Something had changed.

She could feel it in the air. He was unsettled.

Maybe it was the way he walked this time sharper steps, shorter visits. Maybe it was the silence between their interactions, stretched thinner than usual. Or maybe it was the way he hadn’t touched the crate at all today.

Not a sound.

That wasn’t his style.

Bianca sat in the far corner, her back to the loose slats she’d widened over the past few days, knees pulled to her chest. The pendant still hung heavy at her neck. She hadn’t touched it in hours. She didn’t need to. Its presence grounded her now. A promise she hadn’t broken.

Today, the silence wasn’t scary.

It was opportunity.

She waited another stretch of silence counted ninety seconds past the last drip of the leaking pipe near the far wall then shifted. Slowly. Careful not to let the wood creak.

She unhooked the slat, the one with the carving her feather, her mark and set it aside.

Air filtered through the gap. She leaned into it and listened.

Nothing.

No hum. No footsteps. No key.

He wasn’t here.

Or if he was, he’d stopped pretending to care.

This was it.

Either he’d disappeared for good... or he was giving her one last chance to hang herself before whatever ending he had planned.

Fine.

She pressed her shoulders against the slats and pushed.

The wood groaned, soft but sharp. Loud enough to make her stop and hold her breath.

Still nothing.

She pushed again.

The panel gave way.

Her hands slipped through. Then one shoulder. Then both. She hit the floor outside the crate harder than she meant to, skin tearing on raw concrete.

She didn’t cry out.

Pain meant she could move.

Her eyes adjusted fast. The room wasn’t large. Blank concrete walls. One metal chair. A bucket in the corner. And there across from her the door.

Massive. Bolted.

But the lock new detail was electronic.

Not industrial. Not government. Retail.

She crawled to it, pressing her ear against the cool steel.

Still nothing.