I blink, my eyelids feeling heavy. My head throbbing. The room comes into view, then fades again. Moving my arm feels impossible and I’m not sure if I fade out again or for how long, but the next time I open my eyes, I see the blurry vision of someone in the room with me.

Which room? I’m not in Denver anymore. I’m in Beirut. I’m at the cottage outside Dr. Hassan’s house. This is the room where Zach recovered.

Zach.

I sit up, and immediately fall back down, eyes closing against the ache in my head.

Zach did this to me. He tricked me. I trusted him, and he fooled me.

“Sleeping beauty finally up?” a woman asks.

I don’t recognize the voice right away.

“Leave her alone. Get out of here.”

Now this voice I know. This one I know well.

I force my eyelids to open and stare up at the ceiling for a long time, long enough for the spinning to slow. I turn my head to find Julia leaning against the wall with her arms folded across her chest, hate in her eyes. But I shift my gaze a little from her to him.

He’s got his back to me, but it’s him. His black hair, now spotted with gray, is cut so close to his head, I know it will prickle like little thorns if I touch it. He’s wearing a black T-shirt. Like Zach. His shoulders are broad, but not as wide as Zach’s. And he’s a few inches shorter. The skin on his arms is tanned a golden brown and, unlike Zach, it’s not marred. Not tattooed. He bears the scars of a soldier, but he didn’t nearly die.

Armen turns to look at me. Golden eyes meet mine. We all have them, every one of my brothers. They’re from my mom’s side. My dad had black eyes.

“I thought you were dead,” I manage, smiling a little as a warm tear slips from my eye. I sit up, push through the dizzy spell until I’m leaning my back against the bed.

His eyes sweep my face, but I can’t read the emotion inside them. It’s not what I expect at our reunion though.

“You should have died,” he says.

I’m taken aback.

Julia snorts from her corner as I process what my brother just said. Armen closes the folder he’s holding—Zach’s folder—and sets it down, then comes toward me. Why do I shrink away when he does? He’s my brother. He won’t hurt me.

But he already has, hasn’t he?

I shake away the memories.

“Armen?”

He reaches out and grabs my arm hard, yanking me from the bed. When I stumble, he lets me fall. My knees hit the hard, cracked tiles. I look up at him.

“Everything would have been easier if you’d just died.”

His stare takes me in, and disgust curls his lip. “Get her dressed. I don’t want to see her like this. Nearly naked in his bed.”

Then, to my horror and shock, he turns his back and walks out the door. I just sit there staring at it, in utter disbelief at his actions. His words. Because I know he doesn’t mean it. He can’t. I know what I saw that night two years ago. I know he didn’t want to do what he did. He was made to.

Wasn’t he?

Tears warm my eyes.

Julia tosses my dress, bra and panties at me. “You heard him. Get dressed. Let’s go.”

“Where? Why?”

The sneer she gives me chills me through. She squats down close and I back away. “You don’t know how this is killing him. He’s right. If you’d died that night, he’d be free. We both would be. But you just don’t die, do you?” She grips a handful of hair and stands, drawing me painfully to my feet. “Get dressed.”

“Where’s Zach?”

She snorts again, shaking her head once, then raises her right arm and slaps me so hard across the face that I fall onto the bed.

“Because of you, he’s on his way to getting himself killed.”

Holding my hand to my hot, stinging cheek, I sit on the edge of the bed to stare up at her.

“If you want to see him before Malik puts a bullet in him, I suggest you get fucking dressed.” She turns and walks out the door, but doesn’t close it behind her and I hear them talk outside.

* * *

They’ve zip tied my wrists together too tight. So tight, my skin’s rubbed raw. My brother won’t look at me as the car bumps along the road heading farther and farther away from the city. He’s driving the car and Julia is beside him, and I’m putting two and two together.

“Hope is your baby.”

Armen finally glances at me in the rearview mirror. He looks older than his thirty years and this close, I see more gray in his dark hair and deep lines around his eyes.

“I thought you died that night, Armen.” Neither of them react. “For two years, I’ve lived thinking you were blown to bits, but you’ve been here all this time. And you have a baby.”

Nothing.

“Did you know I survived?”

“Yeah, sis, I knew.”

I think that hurts worse than anything else. Worse than how he looked at me earlier. Worse than Julia’s hand across my cheek.

“What about Rafi and Seth?”

I see the exchange between Armen and Julia.

