Chapter 2

In the first year of the contract, I had begged her.

I' d gotten on my knees in this very office, my hands clasped in front of me.

"Sarah, please," I had whispered, my voice raw. "Stop. I' ll do anything. I' ll work for you for free for the rest of my life. Just… stop this. Stop him."

She had looked down at me, her expression a mask of indifference. Alex was standing behind her, a smirk playing on his lips.

"Stop?" she had repeated, a hollow laugh escaping her. "Liam, the pain you' re feeling now? It' s not even a fraction of what I felt that night. You will feel all of it. Every last drop. This is what you owe me."

After that, I never begged again. I learned to swallow the humiliation. I became the perfect, obedient dog she wanted. I cleaned, I fetched coffee, I stood silently while Alex draped himself over her. I did everything she asked.

My compliance seemed to bother her more than my begging ever did. Sometimes, I would catch a flicker of frustration in her eyes when I agreed to a particularly demeaning task without a word of protest. It was as if my numbness was robbing her of her victory.

Today was one of those days.

We were at a company retreat, a lavish affair at a ski resort. Sarah believed in these things, team-building exercises and forced fun. For me, it was just a new venue for the same old torture.

Alex, drunk on expensive whiskey and his own ego, decided to up the ante. We were all gathered around a large bonfire.

"Hey, Campbell!" he shouted, slurring my name. "I bet you can' t climb to the top of that rock face."

He pointed to a steep, icy cliff nearby. It wasn' t a professional climbing wall. It was a jagged piece of the mountain, dangerous and slick with frost.

"Alex, that' s not a good idea," one of the junior programmers muttered.

"Shut up," Alex snapped. "I wasn' t talking to you. I' m talking to the office pet. He does what he' s told, don' t you, Liam?"

All eyes turned to me. Then to Sarah. She was swirling a glass of red wine, her face illuminated by the firelight. She said nothing. Her silence was permission.

I looked at the cliff. A fall would mean broken bones, at best.

I looked at Sarah, a silent plea in my eyes. Don' t do this. Not this.

She met my gaze. For a second, I thought I saw a flicker of the girl I used to know, the one who bandaged my scraped knee in college after I fell off my bike.

Then her expression hardened. She lifted her chin slightly.

"Alex is talking to you," she said, her voice carrying over the crackle of the fire. "Are you deaf?"

The last bit of hope inside me died. It was a familiar feeling.

"And Liam," she added, her voice dropping to a near whisper, but I heard it perfectly. "No gloves."

The cold from the ground seeped into me. No gloves. On ice-slicked rock.

I remembered a time, years ago, when we were hiking. My hands got so cold they turned blue. She had taken them in hers, blowing on my fingers, her warm breath a promise.

"I' ll always keep you warm, Liam," she' d said. "I' ll never let you get hurt."

The memory was a ghost, a phantom pain that was worse than the cold.

I nodded slowly. "Yes, Ms. Miller."

I walked towards the rock face, the snow crunching under my boots. I could feel everyone' s eyes on my back. I took off my gloves and stuffed them in my pocket.

The rock was like a block of ice. The moment my bare hands touched it, the cold bit into my flesh. It was a sharp, searing pain. I found a handhold, then a foothold, and started to climb.

My fingers quickly grew numb, clumsy. The sharp edges of the rock cut into my skin, but I barely felt it. All I could feel was the deep, bone-aching cold.

Below, I could hear Alex laughing. "Look at him go! Like a little monkey!"

I didn' t look down. I just focused on the next hold, and the next. The wind whipped around me, stinging my face. I was about twenty feet up when my left hand slipped.

I dangled for a horrifying second, my right hand screaming in protest as it took my full weight. I scrambled with my feet, my boots finding no purchase on the icy surface. My fingers were on fire. I couldn't hold on.

I fell.

The landing was a brutal impact that knocked the wind out of me. I lay in the snow, gasping, a sharp pain radiating from my ankle.

Alex roared with laughter. "What a failure!"

I saw Sarah stand up. She walked to the edge of the firelight, looking down at me. There was no pity in her eyes. No concern. Nothing.

"Get up," she said.

I tried to push myself up, but a wave of dizziness hit me. My ankle wouldn't hold my weight.

"I think it' s broken," I managed to say.

She looked at my leg, then back at my face. "I said, get up. Crawl if you have to. I' m done looking at you."

She turned and walked back to the fire, leaving me in the cold and the dark. The party continued around me as if nothing had happened. I lay there for a long time before I finally managed to drag myself back towards the lodge, one agonizing inch at a time.