Your Case or Mine

Chapter 19

She didn't even realize she'd fallen asleep. She was on the sofa, waiting up for Killian to get home, and had just closed her eyes for a few minutes. The next thing she knew, a sharp pain in her neck had her waking with a start...and her entire body froze. He was leaning over her, smirking with a dark glimmer in his cold eyes that made fear prickle under her skin.

He'd waited for this moment, and he was going to savor it. Her fear and confusion tasted sweeter than he'd anticipated.

That husband of hers had left in a hurry; perhaps they'd had a fight, by the looks of his forlorn expression as he'd driven away. He'd left her alone and more vulnerable than either of them had realized, and all that patience had paid off. The opportunity he'd been waiting for had finally presented itself, and he'd waited, watching her pace around the living room. Eventually, she'd fallen asleep on the sofa, and he'd wasted no time picking the lock of the patio door then. He'd done it before, to test out how much of a challenge it would be, so this time he released the latch with ease.

He'd stood over her for a moment, relishing the thrill of the hunt. She awoke as the needle pierced the delicate skin of her neck, just like the others.

"What the fuck are you-"

That's when she saw the needle. And the mixture of anger and fear became pure terror. She struggled to get away from him then, one thought overriding the dozens that were making her head hurt. Get in view of the cameras. Alert whoever was on the other end of them to what was happening. Get help.

But he grabbed her foot as she tried to scramble off the sofa, and she fell, her hip taking the brunt of it. Bruises were the least of her worries though, as she screamed hoarsely on the off chance that anyone might hear, her entire body starting to feel so weak and heavy as she dragged herself across the living room floor. Her vision was blurring, and she was hyperventilating, desperately fighting whatever he'd injected her with and clinging to consciousness.

He didn't seem concerned, watching her with mild amusement. She made a last-ditch attempt to get away and he sighed. They'd all done this. Tried to get away from him. But she was especially fiery. The others had lost consciousness within a few seconds, frozen in their terror, but she was fighting it.

"Why...why are you doing this? Please-"

Her words were slurred, as she finally began to lose the fight, lying on the living room floor with tears slipping down her cheeks. She hadn't made it to the kitchen, so all she could hope for was that she'd still made it far enough for someone to see her.

"Because you deserve to know what it feels like, Ems."

CS

The first thing Emma was aware of was a dull ache in her head that resonated down her shoulders and back. It felt like the mother of all hangovers...

Her eyes snapped open, the memory of Neal leaning over her with a menacing smirk and a needle in his hand jolting her into consciousness. She groaned, quickly realising that her shoulders and back were aching because her hands were secured firmly behind her. Her heart was racing as she tested the restraints, deducing with a wince that it was cable ties currently biting into the flesh of her wrists.

The last thing she remembered was the world fading from her peripheries as Neal picked her up like a ragdoll from the living room floor and headed out of the patio doors. She'd tried her best to kick out, but her body had felt like lead, and after that, blackness had engulfed her vision.

Now, she was waking up in the middle of some kind of basement, her hands tied behind her back, sat on a wooden chair that had certainly seen better days. Despite her throbbing headache, she tried to engage all of her cop instincts and looked around for any defining features that might clue her in on her whereabouts. But it just looked like any other old, nondescript basement.

There was one small window, definitely not big enough for her to fit through even if she managed to free herself from the cable ties, and no other visible means of escape besides the concrete steps leading up to whatever lay beyond the basement. Flexing her wrists as much as possible, and gritting her teeth as the plastic rubbed her skin raw, she held back tears.

She had no idea what Neal had in store for her, or if this was just some kind of revenge gig to scare her and pay her back for the broken nose she'd given him earlier that day...or yesterday, she wasn't sure. Turning her head back toward the small window, she saw nothing but darkness as she tried to work out how long she'd been out cold.

