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I open my mouth to argue, and my eyes land on Emily.

She’s still on the floor where he left her. Her dark curls are fanned out around her head, face slack, blank eyes staring at nothing. She looks smaller than she did in life. Emily wasn’t small. She was loud and furious, and she took up space in a way that I envied, but also feared, because I knew what happened to women who made themselves too threatening to belligerent men.

She fought them. From the very first day they brought her down here, she fought. I tried to tell her to be quiet, to focus on surviving, but her whole being said, I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. She argued and kicked and refused to be quiet, and they drugged her for it, then they drugged her again. Now she’s dead on a concrete floor, and I’m being pulled away from her. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

My throat closes. My eyes burn.

We were so close to getting out of here. When the other women fled up those stairs and out into the night, we should have been with them. I can picture it so clearly. Emily’s hand in mine, both of us running, the cold night air on our faces. Both of us free. We would have stayed friends. She would have been my rock, and I would have been hers. For the first time in longer than I can remember, the future would have held a bright spot. I had someone who cared about me.

But Emily was already unconscious when the women ran screaming from the basement. She couldn’t run. I didn’t know how to save her, but I was going to hold her close until someone came who did know.

Now she’s lying dead on the concrete floor, and I’m chained to the coldhearted man who didn’t even want to try and save her life.

Underneath the grief, I feel something new. Something I haven’t felt in a long, long time.

Rage.

I have been smiling at this monster of a man and pleading with him, and he is dragging me along like an animal. I have endured and survived by making myself so agreeable, and for what? What exactly has being so sweet and quiet and so goddamn pathetic gotten me?

I glare at his hand. The hand cuffed to mine, dragging me toward the stairs. Those tattooed knuckles and the expensive watch. He’s not even looking at me. He’s bored. He’s dragging me in the direction I’ve told him—begged him—that I don’t want to go, and he’s bored.

I’ll make him look at me.

I’ll make him listen to me.

I drop my head and sink my teeth into the side of his hand, the fleshy part just below his pinkie finger. I clamp down with everything I have, my jaw locking tight, my teeth seeking blood.

Needing to hurt him.

Demanding that he stop.

I taste blood almost immediately, warm and coppery, and I don’t let go.

He makes a sound I haven’t heard from him yet. A yelp of pain.

“What the—! Yob tvoyu mat.”

He tries to pull his hand away. I follow it with my teeth, holding on. It feels good. It feels like taking something back. If he’s going to treat me like an animal, then I’m going to act like one. He’s bleeding into my mouth, and it tastes like victory. For one fierce, blazing moment, I am the dangerous one.

“My fucking gun hand.” He wrenches it back and forth. “Are you out of your mind?”

Yes, I think happily. It feels wonderful.

But I was never going to win.

His eyes flash.

He seizes my throat in an iron grip. His large hand engulfs my neck and squeezes, his fingertips digging into my vulnerable flesh. I’m arched backward, staring into his blazing eyes as he strangles me.

Black spots bloom at the edges of my vision. My knees go soft beneath me. Cold sweat breaks out across my back as my feet scrabble on the concrete.

“Just. Let. Go,” he says through clenched teeth.

His face swims above mine, his eyes blazing with anger. My lungs are screaming. My head is pounding.

He’s going to kill me.

I’ll die in this basement, after all, but at least I’ll get what I wanted. This cold, cruel man isn’t going to drag me home against my will. The black dots engulf my vision, and though I try to fight it, I go limp.