Freya Thorburn had grown up in a gilded cage.

This cage was not the same.

She paced the width of the main room. Back and forth. Her stomach in knots as the clock ticked away the seconds.

No one was coming for her. At least no one she wanted to see. The only people she came into contact with were the woman who brought her food and clothes, that disgusting man Yuri Gabor, and him. Charles. The one with the cold, dead eyes. She shivered just remembering the look on his face last night.

After six weeks in captivity, this was her reality. Some might not object to being kept in the lap of luxury, but Freya knew the trappings hid what was really going on here. A cell with brocade wallpaper, velvet sofas and Egyptian cotton sheets, and a closet stocked full of designer clothes, was still a cell. Those things didn’t change the fact that she was a prisoner. The question was, what for? What value did she have?

She could merely guess at what she didn’t know. There wasn’t anyone alive who would pay a ransom for her. No one who cared about her, besides her twin sister and her roommate, and even they had their limits. Michelle wouldn’t care until she needed something, and Freya’s roommate wouldn’t bother asking around until it came time to pay rent. It didn’t leave her with much hope.

And that brought her back to the questions that had been haunting her since yesterday.

Did she hold out? Did she stand her ground? Or did she give up? Did she let Yuri win?

No, she couldn’t give up. She couldn’t sentence herself without a fight. She didn’t know what the man with the cold, dead eyes wanted, but she couldn’t trick herself into trading one jailer for another.

The only point of entry to the suite beeped.

The hair on the back of her head stood on end.

She turned, clenching her hands into fists.

Her stomach tightened.

It was him. The man from last night.

Her pulse kicked up and her palms began to sweat.

What the hell was going on?

“Good evening, Janelle.” The man who’d introduced himself as Charles took a few steps closer. Yuri called her by her preferred middle name, while Charles insisted on calling her Janelle.

He was average looking in almost every way. Average height. Average build. Caucasian. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Bland.

She recognized the well-made suit and how it was tailored. Charles had money, but he wasn’t flashy about it in the way a lot of people were. He was understated.

“It’s polite to respond, you know?” Charles pushed his hands into his pockets and took a few steps into the room.

The door behind him slid shut. There were no hinges, no handle, nothing from the inside. She knew. She’d checked. It only opened from the outside, just like a cell door.

“It’s not polite to hold someone hostage against their will, either.” She didn’t move, but she did lift her chin.

Charles grinned, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. He was the shark, baring his teeth, reminding her who had the worse bite.

“Sit, please?” Charles gestured to the two pink-velvet sofas facing each other.

“I’ll stand, thanks.”

“Fine.” Charles strolled toward the windows to her right.

On her first night here, she’d tried breaking the glass. She’d learned the hard way that the windows were also reinforced, with no way to open them from the inside, and they didn’t break.

This was a prison. One with all the trappings of luxury, but still a prison.

Freya swallowed and turned with Charles toward the cityscape obscured by the low-hanging fog and rain. She didn’t dare turn her back toward him. Her skin crawled when he was near, and a very loud voice in her mind screamed that he was dangerous. But what could she do? She was a prisoner. Charles, Yuri, and the woman who brought her food three times a day were the only people Freya saw, and none of them were concerned with her plight.

“It’s a beautiful city,” Charles said.

Freya didn’t respond.

She hadn’t chosen Seattle. Seattle had chosen her after the death of her mother. It’d suited her mood at the time. Dreary. Rainy. But it had become her home.

“Do you live here?” Freya asked. She needed to gather information. If no one was coming to save her, then she had to save herself. She had to fight back, at least.

“God, no.” Charles chuckled. “I visit on occasion. Yuri provides excellent services.”

Freya shivered and swallowed down bile.

She’d had a first-row seat to the kind of services Yuri offered.

Was that what would happen to Freya?

“I admire you, Janelle.” Charles turned toward her, his eyes gleaming.

Freya took a step back.

That look, the way he stared at her, it didn’t bode well for her.