Dread settled heavily in the pit of her stomach, and Emma resorted to looking around for the next best thing to an escape plan: a weapon. There wasn't much in the basement, aside from a bare cot in the far corner, a workbench of some sort, and a metal shelving unit along the opposite wall. There looked to be some sort of toolbox on the middle shelf, and her heart leapt as she zeroed in on it.

Summoning as much energy as she could, mostly fuelled by adrenaline and her finely-tuned survival instinct, Emma managed to shuffle-hop the chair she was bound to a little closer to the shelves. She was breathing heavily and sweating through the pain in her wrists with every sharp movement, and on the third time, she overshot it, toppling the chair and crying out as she hit the floor. Hard.

With the wind knocked out of her, and agonising pain searing through the shoulder she'd landed on, she had to fight back the urge to throw up. Hot tears burned her cheeks and blurred her vision, and she blinked them back furiously as she heard the door open at the top of the stairs.

Emma lay still, attempting to even out her breathing, and listened to the footsteps descending the stairs. A few moments later, she was being hauled upright, and her chair was being dragged back into the middle of the room.

"You think I'd be stupid enough to leave anything in here that'd help you escape? Come on, Ems, you know me better than that; you're forgetting that I know you, and how resourceful you can be. The toolbox is empty. Nice try, though."

Her shoulders slumped in defeat, as she tried to ignore the pain in the left one. It's not my punching arm, at least, she thought.

"Why are you doing this?"

She snapped, glaring up at him as he finally stepped into her line of sight. He crouched down in front of her, placing his hands on her knees and sliding them up to her thighs. She shuddered in disgust and clenched her jaw, his touch turning her stomach. He simply smirked.

"I told you. You deserve to know what it feels like."

"To know what what feels like?!"

She said, with a mixture of confusion and anger. His riddles were pissing her off, more than scaring her, which she assumed was the intent. And she had been scared. But part of her still thought that perhaps this was just a game he was playing to mess with her head. It hadn't occurred to her yet that he could even be capable of murder.

"To have your heart ripped out...the way you ripped out mine."

Emma stared at him blankly, trying to process his words.

"Are you fucking with me? I ripped out your heart?! You're the one who abandoned me! You're the one who let me go to prison for you and then disappeared off the face of the earth!"

Her voice was shrill, and those pesky tears were back, but she refused to let them fall, refused to let him see that his abandonment still hurt her. His grip on her thighs tightened momentarily before he let go of her and stood up, staring down at her coldly.

"You threw our child away."

Her throat suddenly felt dry and the color drained from her face. He knew.

"H-how did you...I-I...I didn't-"

"Yeah, you didn't think I'd find out about him, did you? Thought you could just toss him away like trash and move on with your life. Well, you thought wrong."

Her heart was pounding, spots dancing in front of her eyes and her breathing becoming shallow. The fear from earlier was back at full force. She'd had nightmares like this, and part of her desperately prayed she was about to wake up in a cold sweat, to find that that's all this was.

"I was seventeen," she said shakily, "I had to live out of my car for a year, how the hell do you think I could've raised a kid like that?! You were already long gone."

"If I'd known you were pregnant, I wouldn't have left. Or I would've taken him with me. I wouldn't have let you put him into the same system that turned you into such a fucked up mess."

Emma turned her head away, not wanting to look at him as his words carved wounds out of old scars; not wanting him to see her tears and know he still had the power to hurt her with the things he said.

"I wanted him to have his best chance."

She whispered, more to herself than him. Giving up her son had simultaneously been the hardest and easiest decision she'd ever made. She'd loved him since the moment he was born, but he'd deserved better than the little she would've been able to offer him. She couldn't be a mother, didn't know how, and he'd deserved someone who could give him love and stability and a real home. How could she have given a child all of that when she'd had none of it to give? Keeping him would have been selfish, and she'd chosen to put her child first instead of her own crippling desire for the unconditional love her son would have given her.

Why couldn't Neal see that?

"Like your parents gave you your best chance? Look how you turned out."

The metaphorical knife kept on twisting deeper into the scars of her insecurities Ashe sneered at her. And she knew he was well aware of that. He had always known how to hurt her the most.

