They had to drag me to a room. I didn’t stop fighting for a single second. Mummy would have been proud of me.

It took three men to bring me to a simple cell. It seemed in sharp contrast to the beautiful, luxurious mansion we were in. It was bare, dark and grey, with no windows.

The floor was dark marble, still a hint of luxury in an otherwise barren room. There was a wooden chair front and center in the room, and a bucket in the corner. I looked at my captor incredulously, kicking like a wild animal to get free and escape once and for all. But there was no use. With three men holding me down, I was helpless.

“You can’t keep me here!” I screamed at the top of my voice, but he merely smirked at me.

He hadn’t even gotten his hands dirty, using three of his employees to throw me around like a ragdoll. As if it was beneath him to touch me. I hated him more with every breath I took, hoping to get revenge for every second I had to spend imprisoned in this hellhole.

“Watch me,” he told me darkly, then motioned for the goons to leave.

They shut the door behind them and then it was just us. My bruised, battered body shaking on the ground, and him, powerful, tall, magnetic, standing before me like he owned me.

“Here is what will happen next,” he said calmly, looking at me with an indulgent smile as he paced the room. “You’re going to have a little makeover. And your training will begin. But not before you’ve been punished for screaming and misbehaving. You will spend three days in here. Behave, or I’ll make it a week. Understood?”

I spat at him.

His eyes darkened, and he approached me in three quick, long steps. He raised a hand as if he was going to smack me, but I didn’t flinch. I wasn’t afraid. He wouldn’t break me that easily. I would fight until my last breath.

“I dare you,” I said huskily. “I dare you to hit me.”

He leaned down and grasped my throat between his fingers, grinning down at me.

“You don’t want to dare me, little one,” he told me menacingly. “I’ll make all your nightmares come true.”

He choked me, pressing down harder and harder until I could barely breathe. But I didn’t make a move to stop it. Instead, I just stared into his eyes with pure hatred in my gaze, waiting for him to finish what he’d started. I knew he wouldn’t kill me. He had plans for me, and I wouldn’t go down that easy. Still, I wanted him to know I wasn’t afraid of him and his threats.

Moments later, my eyes started rolling to the back of my head and I gasped for air which made him chuckle.

“Not so tough after all, are we?” he asked, letting go of me suddenly and letting me fall to the bare floor. “We’ll see how you’re faring three days from now. I won’t be in to see you, little one. And your food will be limited. Think you can handle it?”

I growled at him like a wild animal. I felt feral and angry. Like a completely different girl than I used to be. I was going to fight for my freedom. I realized how important it would be to be independent and to know how to fight here. If I didn’t I would fall prey to someone far more foul than the man standing before me.

“Well, I’ll see you eventually, I’m sure,” he winked at me, his smirk evil. “Goodbye, little one.”

“I have a name!” I screamed at him, and he turned around, his eyes filled with amusement as he looked at me.

“Oh, I know,” he said perfectly sweetly. “Harlow Granger. I know who you are. You just don’t know who you’re about to become.”

He shut the door and locked it behind him, and suddenly, I was in complete darkness, blacker than the night and inescapable.

That was when the fear started to creep in.

* * *

The room was designed as a prison cell for a reason, and within hours, I started to feel the effect it was having on me.

It was making me claustrophobic. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the walls started closing in on me, and I started to have trouble breathing. I wheezed, feeling panicked and frightened, my senses on high alert for any sound, smell or appearance. But it was peaceful in there, almost artificially so. As if every sound coming from outside had been blocked purposefully, to make me truly feel how alone in the world I was.

I started to tap my left foot against the floor in rhythmic, slow motions. That provided some noise and calmed me down a little. Being a big city girl and living in London, I’d never experienced silence like this. It felt like true isolation, and it sent fear into my bones.

Time passed painfully slowly. I tried counting the seconds and minutes like I had in the car, but as the numbers grew, I felt angry and even more scared. I knew I needed to stay strong. All my instincts came out to play now, the primal need to survive at any cost standing center stage just like I had been not long ago.

God, had it really only been a day and a half? It felt like a lifetime away, standing on that stage holding bouquets and having roses thrown at me. Now, I was a prisoner. A captive. And just two days prior I was an innocent girl with big dreams and my head in the clouds.

I started exploring the room a couple of hours into my imprisonment. I looked at the bucket, which I’d already realized was meant to be used as a toilet. The mere thought grossed me out and I winced at the thought of having to use it. There was the chair, but other than that, the room was empty. I felt around the walls, finding the door the man had used. There was a smaller part of it on the lower half, kind of like a hatch. But it was locked from the outside as well.

