Contents

DEDICATION

- ONE

- TWO

- THREE

- FOUR

- FIVE

- SIX

- SEVEN

- EIGHT

- NINE

- TEN

- DON'T FORGET

- ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

- ABOUT THE AUTHOR

- STALK HER

THE

FALL

OF

V

--

A Henchmen MC Story

--

Jessica Gadziala

Copyright ©   2018      Jessica Gadziala

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

"This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/ PopTika

DEDICATION:

To my grandfather - 

who also has a knack for storytelling.

THE FALL OF V

ONE

Ferryn

Have you ever made a mistake, and knew the second it was happening how badly you had messed up?

This was what happened that day.

That day when my rebellious streak finally caught up with me.

I guess I had gotten away with too much over the years, had been let off too lightly because there was some ingrained parental fear of being called a hypocrite.

And make no mistake, that was exactly what I would have said, too. Even when Dad got his serious-face on, even when he crossed his arms, and slitted his eyes, and his voice did that growling thing.

I could practically hear the silent conversation between him and my mother - those two always being able to say with looks more than I could with words... and I had a lot of words. 

See, this is why no one should have been telling old war stories around the kids.

She meant that figuratively, of course. She meant the stories about how his own old man let him drink beer with his "friends" when he was nothing more than thirteen, how he'd never been scolded for fighting, for being caught with girls, for cursing, for being, well, a horrible kid. 

Keep in mind, when Dad said his father's "friends," he meant his father's men. He meant his father's brothers. He meant the fellow bikers.

Surely they knew I knew that by now. 

Even Fallon was getting an idea. And, in my humble opinion, he wasn't the brightest of kids. I mean, he watched other kids play Minecraft on Youtube all day instead of playing it himself. That'd be like me watching people my age on Youtube reading books.

But, yeah, he occasionally would get this keen look at times, watching our parents and their friends with a quiet sort of intensity that was actually very much like Dad.

He was finally catching onto something that I had known since I was hardly more than seven.

Namely, Daddy was a criminal.

Daddy and all of his friends were criminals.

And, by extension, so was Mom. And Aunt Lo and Aunt Janie. Even the ones who didn't spend all their time at some military survivalist camp were too. If not by profession, then by association. Even the seemingly normal ones like Aunt Penny, and the charmingly out of place Rey who Uncle Reeve had finally found a little happiness with.

In case this wasn't clear, too, not a single one of these people were my actual aunts or uncles. Except, technically, Aunt Lo. Through marriage to my Uncle Cash who I was trying to get up the nerve to tell that he was getting a little old for his haircut.

They were all my father's men and their wives. Though, to be fair, they certainly all acted like one giant family.

For outlaw bikers.

It was easy for them to fool me when I was little and easily distracted, when Daddy could take me on his bike, and make me forget all about asking what the giant vault in the basement was for.

I clearly remembered sometime in maybe third grade when we had been working on percentages at school, and I came home to Dad in his leather cut - worn and soft from decades of wearing that exact same one - and had asked him what he was one-percent of, running my finger over that badge on his chest. 

He'd looked taken aback for a moment before he declared he was one percent devil, then snarled and grabbed at me, making me run and screech.

I had no idea that there was some truth in his words at the time.

One-percent devil.

They were raising me in the wrong age if they didn't want me to look into things when I was curious about them. 

Like a one-percent badge.

That meant he was a one-percent biker.

Meaning that ninety-nine percent of all biker clubs were a simple brotherhood, men bonding over their love of bikes. 

But one-percent were outlaws.

Criminals.

Bad guys. 

That was what they were.

Bad guys.

Good men, by any definition of the word.

But bad guys.

Everything started to make sense after that computer search when I was ten.

The tension that seemed to come out of nowhere, the nights Mom and Dad were sitting at the table until the wee hours of the morning, hands cradling cups of coffee, tension creasing their foreheads, jaws clenched tight, the dozens of times Dad would get called out of the house at all hours, not coming home for days on end, leaving Mom to clean compulsively, force false joy to keep us from picking up on the tension.

And, well, the seemingly random trips up to Hailstorm for supposed campouts and vacations, little lies we all bought into for more years than we probably should have. Myself included.

I remembered long days in those windowless rooms, trying to make the best of it, playing when I found the motivation, going stir crazy when I couldn't.

There was no real rhyme or reason to the visits - or so it seemed back then. Sometimes it was just for a few nights. Others, weeks. The present spell? Yeah, they were going on months. I didn't know how the kids - or their moms for that matter- were handling it.

See, that is where my story starts.

I didn't realize it at the time, of course. All I knew when I put my foot down was I was bored. And missing out on things that the other kids weren't. Because they were younger. Because they weren't in a pivotal point of their growing-up-hood. 

If anything, they were happy to be put on home instruction, or, in a few cases, pulled out and put on homeschooling. They were glad not to sit in airless classrooms, going zombie-brained as the teachers hammered information into their little heads that they would remember only to spew out on test days, then Etch-a-sketch right out of their brains again to make room for the next lesson. 

But that wasn't the case for me. 

First, because I liked school. I know, I'm a freak. But I had always been a sponge for things that interested me, grilling the adults around me who might have had more information than even my textbooks could tell me. That meant for history, I could grill Uncle Renny who was a bottomless pit of facts. Or if I wanted to know more about literature, my Aunt Janie had an endless list of books that could help shape my life, the way my brain worked, that would make me see things differently. Aunt Lo was a big reader too, though her taste ran toward sweet - and dirty - stories. She'd started slipping them to me under my mom's nose a few months before when she sensed it was maybe something I was interested in - sex. She hadn't been wrong either. And the books had given me more information than any health class I had ever taken.

But it wasn't just the classes I missed. I could - and always had been able to - learn anywhere.

It was the experiences.

And, let's face it, time spent with some people my own age.

I liked the kids, I did. 

But there was only so much I could take.

I mean, I could only listen to Katy Perry music so much before I was sure my brain was going to turn to mush.

I wanted to be around my friends from school. The ones I had been getting a record-store-education with for months before we were whisked away to Hailstorm at a moment's notice, falling deep into tracks by The Doors and Tom Petty and Zepplin and Hendrix and Joplin and Sabbath, back when music had something to say, not just records to sell and charts to climb.

I missed hanging out at She's Bean Around, drinking coffee Mom said I couldn't have yet, talking about politics we were still too young to weigh in on in an official capacity, but had strong opinions on. 

I was losing out on Friday nights at the movies or football games. Saturdays doing sleepovers or hanging out at the beach.

I mean, for God's sake, I was missing just fresh air whenever I wanted it, seeing things other than the inside of shipping container rooms and the heavily guarded grounds that Aunt Lo loved so much.

So, I had done something I guess I had always been good at. I got stubborn. Unbending. Absolutely relentless in my pursuit for freedom. 

Until, finally, Mom and Dad caved.

And let me go back to school. 

There was some kind of meeting with my teachers and principals that I was not allowed to know about, and I was assigned two of Aunt Lo's men or women from Hailstorm to bring me to and from school, had very strict rules about when and where I would meet them. If I was so much as two minutes late because the contents of my locker attacked me or something, they would come charging down the halls. And while the guns weren't out, I knew there were just barely concealed and ready to use.

Weird, a bit embarrassing? Yeah. 

But if that was all I needed to put up with to be able to be back at school with my friends, well, I was willing to deal with some sideways glances.

Those were nothing new anyway. 

It seemed that everyone else knew what I had figured out about my family as well. 

Which was both uncomfortable but also freeing. I was left alone. No one messed with me. Everyone seemed to be careful around me.

I mean, not that I needed my father's reputation to protect me, of course. I had been trained in martial arts since before I could even talk without a baby lisp. 

I could handle myself against roving, unwelcome adolescent boy hands. I could shut down a bully with one hand behind my back and both feet in cement.

But it was nice in a way to be given a wide berth at school since I didn't get one at home. 

Which brings us to my mistake.

My epic, world-changing mistake.

Because it was my birthday, darn it.

The big one. 

Sixteen.

The one that meant something still, even if all that cheesy 'sweet sixteen and never been kissed' thing was the stuff of history. And my parents had put their feet down about it.

No party.

No night out.

No nothing except a cake at freaking Hailstorm.

And while I normally understood - and respected - the fact that they did things that they thought were for my best interest, I could not understand why they couldn't give me one of their armed details that would make the offspring of a president or diplomat raise their brows... just so I could go and have fun with a few of my girlfriends.

Which was something I had even suggested, even if the idea of a bunch of my parents' friends trailing behind me and listening to everything I said to my friends filled me with dread, at least it wasn't a lame sweet sixteen stuck on a hill behind electrified fences and metal walls being suckered into playing Barbies for the third night in a row.

So, I came up with a plan.

I got two of my closest friends in on it.

We wouldn't get away with it for long, we knew, with who I had for parents and extended family, but at least it would be something.

At promptly one-fifty, we would excuse ourselves from class to use the bathroom, walk down the hall by the music room because that was an empty period for the teacher who took a nap behind a locked door and would not notice the three of us moving down a hall we were not meant to if we were, indeed, on the way to the lavatory. 

We would skate down the hall of lockers to the side entrance to the stage for the auditorium, then climb down the stairs that would lead us into the abandoned locker rooms, the kids who had a class needing to run the mile that day on the side field. Which meant we could each sneak out that unlocked door to the back field, slide down the side of the building to a line of pine trees that led to the woods. Where we could be completely hidden from the eyes of any teachers, and take off for our outing. 

Iggy had an older brother who was a year out of high school and drove this amazing vintage T-bird that would have made Uncle Repo weep who had agreed to pick us up and drive us out of town since anyone who saw us out of school and unaccompanied in Navesink Bank would likely call my dad on me. 

Vance, Iggy's brother, was someone who always went through with helping his little sister accomplish her plans for little rebellions, having grown up in the same oppressively strict family. He had rebelled young and hard, and encouraged his sister to do the same so she didn't, in his words, Become some fucking Stepford Wife with no brain and ten kids shackling her to a man who had never fucked her right in twenty years and expected her to bow and kowtow to his will like some king. 

Okay, so I maybe had a little crush on Vance.

And by little, I meant huge, mushy, stupid, can't-think-straight-in-his-presence-because-I-was-thinking-about-what-it-would-be-like-to-have-his-guitar-playing-hands-on-me kind of crush.

He had that thing going for him, something I didn't quite have a word for, something that old musicians did. Like Jim Morrison, like Prince, like countless others did - a cocky, confident, sexually-charged aura about them like a cloud of smoke. In Vance's case, literally. He smoked. And, sure, smoking was bad for you, but he rolled his own cigarettes that he claimed were much better for you because they weren't full of all that 'big tobacco crap' that could give you cancer just from secondhand breathing it in. 

The Indigenous have been using tobacco for generations, after all.

He was also gorgeous, of course.

Too gorgeous, really.

So much so that girls were always flocking around him, putting their hands on his chest or stomach, giving him come-hither looks, whispering in his ear.

I couldn't help it. I knew it was weak and petty and beneath me, but I hated each and every one of them, stared daggers at their bodies that had the time to round out better than mine had yet, at their clear sexual confidence that likely came from experience which I was still lacking in.

But he was tall, and a lithe kind of strong. I knew the latter part because Iggy's parents had a pool. And while we girls were required to wear tankinis if we wanted to swim, he could go in just in his swim shorts. Even when he was just seventeen instead of nineteen like he currently was, he had nice etches of muscles. And, yeah, that trail of hair that... well, you know.

His face was all hard angles, hair that was the darkest shade of brown possible that was always slightly in need of a cut, making the strands fall into his brilliant blue eyes, and these lips that were not prone to smiling, but they did every once in a while, sometimes even my way, stealing all the air out of my chest. 

His voice was raspy, too. That was the only way to describe it, low and raspy, like he had a perpetual sore throat. 

He worked a half dozen odd jobs and played with his bands on nights and weekends. 

Which was where he was bringing us.

To one of his shows.

He was going to drop us at the strip mall a few minutes away because it was too early, let us shop and eat and hang out, then he would pick us up on his way in to set up.

I was excited.

To hang out with my friends, sure. There was even a really cool indie bookstore to check out. 

But more so to spend time with Vance.

I wasn't stupid. Or naive. By any stretch of the words.

I knew he didn't see me that way, that all he saw when he looked at me was this giant, permanent-marker stain across my forehead that spelled out Jailbait. 

I didn't stack up to the girls who could only be called groupies who came to his shows with their short skirts, bared midriffs, and low-cut tops, showing off boobs I might never have. Girls who gyrated their hips in a way that would give him all kinds of ideas. Girls who he would throw an arm around, then disappear with outside.

And not to discuss music or society or great spoken word artists like he did with me.

No.

For blowjobs or sex.

I knew how the world worked, how guys like him operated, how the girls would use their bodies to try to get their hooks in him.

Stupid girls, I couldn't help but think as I would watch it all go down. My aunts would have my head for even thinking something like that about my fellow women. But, really, it was stupid, y'know? He's not screwing you for your mind. Which is why he will forget you exist five minutes after your clothes are back on.

I was working the long game on Vance.

I already knew he liked how my mind worked, that he enjoyed my company, that he didn't just tolerate me because I was his little sister's friend, and he had to put up with me.

So I would bide my time.

I would let the other girls have him.

I would remind myself that it was all for the best, that he could get that out of his system with them while I aged up and became a possibility for him.

Then I would make my move.

Heck, Iggy was even in on it.

She would tell me all the time that she hoped I married Vance, so we could be actual sisters. 

Which was why she was smuggling something really awesome for me to wear to school with her. I could change in the woods, let her do my makeup since she had an amazing hand at it even though she wasn't technically allowed to wear it, then we could all walk out to meet Vance.

I should have stayed in my jeans and long-sleeved tee.

I shouldn't have changed into the skintight black dress that cut too short on the hem. 

I couldn't have known that at the time, though, as I walked out of the woods feeling more confident than I maybe ever had before.

It didn't escape me, either, that Vance looked taken aback, and seemed to need to force his face forward out the windshield as we got to the passenger side of the car.

"You're gonna be cold, Ferryn," he told me, but his voice sounded almost, I don't know, tense? Tense, I decided, was a very good thing as I climbed into the backseat with Heather as Iggy moved in beside her brother. 

Everything was fine.

We got sugar-filled coffee drinks. We looked through endless shelves of books, only each buying one because our purses weren't big enough to store more than that. 

We bought some earrings and bangle bracelets at a little jewelry store, then we had slices of pizza as we waited for Vance to show up.

He did, sometime around seven, his car pulling into the lot.

I never did get back in it.

Vance had been half-climbing out of his door, Iggy and Heather almost running toward him as I struggled with my purse that felt stuck on something.

I didn't realize it wasn't something until I noticed a darkness overtake Vance, as his body stiffened, as his mouth opened.

It was right then I knew.

The falling sensation in my stomach started.

The gut-flinch Uncle Malcolm called it. He said it was a gift. He told me to always trust it, to always follow it. That if I got the gut-flinch, if my body was telling me that something was wrong, then it was wrong.

Well, my gut-flinched just a split second before I felt a hand close around my mouth from behind, an arm close around my midsection hard enough to strangle out my air, to lift me off my feet, to ensure a bruise would be there to remember the sensation even days later. 

"Ferryn!"

Vance's voice was tortured, his face stricken even as I felt myself being dragged backward.

There were things I knew about attacks, having been attacked by people of all sexes, strengths, in my training from Aunt Lo, Aunt Janie, Uncle Malcolm, Uncles Cash, Wolf, Repo, Cyrus, Pagan... the list was endless.

But that was... I could only get away if I stopped it before I was completely overtaken.

And, make no mistake, I was completely overtaken by this man who ran backward with me as though I weighed no more than a dried leaf.

My feet couldn't make contact with the ground to jump up to break his hold on me. 

The arm around my stomach was too firm to wiggle out of.

I was going to be taken.

That realization made a coldness wash over my body, made goosebumps break out over my flesh, made my stomach turn sour, making me wonder if I was going to vomit even as I watched Vance chase us.

All I could seem to think, though, as I saw a trunk open at my side was that he needed to get back in his car to chase us; he needed to get Iggy's phone to call my Dad.

My body lifted higher, twisted, then slammed down into the scratchy material covering the trunk. 

"Vance!" I heard screamed, surprised, almost, to realize that the frantic, hysterical sound came bursting out of me before the trunk door slammed.

He had been close, too.

Too close.

So close that the man who had taken me would have needed to deal with him.

My heart seemed to freeze in my chest, understanding my need to hear, to make sure there wasn't a shot that said he lost his beautiful life trying to save mine.

There was no shot, though.

I heard a shuffle, a grunt, then a car door closing, and the stomach-dropping feel of the car peeling off.

My body rolled, slamming hard against the side of the trunk, hard enough to make me hiss out as the car took a sharp turn, slamming me against the other wall before I finally kicked out my legs and threw out my arms, stabbing them into the corners of the trunk to try to hold myself still as the panic racked through my system.

