And just like that, the room shifts. A fractured family closing ranks for one of our own. Somewhere out there in the dark, Lily doesn’t know yet how far we’re willing to go to bring her home.
But Antonio Salvatore is about to find out.
Chapter 44
The first thing I notice is the smell—damp, iron, and something sour that curls under my nose like smoke. My eyes flutter open, and the light makes my head throb. It’s low and grey, seeping through what I realise are small, high-up windows with bars across them.
I try to move. My arms feel heavy, my wrists stiff, and the bench I’m lying on is hard and splintered. My legs are cramped, my bare feet cold. I sit up slowly, everything aching, and my stomach lurches when I take in the room.
It’s a cell. Concrete walls, narrow and suffocating. A dozen women in slip dresses that cover nothing and offer no warmth sit on benches or the floor, heads bowed, faces pale or bruised, eyes empty and wary. Some whisper quietly, some rock back andforth, some stare at me like I might vanish if they blink, but they all have the same haunted look about them.
My pulse quickens. Panic tries to claw its way up my throat, but I clamp down on it, forcing myself to breathe. I can’t scream. The last thing I want to do is draw unwanted attention to myself.
“Where…?” My voice comes out hoarse, foreign even to me.
A woman nearby shifts. Dark hair slips across her face, catching on the raised lines of old scars. She can’t be more than thirty, but there’s something about the way she holds herself—curved inward, defensive—that makes her seem much older. Like the weight of this place has pressed years into her bones.
“Shh,” she hisses. “They’ll hear you.”
“They?” I whisper back, my throat dry. “Who—why —”
She shakes her head and touches her own wrist. “Questions won’t help.”
I glance down at my own hands. No restraints, but the dull ache in my joints tells me something was done—a drug, something to make me compliant. The thought makes my stomach twist.
I try to take stock. The room is small, maybe fifteen feet long and ten feet wide. Concrete floor, two narrow benches, a single sink in the corner, a barred door that looks like it could hold back a hurricane. There are no obvious exits, no windows I could reach. Every instinct in me screams to run, to fight, but there’s nowhere to go.
My mind spins back to the business card. The high-rise office. The ginger shot. The edge of something metallic in the glass… I swallow hard, nausea rising. How did I let myself trust some mysterious investor? How did I ever think this was a good idea?
I scan the other women. Some are younger, some older. They don’t speak, but their silence feels heavy, filled with the stories I don’t know. One of them, a girl with a fiery braid falling over her shoulder, glances at me. Her sapphire eyes are tired but alert. She mouths a sentence—stay calm—and I nod, almost reflexively.
The first thing I need is information. What do they want? Who arethey? Why me?
The second thing I need is a plan. Even if the answer isn’t here yet, even if the walls are closing in, I need a way out. I tighten my hands into fists, feel the tremor of adrenaline start to burn through me.
Somewhere far away, Matt is in London, oblivious. He thinks I’m safe in Lyon, wrapped up in our stolen weekend and my showcase. He doesn’t know I’m here—with a dozen other women who all carry the same fear in their eyes—in a place where no one is coming for me.
The thought should break me. Instead, it lights something stubborn and raw in my chest.
I will not stay silent. I will not disappear quietly.
I draw in a slow breath, forcing my panic into something colder, sharper. Survival instincts and strategy, that’s what will get me out of here. I need names, faces, routines, weak points. Anything. Every second I waste spiralling is a second I stay trapped. Every second I stay alert is a second closer to getting out.
It doesn’t matter if no one knows I’m missing.
It doesn’t matter if no one is looking for me.
Iwillget out of here.
The first hour drags thick and slow, like wading through wet cement. The silence feels living—pressing against my ears, my chest, my throat—until my own heartbeat becomes the loudest thing in the room.
I force myself to stay still on the bench, letting everything settle into focus. The metallic tang in the air. The chill that sinks bone-deep. The low, almost inaudible shuffling of the other women.
They’re quiet, every single one of them.
I make sure my posture looks small, trying to reassure them without words that I mean them no harm. But inside my chest, something refuses to curl in on itself. I will not go slack. I will not give up the fire in my ribs.
I focus on the girl with the braid.