“Are they alive? I have a right to know.”

“You have no rights,” Julia says.

“Why do you hate me?” I ask her. “I don’t even know you. I didn’t know you existed up until last night.”

She turns, gives me a smirk. “Well, sadly, I’ve known of your existence for far longer.”

“Stop,” Armen tells her.

“Why? She’s been living it up the last two years. What have you been doing? What have I been doing?”

“I haven’t exactly been living it up. I thought I’d lost my entire family, you bitch.”

“Stop it,” Armen says again.

“You’re the bitch. Bitch-whore.”

Armen slams on the brakes, stops in the middle of the road. If I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt, my face would be smashed up against the front seats.

My heart thunders in my chest, but he turns to Julia. “I said stop,” he commands, his rage barely controlled. I watch her, am stunned that she obeys. He then turns to me. “You too. Just be quiet.”

“Tell me about Seth and Rafi, and I’ll be quiet. Tell me how you could do what you did to me, and I’ll be quiet. All I wanted was to save you, Armen. Save you from becoming like him. Like Malik.”

“But there wasn’t any need because I wasn’t becoming like him. I was already like him.”

“I don’t believe that, and neither do you. We grew up together. I remember how you took care of us. All of us. How after mom and dad died, you stepped into the role of both parents. How you went hungry to feed us. How you did whatever it took to take care of us.”

His eyes are like lasers, slicing right through me. “And after all that, I failed, didn’t I?”

“You’re not a monster.”

“You can say that after what I did to you?” He shakes his head and turns his attention back to the road, picking up speed. “You’re stupid, Eve. Now shut the fuck up.”

I sink back in the seat. I’m confused, relieved he’s alive, yet afraid of the man he’s become. And I have a bad feeling—like the worst is yet to come. My head hurts from the drug Zach injected me with, and my heart hurts when I think about what Julia said. That Zach is on his way to getting himself killed. I think about Zach’s deal with Hassan and wonder if Hassan knows what’s happened. Where I am. That his daughter and my brother have kidnapped me. And they’re taking me to Malik.

What use am I to Malik? I still don’t understand. I know he used me to get to Zach, to lure him. Play with him, maybe. But what can he want with me now?

A cell phone rings and I watch as Julia fishes it out of her pocket and looks down at the screen. She answers at the fourth ring.

“Father.” She’s so cold. Last night, I’d thought it was because he dismissed her, but now I’m getting the impression that’s just her.

Hassan is talking loud enough that I can hear him, but I can’t make out his words.

“I left milk in the refrigerator. Hope will be fine. You just take care of her and don’t worry about anything else.”

So Hassan didn’t know what they did.

“No, I don’t care about that. I’m fixing this. Today. I want this done. We both do.” A pause. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of my big brother. Like always. When we’re done, he’ll get exactly what he deserves.”

Hassan is still talking when she disconnects the call and switches off her phone.

It’s another hour before we pass through a set of gates where two armed soldiers stand sentry. And it’s another ten minutes after that before the large building comes into view. A monastery.

“You ready?” Julia asks once Armen waves to the guards and drives through the gates to park the car.

“Yeah,” Armen answers.

“It’s almost over,” she says.

Her words are ominous and I can’t think about what she means. He smiles at her and I can see alongside the anxiety in his eyes something else. Something like tenderness.

“Give us a minute,” he says to her.

“I’ll go let my uncle know we’re here.”

Julia gets out of the car with barely a glance in my direction. Once she’s out of view, Armen turns to me. He’s quiet at first, and he looks…resigned. “I did it to buy them back. That’s how it started.”

“How what started?”

“Seth and Rafi, when they disappeared, I went to Malik. I made a deal with him. I’d work for him and he’d get our brothers back.”

“Back from where?”

“The group holding them prisoner. A group loyal to him.” He shakes his head, and I see guilt in his eyes.

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they—” I can’t say it.

He doesn’t answer. Just looks down.

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“You should have come on the flight I arranged for you. I could have hidden you.”

“It was you who sent that ticket?”

He nods. “Now it’s too late.” He can’t hold my gaze and when he speaks, any tenderness I saw earlier is gone, replaced by the cold, impenetrable man I remember from my last days here two years ago. “Now, I’m going to have to prove my loyalty.”

That’s all he says before climbing out of the car and opening the back door. He reaches in and takes hold of one arm, dragging me out. Forcing me, as I stumble and fight, toward the front door of the huge estate.