“I’d like for you to be my wife. Marry me?”

Freya jerked, no less surprised by the question tonight than she’d been last time.

“No.” She shook her head.

“I’ll win you over yet. Good night, Janelle.” Charles’ smile widened.

Freya stood there, too shocked to move. He wasn’t serious, was he?

Charles rapped on the door with his knuckles and glanced back at her.

“Tomorrow night, my pet.”

What kind of sick joke was Yuri playing?

Charles stepped through the door.

Freya rushed after him, but before she’d taken three steps, the door slid shut and the soft snick of the locks engaged. Rage fueled her across the suite. She pounded on the door with her fist.

Someone was on the other side.

A human being was out there.

“Hey? Anyone listening? I know you’re out there. I don’t want to be here! Hello? Help? Anyone?”

She’d screamed herself hoarse three days ago when they’d brought her here, but it hadn’t done her any good then and it wouldn’t now.

Freya turned, shivering.

That man made her skin crawl.

Worse than Yuri.

Worse than the other one, whatever his name had been.

She had to figure out how to get out of here, or something bad was going to happen to her.

She had to think. To use her head.

Freya wasn’t dumb. She’d been on her way to rocking her PhD when Mom died. She was smart. And now she needed to use her brain.

She was in a cell. A room. With no way out or in that wasn’t controlled by her jailer. She had no phone, no TV, no Wi-Fi access, no contact with the outside world. Her father would not look for her. He wouldn’t see the point in expending effort, now that her mother was gone. To say that Freya and Michelle’s relationship with their father was cold was an understatement. It was practically nonexistent.

Freya crossed to the windows, staring out on a small, dark parking lot. The people down there had no idea she was a prisoner. The windows were tinted, as she’d already learned. Writing on them, hoping someone saw it, did her no good.

The muscles in her neck constricted, making it hard to breathe.

What if she never saw her father, her twin or her friends ever again?

Freya pressed her hand to her mouth.

Her roommate had likely reported her missing. Rent was already due. Had Freya been replaced?

What about the others? Did anyone care that she was gone? Was anyone looking for her? She’d missed birthdays, her first date with Jaxon, the girl’s trip.

She’d been looking forward to that date, too. Jaxon was...he wasn’t just another guy at the club. He was different, and she’d known after meeting him that she needed to be different, too. Which was why she’d kept things between them friendly. She hadn’t so much as flirted. Intentionally, at least. Now she may never get her chance.

The door whisked open.

She caught the scent of his aftershave.

She knew who it was.

Yuri emitted a kind of cold confidence that chilled a room. He was a natural mood killer.

Freya swiped at her cheeks. She wouldn’t let them see her tears. That monster didn’t deserve them.

“What do you want?” she asked without turning around. She’d cowered from him in the beginning, before she realized that Yuri wouldn’t lay a finger on her. She must have a high price tag, if he wasn’t willing to hurt her like he had the others.

“I thought we should have a little chat,” Yuri said. “You’ve met Charles.”

Freya swallowed. Yes, she had, and she’d seen her death in that man’s eyes.

Yuri Gabor was fascinated by people’s reactions. He loved studying them. The way a person looked, or didn’t look, at a crucial moment told a hundred truths.

Janelle Freya Thorburn, for example, was a woman near her breaking point. Oh, she had a fine fire in her, which made her the more valuable sister. Michelle didn’t pose nearly the same kind of challenge as Janelle, or Freya, as she preferred to call herself, did.

Freya was a beautiful woman, but it wasn’t her looks or that intangible quality that made her special. It was a combination of everything. Looks. Breeding. Intelligence. She was the whole package.

If Charles hadn’t been poised to pay, Yuri could have had another buyer interested in her. Not that human flesh was his forte. Fantasy fulfillment, that was the name of his game. And Freya could fill a mind with fantasies.

“Charles is a customer of special needs.” Yuri tilted his head the other way.

