PROLOGUE
Grace
Sitting in the back seat of John Smith’s SUV, I chewed on my bloodstained nails despite my trembling fingers. Four years of captivity had made me crazy and nervous and had taught me that hope was more dangerous than a knife to my throat.
I was stupid, an idiot, and I hated myself more than I hated my captor driving this vehicle—a beast of a man who had purchased me for a ton of money.
The devil you know is better than the one you don’t.My brother Duke’s words haunted me as the world scrolled past the tinted windows, a bitter reminder of my teenage rebellion. I’d thought I knew everything at sixteen, thought the worst thing in my world was my father’s drunken rages. Watching John’s muscled forearms flex on the steering wheel, I understood and learned quickly what true evil looked like. It wore business suits and expensive watches. It looked like perfectly normal men who bought and sold girls like cattle.
Suburban houses with their manicured lawns rolled past, graduation signs dotting perfectly trimmed grass. A wild laugh bubbled up in my throat as I remembered my own dreams of high school graduation. Before Miguel Rivera found me outside that Boston coffee shop, before his promises of a better life turned into a nightmare of clients shopping for their perfect prey.
The memory of those first weeks still burned—the penthouse apartment, designer clothes, fancy dinners with rich men. No sex required, Miguel had promised. Just conversation. I’d thought I’d found the perfect escape. But it was all a façade—a trap to lure unsuspecting virgin girls like me into a world of darkness and pain.
For four long and drawn-out years, I clung to one thing—death. That was the only way out. I accepted that I would never see my three brothers again or even my father or my childhood friends. I would never get to finish high school, get married, fall in love, or have a family of my own.
I would give anything to turn back the clock and listen to my father bark orders to make him dinner or wait on him hand and foot. I would welcome his fist, which was far better than the abuse I got on a daily basis from the monster driving this SUV.
Regret was a bitch, poisoning every waking moment and haunting every nightmare. I ground my back teeth together, holding in the need to sob until there were no more tears left.
A small hand reached over from the seat beside me. “Stop,” Thea whispered. “If he sees you crying, he’ll whip you.”
Her touch anchored me to reality, as it had on countless nights when we were huddled in our cages next to each other, whispering promises of escape that grew hollower with each passing minute, hour, month, and year. We’d learned each other’s stories in fragments between rapes and beatings—herdreams of beauty school, my brothers’ names, the small details of our lost lives that we clung to like lifelines.
I let out a quiet snort as I eyed the monster in the driver’s seat, his perfectly coiffed hair and expensive cologne barely masking the rot beneath. He was on his phone, discussing our fate as casually as if he were trading stocks.
I was desperate to jump out of this vehicle, especially after a night from hell. Twice a month, John hosted a party at one of his properties for rich bastards who got their rocks off on hog-hunting, fucking, drinking, and snorting the drugs John purchased by the truckload. Among the eight girls in his possession, Thea and I brought in the most money at those parties. Why? I wasn’t sure.
Regardless, Thea was right. At any sign of whining or crying, John got out his whip and beat us. He hated weak women. Over the years, I’d learned to take whatever John or his men dished out. That was the only way to survive.
“We’re meeting them on Friday.” His cigar-laden voice made my skin crawl. “No, not these two yet.” He briefly flicked his gaze over his shoulder at me. “I have some plans before we sell them.”
The words hit like a container ship that lost its rudders. Thea’s fingers tightened around mine as our eyes met. We both knew whatsellingmeant. We’d seen it happen to Marina last month—how she’d screamed as they dragged her away, how her new owner had smiled like a shark circling prey.
“You’re selling us?” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Rage and terror warred in my chest. Another sale meant another John Smith, another hell to endure. But I couldn’t leave Thea. She was the only reason I hadn’t driven a plastic fork that came with our meals through my eye months ago.
“We will get out of here,” she would whisper before we fell asleep. “Dream about it, Grace. Think it. Manifest it. We will see our families again.”
I had believed her once. During those first months of torture, I’d clung to visions of my brothers coming to save me. But hope had bled out slowly, beaten from me one client at a time.
John ended the call with a laugh that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. “You two better not be crying, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Fuck off.” The words were liberating as they dropped from my lips.
“What did you just say to me?” he barked, his knuckles white around the steering wheel.
“I said to fuck off.” My voice was louder but cracked. “If we want to cry, we will. I never understood why our emotions bother you so much. Do you think your whip feels good? Or that pulling on my hair or using me—or any girl, for that matter—as a punching bag feels like we died and gone to heaven. How about I whip you? Punch you? Have one of your men rape you?”
Thea sucked in air beside me, shaking where she sat. But beneath her fear, I saw a spark of something else. Something like hope.
My back burned with phantom pain, the scars of the whip feeling like they were raw and open. But the thought of being sold was too much. I would rather die than be beholden to yet another deranged bastard.
He growled as if he were the alpha calling for his pack to descend on us. “You know, bitch, on second thought, I think I’ll rip your limbs from your body instead of selling you.”
I was already dead, so I popped off my seat belt and spat at him. “I would like to see you try.”
He roared as he sped down a two-lane country road lined with tall trees and thick brush. Our Taj Mahal was a barn inthe mountains somewhere in the Ozarks. We were deep in the woods, where no one would even think to look for us. Even the cops wouldn’t move a muscle to do anything. John had them in his back pocket.
