Page 11

A shiver goes through me. I have known frightening men. My father, who raised his voice and his fists to me. My husband, who does the same. The men who put me in that van and kept me in this basement. They were all loud and obnoxious and weren’t smart. They were blunt instruments of anger and greed.

This man has no bluster or fury that I can placate by making myself small. There’s only coldness in those gray eyes.

He turns and moves toward the door, dragging me with him.

I stumble forward, my arm stretched out before me like a dog on a lead. “Wait. Don’t, please. Where are we going?”

“I told you. I’m taking you home.”

His attention is already somewhere else. I’m not the most interesting thing in the room anymore. I’m not sure I’m even in the top three.

“Why?”

“Because I’m being paid a lot of money to do it.”

But there were eleven other girls down in this basement. Why me? Why did he move past them all and seek me out?

“Viktoriya,” he grates, sparing me a furious glare. “Move.”

His words finally penetrate my fog.

I stop dead, my stomach clenching.

“Wait. Just—”

He half turns toward me and snaps, “What now?”

The stranger’s jacket gapes. My gaze latches onto the gun holstered under his arm, and a shiver goes down my spine. As I pull against the handcuff, my midsection aches. The swelling is going down, but the memory hasn’t faded. I asked for more water, for me and the other women. I got a fist to the stomach for it. I was punched in the face for asking a single question. My cheekbone still aches.

Men turn ugly when a woman speaks up.

I swallow down what I was going to say and choose softer words.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be any trouble. I just—I think there might have been a mistake. About me.” I try a small smile, but it feels strange on my face. “You don’t need to take me anywhere. If you could just drop me at the nearest bus stop, I can find my own way from there. I don’t want to be any bother.”

The man laughs, low and dark and entirely for himself, as though I’ve surprised him in an unexpected way.

“Drop you at a bus stop? That’s a new one.”

He pulls me toward the stairs.

Down here in the basement, the other women cried about wanting to go home. Their mothers, fathers, siblings, and boyfriends would all be so worried. One girl had a dog she couldn’t stop talking about, who slept at the foot of her bed and would be distraught by her absence. She cried all the time. They all did. Even the ones who tried not to, like Emily.

I didn’t cry once.

What was I meant to cry for? The violence of home? A place where I’m always braced for the next punishment?

I’m out now.

I won’t go back there.

“Stop,” I cry. I ball my hand into a fist and pull against the handcuff. “The bus stop. Just take me there, please. You don’t have to take me anywhere special. I’ll find my own way.”

“That’s not an option, Viktoriya.” He keeps pulling me. My feet are sliding on the concrete as I fight him. “The fastest way to get this done is for you to do everything I say. Then you’ll see your parents, your brother, whoever it was who paid me to come and get you. After that, you can take as many buses as you want.”

“No. Please. Just leave me here. I haven’t got any money for you.”

“You’re already paid for, printsessa.” He gives another sharp tug on the cuff. We’re nearly at the stairs. “Now move.”