"How did you find out? Is he...okay?"

She warily met Neal's cold, emotionless glare, and a shiver ran up her spine.

"Now you care about his well-being? A decade too late, Ems."

Her breath hitched, not knowing how to interpret that, and she swallowed the lump in her throat as he began to pace the room and continued.

"I called the prison in Arizona back then. Asked about you. They said you'd been released a week earlier...and that they had the CPS paperwork if you wanted contact with the baby. I thought they had you mixed up with someone else, but it didn't take much work to find out that you'd thrown our son away the moment he was born."

Emma watched him silently, tears in her eyes, as he paced. Her headache was twice as bad now as it had been when she'd woken up.

"You went looking for him," she choked out, a blizzard of dread swirling in her stomach, and even as she hesitantly asked the question, she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer, "Did you find him?"

"Of course I did," he snapped, "Took years to track him down, seeing as you hadn't even put me on his birth certificate, but I wouldn't give up on my son the way you did. You're just like my own mother. Chose yourself over your kid."

She bit back the urge to snap a retort, her irritation rising. There was no use repeating her defense, when he clearly wasn't going to accept it. No matter what she said, he was going to choose to believe she'd given up their child out of malice and selfishness. But he hadn't been there; he hadn't stood in her shoes as she broke her own heart for the wellbeing of their son. Despite her own guilt, and despite what Neal believed, she knew deep down that she'd made the choice in her son's best interest, not for herself. If it had been for herself, she wouldn't have spent the last decade with a small, aching hole in her heart.

"Is he okay? Neal...just tell me he's okay."

She whispered, choosing not to respond to his accusations and anger. A lone tear slipped down her cheek, but with her hands tied she couldn't even brush it away. Neal stopped his restless pacing and loomed over her, sneering at her tears. He turned away without answering her desperate plea, making for the stairs and taking them two at a time.

A sob caught in her throat and she called out to him.

"Please, Neal. I just want to know he's-"

He didn't look back as he slammed and locked the door behind him. As silence descended, the residual bit of strength she had holding her together crumbled and Emma broke, sobs shaking her slight frame as the the tears fell freely.

CS

8 hours. That's how long it had been since Killian had returned to the house and found Emma gone. And he'd felt every single one of those hours. Even though he knew it was unlikely she'd somehow manage to call, he still kept his phone in his hand, glancing at it hopefully and silently willing her name to appear as an incoming call.

It didn't.

The house had been swarming with CSIs, Killian's team and half the Boston Homicide department within a half hour of Killian making the panicked call to Will. Neighbors had milled around for the first few hours, hoping to pick up on the latest gossip and figure out what kind of drama had the new neighbors' house full of cops so late at night.

But the only neighbors Killian spoke to personally were Aurora and Philip. He didn't tell them much, just the bare minimum, and Will had taken a statement from each of them. They hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary though. No suspicious vehicles loitering, and no strangers hanging around paying particular attention to the house, as far as they were aware.

A broken piece of fencing and tyre impressions were found in the woodland surrounding the backyard, but they ended at the road. Nevertheless, molds of the tyre prints were sent for urgent analysis, and the backyard and woodland were processed thoroughly, along with the living room. Only one partial fingerprint was found that didn't match Killian and Emma's, so that was marked as the highest priority.

By the time the results returned, the CSIs were long gone and Killian had practically paced a groove into the kitchen floor. David had sent most of his team out on patrols to search for Emma, in hopes that someone may have seen something, and had put Will back to work following the new leads they'd found in relation to Gold and his son.

When Belle sent through the results of the prints, Will pulled them up on his screen, and as he did so, he cursed under his breath. Killian was by his side, peering over his shoulder, in a heartbeat, his pulse quickening as he silently prayed for good news.

Killian stared at the screen, tunnel vision taking over, his entire body going cold and his heartbeat thundering in his ears. It couldn't be. The mugshot staring back at him was old, taken when the man was probably in his mid-twenties or early thirties. But it was definitely him.

