Alex's body ached as she perched on the edge of the makeshift hospital bed. This wasn't a real medical facility—just a discrete location her father had access to. The events of the past few hours replayed in her mind like a broken film reel: her father yanking her from the house, removing the gag from her mouth, freeing her bound wrists. The phantom pressure of the restraints still lingered, and her neck throbbed with dull pain.
The doctor—a thin man with kind eyes and a permanent worry line between his brows—had already treated her injuries. He'd assured her that the cuts on her neck were superficial. "The blade barely broke the skin," he'd said in a clinical tone that somehow made her feel both better and worse. The real damage had come from the lamp Phillip had used to knock her uncons
