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“I think he’ll be back. I have a feeling he wants to have some… words with us.” I didn’t need to explain my fear of what his punishment would be for our initial escape, but based on how Silas tensed next to me, he expected it as well. Darren lived on our pain, got off on it even. “When he’s here, the door is locked, right?”

Silas nodded. “When he stays long, yeah. But he didn’t lock it when he dropped us in. He seemed weird.”

That was an understatement. When I saw Darren in Lexington’s house, I was initially grateful that he was there to help—until I saw his eyes. They were dead, for all intents and purposes, and I couldn’t help but wonder how I hadn’t noticed it before. He had also barely spoken, brandishing a gun, pistol-whipping Silas over the head when he tried to argue. He handed Silas a gag and motioned for him to put it on me. He had taken the baseball bat from my hands, gripping it in his own. He directed us out of the house and through the small wooded area at the back of the yard. He even got us into the trunk of his cruiser. And he did it all without muttering a single word.

To say it was strange was an understatement. I had pestered him with questions through my gag every chance I had. None of it made sense, the words a jumbled mess, but I refused to go quietly. The only reason I went at all was to protect River. My heart hurt thinking about his tear-stained cheeks and fearful eyes as I lifted him into the attic, but he was safe. That was all that mattered in the moment.

The darkness around us was heavy, the shadows lurking in every corner. While I had been initially blind when we were thrown in here, my eyes quickly adjusted. Silas’s did as well. We had grown used to the darkness, and it seemed our bodies hadn’t forgotten our time here. Though Darren… he seemed a bit lost in the shadows when he brought us down.

“Holy shit—he was wearing night-vision goggles back then, wasn’t he?” I muttered. I’d always known he was masked, which explained why his face had been hidden from me. But even now, with Silas standing barely a foot away in the dark, I could barely make out his features.

While we were limited in what we could see, when he was down here before, he had moved without worry. It must have been night vision, and I kicked myself for not putting it together until now, though the information wouldn’t have helped before.

“He didn’t have them this time,” Silas mumbled.

“Maybe he doesn’t have them at all,” I exclaimed happily. “We lived down here. You lived down here for years. You could find your way around here with your eyes closed, light be damned. I don’t think he can. He never needed to. He never spent much time here.”

A glimmer of hope lit the path out. Well, not literally, but figuratively.

“If I can get him talking, do you think you could sneak out around him?” I asked. “Find something to knock him out with? Find the door, see if it’s open? Anything like that?”

“He may have the mask when he comes back,” Silas complained.

“True,” I conceded. “But if he doesn’t, could we try?”

Silas was quiet for a moment. I could practically hear his thoughts and worry. He was all but trained not to defy Darren, but he had a spark in him that had been lit since we got out the first time. He had tasted freedom, and I had a feeling he would be damned before he lost it. “I can try. But he needs to stay distracted. I can get around, but he may notice or hear me if I’m not careful.”

“I can do it,” I said, a sudden spark of hope igniting in my chest for the first time since we were locked in this dungeon. We were going to get out of here—I was sure of it. “If you can’t find an escape route, just let it be, okay?” I wanted my own freedom, but making sure he was safe came first.

Silas sighed, his voice low with frustration. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

I hated that he was right. He was only sixteen, but he had already lived through more horrors than most people face in a lifetime. “I know,” I said gently, “but you have a whole life ahead of you, and we’re going to get you back to it.”

“Okay,” he agreed.

It felt like hours that we sat in the dark, bouncing ideas off each other on how to get Darren talking or distracted. The anxiety of his return was palpable in the air around us, neither Silas nor I wanting to spend a minute more down here than necessary. I could tell that Silas was nervous that I was upset with him, that he blamed himself for my being taken again. Truly, I wasn’t. If Darren had broken into the house alone, I probably would have willingly gone with him, too.

River was in the house, and I needed to do whatever was necessary to get the danger away from him. If I had fought, there would have been no way for me to ensure that River remained safe. The only way to do that was to get Darren out of the house as peacefully as I could. Now that we were out of the house, now that River was safe, I was ready to fight until my last breath. Though, I hoped and prayed that I would survive. I had so much to live for, so much life I wanted to live. This time, I remembered more than just those green eyes that had haunted me.

Now I remembered Fai’s smile whenever I mouthed off to him, the same smile my father used to give me. I remembered Jackie’s fierce protection of me, and Oliver's defense of me—the way I used to wish my own brother would protect me. I remembered Lexington: his smile, his heart, his love for me. Because that’s what we were to each other. We were in love, so irrevocably that I could feel it in the very recesses of my soul. His love was a kind of love I had never felt before. It was still so new, but so intrinsic to who I was now.

Lexington had changed me for the better, and he was why I would do everything to get out of this place, because I knew that as long as I was gone, he would fight for me. He would do everything he could to find me, and I would do everything I could to get back to him.

A crunching of metal sounded around us—the telltale sign of the door opening. Silas tensed and stood, moving to the corner of the room as we had discussed.

“Silas,” I spoke quickly and quietly, “if you have a chance to get out, take it. Leave me behind and run. Run far. Promise me?”

“Goldie,” he protested.

“Promise me, Silas,” I snapped.

He was quiet for a beat, the only sound the footsteps echoing from the entrance. “Okay.”

I didn’t believe him for a second, but it gave me peace of mind that I’d done what I could. I swallowed hard and took a steadying breath as I stood. I could do this, I thought to myself. I thought of all the nights Lexington had held me close, whispering words of encouragement as I fought to escape my nightmares. I cycled through those words, using them to calm my racing heart and rising anxieties. I was about to face the very source of the nightmares in the flesh, and I couldn’t panic. I couldn’t let myself.

The footsteps stopped right at the entrance of our room, his body just barely silhouetted in the darkness. I could immediately tell he didn’t have the night-vision mask he used to wear, his breathing louder than it had ever been before.

“Darren,” I greeted, staring him down, knowing he couldn’t see me.