"Maria look, I'm really grateful for you staying over, I really am alright?" she shakily exhaled, "but I just want to get on so, please do me a favour: just let me make this decision on me own. Alright? Let me just please-" she squeezed her eyes closed, "- feel as though I'm making one decision on me own, okay?"

Maria looked sadly at the woman next to her. She couldn't fathom why Carla felt it was so necessary to go into work just days after she had been raped. But as her eyes scanned Carla's visage, her gaze falling to the bruises that marred the skin along her neck and shoulders, she slowly began to understand: Carla needed to be back in charge. Or - in the very least - feel that she was in control of something in her life once again, and Underworld was the only place that would give her a semblance of that feeling back.

And so Maria complied, even though she knew it was too soon, and slowly nodded her agreement.

"Okay."

Carla sighed as she heard the factory doors close, leaving her alone in Underworld. She knew Maria only had her best interests at heart, but she couldn't help but feel suffocated by her mother-hen tendencies. And with that suffocation came the claustrophobia. Just like it had the night Frank—

Carla placed her hand above her left breast, feeling her chest constrict painfully beneath her fingertips as she struggled to regulate her breathing. The same way she struggled to breathe oxygen into her lungs when Frank pinned her to the floor of her flat —

She shook her head sharply, desperate to stop yet another rerun of that night. It was, after all, the reason she was in the factory now.

She had paced around the flat like a caged animal after Maria had left for work that morning. Desperate to keep her mind off the memories that it replayed on a seemingly endless loop.

She had tried to distract herself by doing a load of laundry but found her gaze drawn continuously back to the front door. To the feeling of her back being pushed into it, to Frank's fingernails sinking into her skin like razor blades as he gripped her by her arms...

...and then by her throat.

It was then that the walls of her flat seemed to well and truly close in around her, and she leaned over the back of her settee, her head dipping low as her breath came in quick short bursts, and as hot tears trailed down her face. No matter how hard she tried to calm herself down, she just couldn't escape the memory of Frank's cold, dark eyes as his voice echoed through the empty flat.

"It's your fault. You made me do it..."

Her fingers dug mercilessly into the cushion of her sofa.

"... it's your fault..."

A whimper escaped her dry lips as she raised her tear-filled eyes to scan the room.

She was alone — alone in the place where it had happened — and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that he was there with her somehow, all around her, becoming a part of her so that she could never escape him.

"...your fault... your..."

Abandoning the freshly cleaned laundry in a messy heap on the settee, Carla quickly changed her clothes and called a cab, desperate to find solace in the only place she believed she could escape it all; the only place left where she felt a sense of comfort.

Both her and Frank's computers were in sleep mode. 'Hayley must have been catching up on the orders,' she thought. The orders she had delegated to her before the wedding.

The wedding.

It seemed like months, not days since she had anxiously paced her office: nervous about how she could get out of the business partnership with her fiancée without violating their contract. She knew he wouldn't want to continue working with her after she told him their relationship was over. But what caused her the most distress, was the enormous guilt that gnawed at her insides. The guilt of knowing that while she was about to deeply hurt Frank by calling off their engagement, especially after all he had done for her, she secretly revelled in the freedom that awaited her on the other side of that conversation.

The relationship was toxic. It hadn't started off that way, but it was certainly how it had ended. She had found herself behaving erratically, more so than usual: jumping into a car and driving under the influence in a bid to get away from his possessive, controlling, and - if she was honest - frightening behaviour the night of their engagement party.

She bit her lip and touched her fingers to her arm, still able to feel the vice-like grip he had taken of her as he dragged her across the Bistro; the way he chastised her and then taunted her about Peter.

And the way he looked at her - like she was some wild thing he needed to tame, to break – she had seen it then. This wasn't the same Frank that comforted her after her mum died. Not the same Frank that swept her off her feet in Rome.

This Frank scared her.

But after the accident, despite his manipulation of the situation, he had softened towards her again. The gentle touches had returned, the soft kisses...

And while she knew she was still having doubts about marrying him, she had convinced herself that his controlling, dominating behaviour of that night in the Bistro had simply been a one-off.

How naive she had been.