Panic is useless, Uncle Malcolm's voice spoke inside my head. Biologic, but controllable, he had added. You must fight it, stay in control. If you are in control of your mind, you can control your body. If you can control your body, you can change your situation.

There was one last helpless, whining, bemoaning whimper from somewhere deep within me, something that, under any other situation, would have turned my saliva sour to even think of saying it, but in this situation, with my world changing around me by the moment, there was no pride left to fight it.

My parents were right. I should have done what they said.

But there was no time for that, for girlish helplessness. I was not helpless. I would never be helpless. 

I had trained for this for God's sake.

When the car idled at some traffic signal, my legs and arms relaxed as I scrambled to the corner of the trunk, hands frantically searching for the pull. There was always a pull. It was the law. For little kids locking themselves in trunks, mostly. But also for this kind of situation, for people thrown helplessly into the locked depths. There was a pull somewhere that would pop the top open. So I could alarm a following car, get the police involved, or, if I was desperate enough, to jump out. Broken bones and road burn would hurt, but the pain would be self-inflicted, it would be known.

Whereas whatever lay ahead of me would be brought on by others.

I wasn't naive though.

It wasn't unknown.

My fate.

Much to my mom's discomfort, Aunt Lo and Aunt Janie had sat me down, insisting right to her face that she knew why this was necessary. There had been weight behind the words, something I hadn't understood, but it was enough for Mom to concede, to wring her hands as they charged forward into it.

They didn't shy away from the words, the ones that made my belly tighten. Abduction. Trafficking. The sex trade. Rape. Virginity auctions. 

I understood in painfully explicit detail what men wanted from young, pretty girls when they snatched them off the street, threw them into a trunk, and drove them away from their lives.

I knew what was going to happen to me if I didn't get away. If I didn't get control over this situation.

My hands fumbled uselessly at the roof of the trunk, finding nothing, trying not to get hopeless, trying not to realize that not all cars had the pull. Old cars didn't. That was why the law was passed. Little kids suffocating to death. 

I choked back the cry that formed in the back of my throat, hands feeling at the sides, at the door itself, unwilling to give up.

There's more than one way out of a trunk, Uncle Malc's voice broke through my frantic, scrambling thoughts. Back seats fold forward.

I flew to the front of the trunk, slamming my feet out to brace myself as my hands sought the pull with a feeling of a full-body sigh as it folded forward.

I could move out, throw the door open, and fall out into the road before they could get me.

There was still a chance. 

Seat flat, I threw my upper body forward through the opening, blood pulsing wildly through my temples, wrists, throat, making my very familiar body feel oddly foreign as my hands grabbed the back of the seat to drag myself forward.

"Bitch has a will," a deep, chilling voice said. And all I could think was Close. Too close.  "Gonna be fun to break her of that," he added before a pain exploded across the tops of my hands, cracking into my knuckles with the crushing sensation of breaking. A cry ripped from within me, a sound I hated hearing, hated giving to them, but couldn't manage to keep in as I snatched my hands back, finding them shaking even as the metal bar he'd used to whack them swung back up, and slammed back down with awful, black, unconsciousness.

When I woke up again, I was back in the trunk, the back seat closing me in complete darkness.

"Ow," I whimpered, raising my hand to my head where it was slamming with an intensity that made my eyes hurt. My fingers, sore and weak themselves, met the side of my head, coming back wet and sticky. 

Blood.

Even as the thought formed,  I could smell it. Metallic and primal, a scent I knew as well as anyone could, having smelled my own more times than I could count when I caught a fist to the nose, lip, ear. When I landed on something that forced holes into my arms, knees, hands.

My training hadn't been about the gi, padded floors, and instructors who came at you with a fifth their real force, terrified of lawsuits.

Everything I had learned had been raw and real life. Every bruise I got came from an adult who loved me, every bloody nose from an aunt or uncle who knew that training was useless if it didn't teach you to be able to think and act through actual pain, every split lip from a trained adult who knew I needed to become intimately acquainted with the feel, taste, and smell of my own blood.

Cry if you have to, Lenny told me - not quite an aunt yet, though we all knew that was coming - but get up and fight.

I pulled in a ragged, shuddering breath, trying to clear my mind to focus, trying to think of the next move. 

But my stomach pitched, making me turn on my side just fast enough to throw up into the corner of the trunk.

Headache.

Nausea.

Head injury.

Concussion.

I had a concussion.

I spat the saliva and bad taste out of my mouth, trying to move away from the corner, trying to keep consciousness as my brain started to swim, as my vision kept blanking in and out, stealing seconds, minutes, I didn't know how long. 

I reminded myself that the thing about not falling asleep was - mostly - fictional, something fun to throw into movies for dramatic effect.

Mostly though.

Sometimes, the concussion was bad enough that you shouldn't sleep.

Because there was a good chance that you might not wake up, that you could pass out, choke on your own vomit, and never wake again.

Even as the thought occurred to me, I could feel the car slowing. Nothing unusual. Even criminals - maybe especially criminals - needed to abide stop signs and red lights.

But this time, it didn't charge forward after a moment.

No.

The engine cut, making me aware of the constant vibration that had accompanied it while it had been on.

There was another pause as my heartbeat skittered into overdrive, making adrenaline surge through my body as a door slammed. Then another. As male voices got closer, as they laughed from outside the trunk.

As a key was jammed into the lock.

As the door started to lift.

And I thought a thought then I never thought someone like  me - so fearless, so ambitious, so full of drive, of ambitions, of, well, life - would.

Maybe I'd prefer it if the concussion killed me. 

TWO

Reign

The car - sleek, black, long, flawless, the kind of car Repo would have wet dreams about, came to a screeching halt after pressing into the gates enough to bend the metal slightly inward, making me think a thought I would later chasten myself for.

They don't make them like they used to.

I mean, what the fuck kind of thought was that to have? Especially now. Especially with Ferryn pulling another fucking rebellion, sneaking out of school with her friends.

Yeah, it was her birthday.

And, yeah, I got it.

I got her better than she got herself. I guess because she had a lot of me in her.

She was independent, brave, free-thinking, and stubborn as a goddamn bulldog. 

Somedays, when she was railing against me or Summer for some rule we laid down, that she objected to, I had to work to keep from smiling. And, if it weren't for Summer sending me that Don't you dare look in my direction, I likely would have smiled too.

Because Ferryn and I, we were cut from the same cloth. And, what's more, I liked it. I liked hearing her argue and bitch and refuse to back down. 

I liked when she took a stand, and followed through, even if she didn't have permission.

I might not have liked it when she came home with a hole through her nose, but I found myself respecting her balls.

I mean, even my men wouldn't pierce something if I expressly told them not to.

And here was my daughter, this black-haired, gray-eyed, tall, and slight thing, coming in with her chin jacked up so high you'd swear she was fucking royalty, telling you that you can punish her all you want, but she has a right to "bodily autonomy," and that no one could make her take it out. 

I'd wanted to laugh, but held it in until I got into the bedroom with Summer later, after having doled out a punishment of three months cleaning the entire goddamn clubhouse top to bottom on the weekends when I knew she wanted to hang with her friends, but she hadn't objected, hadn't begged or bargained for a lesser sentence. She took her punishment without complaint.

"Bodily fucking autonomy," I had chuckled as a smile finally split Summer's face too.

"That sounds a lot like Alex, don't you think?" she'd asked as I dropped down next to her on the bed.

"Can't decide if she's a good, or a bad, influence," I agreed about the smartass, loudmouth, opinionated wife of Breaker. Not technically part of our strange, varied family, but Alex and Janie were buds and coworkers on their cyber vigilante missions, so that meant she was part of the girls club. And if she was part of the girls club, that meant she had a hand in helping raise our kids. Most especially our daughter.

"I think she is going to show Ferryn how to unapologetically speak her mind," Summer decided, nodding a bit. 

"Even if she's speaking unapologetically to her parents."

"Oh, you love it, and you know it."

"Yeah, guess I do," I had agreed before, well, we stopped talking, finding not-talking a lot more fun, as we often did. Even after all these years. I'd never get enough of the woman. I swear on my deathbed, I'd be begging the universe for one last time with her.

So, yeah, Ferryn was a mini me, with a better vocabulary and therefore sharper arguments. Much like the one she'd given us about her sixteenth birthday.

And, yeah, she'd had a point. 

It wasn't fair that she got locked up on her birthday instead of celebrating with her friends.

Summer, especially, felt guilt in this particular situation.

Because it was her raging bitch of a mother who was preventing her children from being allowed to have a normal life.

Not that it was anyone's fault that she'd gotten free.

Well, except for Abruzzo.

Who'd paid with a lot of bloodshed before he hopped on board on the mission to track down the elusive V. 

He'd been about as effective as we had, as Hailstorm had. Meaning not at all.

The kids were all getting stir crazy.

Ferryn, as always, more so than anyone else. Because she was older.

She was missing out on more.

Really, it was my own fucking fault for not seeing that this would be a stunt she would pull.

I'd have done the exact same thing in her position. 

Had I thought of it, I would have made sure there were extra guards outside the school.

Summer was a wreck, sitting up at Hailstorm saying how she never should have let her go back to school.

I'd assured her that she was just being, well, Ferryn, and that we'd find her, punish her, then wait for her to pull something like this again. As we both knew she would.

Hell, Mina had pulled me aside once to tell me that I should prepare myself for Ferryn's teens, that she'd be a lot to handle.

And she was.

Clearly.

But I had calls out to her friends' parents, and people trolling all over Navesink Bank to find them and bring them home, kicking and screaming if need be. Which it would likely be.

She'd come home.

So, the car thought crossed my mind in that moment between trying to figure out more of Ferryn's hotspots, and calling her deliberately turned off phone.

"Fucking kids," Virgin muttered at the car as the one who'd been driving threw open the door, climbing out so fast he stumbled, making the guards by the gate readjust their guns, the ones that Lo's guys could wear with no concern of the cops for reasons she refused to disclose. 

It was right about then that I recognized this particular kid. Though, he could hardly be called that, closing in on twenty.

Which I knew because I knew his sister.

Because Ferryn was friends with her.

Because this guy would drive Ferryn home some nights, leaving Summer to press her lips together to keep from smiling.

"What?" I'd asked one night, watching out the window as Ferryn prattled on, and the guy just kept staring forward.

"She's madly in love with him," Summer had informed me.

"I'm gonna need you to repeat that."

"I overheard her on the phone with Iggy one night. Madly in love with Vance."

"And the reason we're letting her sit out in the car with him..."

"Oh, please. Look at him. He won't even look at her. He knows he can't even do that."

"She's a baby," I'd insisted. 

"She's a young woman, and you know it," Summer had insisted, putting an arm around my lower back, leaning her head into my arm.

"Don't gotta like it," I'd grumbled, knowing I would likely never be able to see her as anything other than the little girl in the Chucks and tutu, giving me sloppy kid kisses on the cheek, smearing jam on my face, and telling me that my scruff tickled.

"No," she'd agreed. "I don't think you ever will. But let her have her crush. She'll have a thousand of them. And this one is the most harmless."

"How do you figure?"

"Because he's too old for her. Because he clearly knows and respects that. Because if you shut this down, and she crushed on a boy her own age, she wouldn't be sitting in the front seat in the driveway right now; she'd be in the back, parked in some lot somewhere, doing things that you never want your little girl to do in the back of a car."

"Or fuckin' anywhere," I'd added.

"Yes, yes, of course. She will never do any of that... ever ...  anywhere," she'd placated me, patting my stomach.

"Damn straight."

So I knew this guy from countless stops in my driveway, each time, his gaze not even drifting to my daughter, no matter how much she was clearly trying to get it.

I also knew that look on his face.

Eyes huge.

Muscle ticking in his jaw.

Fucking frantic.

His eye was blackened, too. And his lip split and still bleeding down his chin onto his shirt.

"They got Ferryn," his voice rose up out of him, roaring across the field between us. And since I'd had a talk with the kid once, and knew his voice for low and raspy, I knew his voice was matching his face. Fucking freaked.

"The fuck'd he just say?" I heard myself asking Virgin, sure I misheard him.

"Someone got Ferryn," he repeated, taking off across the field even as Lo's guys worked to open the gates to let him in.

It was then that my feet carried me over to him. How? I don't know. Because everything felt numb right then.

"What?" I hissed as I came up almost nose-to-nose with him.

"Two men. Black Cadillac. Old. No plates," he rambled off as one of Lo's guys picked up his phone to call it in. "Outside the pizza place in Farehold," he added. "Both white. Tall. Wide. I tried," he added, voice begging me to believe him. "I tried to get her back," he added.

That was why his eye was black, why his lip was bleeding. Trying to save my daughter.

Save my daughter.

"From the fucking beginning," I growled, trying to keep the panic from welling up, knowing it would do me no good.

"They snuck out of school. Convinced me to bring them to my show tonight. But I dropped them off to go to the bookstore and eat. I had just come to pick them up. She was getting up to walk to my car, but someone behind her grabbed her purse. I was getting out, thinking some asshole was just trying to mug her. But then he was dragging her. He was grabbing her and pulling her to a car. And shoving her into the trunk. I tried," he repeated, sounding frustratingly helpless.

"I see you did," I agreed, giving the kid a bit of comfort I didn't even have for myself as my mind raced.

Words crossed my mind that I never wanted to think.

Kidnapping.

Rape.

Trafficking.

Or V.

"Tell them everything," I demanded, motioning to Lo's guys as I flew across the yard toward the compound, screaming out the news as soon as I was inside the door, making everyone's face match the kid outside - and likely my own - frantic.

"Oh, my God," Peyton hissed as she jumped off of Sugar's lap, knowing I needed him.

I needed everyone.

I needed fucking everyone, but even that was no guarantee of anything.

"I'm calling the Mallicks," Sugar announced.

"I got the Grassis," Duke added.

"Breaker and Alex," Edison added, going for his phone. 

"Sawyer and Barrett," Reeve jumped in.

"Anyone else?" I asked, not seeming able to think straight, not ready to break this news to poor fucking Summer.

"Luce," Wolf growled, pointing to the phone at his ear.

"I'll call Baird too," Cyrus added. "Longshot, but anything is better than nothing."

"Yo," Cash said at my side, voice calmer than it should have been, but that fuck always had a knack for staying calm in the worst of situations. "Abruzzo."

"That motherfucker," I agreed, storming out of the compound toward my bike, finding Lo's guys had forced the T-bird out of the way, and had Vance, Iggy, and Heather out, getting stories from the frantic guy and hysterical girls. 

"Call Lloyd," I demanded of Roderick who had followed at my heels, stopping beside me while I got on my bike. If there was ever a time to get the law involved in my business, it was when my little girl was in the fucking trunk of a car, waiting for me to save her.

I had to fucking save her.

I couldn't let them hurt her.

I couldn't let them put marks on her like Summer had, like Janie had, and Lo, and countless other women who knew the angry touch of men using their power in a way the world never intended.

Not my daughter, damnit, not my fucking daughter too.

She knows how to fight, I reminded myself. 

Unlike Summer, unlike Janie, when they got caught by people meaning to hurt them. She knew how to fight, to defend herself, to give it all she got. 

I don't want my daughter to ever feel as helpless as I was made to.

That was what Summer had told me one night when Ferryn had gotten a pretty bad shiner, prompting me to suggest that maybe we should dial it back a bit with the training. 

Thank fucking God that my woman was stubborn about somethings. 

Ferryn had eleven years of martial arts under her belt, even at times besting Lo, Janie, and even some of the men - Cy, Edison, Pagan, and Laz - who she'd trained with to learn different fighting styles and how to work against them.

Though, if this was V, there would be an army. She'd had one once upon a time. She'd had men in her pockets to kidnap and torture Reeve a bit back.

Sure, she'd went into hiding after.

But while V was an elusive creature, evil to a degree that it made it hard to even understand what her motivators were anymore, there wasn't a single doubt in my mind that she was rebuilding her army. From what Marco Abruzzo said, she still had contacts, she had plans to utilize them, rebuild her inhuman trafficking operation, building stacks of money made on the foundations of slavery and rape.

The word made a pit shoot out of my stomach and lodge in my throat.

Rape.

There had been rules when she'd had Summer - orders for her men not to step over that line.

But, well, when you employed the lowest human specimens the world had to offer, they often got twisted little ideas in their heads. The kind of ideas that had Summer on her knees contemplating suicide to avoid the seemingly inevitable since she knew there was no way out even if she took down one attacker; there were dozens more. Who knew what fate could have been worse than suicide inside the walls of V's compound?

And with Summer's escape, then years inside a cell to mull things over, she had likely found ways to ensure a repeat could never happen again.

Which didn't fare well for Ferryn.

She was a smart girl, though.

It was something you knew about her even as a toddler - those eyes of hers were always watching, taking things in. Her mouth always asking questions, demanding answers. 

If there was any possible way to escape, she would find it.