"Well, fuck me sidewards," Will said, eyes wide, "We got a match for the print...and a name for Gold's son, too."

David impatiently gestured for him to continue.

"They're...fuckin' 'ell. They're the same person. It's Gold's son. He's our guy!"

"Neal Cassidy."

Killian said flatly, and his tone had Will and David turning to look at him with matching frowns. The knot in Killian's stomach was now a raging tsunami of anger, fear and dread. He'd witnessed how that man had spoken to Emma, heard the venom in his tone and seen the cold fury in his eyes. He'd known Neal was bad news, but he'd had no idea that less than 24 hours earlier, he'd been toe-to-toe with the man they were hunting.

"You...recognize him?"

Will asked, with a mixture of incredulity and suspicion. Killian swallowed thickly, feeling as though he might throw up at any moment. After a steadying breath, perching on a breakfast stool for support, Killian nodded.

"I had the displeasure of meeting the sorry excuse for a man yesterday," he said quietly, and Will gawped at him, while David's eyebrows shot up as they waited for him to continue, "He's...he's Emma's ex boyfriend. The one who broke her heart."

David and Will both spluttered their shock, and it was the first time Killian had heard David curse.

"We thought all of this was either Gold's revenge against his wife, or his son's revenge against his mother for givin' him up. But it's not," Will muttered, his face pale with shock as realization and understanding rammed into him like a truck, "It's about Emma, innit? It's been about her this whole time, and we put her out 'ere, right where he could take her."

The room was plunged into oppressive silence for long moments, as Will's words weighed heavily on all three of them. Neal had ripped Emma's heart out metaphorically a long time ago, and now...well, now, he'd come back to do it literally.

CS

Emma had no idea how long she'd been left to cry it out, alone in the basement, tied to a rickety chair. She had very little perception of time, unsure if it was nighttime or if the little window behind her had been covered over from the outside to prevent light filtering in.

All she knew was that, despite a distinct lack of appetite, her stomach kept rumbling, and her mouth was dry as a bone. She needed to figure out a way to free herself…

The door at the top of the stairs creaked and Emma lifted her gaze somewhat warily. She steeled herself for another confrontation with Neal, her whole body tensing as she waited for him to appear.

But he didn't appear. Instead, a young boy peered inquisitively around the door, and then tentatively made his way down the steps with wide eyes and a nervous smile.

If Emma had thought her mouth was dry before, it was nothing compared to now. So many of her nightmares had started like this, and they never went well. A sob lodged in the back of her throat and tears once again sprang to her eyes. She was unable to find words, silently watching the boy reach the bottom of the steps and hesitate, before shuffling closer to her, knotting his hands exactly the way she did when she was nervous.

Blinking back her tears and trying to remember how to breathe, Emma ached to reach out for him, while at the same time, her fight or flight mechanism was screaming at her to get out of the situation. Not that she could, even if she truly wanted to.

"Hi…" the little boy started, with a slight nervous tremor in his voice, "You're my mom, right?"

Emma nodded, unable to manage more as her heart felt as though it was being cracked open inside her chest.

"I'm Henry...I'm your son. I'm ten years old and my birthday is August 15th and I live in Storybrooke, Maine and I play soccer and football and I like writing stories and drawing art. I have a dog called Pongo and I like taking him to the beach because we do races and he fetches stuff. And my best friend is called Avery and my mom and dad take us to watch the Patriots every year because we both like them, My mom...uh, heh...my other mom, she said I might get to meet you someday and I should tell you the things I like and maybe you might like those things, too."

He rambled with a hopeful grin, and Emma sobbed out a laugh, which made Henry waver slightly. Her laugh was partly borne out of nervousness and partly relief...relief that he possibly didn't hate her and didn't resent her for giving him up, and relief that he had a family. A real family, and friends, and hobbies he loved. That's all she'd wanted when she'd watched him taken from her in that prison delivery room a decade ago. She wanted him to have everything she couldn't offer him, and it looked as though maybe he might have all of that.

