When the trunk opened, I was blinded by the lights. The glare died down as rough hands yanked me from my tiny prison and hustled me through a parking garage to an elevator. Blinking hard, I stared around at the men who held me, but none of them were familiar. My hands and feet had gone numb from their bindings, and my tongue felt buried in sand from the handkerchief in my mouth.

They held the elevator doors open for about a minute until Dmitri appeared. He strode in, a huge grin on his face as he took me in his arms. I tried to lean away from him, but I was trapped.

“Were you this inhospitable to Nate?” He spoke in my ear. “I don’t think so.” His hands ran down my back and squeezed my ass as the elevator shot upward.

I wanted to knee him in the crotch, but my legs were pinned together by the zip tie at my ankles. My mind screamed, “Get off me!” But my dry throat wasn’t able to push a sound past the handkerchief. Not that it would’ve mattered.

The elevator stopped. Dmitri released me when the doors opened, and his men dragged me into a magnificent penthouse with stunning views of the city. Two armed men stood guard at the elevator, and a handful of Dmitri’s goons were scattered around the main living area and the open kitchen. My heart sank. There was no way I’d be able to get past all of them.

“Take her to my room.” Dmitri strode toward the kitchen while I was dragged down a dim hallway and into a large bedroom.

At the foot of the bed with black sheets, two small cages sat. Inside one, contorted into a painful fetal position, a woman with blonde hair and light blue eyes stared at me. She was naked, her eyes feral, and no recognition sparked in them. But somehow I knew, maybe through some connection that I could never understand, that she was my mother. Seeing her like this cut a new hole in my heart, one that I feared could never be repaired.

His men shoved me to my knees next to the empty cage. One reached under the bed and pulled out a length of iron chain with a shackle at the end.

The other cut my zip ties and grabbed a handful of my hair. “Snyat' odezhdu.”

Strip her. I cringed back and put my hands in front of me to defend myself. The man with his hand in my hair wrestled his arm through my elbows and held me still as the other one stripped off my jeans. I pressed my knees together, refusing to let this happen to me. Tears burned in my eyes as the man ripped my legs apart and peeled first my jeans and then my panties off.

His eyes focused between my thighs, and I kicked at him, nailing him in the jaw with the side of my foot. He roared and grabbed a handful of my shirt, yanking it forward. The seams burned along my skin as they pulled apart, the fabric no match for his brute strength. He did the same to my bra, stripping it off me with calculated violence until I sat naked, tears streaming down my cheeks.

He licked his lips and reached for the shackle. I tried to kick again, but he grabbed my calf and squeezed until it burned. Then he affixed the cuff to my ankle. When he was done, he sat back and stared at all the parts of me he didn’t deserve to see.

The man holding my hair released me. “Poyekhali.”

Let’s go.

The one who’d stripped me shook his head and pointed at me, arguing in Russian. The words were garbled, but the meaning was all too clear. He wanted to hurt me in the worst way possible. But the other Russian warned him that Dmitri would kill him when he found out. The threat worked, and the brute backed off before reluctantly following his comrade from the room.

When the bedroom door shut, I collapsed and hugged my knees to my chest. My entire body shook as my fingers roved to the shackle and my ankle. Get your shit together, and get out of here. My inner voice sounded a lot like Nate’s. Maybe he was coming to save me. Maybe he was storming up the stairs to the penthouse right that second. But that wasn’t a risk I could take. I needed to get out of here, and I needed to do it fast.

I sat up and peered at my mother through the bars of her cage. “I’m Sabrina.” Crawling closer, I tried to reach the simple bolt on her door. “I’m your daughter.” If I could slide it open, she’d be free.

She didn’t look at me, only tucked her head tighter against her knees.

“Mom.” The word felt alien on my tongue. The shackle dug into my ankle as I reached for her cage. My fingers slipped off the bolt. I pulled farther, ignoring the pain in my ankle, and slid the bolt free. The gate swung open.

“Mom, you can come out.” I scooted back toward the bed and yanked on the chain. It was latched to something underneath the sturdy wood frame. Turning back to my mother, I found her in the same position she was in when the door was shut. “Mom!”

She finally looked at me, her light blue eyes glassy and vacant.

“The door is open. I need your help.” I shook the chain. “If I can get free of this chain, you and I can leave here together. Just come out.”

Her gaze traveled over the open gate, but she made no move to exit the cage.

“She won’t move.” Dmitri leaned in the doorway, a satisfied smile on his face. “Will you, my dear?”

My mother seemed to cave in, shrinking into the smallest possible version of herself.

“Nikita and I go way back, don’t we?” Dmitri shed his jacket and walked into the room.

I scooted back against the bed and pulled my knees up to hide as much of myself as possible.

