1
KAYLOR
I’d never been locked in a room before where I couldn’t come and go as I pleased. I guessed it came with the territory of being kidnapped. It didn’t just suck. It was terrifying yet…also boiled my blood. I was so fucking mad at Rusty, a rage I’d never felt before, so much stronger than Kreed’s betrayal.
I wasn’t sure what time it was anymore, if time even flowed the same way in this suffocating box they called a room. The absence of natural light warped my internal clock beyond recognition, leaving me adrift in an endless present tense of captivity.
But I knew this: the flashing red light mounted in the corner of the ceiling had blinked exactly 327 times since I started counting, mostly out of sheer boredom.
I kept count with someone clinging to the brink of sanity because I needed something to anchor my mind to. Something concrete and measurable to focus on, instead of the inferno raging inside my chest. Something other than the brutal reality that I’d been stripped of my dignity and my freedom—again.
This time, though, it wasn’t Kreed’s betrayal doing the cutting.
It was Rusty’s.
My father’s best friend, who had spent an entire Saturday teaching me how to change a flat tire in the driveway, his patient voice guiding my small hands as I struggled with the lug nuts. Rusty, who had lied to my fucking face when he’d sworn to always look out for me.
His deception stung deeper than Kreed’s ever had, slicing through places I hadn’t even known were vulnerable. Kreed broke my heart, shattering it into a thousand glittering pieces that were only just now reassembling. But Rusty destroyed something foundational I’d built my entire sense of safety upon.
And in the hollow space where that trust used to live?
A fire took root.
A violent one, burning hotter with each passing hour.
I never wanted to hurt someone before. Not like this. Not with my own hands wrapping around their throat, not with my fingers digging into soft flesh until something vital gave way. But when I thought about Rusty, the grating sound of his voice as he’d spoken about selling me, the calculated way he’d manipulated my grief and desperation, I wanted to watch the life drain from his eyes. I wanted to be the last thing he saw before the darkness claimed him.
And the most terrifying part? I didn’t think I’d feel a single fucking ounce of remorse.
My mind wandered to the video Rusty forced me to make, a message to Kreed. I’d laughed in his face when he ordered me to read the script. He was a bigger idiot than I thought.
I just prayed Kreed got the hidden message I’d left. Regardless, I had to believe he would come…that he would move heaven and earth to find me. Or, in this case, stroll through the gates of hell because this was undoubtedly the fiery pits of the underworld.
The camera blinked again, its red eye recording every moment of my captivity for whatever sick audience waited beyond the lens.
328.
I flipped it off, my middle finger held steady for a full threeseconds before I lowered my hand. “Enjoy the show, assholes,” I muttered.
Who was watching this digital peep show? Rusty himself, getting off on seeing me finally under his control? I was the last thread tying him to my parents’ murders. Or was it some anonymous suit in a climate-controlled office three states away? Or worse, some perverted bidder sitting behind his computer screen, one hand on his credit card and the other doing things I refused to let my mind imagine.
My stomach rolled with nausea, bile rising in my throat, but I couldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me curl into myself. Instead, I rolled out of the narrow bed, doing my best to project strength I wasn’t sure I possessed.
I wasn’t staying in here waiting to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. I wasn’t going to sit passively while some sick freak slapped a dollar sign on my life and called it commerce. I was getting out of this nightmare. I had to find a way, and despite believing Kreed would find me, I couldn’t sit and wait to be rescued.
The window became my first target.
I crossed the small room, the old wooden floors creaking under my bare feet. My fingers traced the boarded-up window frame, searching for weaknesses, for anything to give me an advantage, but unless I got my hands on a crowbar, the boards weren’t fucking budging. The curtains were fake too, just decorative fabric stapled to a wooden frame. Between the cracks in the boards blocking any view of the outside world, I could only see patches of snow, nothing significant to give me any idea where the hell I was.
I pressed my fingers along the edges where the wood met the frame, pushing and pulling, searching for even the smallest amount of give.
Nothing. The installation was professional, permanent, and recent, considering the rest of the room looked like I just stepped out of the Victorian era. Each piece of furniture came straight from an antique shop or had been here a really, really long time, a frightening thought considering my current predicament. I was starting to get asick feeling that this operation had been going on longer than Rusty’s reign.
I moved on to the floral-covered walls.
My palms ran across textured surfaces, revealing nothing useful. No visible screws I could work loose, and the air vents weren’t big enough to fit one of my legs, let alone all of me. Just wallpaper and plaster. I knocked against it with my knuckles. Only a hollow sound came back, telling me these walls were lined with soundproofing material, no doubt designed specifically to trap people and muffle their screams. Rusty had spared no expense in this place. Or whoever owned it. How many other rooms were like this one? How many other girls like me were trapped? How many others had been sold, lost to their families?
God, how the hell did I end up here?