"Hi, Henry," she whispered, smiling through the tears that wouldn't stop slipping down her cheeks, "I'm so happy to meet you. I thought about you every day and I hoped you'd have a nice family. I do like a lot of those things."

Henry's face lit up, but it was then that he seemed to realize something was amiss.

"Why are you tied up to that chair?"

He asked, frowning with innocent confusion as he assessed the situation. Emma swallowed thickly.

"Well...your dad...he was playing a game and he forgot to untie me," he looked wary and still somewhat confused, so Emma quickly continued, "Do you know where there's some scissors upstairs? Because my hands are hurting quite a bit."

"My dad went out to get dinner for us all," Henry said matter-of-factly, "He said I can have one of the cake milkshakes from Boston Burger. My mom and dad always take me and Avery there."

Emma felt a surge of urgency tug at her gut, and she nodded as Henry rambled.

"That's really great. Do you think you could go find some scissors or a knife and then we can be ready for when your dad comes back?"

Henry nodded enthusiastically, heading for the stairs, but wavered slightly on his way up.

"Uhm…my mom says I shouldn't carry sharp things like scissors or knives and I should ask her to carry them for me. Maybe my dad can do it?"

"No! I-I mean...your mom is right, but if you promise to be careful, I think you're grown up enough to bring them down here and help me. Whaddaya think?"

Emma held her breath, silently praying he'd relent. Henry seemed thrilled to be considered grown up enough for something, so he grinned widely and nodded again, practically falling over his own feet as he raced up the stairs.

Once again, Emma held her breath, silently praying that he'd make it back down and help to free her before Neal returned. She didn't even want to imagine what he might do otherwise. And her only chance of getting out of her ties, and possibly of getting out of this unscathed, would be gone.

But she didn't just have herself to worry about now. As much as she was instinctively sure that Neal wouldn't hurt their son, he was apparently capable of much more than she previously thought. She wasn't sure she ever truly knew the man she'd once thought of as the love of her life.

He'd kidnapped her, and was holding her hostage, tied up in a basement. And he'd potentially taken Henry hostage, too. The kid didn't seem at all distressed though, so perhaps there was some kind of arrangement he'd made with Henry's adoptive parents when he'd tracked their son down. The thought made her feel just a little bit nauseous, having never considered the idea that Neal would eventually find out about the baby she'd carried while sat in a prison cell.

Henry finally returned, stampeding down the steps with a tense look of concentration on his face, holding a pair of scissors very carefully out in front of him.

"I did it!" He grinned proudly as he skidded to a stop in front of her, and Emma couldn't help but smile back at him with a little bit of wonder, "Should I cut you free now, mom?"

Emma's heart skipped at the title he so easily graced her with, and a lump of emotion lodged in her throat once more as she nodded, unable to get any words out. In all the dreams she'd had of this child, never had he been this warm and accepting of her. It was more than she thought she deserved from him. But she supposed that Killian had been right when he said her dream interpretations of her son, and his anger toward her, were simply reflections of her own guilt, and not what the real-life version of him might feel.

Henry quickly and easily snipped the ties around her wrists, and the ones at her ankles too, and Emma almost cried out with the sharp pain that jolted through her shoulders and arms as they were released from the position they'd been held in for...who knew how long now.

Gingerly getting to her feet, and feeling slightly wobbly with dehydration and lack of food, Emma looked down at Henry and immediately pulled him into a tight hug. He immediately returned it, wrapping his small arms around her waist. She'd never dared to hope she'd have this kind of moment with her son, never thought she'd get to meet him, let alone hold him in her arms. She certainly hadn't imagined it'd be in a basement where she'd been held hostage.

if there was one silver lining to Neal crashing back into her life and turning her world upside down, the little boy currently hugging her fiercely was it. The hole in her heart that had been ever-present in her life since the day Henry was born, now suddenly didn't ache, for the very first time. Her son didn't hate her. He had a good life, and a family who loved him, and he didn't hate her.