He tossed his jacket on the bed and began unbuttoning his shirt. “I knew her when she still belonged to your father. A beautiful woman with an even more beautiful child.” A wistful smile crossed his face. “God, how I wanted her. I would watch her day and night, creep into her room when your father was away, dream about her. But then your father showed me his true nature. He used me.” The smile faded and the cruelty remained. “Over and over. I often wondered if she knew about him. I asked her several times once I got her in my possession. She denied it. But I wasn’t sure if I believed her.” He shrugged and his hands went to his belt.

A shudder wracked me, and I glanced to the door, looking for any avenue of escape.

Dmitri knelt and pointed at my mother’s cage. “You see that? Blind obedience. She won’t leave that cage until I tell her to.” He reached out to touch me, but I slapped his hand away. “You’re fiery now, but it will fade just like Nikita’s did. Soon, you’ll be in this cage.” He patted the empty one. “And you won’t come out until I tell you to. And if I tell you to strangle your mother, you will. And if I tell you to suck every cock that walks through that door, you will.”

“Never.”

Dmitri smirked. “Your mother said the same thing.” He snapped his fingers and stood.

My mother uncoiled from her cage and crawled to him. Her body was marked with a highway of scars—cuts, bruises, burns. Some of them fresh, some of them old, all of them painful. A thinner, longer chain ran from her ankle to a bolt in the floor at the back of the cage.

“Sosat'.” Dmitri delivered the sick command in a stern voice.

My mother knelt before him and unzipped his pants.

I looked away as she pulled out his cock, but Dmitri grabbed my hair and forced me to watch as she took it in her mouth. My gorge rose, and I dry heaved, but Dmitri held me fast.

“You see?” Dmitri slapped my mother’s face as she sucked him. “This will be you in no time. I broke her spirit. Now I’m going to break yours.”

Spit pooled in my mouth as the urge to throw up tried to overcome me. “Nate will come for me.”

Dmitri laughed. “Nate and his associates are dead. All of them. My men are on their way here with Nate’s head.” He pointed to a shelf on the wall between two windows. “I’ve already got a place picked out for it.”

The floor seemed to disappear, or perhaps I sank through it. My heart constricted, as if an icy fist crushed it between cutting fingers. Nate couldn’t be dead. I would have known, wouldn’t I? I would have felt it. A million denials twisted inside me. But the finality in Dmitri’s tone, the sadistic satisfaction in his eyes…

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to. It’ll all become clear soon enough.” He yanked my mother from his cock and threw her to the floor. “Now it’s your turn.”

“I’ll bite it off.” I snapped my teeth.

“I don’t think so.” He pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked it open. Pointing it at me, he stepped closer, his halfway flaccid cock waggling in the cool air.

“Mom.” I choked on the word as she lay where he’d thrown her.

“She won’t save you.” Dmitri shook his head at me as if I were an unruly child. “Don’t you understand?” He grabbed her hair again and dragged her until she sat in front of me.

She didn’t say a word as he ran the blade down her breast, drawing a line of blood right on top of a series of similar scars. Her eyes remained glossy. She wasn’t there. Tossing her aside again, he reached for my hair. I kicked out my foot, catching him right below the knee.

He yelled and fell to the side as I scampered up onto the bed and yanked at the chain.

The noise drew one of the earlier henchmen into the room, but Dmitri stood and waved him away. “Get the fuck out.” He went to the door and slammed it, then flipped the lock.

I tugged at the chain, the metal biting into my ankle as I fought like a wild animal with its leg in a trap.

Dmitri returned, knife in hand. “You’re going to regret that.”

“Fuck you!” I whipped the chain toward his knife hand, but it was several inches too short.

He took the opening and launched himself at me, his thick frame pinning me to the bed. I fought until he pressed the blade against my throat, warm blood trickling across my skin.

“Let’s start our first lesson. You need to learn who owns you.” He shoved his knee between mine.

“All of this belongs to Nate!” I yelled in his face. “You can’t take anything from me, because I’ve given it all to him. You can do whatever fucked up things you like, but I will never be yours.”

He blinked, his dark eyes growing narrower. “I’d like to test that theory.” His other knee joined the first, and his cock head pressed against my inner thigh.

Bile rose in my throat as I tried to send my mind somewhere far away from the monster on top of me. Nate’s eyes, my favorite green flecked with hazel, and his smiling face appeared. How could seeing him hurt so much?

“Spread wider, kukla.” Dmitri’s hot breath at my ear brought me back to the here and now. He pushed closer, his cock nearly at my entrance.

If he’d been telling the truth—if Nate truly was dead—maybe I should simply buck up against Dmitri, let the knife slide inside me and cut off my life. End the torment before it began. It would only take one swift movement.