If there wasn't, well, I would just have to find her. Whatever it took. However many people needed to be tortured, no matter how much blood had to stain my hands, no matter how many doors I had to knock down, deals I had to make.

Whatever it took, I would see my daughter again. Sitting at the dinner table, animatedly telling us about some school drama, on the couch, nose buried in a book about ancient torture, the Salem Witch Trials, the Vikings, Romans, Greeks, philosophy, poetry, in the doorway of her room as she folded her arms and unleashed her own version of hell on me or Summer for some thing or another, at Christmas, beaming when she realized we had paid attention, had gotten her what she wanted, hell, even in the goddamn front seat of that kid's car in the driveway.

I'd see her again.

Come hell or motherfucking high water.

THREE

Ferryn

The trunk opened into darkness. The kind that implied the pitch black of night and the deliberate lack of inside lighting.

Deliberate.

Because they didn't want me to see where I was. Because they didn't want me to be able to look for an escape. Or remember paths for a later attempt at freedom.

But there was more than one sense.

Uncle Cyrus had been the one to focus on that in my training - taking something away from me, teaching me to compensate with other senses. He would blindfold me, then move around me, attacking silently from different angles until I learned the sensation of air displacing itself for a human inhabitant, until I learned that the little baby hairs weren't moving because of some breeze from an open window, but from someone moving in beside me, until I could learn to hear an arm raising in the air to strike me, and stop it. He would shove earplugs in my ears so I couldn't rely on them to hear him coming from behind to attack me.

If you can learn to concentrate without one or more of your senses, you can teach yourself never to be disoriented by the loss of one.

Suddenly, I wished I had taken him up on his offer for more of those classes instead of ditching him to hit up poetry slams or open mic nights. 

Hands moved out, closing around my arm just above my elbow, the unyielding pressure making my bones feel small and brittle beneath - a malnourished skeleton in the grip of a vengeful giant. 

Fingers curled into delicate flesh, pressing marks into the skin, ones I knew would be there to see hours later, ones that I could run a finger over and still feel an aching memory. 

The tree limb known as an arm pulled me from my prison - vomit-filled and putrid, but somehow much more preferable to the outside unknown.

My head wobbled on my neck, weak as a rag doll between two feuding children, making the migraine already screaming through all hemispheres of my injured brain take on a new intensity, white sparks floating across my vision, bile sloshing around ominously in my stomach empty of all other contents.

My shoulder screamed, wrenched unnaturally backward toward the body directing the hand still pressing bruises into my forearm.

My breath hissed out of me, the only show of pain, the only sound I seemed capable of making with my poor, confused body so overtaken by differing pains to be able to express it.

All for the best, I decided when my lower back crashed into the bottom of the trunk as my body was pulled fully outward, my traitorous legs refusing to hold my weight, the muscles turning to dust as my feet touched the ground. Because men like these, evil men, ugly-souled men, they got off on the pain, on your power being given over to them.

As far as it was under my control to do so, I wouldn't give them that satisfaction. 

Not even as a disembodied voice chuckled - low and wicked - at my weakness.

"Might have to carry her," the voice commented, making a chill break out over my skin. "Could get a real feel for her that way, know what I mean?"

As if he was being subtle.

And all my brain could really focus on, aside from revulsion that was like a poison eating away at my stomach lining, was I couldn't let him carry me. If he carried me, it would be too easy to get disoriented.

If I could walk, I could count steps, maybe touch things on my way, try to see what was around me even in this inky blackness.

I choked back the sick in my throat, fought the spinning in my head, forced my legs to extend, the muscles to stiffen, to do their job, and hold my weight like they had been doing since I was hardly even a year old.

Work, darnit, work.

The arm around my middle allowed just enough slack for me to test out my legs, clumsy as a newborn foal - or that giraffe baby the internet waited weeks for. 

But my knees locked.

My muscles stretched and solidified.

My feet planted.

And this time, my legs didn't buckle, they held firm in a way I had never thought to question their ability to do so before. 

Funny, the basic things you can take for granted.

A head not screaming in pain.

A stomach that didn't roll and slosh with each unstoppable thought.

Legs that knew their job.

And freedom.

God, freedom.

Sure, it came with limitations. 

It always did.

Rules. Laws. Enforcers of them.

But freedom to break them, to deal with the consequences.

This.

This was a new world.

And I was a clueless babe in it.

If there were rules to follow, I didn't know them.

If there were consequences for breaking them, I was ignorant of what those might be.

I had no choice but to follow as the hand on my arm dragged me forward.

Count, I remembered five feet into my walk/drag.

I had to count my steps.

I had to listen.

I had to try to force my swollen, painful eyes to adjust to the darkness, to be able to see through it.

Fifteen steps.

A curve to my left.

Six steps, a shaded window, slivers of moonlight peeking through the sides.

Eight steps, a doorway, closed. Or so it seemed, because there were sounds coming from within in, a creaking, a hissing, a banging.

Don't think about it, I commanded my brain even as the realization of what was happening there crossed my mind. 

My parents never blocked the late night TV shows. I knew sex when I heard it.

And I needed not to think about it, not to wonder if the participants were happy lovers, or girls like me... and men like the ones flanking my sides.

A turn to my right.

Twenty steps.

No windows.

No doors.

No sounds save for the scrape of my shoes, the clomp of the man to my right, and the step, drag sound of the man to my left, the one who suggested the other carry me. He was lame in some way. A limp, maybe. A prosthetic. Something. One of his feet or legs didn't work as it should. 

I was yanked to a stop, the hand loosening enough that the blood flooded back to it - a pulsing sort of pain that momentarily eased the jackhammering in my skull.

A click.

A slide.

Another click.

Locks. 

Those were locks.

I had a feeling I knew what was next, threw an arm out as I was pulled to help keep my balance as I was pulled forward, as my foot met the end of the floor, dropped, found a narrow stair that bent in the center from years of people who walked up and down there instead of the sides. 

My hand met the wall, smooth Sheetrock for five steps before it gave way to something more rough and cold. 

Cinderblocks.

A basement.

Seven more steps.

A stumble as my foot sought another step only to find solid floor.

There were sounds here, dull, but there.

Breathing.

The steady in and out of air in bodies.

Bodies, well, they had scents too.

Sweat and unwashed hair.

Blood.

Blood.

No.

I couldn't think about the blood, about how it got there, about who inflicted it.

I had to focus instead on what else bodies had.

Minds.

Mouths.

Things that could tell me more about where I was, why I was there, what the rest of the building maybe looked like.

The hand closed tighter again, this time - thanks to the reprieve - the pain was sharp and insistent, demanding attention, as my body was pulled forward across the floor.

Twelve steps.

Then a pause as I tried to slow-blink, as I tried to force my eyes to see.

There was a clang I couldn't make out as I started to finally see him.

My captor.

The outline of his massive frame, so massive that it reminded me of my Uncle Wolf, of his stubbornly unmovable body when I had tried to best him. Even just standing still, taking my abuse, I could never overtake him.

My gut told me that I could never overtake this one either, this silent, looming giant, but my will to survive told me to try.

There was another noise, something metallic and heavy, dragging across the floor. 

The hand loosened.

Then released entirely.

There was hardly even a heartbeat of a hesitation as my body swiveled, muscles remembering the moves even before my brain could grasp with them with clumsy hands.

My feet planted, evenly holding my weight as my right side cocked back, as my fist curled, as every ounce of weight in my admittedly slight body surged forward.

Adrenaline made the movements feel slow as I could hear the swish of the air as my arm sliced through it, as my fist sought its target. 

The crack and crunch was something I felt and heard simultaneously as my fist made contact, something soft and curved along with something firm and unyielding.

An ear and jaw.

Crack.

And crunch.

Then grunt, hiss, the man registering the pain even as I curled back again, now knowing the ear, knowing the nose was just a few inches inward.

It landed there, warm breath meeting my knuckles before they landed with an upward strike.

Had it been more true, were I able to see, was my position skilled enough, I could have done it. It was easy, really. Pushed his nose into his skull.

Nearly instant death.

But nothing lined up for me, my weakened hands from the whack from the metal bar, my too-sideways strike, making my own chest get in the way of my full force, my blind eyes unable to catch him perfectly under the nostrils.

It hurt, sure.

He reared back, growling, likely tasting his own blood as it leaked from his nose to his mouth.

I went back a step, raising my arms, using my raised fists to shield my face.

But when the pain did come, it was much lower, giant fingers curled and surging from a massive body into my exposed, weak midsection.

My air knocked out with a whoosh, with the pain of impact as my body folded forward, one of my hands dropping to hold my belly even as the other tried to strike out.

But met empty air.

My captor was no longer standing before me.

It wasn't until I felt the weight and the click that I realized he had ducked down low by my legs.

And shackled me.

That was the metal sound.

Chains pulled against the floor.

My leg kicked out on impulse, like it could dislodge it.

But there was no way.

This was something heavy, something that weighed as much as my full leg likely did, making it hard even for it to lift off the floor. 

There was a creaking sound as my captor got back to his feet.

I remembered maybe at the last possible second to curl my fist and strike out, to show that I wasn't cowed by a shackle, that I still had fight left in me.

My knuckles met the firm, yet soft, flesh of an upper arm, having no impact at all except to incite the man who curled backward, and finally gave me what I had admittedly earned with my own violence, a strike to the jaw.

The pain started at impact then ricocheted outward until the entire side of my face was throbbing, until the pain was deep in my jaw and gums but also my nose, my eye socket, my temple.

I fell back against the wall for support as my hand rose, pressing into the pain as though there was any chance of easing it.

My eyes closed.

My breath hitched.

Hitched.

Like I was going to cry.

But no.

No crying.

I wouldn't give him that, no matter how much my body was begging for the release.

I took fast, strobe-like breaths, frantic and panic-laden. 

I could feel his gaze on me, his eyes clearly better adept at night vision than my own, the impact of it slimy and penetrating.

But short.

Short because he turned and I heard the clomp of his boots across the floor. Then up the stairs.

There was a pause as he met the landing, then a light blared to life above me, making the migraine roar back to life, my body shrinking away from the brightness I could see even behind my closed lids as I fought back another wave of nausea. 

I didn't have time for pain.

But my body didn't want to listen to reason, to my primal need for self-preservation.

My body folded, my back sliding down the wall until I was squatting at knee-level, my elbows braced on my thighs, hands cradling my head.

I can't say how long I stayed there.

Pain had a way of warping time, bending it in a way that made it impossible to tell one pain-soaked moment from the next. 

But when the screaming inside my brain eased to a level that allowed me to think past it again, my thigh muscles were burning, my legs shaking with the effort to hold my weight in an unnatural position for it.

I let myself slide down the wall fully, my butt hitting the hard, cold ground, my legs kicking out, one slower than the other, dragging the weight of the chain with it.

That was the first thing I saw with the newfound harsh, fluorescent overhead light - the shackle, the giant metal ring encompassing my bare ankle, flecks of rust moving from it onto my skin. It would rub me raw, I knew, in just a few hours' time, making me sorely sorry that I had changed out of my school clothes and into this godforsaken outfit.

A silly, frivolous, immature thing, I realized as I sat there, wanting to have a sweet sixteen, wanting it enough to disobey my parents, to take risks, to allow myself to be captured.

I was victim-blaming myself, but, really, I should have known better. I should have realized that my father - of all people - was not the sort to overreact. If he felt I needed to be at school with armed guards, then at Hailstorm with an army of them, then that was exactly what was needed.

I had been selfish and stupid to assume otherwise, to take it personally, to immaturely think that he was just trying to metaphorically rain on my parade. 

And here I was, paying for that ignorance.

In a basement.

How cliche.

I mean, of course it was a basement. Of course it was a cliche. Those existed for a reason. Because what better place to keep women chained up but in a basement, ten feet under ground, behind thick, impossible-to-escape concrete, with no one to see them or hear them scream?

I let out a shaky breath, pushing thoughts like those away, knowing they would do nothing but fuel the panic that was lying in wait, a tiger ready to pounce. 

My gaze slowly lifted, ignoring my bare legs, the short hem of my skirt, the easy access it provided for hands - and other body parts - that wanted to do a different kind of damage to me.

No.

I couldn't think about that either.

The floor beneath my body was smooth in texture, marred with splatters. My gut twisted with the idea of blood, but they weren't the reds of fresh blood or even the brownish stains of dried. They were greens and tans and cobalt blues - paint.

Almost directly across from me was the staircase, long and narrow as it had felt descending in the dark, a railing holding on by one struggling screw, half hanging out of the wooden beam it was connected to.

The door at the top was wooden but maybe deceptive, maybe one of the security doors like Daddy had on all the outside entrances to our home, with metal bars inside.

Finished with that, with the impossibility of reaching them thanks to a chain that implied I maybe had ten feet of freedom. Not enough to get to the bottom, let alone ascend. My eyes drifted to the right, finding the source of the breathing I had heard before. 

A woman.

Not like me.

Older.

Older by at least a decade and a half. Thirty, maybe, with the slight creases beside her green eyes to attest to the years I had yet to experience. Her brown hair was long and stringy, a mess of grease and knots around her wide shoulders, ends falling to toy with her round breasts, unconfined by a bra, nipples peaking out of the thin off-white material of her shirt, objecting to the cold of being below ground. Her face was angular, a cat's face, with eyes not nearly as keen. Unnaturally subdued actually. Drugged, maybe. It would explain the blank look to her face, the way her body slumped back against the wall, legs cocked out at a painful angle. Pain she wouldn't feel if there was something coursing through her veins to prevent it.

Her body was unmarked, though, not like mine, not bleeding and bruised and aching. 

Her head lolled to the side, unobstructed by working muscles, making my belly feel wobbly all over again, cringing at the idea of that being my fate, an animated corpse, a body to torment while the mind went elsewhere.

I looked away, uncomfortable, the way a dying creature makes you feel wrong for watching it wither away, like it deserves the dignity of at least not being seen crossing over.

I didn't expect anyone else. 

When my gaze went to the other end of the room, I expected emptiness, or useless things - old milk crates or boxes, musty forgotten belongings.

But me and the dead-girl-sitting were not alone.

This girl was younger though.

My age.

Faces like hers were deceptive, though, all soft and fleshy, one that said she would be carded well into her forties. Maybe she was sixteen, maybe nineteen. 

But either way, pretty.

So pretty that, even in this ugly situation, I could still feel a twinge of jealousy at her shoulder-length blonde hair that was natural if her brows and lashes were anything to go by. Her lips were oversized, pouting almost, naturally so, by design, not choice, and the kind of pink that made you think lipstick, but judging by her greasy roots, I figured that was just their natural hue.

The eyes, framed with thick dark blonde lashes were a startling shade of blue.

And they were looking at me, watching me as I inspected her, as I looked over her like a  judge to a dog seeking their AKC title.

Blank.

But not drugged, not unseeing, just not emoting. 

Unreadable.

Her eyes didn't roam over me, didn't compare my straight-up-and-down body to her perfectly curved one, didn't notice my clean hair as I noticed her dirty, didn't take in the injuries to my body as I did hers.

The edge of her lip was scabbed over, a gash an inch long, a split that had to have been caused by a cruel hand. There was a band of blue around her throat, purple at the edges, rounded like fingers.

Choked.

Someone had choked her.

There were spots on her white top, too, dried blood drops around the deep U of her neckline, the material saggy and weak like it had been stretched to that shape, as though it had been forced wide to allow...

No.

I swallowed hard as I watched her watching me.

"Do you know where we are?" I heard my voice ask, quiet compared to my usual tone, but it rang out shrill and startling in the silent space, making the girl on the other side gurgle on her spit as this one jerked her head back slightly at the sound. "How long have you been here?" I added as she said nothing, just kept looking at me. "Are you chained too?" I tried, unable to see her legs as they were under her, cocked to the side.

The drugged girl had chains.

Though she didn't need them.

Her mind was its own prison.

Her body was useless even if the idea of escape did surface.

"Shackle?" I repeated, jiggling my leg to make mine dance and jangle, wondering if maybe she didn't speak English.

Whether she understood the words or the movement, I didn't know, but her body shifted, her butt meeting the floor, her legs sliding out to her side, one chained to the wall just like mine.

"Did you try to run?" I asked, wondering if that was why we were chained. Had my fight - or hers - ensured our helplessness?

She gave no answer to that, just let her head fall back against the wall, as though her neck were too weak to hold it any longer.

"How long have you been here?" I tried again, unable to accept that I was in a room with two bodies, and neither of them could help me, could give me a better view of our prison, could show me where the weak spots were, so I could exploit them.

There was nothing still for another several long minutes, just the tick of my heart, the rush of my blood, the throb in my jaw and temples.

Then, "What's the date?"

Her voice sounded weak and scratchy, awkward with disuse.

I guess it should be, with no one to talk to but a drugged woman who - even if she did hear you - did not understand.

"August third," I heard myself answer. Adding silently My birthday. Though, I was somehow acutely aware that even if I survived this, if I got free, August third would never again be the anniversary of my birth; it would always be the day I was taken.

