After My Fiancé Faked Amnesia to Destroy Me

The hospital released me at dawn. I signed the papers with my left hand because my right wrist wouldn't close properly. The nurse who brought the discharge forms kept her eyes on the clipboard.

"You should stay," she said quietly. "At least another day."

"I can't," I said.

She looked at me then. At the bruising along my jaw. At the way I held my ribs when I breathed.

"Is someone coming to get you?"

"Yes," I lied.

She handed me the papers. Walked out. I sat on the edge of the bed and put on my shoes one-handed. Everything hurt in a distant way, like pain happening to someone I used to know.

My phone had forty-three missed calls. I turned it off.

The lobby was empty except for a man reading a newspaper near the vending machines. He didn't look up when I passed. I pushed through the glass doors into air that smelled like garbage and exhaust.

A black SUV idled at the curb. The back door opened.

"Miss Garza," a voice said. Male. Neutral. "We're here to take you somewhere safe."

I looked at the open door. At the dark interior. At the man in the driver's seat whose face I couldn't see.

Somewhere safe.

I had believed in that once. In the idea that safety was a place you could arrive at if you were good enough. Patient enough. Quiet enough.

I got in the car.

The door closed behind me. The locks engaged with a soft click. The man beside me in the back seat smelled like cigarettes and something chemical I didn't recognize.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Not far," he said.

We drove south. Then east. The buildings got lower. The streets got narrower. I watched the city pass outside the tinted windows and thought about my father.

The nurse had told me while I was still on the floor. While the IV was hanging loose and my ribs were deciding whether to break or just bruise.

"Your emergency contact," she'd said. "Ruben Garza. He was brought in tonight. Hit-and-run. Midtown. He's in the ICU at Mount Sinai."

I'd tried to stand. Couldn't. Tried again.

"I need to go," I'd said.

"You need to stay still," she'd said.

But she'd already been backing toward the door. Already been looking at me like I was something that had happened to her shift instead of a person.

I pressed my thumb into my wrist now. One. Two. Three.

The SUV stopped.

We were in a part of Manhattan I didn't recognize. Industrial. The kind of neighborhood that looked abandoned until you noticed the cameras.

The man beside me opened his door. "This way," he said.

I followed him into a building with no sign. Down a hallway with concrete walls. Through a door that locked behind us.

The room on the other side was small. Windowless. A single chair bolted to the floor in the center.

"Sit," he said.

I sat.

He left. The door locked.

I counted the seconds. Got to three hundred before I stopped. My ribs hurt. My wrist hurt. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed like something dying.

The door opened again.

She came in wearing white. Of course she was wearing white.

Zara stopped three feet from the chair. Tilted her head. Smiled with just the corners of her mouth.

"You look terrible," she said softly.

I didn't answer.

"I told them to be careful," she continued. "I said don't break anything that shows. But men are so imprecise." She crouched down in front of me. Her perfume was something floral and expensive. "Do you know why you're here?"

"Because you paid someone," I said.

Her smile widened a fraction. "Because you embarrassed him. Because you made him look weak in front of people who matter. Because you thought you could take something from me and walk away." She reached out and touched my bruised jaw with two fingers. I didn't flinch. "You can't."

She stood. Walked to the door. Paused with her hand on the handle.

"They'll bring you food," she said. "Water. I'm not a monster." She looked back over her shoulder. "But you're going to stay here until you understand what you are. What you've always been."

"What's that?" I asked.

Her eyes were very blue. Very empty.

"Nothing," she said.

The door closed. The lock turned.

I sat in the chair bolted to the floor and thought about my father in a coma. About Axl's voice on a recording. About three years I would never get back.

About the fact that no one knew where I was.

I pressed my thumb into my wrist. One. Two. Three.

And I started counting.