Before I could move, a painful crack across my nose pulled a scream from me. Then Dmitri’s weight shifted, his knife dropping to the bed as he grabbed at his neck. I shoved him away, then saw my mother behind him, her chain wrapped around his throat as she pulled with all her strength. “Don’t you touch my daughter, you kusok der'ma,” she hissed.

Dmitri tried to stand up, and my pushing was helping his momentum. Instead of letting him go, I latched onto him like a monkey, wrapping my legs around his torso and using my weight to pull his body down, the chain tightening as my mother pressed her knee against his back.

He shot one hand out toward the mattress, reaching for the knife. I grabbed it first, slicing his fingers as I pulled it from his grasp. I clutched it close, then shoved it up. My arm jerked as the blade glanced off his ribs, then sank between them.

Surprise lit his dark eyes as I twisted the knife. He gurgled as hot blood poured out of the hole in his heart, coating my chest as the blood vessels in his eyes popped.

Blood leaked from his throat where the chain dug in. When I was certain he was dead, I let go and shoved him to the side. He lay face down on the bed as I scrambled from beneath him. My mother perched on his back, still pulling the chain with all her might, her thin body shaking from the effort.

“Mom.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s dead.”

She shook her head and kept pulling. “He’s not. It’s a trick.”

I squeezed her frail arm. “It’s over.”

She blinked hard, her wild eyes adjusting, as if she were finally seeing me. “He’s dead?”

“I promise.” I gestured to myself, covered in his blood. “I stabbed him in the heart.” I glanced down at his body. “And you are on the verge of taking his head clean off.”

Her grip loosened on the chain, her hands red and raw from pulling so hard. “I couldn’t let him.” Her eyes watered. “Couldn’t let him hurt you, too.”

I pressed my palm to her face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”

“You couldn’t have.” She grabbed a handful of the duvet and wiped some of the blood off me. “No one knew where I was or what happened to me.”

I tugged the sheet from beneath Dmitri’s body and wrapped it around her shrunken frame. “I’m here now. We’re getting out of here. I promise.”

“But the chains…” She glanced at my ankle, then her own, her eyes reminding me of the ones I saw in the mirror every day. There was so much I wanted to know, to tell her, but there was no time. If we didn’t find a way out soon, we’d be dead before our jailbreak truly began. Killing the warden was only half the battle.

“There has to be a way to get free.” Dropping to all fours, I felt beneath the bed for where my chain terminated into a metal loop.

“His guards won’t come back in. Not for a long while.” She shuddered. “They know not to bother Dmitri while he’s having his fun.”

I felt around the loop and the metal plate that had been set flush into the wood floor. I wouldn’t be able to budge it. Sitting up, I inspected the cuff at my ankle. It was similar to a handcuff, but not as seamless. The homemade mechanism had a couple of screws holding it together.

Climbing back onto the bed, I wedged my feet under Dmitri’s body and kicked him over onto his back. His head lolled to the side, flesh and bone visible, his spine showing through. The blade still protruded from his chest. I yanked it out as my mother stared at his face, as if wanting to be sure that he was truly dead.

I pressed the tip of the knife into the small screw that held the back of the shackle together. It slipped out, and I cursed quietly, then tried again. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to twist it until the screw came loose and the bolt on the other end dropped to the bed. Tugging at the metal, I was able to open the cuff enough to slide my foot out.

“Here.” I handed the knife to my mother. “Work the screw out.” I gathered my clothes from the corner and threw them on as she twisted the blade.

Once I was dressed, I sat next to her and took the knife, working the screw out faster than she could with her shaking hands. When the shackle was gone, she rubbed her ankle, as if it were the first moment in a long time since she’d been free of it. The thought cut me, but I couldn’t dwell on guilt. We had to get out of the penthouse.

I rose from the bed and rummaged through the nearby dresser, hoping for some sort of weapon. “Do you know where he keeps his guns?” I whispered as my mom continued to rub her ankle, a faraway look once again clouding her eyes.

“Not here.” She pointed at the side wall. “In the bedroom next door.” Another tremor shook her, and tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

Shit. We wouldn’t make it two steps out the door without some sort of weapon. Our little knife wouldn’t do a damn thing against the goons with guns right outside.

I darted to the windows overlooking the city. They didn’t have an opening mechanism, just sheets of glass. Not that it mattered, we were thirty stories up, and there was no way down.

I returned to the bed and pulled my mother to my chest. Her tears drew some of my own. It was as if she were letting out all the emotion she’d hid from Dmitri for so long, her body no longer able to hold it back.

“I’m so happy I got to see you.” She pulled back and stroked my cheek. “My beautiful girl. So glad I got to see my Sabrina again.”

“Don’t give up.” I gave her a weak smile. “We are getting out of here.”

She shook her head, her sad eyes cutting through my false bravado. “I wish that were true.”