"Four months," she declared after a long moment, making my heart drop down into the acidic pits of my stomach.

Her voice hitched then, making me snap out of the selfish turn of my thoughts, ideas of what four months would feel like to me, thoughts that were an actuality for her.

Maybe it would have been better for her not to know, not to realize how long she had been suffering, how many things she had been missing in her old life, how her family had been worrying, how her friends had been missing her.

My gaze snapped to her face, finding her eyes closed tight as she took another breath, this one forced and deliberate, slow, steadying.

Her eyes opened again when the tension left her shoulders, when she seemed to get control over her emotions once more, leaving that awful blank look in her eyes again.

"Do you have a name?" I asked, rolling my eyes at myself. Of course she had a name. Everyone had a name. 

"Chris," she told me, there being an inflection at the end, like a question, like she wasn't even sure anymore.

"I'm Ferryn," I told her even though she hadn't asked, somehow needing her to know. Maybe a part of me wanted her to have that, in case something happened to me, in case she got free after, she could tell someone. My life - or death - wouldn't be a mystery. My family could stop looking. 

"Do you know where we are?" I asked again, now that she seemed willing to speak.

"No. I was in a trunk," she admitted.

"Me too," I agreed. "And the house was dark when I was brought in."

"The light won't help you figure it out," she assured me.

From knowledge.

Because as long as she had been here, she still had the fight left in her to look for answers, to look for outs.

"Is it just the two? The giant and the guy with a limp?"

"No."

The answer was clipped, and final, letting me know that I would not get more from her.

In fact, she turned away, and let her blank stare study the wall across from her.

I tried again a few moments later, badgering her with all the questions crowding for space in my mind, fighting for attention, for impossible answers.

Impossible because Chris wasn't here anymore.

I mean, she was, but she wasn't.

She had slipped away.

Inside her mind.

Or out of it.

I wasn't sure.

But I imagined the escape made sense. It helped the hours pass. It let her release the physical hold on the world. Maybe she was back home. Maybe she was giving her mom a hug, kissing her little sister. Maybe she was making out with a boy behind the movie theater, or dancing her heart out in ballet class.

Wherever she was, I hoped it was better than here.

With the cold, hard floors we were meant to sit and sleep on. With the moisture that seeped in through the dirt and cement, chilling us to the bone. With the small toilet in the center of the room where we were expected to go with the others able to see and hear.

Dignity.

That was something I was going to have to force myself to let go of.

There would be none to find here as I tried to sort out a path to freedom.

I would have to eat to stay strong and focused. If I ate, I'd have to use the bathroom. And if I was stuck here for months like Chris, well, there were other undignified bodily things to consider.

My belly twisted at that thought, and it took me a good twenty minutes - I'm guessing of course, but figured it felt something like twenty minutes, though it could have been five or three weeks for all I knew - that there was no cause for shame, no reason to feel embarrassed over my body and how it worked. If they wanted to strip us of everything - including basic human necessities - well, then they could become aware of how our insides came outside every four weeks, and all the raw and ugly that meant.

Raw and ugly, after all, was what they seemed to like best.

What was more raw or ugly than girls chained in basements, unknowing their fate, forced to accept it whatever it was?

Except, well, maybe they hadn't counted on me.

Maybe they counted on drugged-out girls made malleable, or girls who escaped their minds and bodies like Chris.

They didn't factor in girls like me, born into worlds of uncertainty and violence, raised up to stand against it, to fight it, to overcome it.

And make no mistake, that was what I was going to do.

Stand against it.

Fight it.

Overcome it.

Come hell or, as my father might say, motherfucking high water.

FOUR

Summer

V had my daughter.

I could say My mother has my daughter, but that made it sound like they were having tea, and homemade cookies fresh out of the oven, chocolate still gooey - as gooey as the feeling as that scene conjures up.

But I doubted my mother knew anything at all about cookies and ovens.

What she did know about, though, was basements, and chains, and pain, and degradation.

I had a brand on my thigh and scars down my back to prove it.

And now she, and worse yet - her minions - had my daughter. 

It's too early to know that, that was what Lo had said when the news came in.

Sure, abductions happened every day. To countless young girls all over the world.

But this, this was too perfect.

She had been under full-time guards for months, never out of sight of at least two people with guns, and the skills to use them effectively. 

And the one time she sneaks out, some random slimeball grabs her? No. That was too coincidental. 

I knew that.

Reign knew that.

Even Lo knew that.

They were probably just trying to keep my mind from going there.

But how couldn't it?

Even all these years later, my mind went there at times. When I was sleeping, when my subconscious decided I had been too happy for too long, that I needed a reminder of what all this was born in.

Fear and misery and a chance escape.

From the torture.

And the humiliation.

I paced the smooth, flawless floors in an empty hall of Hailstorm, the windowless darkness only interrupted by a small hanging bulb from the ceiling, creating ghosts in corners, much like the ones I felt in the recesses of my mind.

Ghosts with clanking bones and cold breath and wicked sneers.

Because Ferryn, much like me all those years ago, would be scared and alone and confused, unsure what might happen to her, why this was happening to her, what chance there was for survival, let alone escape.

"Ugh," I growled, just barely containing the urge to slam my foot into the wall, knowing how unbending it would be, and that now was not the time to drag any of Lo's people away from trying to find my daughter to put a cast on my broken foot.

I deserved it, though, the broken foot.

I should have listened to them.

Lo and Janie and Maze and Mina, when they had sat me down like some kind of intervention just a few weeks ago, faces grim, voices firm, telling me that it was time.

Time to tell Ferryn about V.

Time to tell her about what had happened to me.

"She's seen the scars by now," Lo had reasoned. "Don't you think you are doing her more of a disservice by keeping the truth from her? She's not a little girl anymore."

But she was.

In so many ways, she was.

Innocent and ignorant of the depth of evil ran in our blood.

Because that was what V was.

Pure, undiluted evil.

Not like The Henchmen, or Hailstorm, the Mallicks, Breaker, Shooter, Luce, even my dad before he died. These people lived in a gray area between actual good and bad. People with gritty, questionable jobs, but who were good men and women.

There was no way a woman could abduct and sell other women out to men who would beat and rape them until they were no longer young and beautiful could be called anything other than a monster, an abomination, a beast straight from hell.

There was little I could call redeemable about the woman. Maybe only that she instructed her men not to actually rape me. Though she clearly didn't have as much control over them as she thought she did, as they certainly tried a time or two.

Other than that, well, she had her only daughter kidnapped, beaten, sliced open, starved, and degraded for months. Just to get control over her father's importing business.

Ferryn was being used much like I had been so long ago.

Except, in this case, we had no idea why. 

V didn't want the arms trade, so she wasn't looking for Reign to give it up.

But he had been a big part of how she ended up losing her empire, why she had been thrown into a cell, held captive by the man she had spent her life trying to stay away from - my father. 

She had a lot of years in that space to think. And plot. And seek her escape.

That idiot Marco Abruzzo had just opened her cage, without stopping to think that she was locked up for a reason, that she was dangerous, that she was uncontrollable.

As if gunning down my father right in front of my eyes wasn't bad enough.

No.

Now was not the time for that.

That was an old pain, a dull ache that hurt when it rained.

This was new, raw, gaping, bleeding openly.

My daughter.

In a dark place surrounded by men with leering eyes and predatory hands, unsure what was going to happen to her, if this was how her short life was going to end.

The cold washed over my skin, prickling the flesh with goosebumps, making my stomach turn itself upside down, as I did nothing. Paced.

I hated feeling useless, having no way to help.

Reign's men were scouring the areas. Janie and Alex and whatever other computer geniuses there were in town - or even abroad - were scouring cameras for a direction, for a spotting of the car that Vance had pointed out.

I felt for them too, Vance and Iggy and Heather, who had witnessed another sword swipe of an underground war they should have been nowhere near, that kids, in general, should have been nowhere near.

It's not like it was in the old days, Janie had agreed once when we were sitting in the makeshift toy room for the kids at Hailstorm for the tenth day in a row, all of us going a little crazy. When wives and kids were all off limits. We're part of the game now. Pawns to be moved around the board on the way to a win.

I had thought about this more times than I could count over the years whenever there was something going on in Navesink Bank that made guns and knives and hiding out a possibility - that this was no life for a kid, that it was selfish to bring them into it, that it was too dangerous, no matter how strong the urge to be a mother was. 

Not that I regretted it. My kids, they meant the world to me. Ferryn with her fearlessness, her confidence, her sharp mind, Fallon with his quiet intensity that reminded me of Reign, and Finn with his calm, laid-back, kind and sweet nature, a little mini imitation of his Uncle Cash.

They were the lights of my life, the physical embodiment of Reign and my love for each other.

I wouldn't trade them for anything - not even all the years of sleepless nights back. 

But it had been wrong to expose them to this life, to this danger. 

They were all at risk, but none so much as Ferryn, whose femaleness could be used against her, who had the potential for her first introduction to the ways of men and women forced upon her in pain and blood and violence.

And that was my fault.

I put her at that risk.

For bringing her into this battle, sure.

But also for not preparing her for the enemies lying in wait.

Sure, I had insisted on her self-defense, even when Reign fought me on it, when Lo suggested that maybe she needed a couple days off. 

I made sure she knew how to use her body to defend herself, how to use someone else's body against them. 

I never wanted her to feel as helpless as I once had.

But that wasn't enough, I could see now.

Because while Ferryn was a bit of a handful, was always pushing the limits to see if they were there, was maybe firmly planted in a rebellious stage, she was a reasonable young woman.

Had I sat her down finally and told her, laid it all right there out on the table, all the raw and wet and ugly, all the pain and fear and humiliation, if I had openly shown her my scars instead of rushing to cover them when she might have gotten a look, if I had shown her the brand that I myself tried never to think about - burning flesh a scent I could never fully get out of my nose - she would have understood. The rules. The limitations. The armed guards.

Why she wasn't allowed to go out with her friends on her birthday like any other normal sixteen-year-old girl.

She wouldn't have felt the urge to sneak off. Or, even if she did, she would have fought it, known that she wasn't safe enough.

And, yeah, maybe she would hate us for it, for exposing her to these things that denied her a normal adolescence, that made her a target of ugly deeds by wicked hands.

She could hate us.

She could scream and bemoan her fate.

But at least she would have been safe.

Home.

In her bed at night.

Smart-mouthing us, using that brain of hers like a whip, leaving scars in the wake.

But here.

With me.

Nowhere near V.

And her men.

And her evil intentions.

What was the point in taking Ferryn?

To fuel another bloody war?

To what end?

There was that thing about a reunion, my mind reminded me. She had said something about wanting to see my children and me.

But why?

My body stopped its frantic pacing, my forehead pressing into the cool metal wall as I let out a defeated breath.

Maybe why was the wrong question.

Maybe there was no why.

At least not one that made sense.

Maybe there was just power and insanity.

Just actions without reasons.

Just meaningless evil.

I turned, my back slamming against the wall, sliding down until my ass hit the floor, cold and solid, like I needed the grounding, because I was pretty sure I was sinking.

It sure felt like I was falling.

Further and further.

The night faded into morning before someone looked for me.

"You need to stop this," Lo demanded, voice steel, forcing me to bend to its will.

My own was gossamer, weak and hole-filled when my mouth opened. "V has my daughter."

"And sitting here is doing nothing to help that situation."

She didn't deny it, I realized.

That it was V.

Maybe they knew now, what I had known for the better part of a day.

"There's nothing I can do. I don't have what you and Janie and..."

"You have children who are wondering why their sister didn't come home to torment them last night, who didn't get good night wishes. You have a man who is going on thirty hours without sleep, who needs not to have to worry about you on top of it all. So get your ass off the floor, and get to work. You don't get the luxury of falling apart now."

Lo was a soft friend, an ever-present shoulder, an open ear, an overflowing heart.

But this wasn't Lo, my old friend.

This was Lo, badass leader of Hailstorm telling me to stop believing in my weakness and find and use my strengths.

Wife.

Mother.

The glue that held my family together.

It wasn't as flashy as computer hacking or bomb-building or head-bashing, but it was every bit as important. 

So I got my ass off that floor.

I met my boys for a late breakfast.

I assured them that Ferryn was fine while reminding myself that some lies were kind, were for the greater good.

I called my husband for an update, putting grit and determination in my voice, even if it was just for show, even if I was nothing but ash and ember inside.

This was my part to play.

For now.

FIVE

Ferryn

I think a day passed.

It was hard to keep track, to count when the pain and exhaustion made my eyelids heavy, blinking closed without permission, making me wake with a start seconds or minutes or hours later. I had no idea.

The one window, situated over the woman currently racked with chills on the floor, withdrawing from whatever cocktail that had been in her system, was blackened from the outside, not even a hint of sunlight or moonlight to suggest what time of day it was, how much time I had lost already.

My neck ached from hanging to the side when sleep stubbornly claimed my consciousness. It was a constant sharp twinge when I tried to turn my head. But it paled in comparison to the pain in my head, like my skull had been wrenched open, though I knew from inspecting the spot with weak fingers that it was unlikely. Just bruised and miserable with dried blood caking to the hair around it. My face felt swollen, gums tender, and a back molar wiggly. Wiggly, but not hurting aside from when it pulled against the thin nerve it was still attached by.

But, all in all, I was okay.

Okay enough that I needed to stop thinking about it. I needed to focus on other things. I needed to force my numb legs to hold my weight so I could make my way to the communal toilet, maybe see if there was something there I could bash off, hide down my bodice for the next time someone came down.

No one had.

And it was both a relief and a source of never-ending tension.

Because they would come. Eventually. And a part of me just wanted that part to be over with, so I stopped spinning possible scenarios in my head about what might happen when they did.

And if they did come, who would they come for?

The girl detoxing, desperate for a cure, willing to do anything for the blissful escape?

Chris with her haunting stare?

Or me?

My stomach twisted at the idea.

And that was exactly why I needed to stop sitting, waiting for fate to come to me. I needed to take it in my own hands. Even if they were bruised and hard to bend. They were small and injured, but they would work, they could still do damage, they could help me claw, punch, crawl my way out of this if that was what needed to happen.

"Ugh," I groaned as I forced my knees to the floor, pushing my weight on them, then attempting to rise to my feet, immediately assaulted with the evidence of their disuse - pins and needles, sharp and throbbing and uncomfortable. 

"You should have laid down," a voice called. Scratchy. Chris.

My head shot over, finding her watching me with those voids she called eyes.

"I didn't want to be that vulnerable," I admitted, seeing no reason to lie.

"You think you can fight."

"I will fight," I shot back immediately, the voices of the women who had raised me strengthening my tone as well as my resolve.

"It's pointless," she told me, gaze moving from mine, staring off across the room.

"Fighting for yourself is never pointless," I told her, shaking my head as I forced weight onto my other leg, leaning back against the wall to let it come back to life before I forced it to carry me across the room.

"There are more of them. And they're big. And they have no hearts in their chests. You can kick, bite, hit, and they will just hold you down harder, laugh at your weakness."

My heart crushed in my chest, deflated and bruised, and I knew at that moment that no matter what happened, if Aunt Janie detonated a bomb to kill them all, and Aunt Lo came storming down the stairs right now to save us, that it would never be the same. My heart. It would never be what it once had been - not ignorant, but innocent of the ugly in the world. Because here I was, looking at what it could do to a girl. A girl just like me. A girl who probably had a crush on a boy. A girl who had hobbies. A girl who realized when she was taken that she should have told her parents she loved them more, should have tolerated her siblings more.

"All it would take is one good hit," I insisted, unwilling to let go. Of my fight, my determination, knowing that if I did, all I would have left was defeat, acceptance of my circumstances.

And I couldn't let that happen.

I couldn't make myself a victim before I even had something to feel victimized by.

"They hold your arms down," Chris said, tone as empty as her eyes, her lips barely moving as she spoke. "There's never just one of them, you know? There's always two or three. I guess they get more money that way."

I closed my eyes tight for a second, willing my eyes not to tear up, not to let those pictures take root in my brain.

"There's no way to hit them. Even if you did, you still couldn't get away. And then they will make you regret hurting them. Whatever you think you can do to them, they can do worse to you. A lot worse."

I couldn't help the thoughts then, couldn't stop them from tearing through my brain, making me hate the world for creating monsters, hate society for allowing men to think they could use their bodies as weapons and get away with it, for taking a girl who had likely been just like me, innocent of men, and force them to learn nothing of them but the brutal, the evil.

"Look at me," I demanded, hearing venom in my voice. It was flooding my mouth, laced with some primal urge to infect, to sink in, to lace the bloodstreams with burning pain. I was alive with desire to do that to these men. For what they did to this girl. Her head turned, chin lifting, eyes settling on my face, seeing but empty. "I am going to get us out of here. No," I went on when she started to scoff. "Look at me. Listen to me. I am not going to die here. Or have that happen to me," I said, waving a hand across the room, "which is just as bad if you ask me."

