The Highest Bidder

❊ Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ Fᴏʀᴛʏ﹣Eɪɢʜᴛ ❊

• Evᥲ's POV •

I wanted to turn off the incessant beeping, but I couldn't bring myself to move my arm to turn it off. My body wasn't hurting as much as it had been before, and I wondered if Maverick noticed that I was on the verge of dying and decided to send me to a hospital.

Never in my life had I felt myself slowly withering away into nothing. The pain and agony it caused only proved to make everything that much worse. I felt my body shrivel and my stomach begin to eat at my fat and muscles. I felt my core temperature gradually become colder as time went on until I eventually accepted my fate. He couldn't quite break me, so he did what he thought was his last option. He let me die.

But I wasn't dead. Surprisingly.

There was a prick in my finger and I winced, the sudden jolt causing my muscles to protest and ache. I moved my head to the side and let out a whimper. It shouldn't have hurt. What Maverick did to me was much worse than that small prick.

"Eva?"

The voice was unfamiliar to me.

"Eva, can you open your eyes for me?"

The man smelled like a walking doctor's office. Steril with a hint of latex.

Someone's hand tightened around mine. Why was the doctor holding my hand?

"Blood sugar is excellent. Blood pressure is excellent. Her temperature is a little high, but that will go down in time."

No, the doctor wasn't holding my hand. The doctor was on my right side. So, who was on my left? Maverick? No. I knew all too well what his hands felt like. The one holding my own was gentle and warm, while Maverick's was calloused and rough. Of course, he could have been playing the good boyfriend.

"Eva, open your eyes."

I forced my eyes half-open. The room wasn't as bright as I originally thought it would be. Somehow, the lights were dimmed. And I wasn't in a hospital at all. It looked more like a room. Maverick put me in a bedroom?

The doctor lifted my eyelid and shone a light into one eye, then the other. I blinked a couple of times in the vain attempt to get the splotch out of my vision.

"Would you like some water?" The doctor's eyes smiled above his mask as he held out a small cup of water with a bendy straw. I opened my mouth and sucked, shivering slightly when the ice-cold water touched my dry tongue.

"You've been out for a few weeks, Eva." The doctor took the water away from me and set it down on a nightstand beside the bed. "Enzo has been waiting for you to wake up since he brought you back."

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Enzo was in the room with me?

I turned my head slowly to look at him. His brown eyes were slightly widened and he seemed to not be breathing. We stared at each other for a few minutes, his eyes searching mine as if to see if I was truly there.

The doctor lifted his hand and I flinched away from it, clenching my eyes shut to try to block out the pain before it even happened. When his hand didn't connect with my body, I reopened my eyes and stared at his hand suspended in the air. He lowered it slowly and rested it on my arm.

Enzo let out a pained noise, like he was the one being hit.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Eva." The doctor squeezed my arm gently and lowered the mask below his chin.

A part of me knew that the doctor wouldn't hurt me, but another part of me was so accustomed to being hit that I just braced myself for it. And normally that would have pissed me off, but I was too exhausted to feel much of anything. To be completely honest, I was afraid to get pissed off. I was afraid to be anything but silent and cooperative.

In the end, I knew Maverick had won. After weeks of nothing but hatred and pain, I locked away every emotion because I was too afraid to show it.

"Where's Maverick," I croaked the two words out, wincing at the feel of my sore throat vibrating with my voice.

"You don't need to worry about him anymore." Enzo rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. "Carmen, do you mind letting me speak with her alone for a few minutes?"

The doctor, who I guessed was Carmen, nodded and left without another word.

I was so exhausted. I wasn't sure how long I was out or why, but by the feel of my limbs it had been quite a while. I could barely move them, so I doubted I'd be able to walk. I hadn't been able to walk in the end with Maverick, so that wasn't surprising.

I looked back at Enzo with tired eyes, noting the fact that his hair was in disarray. He looked to be deep in thought as he searched me, a worry line creasing the skin between his eyebrows.

"I am so sorry," he whispered. "You have no idea how sorry I am. I just...I didn't want you to be killed. But what he did to you was not only his fault. In the end, I allowed him to take you. And I just want you to know that I'll understand if you never want to see me again after you get back on your feet. I wouldn't want to see me either."

My finger twitched in his grasp and he looked down at it. He must not have realized that I didn't blame him at all. If the roles were reversed, I would have let him go too. But I couldn't be angry about the fact that he blamed himself, because I would have blamed myself too. While I was in that cellar, I never once blamed him for allowing me to be taken. I just wanted to survive the time it took for Maverick to break me into the thing he wanted me to be.

I can't say that I was the same as I was before I was taken. I'd flinch away from a lot of things before I finally realized that not every hand was meant to hurt me. I would be afraid to say no for a while, even knowing that I could say whatever I wanted with Enzo. And I knew for a fact that I'd be afraid to mess up, believing that everything I did wrong resulted in punishment.

But I knew Enzo, and I knew that he would never hurt me. Not just because he promised verbally, but I could read it in his eyes as he looked at me.

I tried to smile, but all I got was a small twitch of my chapped lips. "I don't blame you."

My eyes fell closed, too tired to be kept open any longer. I heard Enzo begin to speak, but I was already halfway into a deep sleep that I knew I wouldn't wake up from for a while.