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He sets a tray down on the table without checking whether my restraints have any give in them, without glancing at anything except his phone screen for most of the time he’s in the room. He hums something under his breath, some song I don’t recognize, entirely unbothered by the woman tied to a chair three feet away from him.

“Eat something now,” he says, barely looking at me, already turning to leave the room.

I don’t move yet, staying still. I watch him instead. He’s not carrying a weapon I can see, phone still in one hand, attention split between me and whatever he’s reading on the screen. A knife clipped to his belt, the only thing on him that reads as remotely dangerous, and even that he’s forgotten to keep any real distance from me.

He steps closer to check the restraint on my left wrist, some half-hearted gesture toward doing his job properly, and that’s the opening I’ve been waiting for without fully admitting to myself that I was waiting.

I don’t think about what comes next the way I’d think through a careful plan.

I don’t think. I just move, elbow snapping back into whoever’s behind me the same way I trained to do it for years before any of this started.

I drive my forehead forward hard into the bridge of his nose the second he’s close enough, using the only real weapon left available to a woman with her hands and legs restrained.

He staggers back with a cry of pain, blood already flowing, his phone clattering to the floor between us. The sound of it hitting concrete registers somewhere distant, unimportant against everything else happening at once.

I don’t stop there. I throw my full weight sideways, chair and all, using the momentum to knock him further off balance while he’s still reeling from the hit, his hands coming up too late to catch himself properly against the wall.

My shoulder screams from the impact of the chair hitting the floor with me still tied into it, but the pain registers as background noise, nothing next to the adrenaline flooding every other part of me right now.

He goes down hard, cursing, scrambling for balance; he doesn’t fully recover in time.

I use the seconds that buys me to twist against the restraint he’d loosened, checking it, working my wrist free enough to reach the small pocketknife I know is clipped to his belt if I can just get close enough before he recovers, fingers scrabbling at plastic and skin already raw from days of restraint.

I don’t get all the way there. He’s already pushing back up, one hand pressed to his bleeding nose, the other reaching for something at his hip.

I don’t wait to find out what. I throw my weight forward instead, driving my shoulder into his midsection while he’s still off balance, and we both go down together, me still half tangled in the chair, him gasping for the breath I’ve just knocked out of him, the two of us a tangle of limbs and splintered chair legs on the concrete floor.

It isn’t a fight I win outright. I know that even as it’s happening, I can’t overpower a trained man with my hands still partially bound and my body carrying weight it’s never carried before. But I don’t need to win outright. I just need enough chaos, enough noise, enough of a delay that someone else has to come deal with it, someone who might make a mistake of his own in the process.

I scream as loud as I can manage, the sound tearing out of me raw and untrained in its own way, more weapon than panic in how I aim it, loud enough to carry through walls this thin.

Footsteps pound down the hallway outside, more than one set, shouting in a language I don’t understand mixed with someone barking what sounds like orders.

The door bursts open, and two more men flood into the room, and I know immediately that whatever window I bought myself is closing fast. Their eyes go first to the guard bleeding on the floor, then to me, and something in their expressions shifts from surprise into a kind of grudging, angry recalculation.

I don’t fight the second wave the way I fought the first. I can’t, not restrained the way I still am, not with my body already screaming from the effort the first exchange cost me.

I let myself go still instead, calculating rather than panicking, saving whatever strength I have left for whatever comes next instead of wasting it on a fight I can’t currently win.

My chest heaves as I catch my breath, sweat cooling fast against my skin in the concrete chill of the room.

They haul the younger guard up off the floor, someone shouting at him in a tone that sounds like fury more than concern, and another man checks my restraints with considerably more attention than the first guard ever showed, tightening them hard enough to bite into skin that’s already raw.

He doesn’t look at my face while he does it, deliberately avoiding whatever expression I might be wearing, as though eye contact might grant me some further advantage he isn’t willing to risk.

“Careful with her,” one of them says, the same phrase I heard back in that alley the day they took me. “Don’t damage the merchandise.”

I don’t say anything back. I keep my face as blank as I can manage, breathing hard, adrenaline still hammering through me even as my body settles back into stillness, every muscle in me still primed for a fight that isn’t coming again tonight.

Inside, something has shifted permanently.

They know now that I’m not simply a passive thing to be guarded. That knowledge costs me something in comfort, tighter restraints, closer watching, but it buys me something too, a crack in their certainty that I’ll stay quiet and contained no matter what.

I think about the baby the second the adrenaline starts to fade, both hands pressing instinctively against my stomach despite the fresh restraints biting into my wrists. Still there. Still moving, a faint flutter answering my hands like it’s checking on me the same way I’m checking on it. That single confirmation matters more right now than anything else happening in this room.

I close my eyes and let myself breathe, counting the way I always do, in for four, hold for four, out for four, forcing my racing heart back toward something steadier. I don’t know what comes next.

I don’t know how long the men outside that door plan to make me pay for tonight’s disruption, whether the punishment for tonight will be worse than anything I’ve faced so far in this building or my entire life, for that matter.