"You've never even seen this place. The men with guns in it..."

"Not yet. But I will see it. I will see it. And I will remember every inch of it. And I will find a way to get a key, to get a weapon. And I will get us out of here."

"You won't be able to," she said when I was silent again. "Remember every inch. When they're done," she added, swallowing hard. "Especially the first few times," she went on, all but confirming what I had thought about her prior innocence, but instead of pity, all I felt was rage. Burning, flooding my bloodstream with gasoline, and striking a match, it blistered through me. "You'll be too hurt, too sick. You won't remember anything else."

"I will," I assured her. Prideful, probably, but I refused to accept any other reality. One where I was too traumatized to even think of escape anymore. "I will remember. And maybe I will be in pain, but I will use that. Do you hear me? I will use that to fuel me. And I will get us the hell out of here."

The tips of her lips twitched slightly at that. Like she maybe found my determination amusing for a moment before grim acceptance replaced it. 

"You'll see," she told me as a creaking sounded overhead.

Her body stiffened, so much so that I knew that someone wasn't just happening over us for the first time in hours, that someone was coming. She would know far better than me. 

"Ferryn," she said suddenly, shocking me.

"Yeah?" I asked, hearing hesitance in my own voice, the first time I realized it even could be there, that this situation did have the potential to weaken me somewhat. And nothing had even happened yet.

"Go somewhere else," she told me, tone desperate, like it was imperative that she tell me. "Go to the ocean or a carnival. Or to your first kiss. Or Christmas. Go anywhere else."

With that, her mouth closed, and her eyes shuttered, blanked out, letting me know that was what it was. When she went all hollow. She was going to the ocean or the carnival or to her first kiss or her last Christmas.

Click.

Slide.

Click.

Locks opening. 

My stomach twisted even as my hands went somewhat frantically to the hem of my skirt, yanking it down as far as it would go, as though the measly material would be of any kind of guard against men such as these.

Stomp, stomp.

Heavy legs on narrow stairs.

My throat felt tight, my tonsils seeming to want to get better acquainted.

My heartbeat didn't speed, but slowed, my breathing following suit, slow and shallow, seeming trapped by some invisible weight of anticipation pressing into my ribs. 

A shuffling to the side dragged my attention away from the lower body descending the stairs, solid legs in dark wash jeans, to the side to find the detoxing woman on her knees, eyes huge, sweat making her hair hang limply around her face. If I wasn't mistaken, there was hope in her eyes. 

Hope of being assaulted.

Just for a high.

Trading one pain for another.

My spit tasted sour at that as the clomping sounded closer, making my head turn back, but slower, like something inside me didn't want me to look, to see the face of a man who wanted to do unspeakable things to me.

But I wouldn't do it.

Avoid.

Pretend.

Escape.

My chin lifted as his boots stilled, stopping at the bottom of the steps, gaze immediately going to me.

It wasn't the man from the night before.

That was my first realization. His arms were too small, his midsection too pudgy.

And the lack of a limp said he wasn't the other either.

This was someone new.

New meant unknown.

Not that I knew what to expect from the others either. Cracks to my knuckles. Bashes to the head. Punches to my center. Fists to jaw. Comments about putting their hands on me.

But, oddly, I somehow would have preferred one of them.

This man was, I don't know, age was hard for me beyond my own age group, maybe in his thirties with close-trimmed brown hair, brown eyes, a scar through his eyebrow, with arms that were smaller than the man the night before, but still much stronger than mine, I would bet. And even if he was softer in the middle, it wasn't enough that it would slow him down, make him an easier target. 

His hands pulsed inward toward their palms, demanding my attention. I found a ring with one key in one, hanging loosely off his thumb. 

Carelessly, really. 

And even through the dread that was a slimy, sticky thing coating every inch of me, there was hope. 

If he wasn't smart enough to hold tight to those things, if he underestimated me that much, maybe this would all be over with before anything truly even happened. 

As if hearing my thoughts broadcast, his gaze moved to me, even though the detoxing woman begged for him to Take her. 

"Fresh meat," he rumbled, voice deep enough that maybe it would have been pleasing if it belonged to anyone else. "Little damaged," he added, moving across the floor to me, each step corresponding to my sluggish heartbeat. "But that'll fade in a day or two," he went on, clearly meaning my face which must have been more bruised than I could have realized. Vanity was something I usually did possess, spending countless hours trying to perfect a cat-eye liner or find the right red lipstick, shopping for styles that suited my body type, which was practically boyish right now, painting my nails, doing my hair. I probably spent as much time worrying about what was on my body as in my head, which I tried to convince myself was still a fair balance.

But right here in this basement, I was glad I was made uglier by black and blue and purple. Maybe, if I was lucky, there were some sickening shades of yellow and green mixed in too.

Not that ugly was a deterrent.

Rape isn't about attraction, Aunt Lo had once told me as she taught me how to get out of what she referred to as the 'rape position' - me on my back, my attacker pinning my arms to the ground, body weight pressing me down as well. Rape is about power.

I could be a swamp creature, and these men would still want to do terrible things to me, because that was what they got off on, not my looks - my fear, my pain, my helplessness.

I trained for this, I reminded myself as the man got closer, bringing with him the scent of sandalwood which I had always liked, but would never be able to smell again without it making my stomach roll. Even now, it went from pleasant to rancid, my nose curling up, my breath catching so as not to breathe more of it in.

This was why I spent endless hours with someone pinning me to the ground, scolding me when I forgot what I was supposed to do, and rolled onto my belly. 

Never give up your back! They would yell at me, frustrated for reasons I guess I had never understood.

Because it was never just an exercise.

It was preparation for a possible real-life scenario.

When 'giving up my back' meant someone could yank down my pants and panties, and rape me without me being able to fight back in any way.

I trained for this, I thought again as he got close, as his head ducked to the side, eyes dipping, moving over the undeveloped length of my body. Everything about it screamed Not ripe yet. Don't pick! But there was a sickness in mankind, a preference even, for bodies decent people knew were too young, not ready. He shouldn't have been able to look at me and see possibilities. But that was what he was seeing as his gaze seemed to sear through my dress, seeking secrets hidden beneath. 

I trained for this, my brain screamed louder. I am not a victim, it added. 

My head shook slightly, clearing the fog put there by his predatory stare, making me remember that I had to stay present, I had to focus, to look for anything that might help me escape. 

There was the key, still held too loosely, but just a few inches out of reach. He'd see me move. He would react, step back, get further away. I had to bide my time.

What else my brain demanded to know.

His shirt was too small, slipping up a bit in the back, revealing a sliver of his side, and something else. Something black. Sleek.

A gun.

He had a gun.

A key and a gun.

Those two things screamed freedom to me.

I just had to wait.

To find my opening. 

To act.

Even if my palms felt a little sweaty.

You're allowed to be afraid, Uncle Edison had growled at me - growled because that was simply how he spoke, but you are not allowed to give up. Fear is a powerful motivator. Use it.

I swallowed, making his gaze go up, watching the moving of my throat like it was somehow erotic - the freak - for a second before he found my face again.

"Shame it's not your turn," he told me, sounding genuinely disappointed. 

It took a long second, long enough that he moved back one more step, making any kind of attempt to grab the key impossible - to realize what he was saying.

It wasn't my turn.

But if it wasn't my turn.

Oh, god.

No.

But even as my mind formed the word of objection, his body was moving across the floor, calm and collected, like he wasn't fetching a young woman for the sole purpose of torturing her.

Chris.

"No!"

The word exploded out of me, dragging out every bit of rage and horror and ferocity my body could hold - which, as it turned out, was a lot. Enough to make him actually cringe forward at the loudness for a second before turning, shooting me an amused look.

"What? You'd rather they tag-team you?"

Bile rose in my throat, acidic and burning.

"I'd rather you fall, get a concussion, and choke to death on your own vomit," I shot back. Aunt Alex. That was Aunt Alex somehow coming out of my mouth. 

To that, he threw his head back, laughing for a long second. "Yeah, I bet you'd like that."

With nothing else, he turned again, crouching down beside Chris' motionless body, stabbing the key into the chain at her ankle.

It clicked open.

Freedom.

Freedom.

But she was still trapped.

In a prison of her own mind, too beaten down to find the will to even try.

"Fight!" I demanded, voice deep, forceful, but pleading at the same time. "Fight him!" I tried again as he pocketed the key, reached down, and sank his unwelcome fingers into her hips, lifting her lifeless body with a grumble, throwing her over his shoulder.

"No fun anymore," I thought he said as he pushed himself back up onto his feet.

"Stop!" I demanded, pleaded, too sick to remember I was supposed to be strong. "Don't" I screamed as he moved toward me, smirking at my obvious distress. 

See, there was knowing something, knowing it in a distant, clinical way. Like reading about the Persian's penchant for scaphism where they bound people to boats, ripped open their stomachs, poured milk and honey over them, then allowed them to be eaten by rats and insects, or the thousands of men and women who had spikes driven through their bodies from anus to mouth by Ivan the Terrible, or the actual burning of women as witches. It was a story on a page, true, but time-soaked, hard to grasp the horror.

Just like this.

There was all the training to stop it, talk about the motives behind it, endless stories on the primetime news, statistics and dramatizations on TV shows.

But it never really clicked.

The horror of it.

The inhumanity of it.

Trafficking.

Rape.

But there was Chris, a girl I maybe could have crossed paths with at some point, with hopes and dreams much like mine, who had never done a wrong thing in her life, thrown over the shoulder of a man who was bringing her to - and maybe participating in - a situation in which the term 'tag-team' could be used. 

And she was limp as a sleeping baby, her mind abandoning her body to try to escape what was about to happen to it.

But there was no escaping it, not really.

The horror in her voice when she spoke was proof of that.

"Don't do this!" I demanded of the man instead, knowing Chris was deaf ears. "You don't have to do this!"

My voice was strange - shrill and squeaking.

"Have to?" he asked, head cocking to the side, resting on Chris' back. "No. Want to? Abso-fucking-lutely."

"You son of a bitch!" I screamed, shooting outward, not a single thought in my head but hurting him, clawing at him, doing something to him. It would be nothing in the grand scheme of things, but at least it would be some small bit of pain, something that said how evil he was.

My arms outstretched, knowing I didn't have the leverage to strike, but clawing out, scraping down the skin.

There was a sick sense of satisfaction coursing through me as a rough, pained hiss escaped him, a hot and gooey warmth much like the blood underneath my nails.

"Fucking stupid bitch," he growled, hefting Chris up higher, allowing him to pivot back, and strike forward, pain exploding across my unmarred cheek, fracturing upward until my eye socket felt fragmented.

The force knocked me back several feet as he turned to walk away.

Walk away.

With Chris.

To do unspeakable things.

Something came from me then, something animalistic, primal, something that reminded me of this book I had read once about women being descendent of wolves - a howling war call that sounded nothing like any sound I had ever made before.

The pain was a forgotten thing, lost in the recesses of a brain that could think of nothing but violence as I charged outward, striking out with the outside of my forearm, wrist, and hand, seeking a floating rib, hoping I could crack it clean off, making him fall, make his friends come take him.

And leave Chris.

But I was two inches too low, getting a growl as he whipped around, using his spin as momentum, arm cocked up, and elbow slamming full force into my jaw, sending me spinning toward the floor.

I had barely registered the crack of impact as my body hit the unyielding floor when I heard his boots going up the stairs.

Up the stairs with Chris.

"No no no!" I shrieked, slamming my palm against the floor in defeat, in complete and utter helplessness.

"Yes yes yes," he hollered down at me a second before the door slammed, and the locks slid and clicked back into place.

And the worst thought crossed my mind as I lay there, face screaming, side throbbing from the fall, breath coming in agonized huffs.

What if she has to pay for my actions? What if they took their anger at me out on her?

My stomach, as empty as it had maybe ever been, twisted and sloshed, bile creeping its way out and up my throat, threatening escape.

I pushed myself up, scrambling across the floor on all fours toward the toilet, sure I could tolerate a lot of awful conditions, but looking at and smelling my own puke for hours - or days - on end was not one of them.

I collapsed next to it, dry heaving for long enough that sweat prickled up over my skin, chilling me in the aftermath as I sat there, knees curled to chest, arms encircling them, forehead resting on my upper arm.

Rocking.

Just rocking.

Trying to breathe, to fight back the hysteria bubbling through my system. 

It wasn't my fault.

Whatever happened, it wasn't my fault.

I was no more at fault than Chris for being born a girl.

This was on them, on the monsters wearing the skin of men, thinking they could parade among us, use us, abuse us with their twisted urges.

This was their fault.

There was a telltale burning at the backs of my eyes, making me press the lids closed tight, forcing the tears back, refusing to let them come - even if they were for her and what she was going through - refusing to let the evidence of them show on my face.

They could have my rage, my disgust, my marrow-deep hatred.

And nothing, nothing else.

That was all they deserved.

Righteous anger.

Indignation.

And any bit of pain I could inflict upon them.

My head lifted as my arms released my legs, my hands raising, curling into fists, showing me the evidence of some small bit of hurt I had brought upon him. He had my scratches down his face.

Maybe his buddies would laugh.

But he had to have a life.

Outside of them.

Outside of these walls.

Around normal people.

People who would see them and know there was only one explanation for them, people who would see him for the bottom-feeder he was.

A whimpering drew my attention away from my own hands, away from the knowledge of what they were capable of if I kept my wits about me, if I acted calmly, if I utilized the years of training I'd had.

"What's your name?" I heard myself ask, feeling guilty for having connected with Chris and not her, knowing we were all in this together, no matter what ways we found to cope.

"Mary," she answered as she held her knees, rocking on her side.

"I'm Ferryn," I told her, feeling a stab of pity for the sweat over her body, the pained look in her eyes. 

I knew about drugs.

First, because of school.

Because of the assemblies condemning them, sure, but also because at least a dozen of kids in my grade and up were already heavy into heroin.

A generation of kids with no hope of a fair future, Uncle Renny had said once, shaking his head. Not surprised they look for an escape.

And they did.

Binge drinking.

Burning out.

Shooting poison into their veins.

Last year, a girl had OD'd on the floor of the senior prom.

She hadn't made it either.

Seventeen and dead.

I shared my father's bone-deep distaste for drugs, for what they did to people who had just been looking for a way out of pain - emotional or physical.

"Are you okay?" I asked, knowing it was a stupid question, that no one could actually be okay in this situation, let alone detoxing in this situation.

"Wish I had something in my system to throw up," she whimpered as she clutched her stomach. "The cramps are the worst."

"I'm sorry they did this to you," I told her, meaning it, though knowing how hollow the words sounded.

"They didn't do this. Not this anyway," she said, shaking her head, refusing to make eye-contact. "Been using since I was your age," she added, maybe finding that talking to me helped distract from the pain in her body. "Turned tricks before I could vote. One night, got so high I don't remember being picked up, just waking up here the next day."

"That's horrible."

"Life is horrible."

I couldn't agree with that, so I stayed silent.

My life wasn't horrible.

And I suddenly felt incredibly guilty for every moment I may have made my parents think I felt that way, every useless rebellion, every fight, every time I thought anything less than loving about them.

I had been a clueless, selfish girl, taking my good luck for granted.

"You're like her," Mary said a moment later.

"I'm sorry?"

"Like the other girl with the doe eyes," she told me. I figured, meaning Chris. "Fresh as snow."

"I guess," I agreed, looking away, oddly feeling almost embarrassed about the fact.

"Honey, if you have to guess, you're lily white," she informed me, voice firm. "Worse for girls like you," she added. "Shouldn't happen like that. The first time. But who am I to talk anyway? Shouldn't be your Uncle Jim when you're eight years old either."

Oh, God.

If possible, this bruised, battered, unrecognizable thing I called a heart inside my chest shrank smaller still, turned darker shades of black and blue.

So, so much wickedness in the world, so much human sickness, so many innocent victims.

"Anyway, if they offer it, take it," she went on as I moved away from the toilet, needing some distance, some space to put myself back together. 

"Take what?" I asked as the chain slowed my pace, the metal slicing into my bare skin as I knew it inevitably would.

"The drugs. If they offer 'em, take 'em. They'll make it all easier to bear."

Again, unable to agree, I said nothing.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe they would make it easier.

But maybe I didn't want it easier.

Maybe I needed every moment of terrible to fuel me, to keep the fire burning inside. Because if I took the drugs, if I escaped like Chris, where did that leave me? Here forever? Or until I was no longer useless?

What then?

Would they kill me?

Since I had seen their faces?

Since I could identify them?

No.

Maybe escape - be it drugs or my own brain - would save me in a way, but it could doom me in others. 

I might have to suffer this fate, until I had the tools I needed, until I found an opening I could use, but I was not going to let this be the last chapter in my story. Or, if it would be, at least it would be a brutal, blood-soaked tale of a woman who refused to give up.

If I had to die, I wanted to die fighting. I wanted to try to take them with me. I wanted to let these bastards know that they didn't win, they didn't break me.

They can never break me.