The hours kept passing, and the overwhelming need to pee made me sit on the bucket, cringing the whole way through. The smell of ammonia filled the room and I dry heaved. It was gross, but instead of despairing over my fate, it made me even more driven to get the hell out of there and leave that godforsaken little cell.

What felt like years later, the hatch opened and I scrambled to get to it. A small tray was pushed inside. There was only one thing on it – a metal jug of water.

I felt angry as hell, my stomach complaining loudly as I contemplated throwing the jug across the room. But I knew I needed to preserve my strength, so I drank the water in slow gulps, deciding to save some for later. God knows how long they were going to keep me without it. They were already withholding food.

I looked at the jug from all angles. It was light, two small screws holding the handle in place. My fingers gnawed at them, and my heart jumped when one of the tiny screws moved a fraction.

Retreating to the corner where there was the most light coming in from under the door, I got to work on the screw. My fingernails were bleeding in moments, still hurt from when I tried to escape the trunk. But I kept working because I knew it might be my only chance. I worked and worked that screw until it finally came loose, and when it did, I cried out happily. Now there was the problem of hiding it.

My clothes, bar my dress, had been taken away from me. Thankfully the room wasn’t too cold, so at least I knew they weren’t trying to kill me. They were probably saving my life for a purpose much worse than death, but what they didn’t know was that I would fight them every fucking step of the way to my demise.

When I emptied the jug, it felt like a decade later. I turned it around once it was empty and saw a small post-it note attached to the bottom. It simply said ‘return’, and I took the hint.

I placed the tray and jug back in front of the hatch and watched closely until it opened, and a hand withdrew the tray.

Briefly contemplating attacking the hand, I finally decided against it. I needed to use my makeshift weapon when someone was in the room with me and the door was unlocked. Otherwise, I’d never get out by myself. They’d just keep me in the dark cell until I died of hunger. I knew they would.

I hid the screw in my underwear. I used the bucket a few times, the stench making me want to die of embarrassment. More water came, and I drank it hungrily because my stomach was rumbling. It felt like they were playing a cruel game, never giving me food, but just enough water to keep me going to the bucket. I hated whoever the creator of this sick game was. I vowed to kill them when I got out.

I slept in short bursts of panic, nightmares plaguing my dreams. It was impossible to get comfortable on the cold, hard floor, but I kept trying. My life for however much time had passed turned into a routine. Water, bucket, sleep, and repeat, over and over again.

What felt like days later, they gave me some food. Plain, hard bread that tasted like heaven to my starving stomach.

It felt like I was slowly starting to lose my damn mind. In the darkness, with nothing but the tapping of my foot to create some distraction, my senses were deprived and so was my body. I started to shake, the cold seeping through the floor and through my flimsy dress, making me shake with fear and anticipation as well as the freezing room. It felt like somehow, the heating in the room had changed. It was impossibly cold now. Maybe they’d turned off the heating. Maybe they’d decided I wasn’t worth saving.

Hours later, the temperature went up again.

Up so much I stripped my dress and lay on the cold tile, the floor the only relief in the steaming room. I felt sick, retching water, overwhelmed by the smell of ammonia and the unbearable heat. I sweated it all out, lying there a complete mess, losing touch with reality as a fever rocked my body to sleep.

I woke up because I was freezing, and groaned when I realized what they were doing.

It hadn’t been enough to take away the light. They had to toy with me further.

The hatred grew inside me, bubbling from anger, ready to boil over and drown anyone who dared come close. I touched the screw in my panties, my fingertips touching the ridges and wondering when I’d get the chance to use it. It was tiny, but at least it was something.

Seconds blended into minutes into hours into decades. I was in there a lifetime. My dream of using the screw faded slowly, but surely. Now, I was too weak to even stand on my feet. I’d made a mess, because I was too hot, too frozen, to get up and pee in the bucket. I felt on the brink of death. My fingers tried to grip uselessly at the screw, but my hand fell away, wet from perspiration and too weak to be of any use.

I felt the life draining out of me, slowly, slowly breaking until I started crying. Slow sobs at first, and then full-blown tears.

It was then that the door opened, and a shadowed figure appeared in the doorway.

All my dreams of attacking him fell aside. He laughed at me, and I cried some more.

“Finally breaking,” he said. “What a sight you are.”

I couldn’t discern who it was. The light illuminated his silhouette, but not his face.

My eyes felt heavy, my body felt broken.

“Help me,” I begged him, my voice ragged from days of not speaking.

I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Freedom, a chance to escape – everything I’d been praying for, and I lay on the ground uselessly, like a broken doll.

“Help me,” I repeated in a whisper, and then my eyes closed for good.