“What are the blue pills for?” I asked.

“They’ll keep you awake and numb the pain. I always take them.”

“And the white pills?”

“Take the white ones only when you’re ready to abort.” She raised her eyebrows knowingly. “They tend to give Misoprostol. It’s for stomach ulcers and abortion, and should not be used with the blue ones.”

“How do you—”

“I heard you in your sleep. You were loud. Talking weird stuff about a disk—and more.”

The disk and the baby were a secret. I couldn’t blurt it all out in my sleep. Waves of panic rushed through me as I realized what would happen if whoever held us captive found out.

“How do you know everything?” I asked.

“Danny made me work on the streets until his employer noticed me and asked him to bring me here.” She was cut short by the sound of a car horn. I figured we were near a street or a highway, but I wasn’t sure. We kept silent for a few seconds. When nothing stirred, she continued in a hushed tone. “You can’t act like this, you know? The way you did with Danny. He isn’t the worst one. I mean, there are worse.”

I glanced down at my hands, at the way the rope cut into my skin, the pain keeping me focused and grounded in reality while my fear paralyzed me. The whole situation seemed hard to grasp, but I knew I had to listen to Liz’s advice to get out of here. It was hard to imagine that Danny wasn’t the worst. He had fooled my whole family by pretending he loved my sister. He knew what would happen to her and still let her come to harm, which demonstrated he had no heart, no soul, and surely no conscience or compassion. To me he had none of the qualities that make us human.

“I don’t care,” I said. “He killed my sister.”

“I’m not making excuses for him,” Liz whispered. “He’s one of the suppliers. Basically, he provides girls in exchange for drugs and money. But he doesn’t take part in—” She drew in her breath and let it out slowly. The way she defended Danny, I couldn’t help but wonder what their relationship was.

“Are there others like us?” I asked, almost hopeful. If there were more women, maybe we could work together and escape. There had to be a way, or else I didn’t know how I could get out on my own.

“There were,” she replied. “They get a new supply twice a month. The first two weeks are crucial. After that, depending on how well you behave, you have only one worth.” She fell silent. Our gazes connected through the grids, and her eyes filled with fear and something else: hopelessness. Her voice dropped to a whisper, which in a way filled me with more terror than the things she had disclosed so far. “You don’t want to mess with them, or else you’ll be punished. If you hope that someone will help you, don’t. It won’t happen. It’s never happened. We’re on private property. No one’s going to come looking for us here because the people who own it are rich. It’s like the extreme wing of a club, or something. Danny told me, and I believe him. And honestly, it’d be a stupid idea to try to run away. Two have tried, and look where it got them.”

A club?

I stopped breathing for a moment as the pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into place. Robert Mayfield had tried to protect his interests by getting rid of me. And then someone else stepped in. That was the reason why I was here, even though, according to Danny, I was older than the girls they usually went for.

“Why would you tell me all of this? If no escape’s possible, then—” I shook my head as I struggled to make sense of my thoughts. If Liz knew no one made it out, why was she still trying to help me? The life she was living was no life at all. I realized I was spiraling into a dark abyss of emotions, and I hadn’t even found out what was really going on.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” she said. Her voice sounded choked as she continued. “I want to keep you safe, even though I probably won’t be able to.” She moved away from the vent, out of my view. I waited for her to come back, but she didn’t.

“Liz?”

When no reply came, I understood. Without hope and faith, she had done all she had thought she could. Why get attached to the “new girl” who probably wouldn’t make it past the two-week mark anyway?

I sat down on the cold floor. For the umpteenth time I wondered what it must’ve been like for her all alone in her cell, being at other people’s mercy with no one to talk to. Three months might not seem like a long time, but it was long enough to need someone near her to remind her that she was still human rather than a worthless object, someone who understood the hell she was living, someone who was there to share the pain rather than inflict it upon her.

Maybe she had found that someone.

When my limbs began to stiffen, I crawled back to my sleeping place, which consisted of a dirty mattress on the floor, and sat down. I buried my face in my hands, unable to avoid the feelings of dismay washing over me.

Jett hadn’t exaggerated when he said the club was dangerous. He also hadn’t lied with his statement that we were connected through a similar past. I just never realized how close he had been to the truth. How horrible would it be for him to discover his father’s club kept me hostage? He’d never find out, not least because he’d probably never come looking for me after I ended our relationship, giving him a good reason to believe I had walked out on him. It had been a bad mistake. I knew it now; I had sensed it then. And I had no one else to blame but myself.

The hours ticked by, and Liz’s cell remained quiet as a tomb. The light above my head kept burning relentlessly, making it impossible to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time. It was hard to tell whether it was day or night, if one day had passed or several, but sure enough, it felt like an eternity. By the time I heard footsteps again, the fear in my mind and cold in my limbs had turned me into a shell of nothingness: functioning without reacting, or thinking. It was only when the door opened that I lifted my head and sat up, unsure what to expect.