The anger coursed through me, finding a well deep inside that seemed to be fed endlessly, letting it flood my bloodstream until my skin hummed with it, until my pulse pounded with it, until my lips were shaking with it.

Sometime later, the click, slide, click, the stomping on the steps.

But not the guy from earlier.

The guy from the night before.

His gaze slid my way as he carried Chris.

I don't know for sure what it was I found there. 

Confusion?

Interest?

Something, something I couldn't put my finger on, something I didn't have much time to ponder as he dropped Chris, blocking her from view with his massive body as he shackled her again, turned, and jogged up the stairs.

My stomach twisted as I sat there, scared, so scared that I didn't want to look.

But I didn't have that luxury.

Ignorance.

Not anymore.

This was the reality now, ugly as it might be.

And I had to be strong enough to face it.

My body shook as I forced my head over toward Chris' side of the basement, finding her sprawled on the floor, facing me, and I wondered if that was on purpose, to frighten me, to taunt me.

Because her beautiful face had been brutalized, bruises around her eyes, blood soaking into the whites of one, a dried trickle of it coming from her nose, more of it coming from her mouth, a fresh band around her throat of bruises, ones that matched her wrists, dotted up her arms and her thighs since they had stolen her pants.

My jaw shook as I looked her over, as the anger became something else, something that spread out of my small body, seemed to coat the air around me.

I swallowed back my saliva as I looked into her unseeing eyes, as Aunt Janie came back to me.

Never back down.

Never give up.

Fight.

And I was going to fight.

For me.

For Mary.

For Chris.

For every other unknown woman they had done this to.

I was going to make those fuckers pay.

SIX

Lo

I felt... useless.

I never felt useless.

Not in years.

Not since I was a young woman, trapped in a marriage with a man who tormented me. 

I made it my mission after that never to feel that way again, to build a life around myself to ensure that I was always in control, to surround myself with men and women who had differing skills from my own, so they could pick up my slack.

And we did good in the world.

We helped so many people like the woman I once had been; we healed ourselves by healing one another. We swooped in when others found themselves without hope, saving the day as often as we could.

We didn't fail.

We insured ourselves against it with training, with constantly bettering ourselves.

But we were failing.

I hated even to think that, even to let such a vile thing cross my mind.

But it was what was happening.

No matter how much I lied and said it wasn't.

Maybe you could call it pride.

I sure would be considered guilty of it more than a few times in my life.

This wasn't pride, though, it was a white lie to save my loved ones heartache they didn't need more of right now.

Everyone at Hailstorm was on it. Those with skills on computers, trying to find the car, trying to search for a trace of V on the darknet. Those who were good at tracking, were tracking. Those with contacts that might have had their ears to the ground on topics such as trafficking, were making calls or setting up meetings. Everyone else was on the streets.

And then there was me.

Doing nothing.

Not a fucking thing.

What? Directing it? Answering endless emails or texts saying the same thing - nothing.

No one had anything.

And this was Ferryn, goddamn it.

My Ferryn.

I loved all the kids.

They all had chunks of my heart.

But Ferryn - the first - arguably had the biggest piece.

Smart, quick, confident, fearless, dedicated, fierce, and yet somehow still incredibly kind-hearted. She was a rare creature, the likes of which I don't think I had ever come across before. 

Really, if she wanted it, if she was willing to work for it, I had a mind to leave Hailstorm to her when I finally decided to step aside.

She would reign over it as well - if not better - than I had in my time. 

She was special.

And she was missing.

And I was smart enough to know that the longer this went on, the more damage was being done to her, the more changed she would be.

V had a knack for breaking women.

I saw a lot of it.

In the aftermath of her inevitable downfall.

When we had needed to stay behind while Reign and his crew got out of there, collecting the women, taking them out, bringing them to the hospitals or back to Hailstorm if they adamantly refused treatment.

Whoever these women had been before they were taken, they became something else entirely after. After weeks, months, years of being systematically tortured, raped in traditional and horrendously imaginative ways, there was very little chance of them holding onto who they had been before. 

Some went home, went back to their lives with their loved ones. But we kept track, we watched in case PTSD turned them psychotic or violent, lashing out at their loved ones that they couldn't distinguish from the monsters they knew all too well.

They went home. Put on their old clothes. Slipped into their old roles. But something was fundamentally changed. Their smiles held reserve, their laughs hollow sounds, their eyes wary and watchful, looking for hands trying to drag them away again.

Others never could go back, much like many of the people at Hailstorm who found themselves too damaged to go home, to pretend, to try to be normal again.

They built new lives, didn't pretend, constructed whatever kind of fortress they needed to keep the world away.

Others still broke.

Shattered.

Crumbled.

Got lost in their heads, ending up in restraints or padded rooms, medicated to keep them calm, to make their lives as numb as possible.

That was what V and her men could do to women. Had done to countless women. Because the ones we had managed to break free were just a few of many spread across continents, trapped in the sex trade until they OD'd, killed themselves, or were murdered by their captors. 

And that couldn't happen to Ferryn.

Not the girl who used to stick Barbie heads on dinosaur bodies, who told me with all the confidence of a seven-year-old (which in her case was a surprising lot) that she didn't want to play princess because she was going to be a knight instead because they got to have the swords, who whispered little girl secrets in my ear, who I let steal sips of my coffee because her mother wouldn't let her, who borrowed books from me, who debated heavy topics with me, who trained with me.

Trained with me.

I needed to remember that.

She had trained with me.

And Janie. Malc. Cash. Pagan. Laz. Edison. Lenny. Cyrus. Anyone, literally anyone who had a skill they could teach her, she had spent time with them learning it.

She took to martial arts the way labs took to water, with some intrinsic, primal, animalistic, evolutionary pull. Like it was in her blood, her marrow, like her muscles had sense memory of something they hadn't known in this life before.

She was good.

After eleven years of relentless lessons, she would be.

There was no changing her inherent weaknesses. She was female and slight, not possessing the brute strength of boys her own age let alone men twice her weight and width. 

But that had always been a focus of her training, overcoming her shortcomings. Learning to be faster, more athletic, knowing how to anticipate an attacker's moves, so she could avoid them, using her legs as much as possible, where her center of gravity was strongest.

And we had gone hard on her, as Summer had demanded, getting her body accustomed to pain, showing her how to think clearly through it.

And I knew her, I knew her as well as she knew herself.

If she found an opportunity to use it, she would. She would claw, punch, kick, hit, bite, gouge.

She would put up one hell of a fight.

She would do whatever it took to hurt them, to make them think twice about putting their hands on her.

"Lo."

Cash's voice wasn't itself.

It hadn't been since we had gotten the news.

I was starting to worry it never would be again.

"Yeah?" I asked, watching as he moved toward me, shadows under his eyes, body tight and boneless somehow at the same time.

All he managed to do was hang his head, moving bodily into me, his head crashing down on my shoulder, his arms going tight around me. "I know," I said, feeling the sting of tears, trying to fight them, knowing it was a useless task.

I don't know how long we stayed like that, just holding onto each other as the world fractured apart.

But then he suddenly yanked away, eyes huge, lips parted.

"What?" I asked, shaking my head at his reaction.

"Fucking Daniel," he said, raking a hand through his hair. "If anyone knows V and how she works and where she might be, it's him."

"Go," I demanded, actually pushing him to make him get a move on.

Of course.

Of fucking course.

Of all the people we had called, all the rocks we had overturned, all the doors we had knocked on, how the hell had we all simultaneously forgotten him?

Daniel.

Who had played V for the public, so no one knew she was a woman.

Who had been the one with the last laugh because he had been an undercover agent the whole time.

Who had shacked up with Faith in the city, loosely involving him with the New York Mob families.

The man who might finally, finally have some answers for us.

Cash was running.

A second after the shock subsided, I was too, tearing across the compound with a renewed sense of hope, of possibilities. 

He could tell us about contacts we might not have known before, send us to them, so we could lean on them until they broke. Until they could get in touch, set up a meeting, get us an address, and then we could do it. 

We could go in.

We could get our girl back.

My shoulder rammed into someone else's as I charged past.

"What's..." Jstorm started, but I didn't have time to explain. 

I just kept running. 

Toward the first real lead we had had in almost sixty hours. 

This was it.

This was what we had all been praying for.

A way to get our girl back.

--

Janie

I reached up, rubbing my shoulder, watching Lo's blonde hair float out wildly behind her as she stormed through the compound.

I didn't follow.

If someone had found her, she would have yelled it to me on her way.

She wasn't running because someone found her. She was running to chase down a lead.

And I prayed to every possible god that could exist that it was the one we had all been working so hard for.

Because everything was leading to dead ends and roadblocks.

I could feel it, a weight on my shoulders, something oppressive and unyielding, sinking my feet deeper into the ground.

Sinking.

I was sinking.

And there was no denying it as I walked into the empty kitchen to get another cup of coffee, this was bringing some shit up for me.

That shit.

That shit that I tried never to think about.

That shit that sometimes forced me to think of it at night still, all these years later, making me troll the darknet while Wolf and little Malc slept, or go catch a meal with Repo if he was struggling too.

That shit that would never go away.

But I tried not to think about it.

When I could.

When I had the power.

It had been so long.

So many years stretched in between, years filled with usefulness, grim determination to right wrongs. Years filled with training, forcing my body to fight until it shut down on me. Years filled with learning, reading, calm, practiced care building bombs because some place or people needed to blow the fuck up.

Then, later, years filled with new things, things I never believed I could have, never thought I could open myself up enough for, show my damage to.

Wolf, namely. 

My silent giant, my fearsome protector - even if I relentlessly insisted that I did not need to be protected, and that if I did, I could do it my damn self.

I never thought I could have him.

Never dreamed the universe could be that kind after all the ugly it had sent my way.

But there he had been with those eyes with a depth that you could jump in and sink endlessly. With those hands that could tear open ribcages and rip out hearts, but also touch me like I was something precious, some miracle, could give me something I never thought I could feel comfortable accepting from a man, could lift me up if I needed it. I mean... I didn't need it. But it was nice to know they were there if I needed them.

And his heart.

We couldn't talk about Wolf without talking about that. It was as big as he was. As accepting, forgiving, understanding, and giving.

He came into my world.

And he forced me to do things, confront things, try things. 

Along the way, I found a depth of feeling I didn't know I was capable of - and I emoted a lot. Rage and frustration mostly, but emotions nonetheless. But he showed me a softer thing, a deeper thing, something that had become a bigger part of me than anything.

Love.

The kind of love that felt overwhelming at times. 

The kind of love that could help you move forward.

But not forget.

There was no forgetting.

This experience was proof of that.

I tried not to let the thoughts creep in, knowing they would be no help, that all they would do was cloud my mind, make it harder to concentrate on the task at hand.

And Ferryn needed me to concentrate, to pull off superhuman hacking, to search every goddamn camera in a three-state radius that I could get into, to troll the ugly hidden depths of the darknet, searching for little breadcrumbs that might lead back to V.

She had to be there.

That was maybe the most frustrating part to the whole team of us working on it. She had to be on the darkweb. That was how clients found you, how you arranged meetings, sales, how you traded human lives for something as empty as money.

But people who did this kind of sick shit for a living knew how to do it smart, how to hide their actions under uncommon keywords, how to demand anonymity until they knew you were a real client with real interests. 

V had been a lot of things in her day - namely a heartless fucking bitch - but she hadn't been overly tech savvy. She shouldn't have been too hard to find. Unless all those years locked up gave her time to think, to plan, to figure out how to operate an untraceable empire. Then once she got out, she would have gathered up some old money stores we all knew she had stashed somewhere as any smart criminal would - never putting all their eggs in one basket. Then dug them up and hired someone who knew more than she did on matters such as this.

That was the only explanation.

Because, quite frankly, no matter how hard I tried - and Alex tried - to stay up-to-date, to know all the ins and outs, there would always be those who knew more, who whipped around the darkweb at warp speed, going in and out of corners we didn't even know existed, that would be closed off before we ever found them.

Such was the nature of technology.

It was always something we accepted, worked to learn more about, but didn't overly stress about.

But now Ferryn's life was on the line.

She was likely in a basement, cold, scared, uncertain.

Like I had been.

She was likely listening to footsteps overhead, praying they didn't move in the direction of the stairs, didn't come down, didn't find her huddled in a corner, chained and defenseless, didn't come at her with leering eyes and predatory hands.

Didn't, day in and day out, make her pray and beg for death because life - the life in the basement at the mercy of merciless men - was worse than not existing at all.

"Don't go dark."

Those words came from my side, from a voice that was familiar, yet not, since it was cracking into manhood, no longer my little boy-voiced babe, but a strong imitation of his father, all depth and impactful cadence.

It was odd, at times, when I looked at him, to think we had made him, that we had needed a place for our love to overflow into since we were full to bursting. 

But there was no denying it when you saw him, when you got to know him. He was an odd, perfect combination of the both of us that seemed impossible, but wasn't.

He was calm and observant, taking things in, a people-watcher, a bit of a - if you'll forgive the term - lone wolf. But once he watched long enough, made up his mind, he had my impulsivity, my tendency toward righteous anger, my ability simply to argue with you until you gave up.

He was smart, prone to reading, though he rarely took my suggestions, preferring non-fiction books - history, survivalism, and true crime novels that Ferryn tossed his way when she declared they were worth a read.

But he was also all action, taking off with Wolf into the woods, learning whatever life skills his father had to teach him, going to the gym with friends, taking self-defense lessons alongside Fallon, his only age-mate in the group.

And, also like his father, he had a way of reading me, something I had always found a bit off-putting. Like when he was still in grade school, coming home, sensing I was having a rough time no matter how hard I tried to cover it because I wanted my child to have a perfectly well-adjusted mother, and gave me a hug, gave me a kiss, made me art, demanded we take the dogs for a walk, anything he could think of to get me out of my own head.

And the ability had only grown through the years.

"I'm trying not to," I admitted, knowing lying would get me nowhere as I turned to face him, holding out a coffee because, well, there was no fear of stunting his growth since he was already only three inches shorter than his father, and had several years of growing left. 

Maybe a little stunting would be good. Cut down on the constant need to buy him entirely new wardrobes.

"It's about Ferryn, isn't it?" he asked, gaze steady.

"Yes."

He nodded a bit at that. "What happened?"

He was thirteen.

And while I wouldn't give him the whole truth, he deserved at least a part of it.

"I think she is in a dark place," I said carefully, seeming to know that he would understand my meaning.

Judging by the slight flinch at the words, and the way his gaze refused to hold mine for a long minute, I realized I was right in that assumption.

When he looked back, he was purely his father, any bit of me I usually found there was gone.

"Then we have to get her back into the light."

SEVEN

Ferryn

I couldn't get to her.

Uselessness was a chain around my throat, just as sure and unforgiving as the shackle around my ankle, eating away at the flesh with a constant burning pain.

I couldn't get to her, gently wipe away some of the blood, lift her into a less painful-looking position, rub her back, do something, anything to try to show her some comfort, some softness, some love in this pain-filled, hard, heartless place.

But I couldn't get to her.

And the hours stretched long and silent save for Mary groaning on the other side of the room, dry heaving, going through her own misery that I suddenly wished I could ease as well.

Both of them were in hell, and, unfathomably, all I had to complain about were some bruises, a wiggling tooth, and the constant, gnawing hunger in my stomach.

They hadn't fed us.

They would, of course, or else I'd be trapped in a basement with corpses instead of women, so the food would come eventually, taking the twisting pain away enough to be able to focus fully again.

I'd never been a girl on a diet, one denying herself food to fit a certain aesthetic. Partly because that rail-thin look simply wasn't in Vogue anymore. Curvier bodies that said you didn't deprive yourself a donut now and again were what people wanted to see, wanted to embrace. And since I fit that skinnier old-school version of beauty, I let myself stuff my face, hoping that I would eventually get some curves like normal girls my age. 

You'll get there, my mother had assured me, to which I had stubbornly reminded her that I got my period three years before, that I should have developed already. I was a bit of a late bloomer too, she'd insisted. I might not have a rack the likes of Aunt Lo, but I think I rounded out alright. At eighteen or so. Give it time. Don't be in such a rush to grow up.

The adults said that a lot about growing up. As if society gave us a choice, as if anyone was allowed to be a kid past the age of twelve. Girls especially. 

The second we stepped foot through the doors of middle school, we had to leave girlish things behind, had to get rid of beloved toys and replace them with makeup, hair straighteners, tweezers, razors.

All they want is a pretty face and an empty head, I had grumbled at lunch one day to Iggy who wasn't allowed to wear makeup, so found herself somewhat of an outcast in that sense too. And spread legs, a boy at the table behind me added, further confirming my thoughts. 

Twelve, going on thirteen, and the only thing in anyone's minds was a hyper-sexualized outlook on life. As though all there was of interest was how our bodies worked. 

Heck, Iggy and I were probably the last virgins in our grade. 

A huge part of that was by choice, but also because boys looked at her with her insanely strict background differently, and, well, no one looked at me because of who my father was. 