She could live with Neal's hate, and the fact that he wouldn't forgive her for her decision ten years ago. That was like water off a duck's back to her now, after everything he'd put her through...and everything he continued to put her through, considering her current situation. The fact that her son didn't harbor the same resentment as his father was the only thing that mattered to her.

That, and getting herself and her boy out of the basement, and as far away from Neal as possible. He may not hurt Henry, but she was pretty certain he'd have no issue hurting her now.

Gently taking the scissors from Henry, and tucking them into the waistband of her pants, she canted her head toward the stairs.

"Shall we get out of this basement, huh, kid?"

Henry grinned and nodded, racing to lead the way up the stairs. Emma quickly followed, scanning the small, rustic kitchen-dining room that the basement door opened into. Striding over to the sink, she grabbed a glass left on the draining board and filled it with water, gulping down a few mouthfuls and closing her eyes at the relief of it. Her throat had felt so dry, and the dehydration had been making her feel a little lightheaded.

Henry was watching her with that inquisitive gaze of his, and she had to resist the urge to pull him into another hug. It felt surreal to have her son standing right there. But they had limited time before Neal returned, and she needed to be as prepared as possible. Glancing around the room, and wandering through to the living room, she took inventory of everything she could see and memorized the floor plan.

She tested the front door, but as she'd suspected, it was locked. Same for the back door. A flash of anger burned in her gut as she thought of how Neal had left Henry to take care of himself in a locked-up house, while he'd gone off to do whatever it was he was doing. And he'd had the audacity to be angry at her for her parenting choices.

Henry was watching her with open curiosity, and she paused for a moment to smile at him. She was grateful and awed by the fact that she finally knew what he looked like, what his voice sounded like, and that he had the kind of life she'd so desperately dreamed of for him.

But she wished more than anything that she'd been able to meet him in better circumstances, that she could take her time and soak up every moment of getting to know her son. She only hoped she'd be able to do that when they got out of there, and that his adoptive parents would allow her to see him again. Because now that she'd met him, and knew he didn't hate her for her decision to give him up, the fear and uncertainty that had always niggled in the back of her mind when she thought of him was gone.

Quickly realising that standing staring at her kid wasn't going to get them out of their current situation, Emma snapped herself out of her thoughts and began pulling open the kitchen drawers. Neal had taken her phone, and there didn't appear to be a landline phone either.

She hoped that by now, Killian and everyone else would be well aware that she was missing and be doing their best to find her. She still wasn't sure how long it had been since she was taken, but it had to be long enough by now that they'd realized something was wrong.

Her heart leapt as she yanked open a drawer and finally found her phone sitting there. Holding her breath, she tried to switch it on...and wanted to cry with relief when it powered up. There was 7% battery left, so she decided not to make any phone calls. She might need that precious little battery later on, if she managed to get herself and Henry out of the house, so her priority was conserving it.

And besides, one of the first things she would do, if she was searching for a missing person, would be to put an alert on their phone, so that their location would light up the computer like a Christmas tree if it was switched on. She simply had to trust that Killian, David and co. had put all of those measures in place, and they could use the phone to come and find her. That would be very damn helpful.

Making sure the phone was set to silent, she quickly stuffed it into her bra. If Neal came back, there was a good chance he'd see her phone blatantly sat in her back pocket, so her bra was a safer and more discreet option. That done, she figured she'd map out the upstairs too, on the off chance that a window had been left open or something. If that failed, she'd break a window and get them the fuck out of there.

"Hey, kid…" Emma turned to Henry, as he eagerly followed at her heels, "I'm gonna go use the bathroom. You wanna watch some TV?"

She nodded toward the living room, and Henry nodded with a wide grin, blissfully unaware of the gravity of the situation Emma was trying to remove them from. With her every move not being followed now, she made her way up the stairs, and tried the windows in every room. No luck, as she'd suspected.