She was watching him, but it was her body language that was informative. Did she realize that hand was at her throat? She did that when she was nervous. Looking for pearls to clutch?

“Here’s how it’s going to go. Charles has asked you to marry him twice now, correct?” Yuri waited for an answer that never came. No matter. “He will ask you eight more times. Don’t say yes immediately. Give him time, but don’t antagonize him. It wouldn’t go well for you to push him too far.”

“Why the hell do you think I’d say yes?” Freya whirled around, hands clenched into fists at her sides, eyes flashing, lips drawn down into a frown. She was regal in a breathtaking way.

“Because I have your sister Michelle in my possession.”

“What?” Freya’s already pale face leeched of color and she gaped at him.

Yuri pulled out his cell phone and clicked on the link to the webcam.

“She’s comfortable and unaware of her situation.” He held out the phone.

Freya crossed the room toward him as though she were in a daze. She reached for the phone but he pulled it back.

“W-what do you want?” Freya’s voice went breathy and she sank onto the sofa facing him.

“What I want you to do is to play hard-to-get with Charles.” Yuri took his phone back and secured the screen. “He has an unfulfilled fantasy. You are his unwilling bride, who he must woo and break to his will. You play your part, make it good for Charles, and Michelle will never know that her life was in danger.”

“Let me guess. If I say no, you’ll hurt Michelle?”

“Only if I need to. And, should you not prove adequate, Charles can always have your sister.”

Freya stared at the mirrored coffee table, that sharp mind of hers twisting the problem, looking at it from all sides.

Yuri had enjoyed watching her at work, puzzling things out.

“That’s it, then?” Freya asked.

“Do we have a bargain?”

“My compliance for Michelle’s freedom?”

“Yes.”

“How will I know if you let her go?”

“You won’t.”

“Then I can’t agree. What’s to say you won’t use her, too?”

“My dear, Michelle is nowhere near your class and value. She’d be more work to clean up than she’s worth.”

“You’re a monster.”

“I’ve been called worse.” By the very people who’d used him, but that was not for her to know.

Once, Yuri had been in her shoes, and he’d turned the tables. He’d learned that he could own people. Watching them, being able to read their dreams in the lines of their lips, he’d known their price tags.

Freya wanted to protect her sister. The same sister she’d been looking out for her whole adult life. Now would be no different.

“I’ll leave you to think over your choices.” Yuri smiled and rose.

Pleasantries got him farther than brute force, at least some of the time.

Freya remained sitting while he stepped out into the private lounge.

Charles would crush her like a delicate flower. The man’s tastes were...messy. Charles thought he wanted a wife to train, to sculpt, to fix him, even, but Freya, or whoever the unlucky woman was he finally picked, would end up like the others Yuri had disposed of for the man. Still, it wasn’t his place to judge. Yuri simply set the price, and Charles paid.

“Sir?” Thomas was waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

“What?”

“Just so you know, there was an issue with Joe. It’s been taken care of.”

“Good. I don’t want to know.”

Thomas had come to his job after watching Yuri personally make the previous club manager pay for his mistakes. Mistakes that had almost brought the authorities in for a closer look. They could always trot out the line that what consenting adults did behind the closed doors of the Swan Palace was their business, but that would open them up to closer inspection. And that couldn’t happen. Not with their clientele, and not now.

Places like the Swan Palace were where Yuri sourced his actual customers. People willing to pay top dollar for what they really wanted.

They reached the second floor.

A new face stood at the stairs.

Yuri paused, looking the man up and down.

He wasn’t young and stupid like most of the idiots that came to work for them. He also wasn’t old and grizzled. The girls would like him. He was easy on the eyes. That skin tone made it hard to pin an ethnicity to him.

“Who are you?” Yuri asked.

The man glanced at Yuri, as though he’d just noticed him.

Circumspect.

Good.

That could come in handy.

“Jaxon Wilson, sir.”

“Welcome to the Swan Palace, Mr. Wilson.”