I wake with a blinding headache and a serious case of cotton mouth. Licking my lips, I taste the familiar metallic tang of blood mixed with the bitter flavor of dried vomit. As my eyelids flutter open, my surroundings slowly come into focus.

I’m in the corner of a dingy office, tied to an old wooden swivel chair, but all five casters have been removed from the base so it no longer rolls. A metal desk with chipped gray paint sits in the center of the concrete floor. On top of the desk are multiple stacks of hundred dollar bills, each stack is at least six inches high. Next to the money is my phone and a collection of tools — a hammer, hand saw, pliers, tire iron, and hedge clippers — which I assume will be used to torture me.

The door opens and the sound makes me physically flinch. My heart races and vision blurs as a man in a beige suit walks in with two musclemen behind him. It’s Benny Bagarov. I recognize him from the articles I’ve read.

“Kara Langley. Fancy meeting you here,” he says in a smooth voice. “I thought you might never wake up, and I’d have to throw you into a barrel of acid. Good to see you’re still fighting.”

His Russian accent isn’t as thick as the man who abducted me and roughed me up in the back of the van. But the words he speaks, the easy way he walks, and the sinister smile on his face make me fear him even more. My body trembles as he draws closer with every step he takes.

“Fuck you,” I mutter clumsily, my mouth sticky and woolen from the after effects of whatever drug they pumped into my veins.

“You sound thirsty,” he says, nodding to one of the goons behind him. “Get her some water.”

“I don’t want water,” I reply, curling my fingers into fists to flex the muscles in my wrists, attempting to stretch the plastic zip ties that bind me.

The other goon grabs an empty steel chair from the corner and drags into the space between me and the desk. Benny sits in the chair and leans over, resting his elbows on his knees to get a closer look at me. If my hands and feet weren’t restrained, he’d be close enough to strangle.

“I must say, Kara, I am very proud of you,” he begins, and his words turn my stomach. “When I found out you were fucking a billionaire, I had to applaud you for your cunning. Screwing a billionaire for a million dollars is brilliant. Bravo, Kara. You truly are your father’s daughter.” He waits a moment for me to respond, but I won’t give him the satisfaction. “I would have waited for you to finish the job, but I couldn’t risk you screwing it up. Then, I wouldn’t get my money. And, besides, what’s the point in collecting $140,000 from poor little Kara when I can put in a little work and collect $2,000,000 in ransom from the lovesick billionaire. Your pussy must be made of gold the way he tried to save you tonight. Maybe I should take a peek to see for myself?”

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” I warn him, meeting his gaze straight on.

He smiles. “That’s good, Kara. Keep fighting. The more fight you have in you, the longer you’ll survive as I cut away at you, inch by inch.” He stands suddenly and nods at the guy in the corner. “Clean her up so we can record the video. Make it quick.”

The goon with the scar that runs from his hairline, across his eyelid, and down to his nose, busies himself with setting up a video camera on a tripod. I close my eyes and grit my teeth as he uses a damp cloth to wipe blood and vomit from my face and neck. But as his hand moves farther down my chest, I begin squirming in my chair, enough to send it teetering sideways.

He catches me before I tip over completely and laughs as he sets me upright again. “Stupid bitch,” he says in a dopey, unaccented voice.

“Fuck you,” I spit back, flashing my teeth at him as he reaches for my chest again. “I’ll bite your fingers off. Touch me again. I fucking dare you.”

He rolls his eyes and begins adjusting the camera angle. “You’re gonna read this,” he says, opening up a note app on his phone and holding up the screen so I can see it. “Read loud and clear and I’ll use a condom when I rape you. Deal?”

“I’m not reading shit,” I say, looking away from the phone as I try to focus all my effort on concealing the way my body is trembling uncontrollably.

“You’ll read it or I’ll fuck you with the claw end of this hammer.”

“God, you’re such a loser,” I reply, staring at the camera lens. “Is that thing recording now?”

“Do you see the fucking light flashing? No, it’s not recording, you fucking moron. Now, rehearse your fucking lines before I bend you over and sterilize you.” He holds the phone closer to my face, then yanks my head up by my hair to force me to look at it. “Read the words loud and clear.”

I force out a puff of laughter through my tears as I begin to read. “I’m being treated well. Please give them the money and they’ll let me go. Give them any amount they ask for. If you… If you call the police, they threatened…” My nose begins to run as my tears come faster now.

“Louder!” he shouts.

I tense my muscles to keep from flinching at his raw anger. “If you call the police, they threatened…to rape me. If you don’t drop off the money by midnight, they’ll cut off a finger for every hour you’re late.”

“That was pathetic,” he says, letting go of my hair. “And now I have to clean the fucking snot from your face. You’d better not cry on the video or I’ll rape you until you’re so dead inside, you won’t have any tears left.”

My body trembles violently as he walks behind the camera.

“Stop fucking shaking.”

“I can’t! I’m cold,” I reply, my voice breaking. “P-Please get me a blanket. Please. It will cover up the shaking on the camera. Please.”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t you fucking move.”

As soon as he leaves, I begin leaning forward so I can use my toes to pull me across the concrete floor toward the desk in the center of the room. When I hear a voice outside the door, I freeze, my heart thudding in my aching head as I wait for the voice to subside.

I’m only moving a few inches at a time, but I manage to get to the desk in what feels like four or five minutes. I struggle to turn the chair around without making loud scraping noises on the floor, but I can’t worry about being heard now when I’m so close. Finally, with my back to the desk, I have to decide between reaching for my iPhone X, the handsaw, or the hedge clippers.

The clippers are too large and unwieldy. I wouldn’t be able to angle them enough to cut my wrist restraint. The saw would be the easiest way to break free, but how am I going to fight them off.

I reach for the phone, which is no more than two inches from the edge of the desk. Unfortunately, my hands are restrained at a level a couple of inches below the surface of the desk. I have to try to stand on my tiptoes without toppling over.

Leaning forward, I put all my weight on my toes and try to remember everything I was taught in ballet class when I was eight years old. Curling my toes under, I push up until all my weight and the weight of the wooden chair I’m tied to is resting on the very tip of my pointed-toe silver pumps.

I almost cry when my finger touches the phone. Stretching the plastic around my wrists as much as I possibly can, I manage to clasp the phone between my two index fingers. I turn away from the table as quickly as I can, praying that the phone doesn’t slip from my grasp. Landing on the five-point base of the chair with a loud thud, my heart hammers against my chest as the phone stays firmly between my fingers.

I use my sore toes to push myself back into the corner, all the while attempting to feel my way around the phone to familiarize myself with the location of the power button and volume buttons. Turning on the iPhone, I sigh with relief when I feel the familiar brief vibration it makes when powering up.

As Dopey returns to the office, I try to regulate my breathing, so I don’t appear out of breath. I hold the phone close to my back, so he doesn’t see it when he wraps a scratchy gray blanket around my shoulders. Luckily, the blanket now completely obscures the phone in my hands.

As he turns on the camera, and I proceed to read his script without a single tear rolling down my cheeks, I hold down the power button and volume up button until I feel the phone vibrate. The brief pulse indicates the emergency SOS screen is now showing. I continue holding down the power and volume button until my phone beeps loudly.

“What the fuck was that?” Dopey asks. “What the fuck was that, bitch?”

I force myself to laugh as I hear the faint voice of the 911 operator answering the call. “Help! I’ve been kidnapped!” I manage to get the words out a millisecond before Dopey backhands me across the face and the iPhone drops onto the concrete. “They’re going to kill me! Help!”