She was about to try the final room, and found the door locked. Frowning, she wiggled the handle, and glancing down the stairs, she gave the old door a hard shove with her shoulder. The rusty latch gave way relatively easily, and she stumbled through into a dark room. Fumbling along the wall for a light switch, she flipped it on...and froze.

Along the back wall, there was a long dresser with large mason jars on top. Each jar had what appeared to be a heart in it, and Emma warily stepped toward them. Confusion and a sense of dread settled heavily in her stomach...but it was when she caught sight of the photographs that her whole body tensed up.

There was a photograph of each victim in her current case, lying face-up in front of each jar. White-hot terror ripped through Emma as things started to make sense in the most horrifying way.

It was Neal.

Neal had killed all those people.

He'd ripped their hearts out, and now he had them displayed in jars as morbid souvenirs, in the house where he was holding her and their son hostage…

This whole thing, the driving force behind the murders, was to do with her the whole time, and the fact that she'd given their son up. They'd thought perhaps it was about the killer's mother...

Emma was pretty sure she was going to throw up.

If Neal was the killer, that also meant his mother was Killian's murdered ex-lover and his father was Boston's most notorious crime boss. Her head was spinning as she stumbled back, away from the macabre jars of human hearts, and braced herself on the wall. Taking deep breaths and desperately trying to fend off the urge to vomit, Emma tried to process everything she was piecing together.

Did her team and Killian know all of this? Had they identified Neal in the time she'd been gone? She hoped more than anything that they were on their way to her, but just in case, she yanked her phone out of her bra with shaking hands. 6% battery.

Opening the maps app, she zoomed out to try and figure out where the hell they actually were. It was loading very slowly, and she didn't have time to be patient with the slow connection. She was clearly in the middle of nowhere, with poor signal. But at least there was any signal. She'd take it.

She quickly sent a tag of her location to David, Will and Killian's phones simultaneously, praying that at least one would successfully send. If they hadn't been alerted of her phone being switched on before, they sure as hell would be now.

Next, and with her hands still trembling to a point where she found it somewhat difficult to type, she sent a frantic text off to Killian, trying to relay as much information as quickly as she could.

"I'm alive. For now. Neal's the killer. Found the hearts. He's got me and my kid in some kinda cabin. He's not here but be back any time. Don't know where the fuck I am. Sent location. Don't call, low battery. Gonna try to get us out of here. Pls just find me."

With that, she locked the phone and put it back into her bra, taking one last look at the jars of hearts before getting the hell out of that room. Closing the door behind herself, she ran down the stairs, ready to grab a Henry, break and window, and make a run for it. It was dark outside, and as scary as the prospect of running off into the woods in the dead of night seemed, the alternative - being held captive by a psychopathic murderer who hated her so much that he wanted her heart in a jar - was worse.

But just as she reached the bottom of the stairs, the front door directly facing her swing open and she froze once again. Neal looked confused for a brief moment, before fury darkened his features and he lunged forward as she tried to dart out of his grasp and move into the living room, in an attempt to instinctively shield her son.

But he grabbed her arm and shoved her against the hallway wall, knocking the wind out of her, and then turns to loom over Henry.

"What the fuck have you done?! You let her out! I told you not to go down there!"

The boy cowered into the sofa cushions, his chin wobbling as he whispered an apology. Emma's maternal instinct kicked into high gear and she rushed forward, shoving Neal away from Henry.

"Don't you dare speak to him like-"

In one quick movement, Neal backhanded her, hard across the face. Stunned, Emma staggered back, a hand to the cheek where sharp, intense pain bloomed from. He'd never hit her before. He may have been an emotionally manipulative bastard with some abusive tendencies there, but he'd never physically laid a hand on her before, so it completely took her off guard. She shouldn't have been surprised, she supposed, considering he clearly intended to kill her and rip her heart out.

He strode closer to her without so much as a pause, and yanked her head up by her hair, forcing her to look at him.

