"You're pretty when you cry, anyone ever told you that?"

Sasha wasn't sure where exactly she was, besides being handcuffed to a radiator inside a warehouse somewhere in Harlem. It was dark and dingy apart from a circle of computer screens lighting up only the centre of the space, a constant whirring of technology had slowly began to drive Sasha insane.

Time was something Sasha didn't understand anymore. There was no concept of seconds or minutes, hours or days. There were no windows that let in sunlight or moonlight and the group of men worked in shifts, never all sleeping at once.

Exhausted and pretty confident that she was nursing another round of cracked ribs, Sasha tried to sleep most of the time. When she was awake, her conscious mind was much crueller to her than her subconscious one, though both were malicious enough to make her jolt from a peaceful slumber all of a sudden or stun herself with her eyes wide open.

Sasha thought that by now the security cameras in her apartment building would've picked up something, only she soon realised that considering her abductor was attempting something incredibly technologically advanced, he was far more than capable of taking out some security cameras.

Sean had never actually told Sasha whether he'd found the supposed hard drive that he ransacked her home in search of, in fact, he didn't tell her much at all.

She stayed chained to a rusting metal radiator with bruises around her wrists and mascara stained beneath her eyes, chapped lips and a dry throat, her head pounding from crying silently, though she'd gotten used to the pain by that point.

Sasha had no doubt that eventually Tony would find her, though whether that was before or after Sean slit her throat like he'd threatened to, was something that made part of Sasha wish the whole thing could just be over and done with.

She was leant with her head against the wall when Sean pushed himself away from the desk on a wheeled office chair and approached her, spinning a silver pistol around his finger with a smile on his face.

Sasha had never once thought of herself as naïve, convinced that Phil had consumed the entirety of that trait from both parents with none to spare for his younger sister to inherit. Though each time Sasha looked into Sean's eyes, she wondered how she'd never seen the evil behind the dark blue and the sinister force of a smile that had once admittedly charmed her.

She was furious with herself for not realising that the man living next door to her had slowly but surely been crawling deeper into the details of her life. All the conversations in the hallway, the coffees and drinks in the bar downstairs, had all flown straight over Sasha's head.

"You want a drink? Something to eat?"

Sasha shook her head. The hunger pains had stopped by that point and although she was sure something to eat would cure the haziness of her vision and the heavy, slow beating of her heart, the thought alone of eating and drinking made her exhausted.

"Your boyfriend," Sean continued, spinning around once on the chair like a child, "He's smart, really smart. I'd heard things from Obi but I never really believed it, not until I saw it for myself. And you had all this information right underneath you, literally, it was under your bed."

Sasha's insides cringed in disgust as he spoke to her, though it wasn't Sean that made her want to throw up, it was the fact that Tony had hidden something so important from her in her own home.

She knew he wasn't stupid, though Sasha almost couldn't believe that Tony would do anything to put her in harms way, especially not by keeping such high intel in her own home.

She felt disappointed, betrayed, even. They were meant to have no secrets, Tony being the biggest advocate of Sasha always telling him everything, though that clearly hadn't been applied to his thought process when he hid that hard drive underneath her bed.

For a moment when Sean held the gun to her head and she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the tiles of her kitchen, Sasha thought she was going to die. There wasn't a shred of hope inside of her, nothing for her to cling onto, only peace, finally.

She wondered whether that was how Phil felt right before he died, whether his mind was the same jungle it always seemed to be, or whether he too found the inner peace only sought out in a true moment of total acceptance of fate.

Sasha hoped it was the latter.

"Why am I here, Sean? You got what you wanted, didn't you?"

The man laughed in her face, almost echoing with pity as he stared down at her with a black gaze and strong jaw, a seriousness shadowing over him all of a sudden.

"Have you ever heard of leverage, Sasha? You're it. Will he save the secret to his livelihood, or the girl? It's like a superhero movie, don't you think?"

"He'll kill you either way," Sasha mumbled, her chest rising and falling slowly as she searched for the breath to speak, feeling like the weight of the world was suffocating her, "No matter what happens, he'll kill you."

Sean laughed again, only this time he stood up and walked over to her, crouching on his knees with the gun in his hand, pressing the barrel beneath her chin.

"Not if I kill him first, sweetheart."

He yanked the gun away and walked back over to the desk without saying anything else, leaving Sasha in silence.

She'd danced with the nightmare of losing Tony more times than she cared to admit, always against her will and from the hand of her intrusively pessimistic inner thoughts, though when it crossed her mind for the first time because the it had a chance at becoming a true reality, Sasha went numb.

She'd experienced loss and pain to a degree where she could recall how it all felt so vividly it made her nauseous, though when she thought about going through the same thing with Tony, the sensation was unlike anything she'd ever felt before.

Paralysed was the only word to describe how Sasha felt at the thought. It consumed her entire being the same way loving him did, taking the breath from her lungs and light from her eyes. Sasha saw nothing for herself without Tony in her world, feeling as though an end to his life would be an end to hers, too.

However, the one overriding emotion Sasha still managed to feel at the deepest depths of her soul, was betrayal. Tony had promised to keep her safe, promised to protect her from anything dark in the world. Instead, he'd put her right in the firing line.

Sasha knew Tony would never have done what he did thinking it would ever put her in harms way, but what he thought at the time didn't matter anymore. The reality was, whether Sasha made it out of that warehouse alive or not, she would never be able to rest peacefully as long as she was with Tony.

Worry of fear and loss, uncertainty of life and death had always been pulsing in the back of her mind since she started to fall for him, but Sasha couldn't see herself walking away from this with her hand inside Tony's. There was too much collateral damage for her to even stay in New York, let alone be able to love Tony without a nagging hesitation holding her back.

Sasha wanted to be safe. She wanted to live a life that she didn't have to be afraid of and one she could control. Since losing Phil, Sasha had convinced herself that being alone was the safest way to be, and although Tony had changed her mind as well as her life, he had ultimately, sadly, proven her right.

an;;
i hate this chapter im so sorry lmao but I will be updating again very soon!! P.S I have a new username which I love AND omg thank you SO much for 60K!!!!!