Either way, it’s not Flynn who comes down anymore. Instead, two other soldiers alternate, and they barely glance at me, and they don’t speak to me other than to command me up the stairs and position a gun at my back as they walk me to a bathroom in the main hall, which makes me wonder why Flynn’s always brought me to his from the very first instance.  

I’ve asked about Flynn’s whereabouts, but they pretend not to hear me. This is a daily activity now.

Other than during their visits, the basement’s lights are kept off, but thankfully, I never return to that dark place I went to the last time I was alone for an extended length of time.

In the silence, my mind travels a lot. It relives everything Dad ever did to me. His malicious means of training me for this. His cruel ways of raising me to be his soldier rather than his daughter.

“Fight him.” Dad flicks his fingers to one of the soldiers he’s brought to the training room. A mountain-sized man with biceps as wide as my head, height that towers two feet above me, and a menacing snarl that says he’d eat me for breakfast if given the chance.

“You’re kidding me?” I look from Dad to the solider and back. At twenty-four, this isn’t the first soldier he’s had me train against, but no one like this. “I’ll lose. More so, he’ll break me.”

“Attack,” Dad commands. “Before he does.”

I didn’t move for almost a week afterwards. His soldier took me down in less than a minute, bruising my back.

He never taught me enough to fight back against him. Or, somehow I was hardwired unable to do so. Maybe because I was already in the monster’s web, and his training never exactly got me into the fighting shape it should have.

The single time I tried to block his incoming hit, I paid for the act of defiance.

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