I spent an entire day in bed with the covers over my head. When the sunlight was too bright, I hung quilts over the windows. When a sliver of light still peeked in, I taped them to the wall. I was trying to simulate the darkness I had in the cage—the pure blackness that blocked out everything—but it wasn’t possible. Nothing could give me that solace. Even when it was dark, the silence wasn’t there. I heard sounds I never really paid attention to—noises I never realized I could hear. When I stayed in my apartment before I was taken, they were just normal sounds, but they might as well have been screams against my eardrum after being alone in that cage with nothing but silent madness to keep me company.

I never imagined I would want that again—especially when it stripped away my sanity the first time.

I dodged calls from Cassie. She wanted to know what happened—where I went—how my vacation was. That’s where everyone thought I disappeared to—those that cared at least. Reynard laid out his plan carefully—he thought of everything. Well, almost everything. He probably didn’t expect me to connect with what he was doing to me—to embrace it—and to crave it when it was finally taken away. It damaged me in a way that he never imagined—in a way that couldn’t fathom—yet I knew I wasn’t the same girl that was taken from the street on my way home and shoved into the back of a van.

Now I would go willingly, just to spend one more day with them—either of them, really. I had a connection to them both.

Reynard and Mauro both had beasts dwelling inside of them. Those beasts needed to feed on suffering. There was kindness in them too—kindness that I saw along the way, even when I didn’t deserve a hint of it. I would have knelt at their feet again if I could, but I knew those days were over. I was a broken toy. I no longer feared the cruelty or the malice—I cherished it. I got off on the pain as much as I got off on the pleasure. My days of calling them Master had passed, and I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to be able to recover.

A week passed before I got enough energy to do more than walk to the door and take the food that I ordered. I had a stack of boxes in my living room, half-eaten meals that were already starting to stink. I didn’t care. I belonged in a cage, not in an apartment, so I tried to turn it into one. I couldn’t recreate the darkness, but I could make myself a prisoner. I set my own boundaries and with them, I found my way back from the darkness I craved. I found the strength to sit in my living room, to watch television, and that’s when I learned the horrible truth about what happened to the two men who imprisoned me.

“Oh my god.” My hand went to my mouth—it was the only thing I had said out loud other than a simple thank you to a delivery driver, and my own voice startled me.

Reynard and Mauro were arrested in Chicago. The news didn’t tell me everything, but the clues were there. They were under investigation by the SEC due to something that happened at their company—something that involved their brother. I ran to my laptop and turned it on for the first time since I returned to my apartment. I quickly scanned every news article I could find, searching for more information. Shit had definitely hit the fan while I had been locked in my self-imposed prison. I thought back to my last conversation with Reynard—how shocked he was when I told him Wyatt mentioned his sister. She seemed to be the source of the problem—something to do with their father’s will—an investment account that Wyatt set up—and it mentioned fraud.

What was it that Wyatt said about his sister? She—was causing problems? Damn it—what was he talking about…

I spent an hour looking through my chat logs with Wyatt—and I cursed myself for not saving all of the videos. I usually deleted them to save room once the blackmail was complete. I was never cruel enough to try to double dip into my blackmail schemes—even when I was running low on money. I found new targets, and it had been a while since Wyatt was the one I was after. The news ran in the background while I continued digging—each one seeming to have more information about the arrests.

I don’t believe Reynard and Mauro were involved in this. They’ve certainly done things that would land most people in prison, but they aren’t responsible for what Wyatt did—but how do I prove it? There has to be something…

Wait a second. I’m going about this the wrong way. I’m digging into the past, but that’s not going to help them—not now. I’m good at finding people—figuring out who they are—learning their secrets.

I shouldn’t be focused on Wyatt—I should be focused on their sister.

I spent all night digging, turning over virtual rocks, and searching for something that could possibly be useful, but it was like looking for a needle in a metropolis. The news had a name for their sister—Hannah Ashton—but I was pretty sure that wasn’t her real name. She was a ghost outside of the news stories that mentioned her and a few companies in Chicago—companies that had later been sold to a man named Josef Weber. Weber released a statement proclaiming his innocence and said he had been duped by the Jackson brothers, but he didn’t elaborate. It seemed like a cover story, and I was pretty sure there was more to it that he wasn’t talking about to the press. I just didn’t know what it could be.