Suddenly, I wished I had taken the plunge, had let Conor who had been my first kiss go further like he had wanted to. Maybe I hadn't been in love with him, or even liked him all that much, but at least that would have been a better memory of a first time than this would.

Even with thoughts of impending rape on my mind, my stomach grumbled harder still, loud enough that I was sure it echoed off the empty walls. 

"Chris," I called, voice low and coaxing, unable to take the blank stare a moment longer, even if maybe that was a selfish thing to think. "Come back," I added, though, again, maybe that was a cruel demand.

What would she come back to?

A body brutalized again, hurt in untold ways... again. 

Reminded of what had happened to her... again.

Maybe the kinder thing was to let her stay there. At the beach, at Christmas, wherever she was that allowed her to escape this reality where terrible things happened without her consent, where there was no potential even for the smallest sliver of happiness. 

Sometime later, long enough that my body gave into sleep again, which I decided to accept meant another day had passed, there was the clomp, the click, slide, click, the stomp of boots on the stairs.

It was the same one, the one who had taken Chris, who had my still-red and angry-looking claw marks down his face.

He paused at the foot of the stairs as my heart started to hammer, as my stomach twisted in something that wasn't hunger for a change. 

This could be my time, my mind told me, making a cold wash over my skin. And I was feeling a little disoriented with my hunger, knowing full-well that would slow me down, would make any attempts at fighting likely weak and laughable.

But his eyes simply raked over me with what I could only call a promise before his feet carried him away from me, toward Mary who had lost even the ability to groan a few hours before.

"Come on," he said, hauling her up by her armpits, her body too weak to move on its own. "Let's see how many cocks you can suck for your dose today."

The awful thing was, I knew Mary was - in a way that was more messed up than I could even express - a willing participant. She would go along with whatever they demanded of her if it meant they would stick a needle in her arm, take away the pain in her body.

Sometime while he was gone, Chris finally shifted, pulling her body to curl up on her side, her face away from me. 

She said nothing, made no noise, so I had no idea if she was still gone, or if she was back and processing pain and the events that had transpired.

Unsure of my part to play, I stayed silent, hating myself for it, but knowing I would only hate myself more if I somehow made it worse for her.

In this situation, I guess we should all be left to deal with it in whatever way kept us the most sane.

Sometime later, Mary came back down, this time able to carry herself, the drugs making impossible things possible again. Her cheeks were tear-stained, eyes red, and lips swollen, but she willingly walked over to her spot, offered her leg for her shackle, and accepted her imprisonment.

I mean, I guess they had to, we all did in a way. 

And maybe she had been here long enough, had life beat her down so much, that fighting felt useless.

I could understand that, at a certain level, knew that human beings could only take so much before they cracked - or broke apart entirely.

But I hoped that wouldn't be my fate. I hoped that no matter what happened to me, I would never lose my fight, my will to get through this, get away from this.

Maybe I would fail.

Maybe the hunger, the pain, the fear would get to me. Maybe I would escape in my brain. Maybe I would take the drugs when they were offered.

You never really knew what you were capable of until a situation was set in front of you.

Sure, I had every intention of using each skill I had to violently protest when someone came for me, but maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I would freeze. Maybe I would - God forbid - beg, give them exactly what they wanted.

My eyes were slow-blinking closed, begging for sleep. When I heard footsteps above us.

Chris had been taken.

Mary had been taken.

I was all there was left.

My stomach pitched, every inch of my skin seeming to prickle simultaneously, every hair going up while a shiver racked my body.

Click.

Slide.

Click.

Fear was a slimy, slithering thing, snaking up my spine, curling around my throat, cutting off my air.

He was coming for me.

I knew it like I knew that whatever followed would be a scar etched permanently on my psyche.

My eyes only seemed capable of taking in legs, jean-clad legs moving toward me across the floor. There was a slit in the thigh, frayed with wear and washing. And I somehow knew - though, really, it was impossible to tell - that this cut hadn't come like that. Distressed, or whatever the term was. This cut was from something. With men like these, maybe a knife.

Oh, God.

A Knife. 

No.

I couldn't let my mind race off toward possibilities, there would be endless paths of them; I would never find my way back.

The jean-clad legs slowed before me, bringing my gaze down to the boots. Not the one that came to take Chris and Mary. These were older, rougher, splattered with what looked like paint and grease. And bigger.

A hand came into view as he stooped, dropping a paper plate down on the ground in front of me.

Too shocked to think better of it, my head shot up, finding someone I hadn't seen before, middle-aged, dark-haired, but hollow-eyed as the rest.

"Eat," he rumbled at me while dropping a bottle of water before moving toward Chris to drop a plate, then finally, Mary.

With that and nothing else, he moved back up the stairs at an annoyingly carefree pace.

Click, slide, click. 

My body seemed unable to come back down from the surge of fear - and the accompanying adrenaline - making me feel shaky and cold all over.

"Eat," a voice demanded, making my head shoot up, finding Chris sitting up, cringing slightly as her body shifted to reach for the plate. "You don't know the next time they'll give us food," she added, gaze lowered.

That seemed like fair advice since a couple of days had clearly passed already, and this was the first food I had seen.

As much as I wanted to engage Chris, wanted to try to keep her here with me, my stomach let out another growl, dragging my gaze down to the plate, noticing for the first time a pile of scrambled eggs and a single piece of toast cut in half, spread with butter soggying the bread.

I reached for it like the half-starving girl I was, digging in with a claw hand since there were no utensils available.

There was a moment of crippling fear that the food was laced with something that would make me like Mary, barely able to find her mouth as she ate, but once I started, there was no stopping it as the hunger overtook me. I barely even registered that all of it was stone cold and overcooked, so intent on having a stomach with something in it.

I wiped my hand down the thigh of my dress, wishing for more, even though my stomach felt full to bursting already.

Leaning back into the wall, I sucked in a deep breath, almost a little upset with how much relief I felt right at that moment. There shouldn't have been any relief. I was shackled like property in a basement of a house full of men who violently beat and raped women, would set their eyes on me eventually. 

How could a simple full stomach make a slow contentedness creep over me like it would at home in bed after a great night out with friends, or taking down one of my instructors who had proven impossible up to that point.

It was amazing what your body could find comfort in.

"You'll get used to it," Chris said, again initiating conversation, pulling me out of a pre-sleep daze.

"Used to what?"

"The spans between meals," she told me, slowly making her way through hers still, somehow bypassing the urge to hoover it like I had. "Your stomach will shrink, and it will hurt less."

"How often do they feed us?" I asked, almost not wanting to know the answer, but wanting to keep Chris talking, even if it was simply about the awfulness I had to look forward to.

"It depends. Every two or three days."

Every two or three days.

I wasn't sure I could ever get used to the grumbling of my stomach. 

I hoped I wouldn't have to.

"Are you from the area?" I asked.

"I don't even know where we are," she admitted. And, well, neither did I actually. But unless I was passed out for longer than I realized in that trunk, I was pretty sure we were still in Jersey. "My mom and I lived in Farehold before she died. Then I was placed in a foster home in Hadlet."

"We were practically neighbors," I told her. Farehold was where the mall was, where Iggy, Heather, and I would walk for hours, buying cheap accessories, browsing the shelves at the bookstore, touring the food court. Hadlet was where the movie theater was, literally five minutes from Navesink Bank. "I live in Navesink Bank. Look," I said, voice going serious. "Do you know who The Henchmen are?" I asked.

"The bikers?"

"Yeah. What do you know about them?"

"That they're dangerous."

Fair enough.

"My father is the president," I told her, watching as her head jerked over, eyes always so empty suddenly working wildly.

"You're serious?"

"Yes. My dad is the president. My uncles are vice president and road captain. My aunt runs Hailstorm. They are looking for me right now. And they are going to find me. Find us."

It occurred to me then what a poor choice I had been for abduction. 

Mary seemed alone in the world.

Chris had been in a foster family, and while I was sure they would have reported it, and the cops had done some looking, there was no one to spur the search on.

It was easy for the world not to miss women without loved ones. 

My heart, what little was left of it anyway, ached at that realization, that so many women went missing, never to be heard from again, with next to no one looking for them, missing them, demanding answers. 

But that didn't mean they were hopeless.

At least not for these two women.

There was hope.

Because my loved ones would move hell and earth to get me back, would never stop, would bash heads and blow things up and run themselves ragged searching every corner of this world to bring me back. 

And take them back with me, get them help, show them love.

I knew this.

If I couldn't find my own way out, they would find me.

I just had to hold it together, keep my wits about me, refuse to lose my mind in this hellhole until then.

"I don't think we are somewhere that we can be found."

Those were the last words she would speak to me that night.

The next day, claw-face came back to take Mary again.

The next, Chris.

I couldn't get through to her after, not even what felt like a lifetime later when paint-shoes came back with plates filled with rice and beans, wanting to get her out of her mind enough to nourish her body. 

I woke up sometime later, finding she had cleared her plate while I slept, then sank back inside herself.

Mary was full-on detoxing again, heaving into the toilet on and off for hours until there was nothing left in her system.

Stomach full, my mind wandered. 

Not to the beach or Christmas like Chris suggested, not escaping the situation.

Just taking stock of it.

My face felt oily, my hands coming back shiny when I touched it. My hair, already prone to grease even after just half a day, felt limp and heavy. My hands inspected the injuries to my face and head, still feeling an ache, but nothing to write home about. My stomach, somewhat flat to begin with, felt almost concave already, my ribs protruding, objecting to the lack of pasta and baked good binges. For, I didn't even know. Four days? Five? I was having a hard time keeping track. I couldn't imagine what another five, ten, twenty, sixty days could do to me.

I hoped to hell it wouldn't be that long, that - like I had said to Chris - my loved ones would come for me, for us. Or, short of that, I would find a way to get us free.

I'll admit, my fire was barely a flicker as time went on, as the constant, nagging fear became my only real friend in this place, as the hours stretched long with nothing but my swirling thoughts to keep me company. And the thoughts only got more and more negative by the hour, until it banked down my resolve.

Just a couple days.

This was what just a couple days of captivity - and a bit of hunger - could do to me. Me with my certainty, my bloodthirst.

Click, slide, click.

A familiar stomp.

I didn't have to look up to know who it was.

Claw-face.

Though, unfortunately, the claw marks had scabbed over already, would likely peel off in just a few days, leaving no proof of my raging fire in its wake. 

I watched as he paused at the edge of the stairs, as he often did, like he thought he was building the anticipation, the fear.

And, damnit, he'd be right.

But the air didn't start getting caught in my throat until he got to the middle of the room... and didn't turn to either side.

No.

He kept coming forward.

Forward toward me.

Oh, God.

No.

While a part of me knew it would come eventually, that I wasn't trapped down here because they enjoyed feeding an extra mouth, finding that they never came for me the other times had given me a small sliver of false security.

My stomach knotted, twisting tighter as his feet kept coming toward me, as my time got cut shorter and shorter.

My hopelessness was a noose around my throat. And as I watched him kneel down in front of me, it was like someone had kicked the chair out from under my feet. 

And I was dangling.

Strangling.

Flailing.

Except, wait, I realized as a hand seized my ankle, sinking a key into a lock, the weight lifting, making me realize for the first time just how heavy it had been, hanging, rubbing, biting into my skin, ripping it off in places.

With the chain off, I wasn't quite so helpless.

"Up," he demanded, hand seizing my upper arm much like the man from the first night had, but curling in tighter, purposely inflicting pain even though I wasn't struggling.

Yet.

I would go along with it until I was closer to an escape. 

As I was half-dragged forward, I felt a stab of guilt at my potential freedom.

But, I assured myself, even if I did get away, if I escaped, if I could put this place behind me, I would come back. I would find a phone, call my dad and Lo, and get them back here in force, have them take down the bad guys, free Chris and Mary, get them help. 

As I passed, my gaze slid toward Chris, finding her watching me, finding that - for once, her eyes weren't blank.

No.

They were flooded.

Flooded.

With unshed tears.

For me.

For what she knew was about to happen.

For what had happened to her.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat, making sure Claw-face was not looking directly at me, then shot her a small, mischievous smile, trying to let her know that if my time was up, that I would do exactly as I said I would; I would go down swinging; I would inflict some pain; I would make them see that they weren't the only ones with power.

My feet sounded annoyingly weak in comparison to his on the steps, as I pretended to pull away, to put up a fuss.

If he was used to me pulling away, he wouldn't think twice about it when I finally did make a move, get in position for it.

I could catch him off-guard

I waited for us to get upstairs, to move through the door, watching as his hands slid the locks closed, seeming to remember at the last possible second to pocket the key he had used to unshackle me.

His pocket.

No matter what I did to him, I had to get that key. Any ideas at all about escape were useless if I didn't get a key.

My heartbeat -  hummingbird's frantic wings just moments before - slowed. My mind that had been racing with fear and uncertainty, cleared, focused.

Everything was about that key. About getting him distracted enough that he didn't notice I was taking it, that he would likely just assume that he had dropped it.

"Should shove you up against the wall right now, and make you pay for what you did to my face."

"What's the matter? Didn't want your hideous insides to show on the outside?" I asked, tone venomous as he yanked me to the end of the hall.

The end of the hall where I knew from counting the steps that we would be turning off if we were going to the garage.

My eyes sought the hallway in question, figuring maybe that would be the best avenue for escape, the door least likely to be guarded. And, maybe if I was really lucky, the garage would be full of blunt instruments, things we could use to defend ourselves if I couldn't get my hands on something better.

Better.

Like a gun.

Like the ones my father sold.

Like the ones I had been using for target practice with Uncle Repo since I was twelve, taking me out of town to the woods, trekking through all sorts of weather to get to the place where he had targets set up at varying distances, holes poked through them many times over from him practicing himself, or with Aunt Maze.

He'd pull the backpack straps off, zipping it open slowly, like he was building anticipation. And, well, he was.

Because I was twelve.

I was twelve, and I was learning how to shoot a gun.

Most kids I knew hadn't ever even seen one, let alone been allowed to hold one.

And there I was, about to illegally - because I knew it was illegal - shoot one in the woods.

I had felt older, wiser, more worldly.

I mean, I didn't get bragging rights. I knew I wasn't allowed to ever speak about this to friends, to kids at school. This was top-secret stuff which only really made it more exciting as Uncle Repo brought out four different guns, telling me to pick them each up, decide which one felt better in my hand.

We didn't do it often, practice, but a few times a year, every year. 

I was good too.

Not great.

Not like Uncle Repo.

But good.

Better than my mom, which rubbed her the wrong way anytime Repo bragged about it.

There was also some kind of story about the wall of the compound and my mom and a gun that was some kind of inside joke that, no matter how many times I asked to know, no one would tell me.

So if I could - by some miracle - get a gun, I would be able to use it. 

Well, I knew how to use it.

Whether or not I would be able to take one, point it, cock it, pull the trigger, and bore a hole - possibly a fatal hole - into a human being... yeah, that was still to be seen.

It occurred to me, yes, even as I was being dragged down another hallway by a man who wanted to hurt me in terrible ways, that my life was so incredibly different than anyone else my age.

I guess I had spent so much time railing against some of the oppressions that came with being born to my parents that I didn't see the freedoms. 

In my position, no one else my age would be able to say that they had the skills to handle it - even if they didn't have the history of utilizing it in this kind of real-life scenario. 

I was lucky.

Someday, I would make sure I told my parents that.

And my aunts.

And uncles. 

They were the sole reason I even had a chance.

We rounded a bend that opened up into what could be called a living room, though the windows were blocked with big sheets of metal that reminded me a lot of the walls at Hailstorm.

There was a single couch facing a stone-front fireplace. No carpets, no knick-knacks, no coffee table. Bare.

Really, it was now or never.

That realization should have made panic wash over me, made my heart trip and stumble forward, should have made my brain race.

But, unfathomably, everything within me calmed, stabilized. My mind cleared. My muscles seemed to steel themselves.

His hand loosened slightly, giving me just enough room to whip my body backward, to lose the grip fully.

There were a few options.

To take someone down.

Fully. 

I needed him down.

We needed to grapple if I was going to get that key.

He was bigger than me, undoubtedly stronger.

But I had knowledge and the surprise factor and his underestimation of my sex, my age, on my side. 

I slid back.

Planted one foot.

Lifted another.

And swung my body around, kicking around in half a circle, the top of my foot landing perfectly as my body kept swinging around before I could plant my feet again, slow the momentum so I could face him once more.

There was always a lag with liver shots.

Five or ten seconds where the pain didn't register, as the liver jerked around in the stomach cavity.

I watched with a perverse, but unmistakable, sense of glee as his face crumpled in pain, as his body went down, unable to keep strength in his legs as the pain overtook his whole body.

No mercy, my Aunt Janie would yell at me in this situation. They damn sure wouldn't show you any.

My body flew forward, instinct and repetitive, unending lessons taking over me, making me land on him, closed fists slamming down full force into weak spots. 