She wrapped her arms around herself, her body shivering relentlessly as memories of them before their engagement dinner with his parents flooded her mind. How happy he was. How in love with her he had seemed to be...

"...you made me do it..."

Making a beeline to Hayley's workstation, she grabbed the wastebasket that laid beside it and hunched over it, begging for relief from the bile that circled in her stomach. But, once again, her body instead lurched painfully into another dry-heaving fit.

She let out a sob as she sank down into the chair, still hugging the wastebasket to her chest as tears sprang to her eyes. Between the constant dry heaving, the inability to sleep, and surviving on nothing more than endless the cups of tea Maria would make her, she didn't know how much more of this routine she would be able to take before she lost what was left of her sanity...

'How did it come to this?' she thought.

"It's your fault, you made me do it..."

Whiskey.

She needed whiskey.

Taking two more steadying breaths, she rose to her feet but quickly jumped back in fright, dropping the wastebasket to the floor with a loud clang.

There he was: sitting on her desk. A sombre expression upon his face as he gazed at her.

Her eyes unmoving from her ex-husband, she tentatively bent down and reached for the oversized purse that lay just beyond her feet, wincing slightly at the stinging pain that pulsed through her lower body.

She knew Tony was dead, and yet here he was again, seemingly in the flesh. If she wasn't stone-cold sober, she would have been sure she was experiencing another drunken hallucination.

"Carla."

Her body instinctively relaxed as the gentle hum of his voice wrapped around her like a cocoon. She didn't feel safe per se, but for the first time since the rape, she didn't feel threatened either.

"Come to gloat, have you?" she mumbled as she straightened up and forced herself to walk into the office.

"Why would I ever gloat about what he did to you?" Tony turned his body to follow her, watching as she placed her purse down beside the desk and pressed herself against the white shelving unit, ensuring she kept a significant distance between them.

"So, you know, then?" She asked, hugging her arms across her chest.

"Yes."

A feeling of shame overtook her as her eyes met his soft brown ones, and she quickly averted her gaze to focus instead on the tiles of her office floor.

"Of course you do," she scoffed bitterly, angered by the pity in his response, "So, is it a 'ghost' thing, hey? You find out what he did through the phantom grapevine or summat?"

"No, I uhh, I saw it. Along with your Paul-" Carla's head snapped up as he continued on, a sneer forming on his lips as he painfully hissed the words out, "goes with the territory you see: forced to watch your loved ones live their lives, the good and the bad. But unable to stop the pain that befalls them. You just feel it, in your soul like a knife slowly slicing through your insides...we couldn't stop it, Carla. The two of us were unable to do a damn thing about it."

"You and Paul?" She quivered, and Tony's eyes met hers again.

"Yes. We were in purgatory together up until just recently. Paul has atoned for his sins now you see, for his role with Dean and then with Lean-..." He saw the flicker of pain flash across her face and decided to change tack, "You should have seen him when I first arrived," he grinned, "told me he was going to kill me."

Carla let out a soft chuckle, "Yeah, that were my Paul, leaping before thinking." She shuffled her feet, "did he say 'owt about me?"

"He had plenty to say about you. All lovely things, which was the reason he wanted to end my non-existent life." He laughed before a seriousness took over again, "Paul was gutted when he heard you say that he never wanted you. He loved you so much, Carla, he wants you to know that. He was just a weak, daft man."

Carla bit her lip, "is um," she looked towards the ceiling, silently willing the tears to stop, "is Liam there?"

Tony sighed, "no. By the time I got there, Liam had already atoned his sins; for his role in Dean's death mostly," Tony lowered his gaze, his voice now barely a whisper, "just more proof that he always was the better man all along..." he shook his head sadly. The guilt of his actions during his time on earth giving him a brief pause before he continued on, "probably for the best, I don't think he would have taken as well to the arrangement as Paul did."

"Arrangement? What arrangement?"

"Paul's final task you see was not only to forgive me but to learn to trust me. Forgive me for going after his widow so soon after he died, for killing his brother, and attempting to kill you. Took him almost a year to learn that, but he did; and now that he has put his trust in me to protect you, he's been able to move on," Tony's eyes bore pleadingly into hers, "neither one of us could stop what happened that night Carla; Paul would have been the first one to apparate there and snap that slithery snake's neck."

