I accepted death, let it wash over me, and as a brilliant white light focused above me hours later, I smiled, believing I was finally going to wherever it was souls went after passing on.

Something sharp jabbed into my arm, and a gloved hand came into my vision as it tilted the bright light slightly.

Shit. I wasn’t going toward the white light. I started to hear again, panicked voices that yelled for blood transfusions and oxygen, and I realized I wasn’t dying.

I was being brought back to life.

I had ceased breathing; the only sound in my universe the intermittent roar and fade of my heart pumping erratically as it skipped to its irregular, fading beat. Someone shouted for paddles, and I thought it amazing that I could still hear snatches of voices even though my lungs no longer drew breath.

I had a choice to melt back into that acceptance of death, to succumb, and I won’t lie, it was so very tempting. I let myself sink further, the same fall you experience when you succumb to sleep, but I knew I wouldn’t be waking from this.

I screamed inside my mind as hot electricity bit at my chest and rushed through my body, forcing my heart to try and beat, but I resisted its saving grace, refusing to surface from my own demise. If my arms would work, I’d push them all away and demand that they let me die in peace.

I had accepted this. I was ready. I was ready to die.

And then a face appeared in my mind.

Jase. My dear boy.

I loved him. If there was even the slightest chance he was still alive, I had to hold on, for him.

I suddenly had to live.

Another shock, worse than the first, sparked something primal inside of me: a hope that burned like wildfire, and an anger that simmered like poison in my veins.

“She’s back,” a voice said, closer this time.

I opened my mouth and gasped for breath, pulling precious air into my lungs as pain spread through my body.

From the brink of death, I was born again—naked, bloody, and screaming as the cold reality of my survival overwhelmed me.

As I vowed to make Dornan and his sons pay for their sins.

I blink, shaking my head, and hear movement upstairs.

Dornan.

I adjust my white sundress and make my way quietly up the stairs. As I hit the last stair, I hear the creak of a chair from the office. I knock gently on the door and it swings open.

Showtime. I’m woefully prepared for this, but I suck in a breath and give it my all. I haven’t come this far just to drop my game in the final stretch.

Dornan’s sitting behind his desk, his laptop open in front of him. He’s staring intently at it, but presses a button shifting his focus to me when I enter the room.

“Sammi,” he breathes.

“Are you okay?” I ask hesitantly, hovering on the other side of his desk. I’m stalling. After making love to Jase, I can’t bear the thought of Dornan’s touch on my skin.

He rises from his chair, his ability to walk around apparently undisturbed. I marvel at the fact.

“You can walk,” I say, surprised. “I can’t believe it. After what happened?”

Luckiest bastard alive. That blast should have killed him.

“Come here, you little cunt,” he says, his teeth gritted together in a grotesque sort of grimace. It’s made worse by the healing scars that litter every piece of his exposed flesh.

“Whoa,” I reply lightly, surprised. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Dornan smiles, baring his teeth, and my world crashes down around me as I hear the door slam behind me, locked with a key from the outside.

He turns his laptop around so that I can see the video he’s watching, and my heart sinks as my knees threaten to buckle underneath me.

As I realize what it is I’m seeing.

Surveillance footage of a girl. A girl in a garage, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown, her movements quick and efficient as she places crudely fashioned bombs into the gas tanks of her enemy’s motorcycles. My heart rushes up into my mouth as I continue to watch the screen, completely engrossed. As the girl turns, the camera catches her face in the infrared light, and I see her trepidation.

Her excitement.

What a stupid girl.

I take a step back, hitting the door with my ass as he answers my question.

Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

“No,” he says, coming around the desk at me, “but I kissed your mother with it plenty of times.” He smirks as he delivers the final word in his sentence.

“Juliette.”

Every day for six years, I used to pray that I would find my way back to the boy I loved.

Until finally, one day, I did.

But that’s the funny thing about life. Nothing good ever lasts, not for me, anyway. You think you’re the one with the power, at least I did, but then I got careless. One tiny mistake, and now I am powerless to stop what comes next.

People think money equals power, but all the money in my bank account, the dirty notes laundered clean that my father left for me, are useless.

Money does not equal power. Power is held by the one with the knife in his hand, tracing shallow cuts into your skin.

Power is held by the one who owns you.

I had power once.

Now, I have nothing.