A short guy holding a tray entered. He placed the tray on the floor and pushed it toward me with his boot, then took a step back. I looked from the tray to the gun in the holster around his waist. He remained quiet, but his dark eyes didn’t stray from me. There was no warning in his eyes. Just amusement. I couldn’t help but think of a caged animal in a glass house—a sick experiment, during which I wasn’t considered an equal because I didn’t matter.

“Thanks,” I muttered, remembering Liz’s advice to be compliant, even though I wanted to charge at him to get to that gun.

It seemed to do the trick because he turned away and left, locking the door behind him.

I neared the tray warily. Just like Liz predicted, the food consisted of a main course dish—chicken with rice and white sauce—and bread. Next to the glass of water were three pills: two blue and one white. What I didn’t expect was that the bread was covered in a thin layer of blue mold, and the water inside the glass looked dirty. Even if Liz was right, I couldn’t possibly eat any of it in my condition.

Besides, my nerves were too frayed to keep anything down. The prospect of starving to death sounded more appealing than dying by violence or drugs because at least I’d keep my self-respect. I could eat another time, once I escaped. I had to believe that a miracle was possible. But I was too thirsty to abstain from drinking the water. I took a sip and grimaced. It tasted just like it looked.

I grabbed the tray and scanned the cell to find a hiding place. On the farthest side of the door was a ventilation shaft in the floor. It was wider than the one in the wall and in the middle was a hole, which I assumed served as an open toilet. The smell of excrement wafting from it was so strong I almost threw up. I kneeled down and discarded my meal and white pill.

The thick slice of bread was too large, so I tore it into bits and threw it into the hole along with the water. I held up the blue pills, considering my next move. Liz was right. If I wanted to escape, I had to stay awake. But not like this. My mind had to remain clear, without the need of whatever those pills were.

I returned the tray to the same spot where the guard had left it, pushed the pills inside my pockets in case I needed them later, and smashed the water glass against the concrete floor. The noise of breaking glass echoed from the walls unnaturally loudly, and for a moment I was convinced someone would barge in to demand an explanation. As quickly as I could, I picked up the largest shard. It was small, but a small weapon was better than no weapon at all. If it was sharp enough to cut through skin, then it would do its job.

There was just enough time to hide it in a small hole of the mattress before footsteps approached and the door swung open, just like I knew it would.

“Don’t move!” one of the two guards commanded. My heart hammering hard, I pretended to finish chewing as I watched one of them clean up the shards.

“Brooke, right?” the other one said. I nodded but didn’t dare look up—or breathe. He stood so close it gave me the creeps. He held up my hands to check them before stepping away again. “You might be new, but let me tell you this. If it happens again, you won’t get our fancy treatment anymore.”

As if I cared.

I could feel his intent stare and almost smiled with relief when they retreated, and the door finally closed. Listening for any sounds, I waited until I was sure they wouldn’t return, then retrieved the shard from the mattress and cut a hole in the inseam of my business suit, then tucked it inside.

A glance at Liz’s vent told me she was there, watching in silence.

“Please don’t,” she whispered.

I had no intention to get her involved or endanger her life, but I wasn’t going to accept my new circumstances and do nothing about them, either. Ignoring her, I sat down on the mattress and began to rock back and forth in an attempt to keep myself awake.

Chapter 18

WHATEVER HAD BEEN in that water began to kick in almost immediately and an odd sense of floating and being weightless filled me. My body began to shake slightly, and then the tremors intensified and my breathing quickened. It was very similar to a panic attack, and I realized whatever was happening to me might take a long time to subside. Maybe the water had been spiked and Liz didn’t know, or maybe I was indeed having a panic attack. Either way, I had to get a grip on myself.

For a long time, I just kept staring at the walls. I was exhausted, but my mind was too active to sleep, even if I wanted to. A guard checked on me at regular intervals, but he never spoke.

I didn’t know how much time had passed when a click outside my cell made me sit up, alerted. Another click followed, and I realized Liz’s door had been opened. Several people entered her room. The hushed voices were too low to understand.

Someone laughed.

And then a sound that made my blood freeze in my veins. I knew that sound. Maybe not knew as in having experienced it before, but knew as in knowing what was happening. I couldn’t tell how many men were in Liz’s cell, but I could hear their laughter, the slapping, the grunting—their bodies slamming against hers as they each took their turn. Shaking, I pressed my hands against my mouth to stop any sounds from forming at the back of my throat. That’s when the whimpering and screaming began. Whatever they were doing to her didn’t leave much to my imagination. A sense of powerlessness washed over me as I realized there was nothing I could do to help her.