"I should have listened to you last October," she whispered, "I thought maybe you had been warning me about Peter since he had rejected me…several times. I mean, after all, I didn't think anyone could hurt me more than you had already done," she laughed bitterly, "boy was I wrong, hey?"

Tony slid off the desk, his sudden movement jolting Carla back against the cabinet. Her eyes widened in fear and her body convulsing with tremors. "Hey," Tony raised both his hands out in front of him as if he were approaching a scared child, "Carla, I can't hurt you, nor would I want to."

Carla shivered; her breaths heavy and shallow, "I've heard that old chestnut before, though, 'aven't I?"

"I know, but trust me now," he reassured her stepped closer to her, "please..."

Her nails dug into the wood of the unit behind her. She watched, frozen, as he reached out and placed his hands on her shoulders.

She sighed as she stared into his eyes, her body relaxing of its own accord beneath his touch. Offering her a smile, he gently guided her towards her desk chair, which she sank upon gratefully.

He moved away from her, giving her space as she continued to take in slow breaths in a bid to quell her racing heart and leaned against Frank's desk.

"Ho-how, were you able to touch me?" she stammered, "I reached right through you last October?"

"When the need of the living is great, the essence of my being transforms into the flesh. With all of its blood and tissue and strength. Just for a moment, mind. And then once again, I dissipate into the air so that I slip through your fingers like smoke."

Carla dropped her head into her hands, her fingers running through her hair, 'This is mad,' she chastised herself, feeling what little was left of her self control slide out of her grasp, 'you're well and truly losing the plot, now!'

Reaching into her desk, she pulled out the bottle of whiskey and tumbler that resided there. She knew Tony was watching as she poured the golden liquid into the glass. She could practically feel the pity emanating off of him, and it had disgusted her so profoundly that she downed the alcohol in one swift movement, before refilling the glass again.

"Carla, you shouldn't be here right now." He stated softly.

She scoffed as she swallowed another mouthful of whiskey, "Oh, special advisor to rape victims, are you, Mr. Gordon?"

"Carla, you need-"

"How the hell do you know what I need?" She snapped, the whiskey splashing in her glass as she forcefully placed it down on the desk with a thwack, "you know what I want, Tony?" her olive eyes flashed dangerously, "I want you to leave me alone! I don't want to hear about how you and Paul are bezzy mates now –"

"I never said we were best friends, Carla-" he watched helplessly as she topped up her glass with more whiskey.

"-and I don't want to hear about how you wanted to stop Frank from raping me, and I certainly don't want your opinion on how to cope. What I want, Tony is for you to LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!" she slammed the bottle on the desk.

Her eyes fixed upon his, silently challenging him to defy her request for solitude. But instead, he nodded softly.

"Okay, if that's what you want, I'll go. But please, look after yourself."

He made his way towards the office door before pausing, "Maria's right, Carla, you're a fighter. Always have been. You didn't let me take you down; don't let that scum be the end of you."

She watched him vanish through the office door, his words lingering in her ears.

She took another sip of the whiskey and shook her head.

'Oh, yes. You are definitely losing it...'

Trying to bring her mind back to reality, she turned on the computer, keyed in her password, and stared at the spreadsheet that splashed across the screen.

She didn't notice the time passing as she scanned the document. Didn't see how dark the factory had become, not that it would have bothered her if she had done. She had grown to prefer the dark over the past few days; it hid the bruises on her wrists, her shoulder, her thighs...

She continued to stare at the computer screen mindlessly and began nervously chewing her fingernails as she mulled over Tony's words.

'Was what he said about Paul true?' she asked herself, 'Was any of it real?'

So engrossed was she in her thoughts that she didn't realize she was being watched.

She stopped chewing her nail, suddenly desperate for the whiskey to numb her senses. Tearing her eyes from the monitor, she brought the glass up to her lips when a slight movement outside the office caught her attention. She raised her tired gaze to the window, half-expecting to see one of her workers standing there pitying her. But when she saw Frank staring at her through the glass, she sputtered the liquid in her mouth, her hand fumbling with the tumbler as she furiously pushed her chair backwards, stopping only when it collided into the cabinet behind her.

"No, no, no…"