Sitting up, I tried to kneel and stumbled forward. My palms caught my fall, and I realized both hands were bound in front of me in some kind of praying position. I waited until the spinning slowed to a bearable level and opened my eyes again to take in my surroundings.

I was in a room the size of a cell with dirty gray walls and a naked light bulb hanging from the low ceiling. The floor was cold and showed brown spots I assumed were dried dirt and God knows what. Behind me was a dirty mattress with yet more brownish stains. My head hurt like a bitch, but that wasn’t my primary concern. All I remembered was the car-jacking, Robert Mayfield’s driver being shot, and a guy pointing his gun into my face. Another guy got into the back seat and pressed a cloth against my mouth, the sickening sweet smell of chloroform still embedded in my mind. Nothing after that.

Where was I? What had happened?

“Good. You’re awake,” someone said. His voice was familiar. I turned toward the door and narrowed my eyes to focus on his height, age, or anything I might catch through my blurred vision and use to help me identify him later.

He walked in, and the door closed behind him. As he inched toward me, his features became clearer. It was only when he squatted that I recognized him.

Years had changed his face and body. He had put on weight. His nose had been broken and there were scars on his cheek and on his left eyebrow, but the resemblance was uncanny. It was the face that still haunted my dreams.

“Danny?” My question was barely more than a hiss, or maybe I couldn’t hear my own voice through the drumming in my ears. My heart pounded so hard against my chest I was sure he could hear it. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m working, that’s what’s happening.” His voice was nonchalant, unaffected, lightly mocking. He licked his lips as his dark brown eyes assessed me.

Seeing him brought back the memories I had been trying to bury for more than ten years: the time my sister fell in love with him, the days after she died, and the way he smiled when he was allowed to walk free. Danny must have seen my shock and felt my thoughts because he started to smile, and a shiver ran down my spine.

“You thought I forgot the troubles you caused me?” His tone had a warning undertone to it. “You really thought you could get away?”

I stared at him, barely able to swallow the bile in my throat. My mind was chaos, completely overwhelmed by his presence. I thought I had put enough distance between us, both physically and emotionally. Of all the people in the world, how could I meet Danny and under those circumstances? My body was burning with repulsion and hate. So much hate and disgust. In spite of the cold, I was burning inside—burning so hot I wanted to push aside anything that stood in my way of hurting him. I wanted to claw at his face and eyes. I wanted to see him bleed, like Jenna had bled—slowly and with no compassion.

“You seem surprised I still remember Jenna,” he said. “It’s not easy to forget a pretty girl like her. She was a gold mine.”

“You son of a bitch, you killed her,” I spat out. I pushed up on my elbow to kick him, smash his face in, but the ropes kept me bound in place. Angrily, I spat in his face. “I wish I could kill you.”

“I’ll admit I deserved that.” He wiped his face, amused. “But it’s not my fault she was weak and took more than she could handle.”

“You hooked her on your shit,” I whispered. Jenna was drugged that fateful night, but the coroner report clearly stated she died of internal bleeding, not of an overdose. “You shared her, you piece of filth. You passed her along like merchandise.”

“Business is business. Besides, it’s in the past now, isn’t it?” He shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I have to thank you. Without you, I’d never have met your sister. I wouldn’t have received good money for a good time. For old time’s sake, I’ll make you a gift, Brooke.”

I flinched at hearing my name roll off his tongue. He leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a whisper dripping with fake secrecy. “Do you want to know what it is?”

“Go fuck yourself. I don’t want anything from you.”

He smiled again, only this time his expression betrayed his feelings. My words had displeased him. I tried to move a few inches back, but it was too late. He moved so fast I barely had time to blink or flinch. He grabbed my bound arms and twisted with such force I feared my bones would break. Pain shot through me, and I winced as his other hand forced my chin up hard.

“I don’t usually take secondhands but on the off chance you’re lucky and make it out alive, I’ll make an exception. I’ll even be generous and grant you release.”

“I’d rather die than—”

He twisted my arm again. My words died in my throat as my vision blurred from the excruciating pain shooting through my shoulder and spine.

“When he’s done with you,” Danny whispered, “you’ll wish I were your first.” He let go of me, and I stumbled forward, tumbling to the floor. I turned warily, watching his every move. “I’ll give you a good fuck, Brooke. One you’ll never forget. I will fuck your brains hard until you break—just like I did with your sister.”

“You’re sick.” I fought to sort through my thoughts, picking out all the things I wanted to say to him, but my hate blinded me, rendering me unable to speak.

“Save that for the one who wants you first.”