"Just who the fuck do you think you're talking to, you little bitch?"

Without waiting for an answer to his clearly-rhetorical question, he began to drag her back toward the basement, still controlling her by a painful grip on her hair. Henry launched himself off the sofa at that point, chasing after them and crying, begging Neal to stop, but he's ignored. Instead, Neal just shoves him back and pulls the basement door firmly closed behind him as he forces Emma down the steps.

She had tears blurring her vision, from a mixture of fear and pain, and as much as she tried to extricate herself from his grasp, attempting to twist and bite and scratch him the whole time, he controlled her easily. She squeezed her eyes shut once they reached the bottom of the steps, Henry banging on the door and shouting muffled pleas to his father.

"Shut the hell up! You carry on and I'll give you something to cry about!"

Emma felt the wave of nausea return from earlier, and she tried to swallow it down. Blessedly, Henry immediately stopped banging and shouting, an eerie silence descending like a blanket, until Neal dragged her over to the cot in the corner of the room and tossed her onto it like a ragdoll.

She immediately scrambled as far from him as possible, her scalp throbbing from his harsh grip finally being released, and watched him calmly walk over to the little toolbox on the shelf. He retrieved a cable tie from it, and Emma tried her best to fight him off when he tried to tie her wrists once more. She kicked and punched out at him with all the energy she had left in her body, even as he shifted to pin her down.

"Carry on fighting me and see what good it does you, Em," he taunted darkly, "You always were a feisty little spitfire. That used to make me want you even more; you were a hot little thing when you were fired up. Our boy has your temper. And if you carry on with this shit, I'll make sure I knock that clean out of him."

Emma stiffened, struggling to breath because of how he was pinning her down, but also from the darkness of his threat. He was telling her, in no uncertain terms, that she'd comply or he'd hurt Henry. Though deep down, she had some doubts about whether he'd actually hurt her son, considering how long he'd spent looking for him and how angry (murderously so) he was at her for giving him up, she'd still witnessed the verbal abuse and the fear on Henry's face.

She couldn't bear the idea of him dishing out any more abuse on the child, especially not because of something she'd done. He'd seen her instinct to protect him in the living room, and he was weaponizing it to maintain control over her.

She had no choice but to acquiesce, if she wanted to protect her son in any way she could. All the fight left her body, and scalding tears slipped down her cheeks as he snapped the cable tie in place around her sore wrists and finally removed his body weight from pinning her to the mattress.

He looked down at her coldly, as she lay there silently sobbing. He reached over to brush her hair off her face then, to inspect the mark he'd left when he'd hit her, and she flinched. Her breath caught in her throat with the flash of fear that shot through her and Neal paused, tilting his head for a moment as he considered her.

"You know, don't you? Finally figured it out."

Emma could hardly bear to look up at him, so she closed her eyes in anguish, and it was enough of an answer for him. He laughed, and it startled her.

"Took you long enough, Ems. You never were that bright. I've been all over the news, with that dumb nickname they gave me. And I'm guessing you found the hearts upstairs. Got a jar there waiting for yours. The one I really wanted this whole time."

He traced his fingers down her cheek and neck, bile rising in her throat as he moved them slowly over her collarbone and stopped over her heart. A shiver of disgust made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she held her breath. Her phone was tucked into her bra on that side; she silently prayed that he wouldn't take it any further. The idea of him forcing himself on her in that way made her feel clammy with horror.

But he removed his hand from her then, and straightened up, and she'd take a sense of relief wherever she could find it at that point. Without another word, he turned and made his way back up the stairs, not bothering to look back at her as he slammed the door behind him, leaving her sobbing and shaking on the bare cot in the corner of the musty basement.

CS

NB So much drama! Thank you for your patience, as usual! Any and all feedback nourishes my soul and my muse! And for those of you who scream feedback at me after each update: I sincerely love you for that more than I can express! It puts a giant goofy grin on my face for the rest of the week lol!