That name—Josef Weber—is familiar. I’m pretty sure Wyatt mentioned his name when we were talking, and if it’s the guy he talked about, then he was part of the reason Wyatt was so stressed out.

Thinking about Wyatt still tore me up inside, even though I didn’t believe it was my blackmail scheme that drove him over the edge and caused him to take his own life. Unfortunately, there was no way for me to know that with absolute certainty. He was stressed, constantly dealing with issues at work—unhappy in his marriage—and I was the one he kept coming back to when all of those concerns weighed heavily on him. I might not have been the one who caused his death, but I still felt partially responsible. What if I had been there to offer an ear in his darkest moment? Would he have talked to me instead of deciding that carbon monoxide poisoning was a better alternative? Was my betrayal still lingering on his thoughts when he cranked up his car?

I deserved every bit of the punishment I got when I was in that cage, whether I caused his death or not—because I betrayed him—and that can’t be undone.

I kept digging, even when things seemed to be absolutely pointless because I just couldn’t give up. I couldn’t sit on my couch and think about the Jackson brothers in prison without feeling a knot in my stomach. I started looking into Josef Weber, since he seemed to be involved in some way, despite claiming to be a victim. He ran a company called Weber Acquisitions in Chicago, with a branch in New York and Los Angeles. It looked like the company’s primary focus was on real estate acquisitions, utilizing investors to build their empire and promising big returns. It was a little different than what Jackson Investments did, but their clientele was similar—both companies took money from people and turned it into profit.

I can’t very well go to Chicago and confront Josef Weber. That’s what Reynard and Mauro did—and it didn’t go very well if they left Weber Acquisitions in handcuffs. I doubt I would even get in the front door. Now they’re considered flight risks—as if either of them would run from anything.

The part that bothered me the most about my investigation was how nonexistent Hannah Ashton was. I had been digging into people’s lives for a while—it was how I survived. Even people who went to great lengths to conceal their identity had trace elements online. It literally looked like Hannah Ashton was finger-snapped into existence on the day Ashton Retirement Fund was registered in Chicago ten years ago. There was no way that was her real name, or if it was, she went by another one prior to that. I was leaning towards the former because outside of Ashton Retirement Fund’s registration, she was still as much of a ghost as she was before the company was registered.

If she’s challenging the will, her real name has to be out there somewhere…

I started doing cross-references for the names Hannah and Ashton with Josef Weber, but it was another dead end. I repeated my searches, just typing everything into the search engines I could think of, each one making my frustration grow. Searching the past was useless, searching the present was an array of dead ends, and I couldn’t very well see into the future. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Exhaustion was starting to take a toll. I was seeing the same glimpse of madness that I felt when the darkness consumed me inside the cage for the first time—then an idea caused me to open my eyes immediately.

Reynard. He was able to track me down—he found my chat logs—that means he must have Wyatt’s laptop. Wyatt is—was the only person outside of Josef Weber that knew Hannah Ashton. I’m sure he would have kept something—especially if he was so torn up about this. I need that laptop.

I needed to talk to Reynard, which meant I was going to have to pay a visit to him in prison. That was the only way I could gain access to his house and possibly get my hands on Wyatt’s laptop. I wasn’t even sure if it was going to provide me with information that the brothers themselves hadn’t already uncovered, but it was the only thing I could think of that could. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to see Reynard and once one presented itself, I couldn’t let go of the thought. Either way, I was just banging my head against the screen and I wasn’t willing to give up—not without exploring every option that I could think of.

I’m sure he hasn’t even thought about me since I left. Why would he? I was a girl in a cage that deserved nothing but punishment. Once that moment passed and he no longer saw me as his object of revenge, he could barely touch me—not the way I needed him to touch me.

But that isn’t what this about…

Or is it?