He walked to the door and knocked, then turned back to me as he waited. His smile was gone, and I realized his eyes shimmered with pity as he stared me down.

“I don’t see why they wanted you. You’re far too old,” he said. “I can only imagine that it’s either a personal preference, or they want the sister of the one they had.”

Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside the door.

“What do you mean?” I asked, his words swirling in my mind.

“Are you really this stupid?” he mocked me. His lips curled upward and all traces of pity disappeared. “I was paid well to provide Jenna, and they were very happy with her. Even if you’d testified against me, you’d never have won. People appreciate my services. Or how else do you think I walked out innocent? Think about it.”

The door opened, and Danny left without so much as a look back. Then the door closed again, and I was alone in the room with his voice ringing in my head. My mind recalled the events after Jenna’s death and ventured to the man who let Danny walk free.

Danny lured my sister into a world of drugs and sold her to others for sex. I had known that for a long time; what I never understood was why a judge would let him go free. I could only imagine the reason now. It had not been Danny’s charms or the way he had lied that swayed the judge in his favor. It was probably the judge’s personal interest in Jenna or him playing a part in what happened to her. I was ready to bet on the latter.

Chapter 17

THE LIGHT BULB above my head cast a glaring light on the dirty floor and the ropes around my wrists. The stale, putrid scent lingered in the air. At some point my sense of smell got used to it, and I dared to draw deeper breaths. I didn’t know when I fell asleep, but that was all I wanted. Not thinking. Not feeling. Just sleeping—until I could forget where I was and what I’d heard. Even my nightmares were better than reality. Waking was like falling straight into hell with no escape, where the pain from the tight ropes cutting into my skin provided more relief than discomfort.

“You should deal with it, you know?” a female voice whispered. I spun slowly in a circle to scan my surroundings. There were no windows—just walls and one closed door, behind which Danny had disappeared. My only escape route was that door, only my ropes were too short to reach it. A shudder ran down my spine as I realized nobody but I was in the room. Was I going crazy?

“Hey, I’m talking to you,” the same voice said. I scanned the room again, and this time my glance fell on a small vent in the wall I must’ve missed before. Pale skin shimmered through the grids, but the holes were too small to see behind. Craning my neck to get a better look, I ignored the nausea in the pit of my stomach and walked a few steps forward. As if sensing my curiosity, whoever was on the other side shifted and squeezed their fingertips through the openings. The nails were long and dirty, and definitely belonged to a female. “I’m in the room next to yours. Can you walk over?”

“No.” My eyes remained fixed on the vent. The fingers disappeared, and finally I could see the eyes and lips of a woman. I couldn’t tell her age, but from the sound of her voice, she was young, maybe younger than I was. “I’m bound.” I lifted my hands to show her.

She let out a groan. “You need to stop crying, Brooke.”

“How do you know—”

“Your name? They mentioned it outside,” she said. “And you need to stop sleeping.”

“Why?”

“Because you make it easy for them to inject you with drugs, and you won’t even notice. Trust me, you’ll want to keep control over your body.”

“Who are you?” I crawled closer to the vent as far as the rope around my wrist allowed until I was six feet away from the opening. Up close, I could see her face more clearly.

“I’m Liz. And before you ask, I don’t know where we are.” She was slightly chubby and in her late teens—maybe around seventeen or eighteen years old, with a blonde bob and bangs. Even with the vent obstructing my view, I could see just how pretty she was. A normal girl—were it not for the caked dirt on her face. I held my breath as I realized it probably wasn’t dirt—more like dried blood.

“How long have you been in there?”

“Almost three months. I stopped counting a while back.” She smiled nervously, but her eyes looked at me with such intensity I knew she’d gone through a lot. My chest felt heavy with dread. Three months was a long time. Clearly, whoever held her hostage harbored no intention of letting her go. I realized the eyes looking at me were the eyes of someone who had seen horrible things. “You have a better chance to survive if you’re strong but compliant. If you want to live, you have to play along and do whatever they ask you to do—and they’ll always ask just once. If you struggle or don’t follow their commands, they’ll ask for permission to kill you.” She paused before adding. “And some of them love doing that.”

I nodded and forced air into my lungs as I tried to memorize every single word.

“They bring food once, sometimes twice a day,” Liz continued. “It’s usually the same thing: bread with one dish consisting of rice with meat, or steak with fries, and a glass of water. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get two blue pills and one little white pill. Eat the bread, drink the water, and always take the blue pills as soon as you can. But don’t eat the rest of the food because it’s spiked. Whatever you don’t eat, find a way to get rid of it without them knowing. And remember, the better you get at playing along, the higher your chances of staying alive. Better yet, try to exceed their expectations.”