robe, her long hair loosely gathered at the back of her neck, still looking every bit the gentle, devoted wife.

"Julian, are you awake?"

She walked to the bed and dabbed the drool from the corner of my mouth with a tissue, her eyes full of manufactured concern.

I opened my eyes weakly and let a hoarse "Ah... ah..." rasp out of my throat.

My gaze strained sideways toward the nightstand, where my phone sat.

That was my lifeline. If I could just get my hands on it, I could reach my closest friend, Harold.

Harold was with the police. One word from me about what was happening here, and he'd tear these two women's secrets wide open.

Teresa followed my eyes to the nightstand.

The smile on her face never wavered. She reached over and picked up the sleek black phone, the newest model.

"Ah... ah!" I rolled my eyes desperately, straining to show how badly I wanted it.

"Julian, you want to look at your phone?" Teresa asked softly, her finger drifting lightly across the screen.

But she didn't hand it to me.

Right in front of me, she pressed the power button. The screen lit, and the slide-to-power-off bar appeared.

"The doctor said," Teresa murmured, looking into my eyes, a faint cold smile tugging at her lips,

"your brain and nerves are very fragile right now. You absolutely can't be exposed to any radiation.

The company's got the vice president watching it, and even if that weren't enough, you still have me. You just lie there and 'recover' in peace."

Her finger swiped, and the screen went black in an instant.

My heart sank to the bottom with it.

Right in front of me, she pulled open the bottom drawer of the nightstand, the one with a combination lock, and tossed my phone inside.

The click of the latch dropping into place landed on my heart like a hammer.

I was cut off from the outside world completely.

"Ah! Ahh!"

The fear and rage boiling inside me finally broke loose. A violent howl tore out of my throat, and my whole body began to convulse on the bed, out of my control.

Half of it was an act. Half of it was the real trembling of a man cornered with nowhere left to go.

"Don't work yourself up, Julian."

Teresa picked up the bowl of chicken soup, stirred it with the spoon, lifted a spoonful and blew on it, then brought it to my lips.

"Anger wears the body down. What you need most right now is calm. Here, have a sip. I added your favorite... ginseng."

She bit down hard on that word, ginseng.

I knew there was more in that bowl than ginseng.

I clamped my mouth shut and stared at her.

This was a face I'd looked at for eight years. Once I'd thought it plain, dull, even a little slow.

But now, in those eyes that had always dropped low and yielded to me, something glinted—sharp and hungry for control, cold enough to chill my blood.

"What? No appetite?"

Teresa sighed and knocked the bowl down hard onto the nightstand, splashing soup across the expensive wood surface.

"Julian, didn't you always teach me that a person has to face reality?

Look at the state you're in now. Who else besides me is going to wait on you?

If you won't eat and drink like a good boy, your muscles will waste away faster, and by then... you really won't even make it out that door."

Her voice dropped softer and softer, and it sounded exactly like some venomous curse.

I gave in. Not out of fear, but to store up strength. I had to survive. I had to keep my body going.

I opened my mouth and let her pour that soup, laced with God knew what, into me one spoonful at a time.

Under the rich flavor of the chicken soup ran a faint trace of bitterness.

I forced down the churning in my stomach and swallowed, mouthful by mouthful.

Thankfully, the two pills this morning I'd handled the same way, tucked under my tongue.

Once she left with the empty bowl, I spat the pills out again and pushed them along the edge of the sheet, deep into the gap between the mattress and the bed frame.

Four white pills already lay quietly in that gap.

They were my bargaining chips for striking back, and hard proof that these two were trying to murder me.

The next three days were the longest and most humiliating of my life.

Every day I repeated the same routine: play dead, get force-fed, painstakingly hide the pills, spit them out.

Every time I hid one, it was like dancing on the edge of a knife.