Nose.

Eyes.

A knee came up, ramming down. I couldn't be sure, but I would have sworn I felt a crack.

Ribs.

There was no time to revel in that, to feel pride.

The key.

I had to get the key.

One hand slammed down into his face as my body shifted, as another landed a groin shot that allowed my hand to seek his pocket without him noticing.

There was one small flaw in the plan, of course. 

Whereas liver shots cause enough pain to render you almost voiceless, groin shots had a tendency to make a man roar in pain.

And roar he did.

It was barely a few seconds before I heard boots running. 

My hand shoved down my dress, sticking the key in my bra before landing another well-timed punch as three men stormed into the room, one plowing forward, snagging me under the arms, and lifting me clear up as though I weighed no more than a dandelion seed.

"Calm the fuck down!" he roared as my hands knew nothing but self-defense, being outnumbered, knowing my time was running out.

I didn't say anything.

What was there to say?

I simply struck out again, landing a lame punch to his jaw, not even enough to make the boulder he called a head swing at all.

All I managed was an even more sore hand, and to piss off a man who could break me in half using half force.

His hand left my arm, moving forward so fast that I momentarily forgot to grab his wrist. 

But a moment was too long in this scenario.

Because half a moment meant his giant hand was closing around my throat.

Squeezing.

My mind flew to Chris, to the bands of bruises around her throat. At this man's hands? While he did awful things to her? Like he was bound to do to me as well.

Thoughts became harder as the lack of oxygen started to make my brain feel foggy, thick.

Fight, a chorus of voices sounded in my head - every last one of my loved ones speaking through my subconscious, reminding me that so long as I had air - even just a teeny bit of it - in my lungs, I had the power to try, to fight, to do something.

My hands moved up in between his outstretched ones, clasping together, half-turning, then driving down the underside of my forearm into his elbow, making it buckle downward, releasing my throat.

My voice gasped in even as my body dropped, sliding under his arm, moving behind him.

Just in time to be grabbed by the man who had carried me in that very first night, leaning down low, catching me - shoulder to belly - and hauling me up and over his shoulder.

There was a moment of asinine, but undeniable, horror at the idea of my short skirt riding up, of the bottoms of my butt cheeks exposed by my black cheeky panties.

It took superhuman self-control not to reach back, to try to drag down the fabric, to cover myself.

But another side of me, maybe a prideful part, didn't want to let them know they had finally gotten to me, unnerved me.

They would only use something like modesty as a source of humiliation for me.

And I'd be damned if I gave them anything to use against me, anything other than what they already had on their minds.

But wait.

Not their.

My head lifted up from where my chin was braced on a giant back, looking up to find the other three men had stayed behind, lifting their fallen comrade carefully, inspecting my damage.

The choker guy seemed to feel my inspection, head swiveling in my direction.

I don't know where it came from, what would possess me to do it.

But I did it.

Smiled.

Because maybe I was losing the war, but I had won a battle, damnit. And I was going to call that a victory.

I did what I said I would when I was brought here - an untold number of days, though it felt like weeks or months - I fought. I hurt them. I showed them that I was going to go down swinging.

And, in turn, he looked taken aback, confused, then almost... curious.

I wasn't sure that curious was what I wanted him to feel toward me, but it was too late for that as I was turned suddenly, the man taking me into a room.

A room with a door.

A room that maybe had a bed.

Where all the awful things Chris and Mary had endured would happen to me as well.

This was when fear finally started to swirl around my belly, making bile rise up in my throat.

I choked it back as I suddenly felt myself falling from his shoulder, remembering at the last possible second not to grab at him for stability.

I slammed down on unprepared heels, feeling a stabbing sensation through them and up my calves for a second before I felt a hand clamp on my shoulder, adding pressure until my body had no choice but to buckle.

Buckle.

Going down.

Down to what?

My knees?

Because, well, after witnessing what I had been willing to do to his body, he was a freaking idiot to think he could try to force anything in my mouth without me biting the thing clear off.

But even as the revolting, but possible, idea crossed my mind, my butt slammed down on a hard chair.

There wasn't even enough time to register that before I felt my wrist snagged, yanked back until my shoulder screamed, then felt something, small but thick, slide around my wrist, tighten, connect me to the back of the chair.

Zip tie.

Even as I realized it, my other wrist got the same treatment until my back was arched painfully backward to keep the ties from clawing at the delicate skin of my wrists.

"See if you can behave your fucking ass like that for a bit," he rumbled before moving off.

The door slammed closed behind him.

Closed.

But not locked.

Not as though that would do me any good tied to a chair.

They knew what they were doing. 

The thought made my lip curl, hating the idea of clever bad guys, always wanted to think of them as base, thoughtless morons easily outsmarted.

But handcuffs were hard, could have been used to break the rungs on the back of the chair, freeing me enough to get down on the ground, bring the cuffs to the front, find something to pick them with, or simply run with them still bound. They would make a good noose if I could grab someone, use it to choke them, pulling their body tight, using them as a shield. 

But zip ties wouldn't break the chair rungs.

Maybe I could saw into them given enough time, but I didn't figure I had a whole heck of a lot of that. 

It wasn't that zip ties were unbreakable.

I'd broken sets of them as far back as eleven years old.

When they were bound in front of me. It was simple, really, bring your arms up, close your fists letting your fingers touch, then use every bit of momentum in your body to drive them down while pulling your arms out, swinging your elbows backward.

They broke almost effortlessly.

It wasn't much harder behind your back, either. You just bent forward, lifted your arms up, and rammed them downward onto your butt. Over and over. 

It took a few times, but they'd break too.

But like this?

Pulled to no slack, so tight that I was worried about the circulation in my hands, connecting me to a solid item?

Yeah... I couldn't think of a way out of it.

My legs were free, though, I reminded myself, thinking.

I'd put dining room chairs together with Aunt Penny once, all Allen wrenches and screws and washers.

But weak in the joints, in the legs.

I took a deep breath, figuring it was worth a shot. 

Getting to my feet, I folded forward as far as I could but still move, making the legs stick outward. Taking a deep breath, I squat-ran backward with every bit of force the awkward position would allow, slamming back into the wall with the hopes that the legs would crack off the seat which would fall out without the support. 

My wrists throbbed as my plan went through, legs splintering, dropping to the ground, the seat following, nothing to stop my wrists, then shoulders from slamming into the wall mercilessly. 

"Ow," I hissed, taking a deep breath, trying to think through it. And, because my mom wasn't around to hear it, and because, well, the situation warranted it, I added, "Fuck."

Taking slow, deep breaths, I listened for running footsteps, tried to prepare myself for another possible fight.

But none came.

Not quite willing to believe my luck - since I knew the sound should have alerted someone - but also not the type to squander the chance, I forced my brain to think past the pain, to ignore the feeling of the ties slicing into my wrists as I pulled from the wall, and tried to throw my arms outward, loosen the rungs from the top where they were still stubbornly connected.

I could feel the skin of my left wrist breaking open, hot, searing, the trickle of my blood as it escaped my body.

Fighting someone else was easy.

Fighting your own animalistic self-preservation was harder as I hesitated at another pull, knowing it would only drive the ties in deeper.

Steeling my stomach - and my will which desperately needed it - I threw everything I had into one last attempt, feeling my heart surge upward as the rungs cracked and detached, the rest of the chair clattering to the hard floor.

Leaving me with two jagged, pointy pieces of wood attached to the undersides of my arms.

Like weapons.

Like I was sure I had seen in a  movie once, some kind of girl vampire hunter with them attached to her wrists to jab into vampire hearts, turning them to dust.

An odd, almost hysterical chuckle bubbled up and trickled out at that thought, the long days, and the fights and the pain and the adrenaline clearly starting to get to me, screw with my mind.

But I couldn't let it.

I had to harden up, like Uncle Pagan demanded relentlessly, always being one of my harshest coaches, refusing to give me a second even to catch my breath or process my pain, instead insisting I learn to enjoy it, fuel myself with it.

Harden up, he would command, swatting me on the side of the head hard enough to make my other ear slam into my shoulder with the force. Yeah, you're pissed. Good. Use it. Come at me with it.

And I would.

Fiercely.

With every bit of tiredness and frustration I would feel at the moment.

I needed to find that strength again, to use all these experiences to drive me forward, to allow me to battle it out again. And again. And again if it was needed.

As if responding to the request for motivation, visions careened across my mind.

Chris with her hollow eyes.

Mary retching for hours.

Mary begging to be assaulted just to get a break from the detoxing.

Chris being thrown down on the floor like trash, bruises around her wrists and throat, blood in her mouth, eyes, demanding I find an escape, so I didn't have to be fully conscious of the awful things happening to my body when it was my turn. 

The gnawing, unstoppable hunger.

The eyes of men who saw us as objects instead of people.

Yeah, that would do it.

Within minutes, I had to remind myself to breathe through the seething anger, the blind hatred that was making its way through my entire system, compressing my ribcage with its ferocity.

But no one came.

And, for the first time, I knew for how long.

This room had a clock.

Just a simple, ugly black rimmed one with bold black numbers and flimsy plastic hands hanging awkwardly on an otherwise empty wall.

Actually, this was another mostly-empty room with boarded windows, white-faded-to-yellow walls, wooden floors in desperate need of wax, or even simply a broom and mop, and one lone captain's chair in a hideous salmon color butted into a corner.

That was it.

Almost as if this place was temporary.

Temporary, but Chris had been here months.

If they were just squatting, surely someone would have seen and reported them by now.

Unless we were in the middle of nowhere.

That thought made me feel anxious and comforted in equal turns.

Anxious because if we were in a populated area, when we escaped, we could find a house and ring the bell, find a road and flag down a car, find a restaurant and beg for protection while we wait for the cops.

It would be the easier solution.

But comforted because if we were in the middle of nowhere, there would likely be woods to disappear into. And while I wasn't exactly the survivalist like Uncle Duke, I certainly knew a lot about the woods from time spent with Uncle Wolf and Malc in them.

I could guide us through them.

If they were too thick, I could ensure we survived in them for a few days before we could find some help.

Either way - in a populated area or the woods - I would make sure we all made it out of here.

But an hour past.

An hour and ten.

Then feet.

Boots.

And something else.

Something I heard a million times before.

From my mom.

The girls club.

My friends.

From even myself.

Heels.

But, no.

That couldn't be right.

This was a place of masculine evil.

It was no place for a woman in heels.

But they kept coming closer, somehow matching the thumping of my confused heart. 

The boots stopped first.

The knob turned. 

I raised my arms, ready to stab forward if necessary.

And, well, at this point, I was pretty sure it would definitely be necessary.

By any means, Aunt Janie would tell me. You have a right to protect yourself for any reason and by any means.

I had a right to defend myself, God-given and undeniable, up to death, right through it.

"Well, well," A woman's voice said, low and almost melodic, but in a cold way, like the chicks in movies you just knew were going to end up stabbing someone or stealing someone else's husband. "It seems this little mouse refuses to be caged. Something will need to be done about those wooden spikes," she added to the same man who had bound me to the chair in the first place.

He took an immediate step forward, but hesitated, something in his eyes relaying some sort of worry or maybe - dare I even think it - fear.

"What are you waiting for?"

"Saw what she did to Harry."

"Oh, yes," the woman said, smiling evilly. "Harry. It seems you managed an impressive feat. You ruptured his liver and cracked a rib into his lungs."

Cracked a rib into his lungs.

Into his lungs.

Which would mean sure death if it wasn't treated immediately. 

Maybe it was, though, I comforted myself, finding that the idea of killing someone and the practical application of it were two completely different things.

Maybe that was what took so long, getting him to a hospital, getting the situation sussed out.

I swallowed a bit hard, lifting my chin, not wanting any of my uncertainty to show. If she wanted to believe I was a heartless killer, then that was what I would be.

"Am I supposed to feel sorry about that?" I asked, taking my cue from her, dropping any feeling at all from my tone.

"Well, any decent person would. Seeing as I can't have that kind of situation tracing back to me, to here. Harry, unfortunately, needed to be put down."

Killed.

He'd been killed?

Two things tried to fight for space in my mind then.

First, I wasn't a killer. I mean, if we wanted to get technical about it, he would have absolutely died from the lung puncture that I had inflicted if he didn't get to the hospital soon enough. But, technically, I had not taken a life.

Second, this woman was speaking as though she was the boss.

But the boss to what? 

An army of men who preyed on girls.

But, no.

That made no sense.

There was no hierarchy in that, no ruling position, unless...

Oh, God. 

She was a human trafficker.

She was a predator of women.

A woman herself. 

Something flew back to the forefront of my mind, buried and dusty from time, muffled because I had been pretending to sleep one night at Hailstorm, so my mom and aunts would talk more freely, and I could listen in.

"That's how it is, though," Aunt Lo had been saying. "With women."

"But wouldn't you agree that we are more nurturing by nature?" Mom had asked.

"Sure, but if something happens, something robs a woman of that nurturing quality, there is no more heartless, no more ruthless, merciless creature on the Earth. Give me ten male kingpins over any one female one any day. That's all I am saying."

And here I was, facing my Aunt Lo - by all standards one of the most badass women in the world - 's biggest nightmare.

A female kingpin.

A woman who trafficked other women.

A woman who allowed her men to chain girls in the basement to beat and rape to their evil heart's content. 

My spit turned sour, hard to swallow without cringing, but I fought it. I tried to school my face in nonchalance even as I lifted my chin higher.

"Put down?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Hopefully right out in the backyard like the rabid dog he was."

"Oh, I like this spirit," she said, nodding.

Almost like she was... I don't know, proud?

But that made no sense.

Why would she be proud of imprisoning a girl with 'spirit'?

"My goal in life, to impress heartless human trafficking bitches."

Apparently, once you started cussing, you couldn't stop. No wonder most of my uncles, and at least half of my aunts used them to punctuate their points. 

"Take a good look at me, dear," she invited, even though I was clearly looking right at her.

"I'm looking right at you."

"Look through eyes not so heavily laced with teenaged angsty hatred," she clarified, making my hackles only manage to rise further. There was maybe nothing in the world I hated more than adults condescending to me, as though a couple of years made that big of a difference with emotions and passions. I knew adults who flew off the handle - both to hysterics or violent rage - far more easily than my age-mates did. 

But she was right; all I could see when I looked at her was what she had allowed her men to do to other women, what a soulless, heartless monster she was.

I wasn't sure I had even really seen her until she demanded I do so.

It took just seconds.

Three, tops.

Three seconds to see it.

Because there was no mistaking it.

It was in the subtle contours of a body, so familiar. In the bone structure of her face. In her eye color. My eye color.

And, finally, it was in the hair.

The red hair I had always envied, mostly in the confines of my own heart, not wanting to come off as insecure, or that I didn't want to inherit the dark hair from my father.

But that was my mother's hair.

It was my mother's face.

It was my mother's body.

Plus a few years.

Which, really, could only mean one thing.

"Now you're getting it," she said, smiling.

That was one difference.

While, technically, maybe those were the same lips, that was not the same smile.

When my mother did it, it lit up her whole face, it etched deep into her cheeks, made her eyes dance, gave her happy creases.

When my mother smiled, it was a sight to see.

Whereas with this woman, all you could see was the smile of a snake, fangs dripping, just ready to sink them in and infect you.

"What? You don't want to give your grandmother a hug?"

There it was.

A confirmation I didn't really need since the DNA was undeniable, but somehow, hearing it aloud made it feel more real.

Sickeningly real.

Because if this was my grandmother, it meant some of her was in me, there was a connection - even if it was only genetic - binding us.

I couldn't help but wonder as I looked at her, as my mind tried to process this information, how did others do it? How did the parents, siblings, children of serial killers, rapists, or pedophiles handle the weight of that reality? That they were related to monsters?  Did they wonder if there were pieces of that evil in them as well? That such a thing could be hereditary?

Even as I thought those things though, another realization crowded them out.

My mother was related to this woman, more completely than even I was.

And there was no kinder a woman, more caring a mother, no more devoted a wife, the most morally-minded woman I had met. She was pure goodness, light, warmth. With a little dab of grit and strength to even it out, so she wasn't all mush.

That was who I had come from.

Not this abomination before me.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised they never told you. They'd rather brush me under a rug, lock me up in a cell, deny that I ever existed at all."

They?

But even as the question formed, things started coming back to me.

Like stolen snippets of conversation that abruptly cut off when my grandfather would come to visit to speak to my parents, and I would catch him saying that she was nothing to worry about, that she was never going to get within a mile of my mom and us again.

Again.

Like she had gotten to us before?

But I would have remembered that.

I remembered the eye color of my first Barbie from back when I was three-years-old - an inhuman cobalt blue that I colored over with brown a few weeks after getting it.

I would have remembered a woman 'getting to' me before.

So, what then?

My mom?

My mom.

See, I hadn't really gotten up the nerve. To ask. I had tried over the years, wanting to know, wanting to understand, wanting her to share it with me. But she was fiercely protective over them, covering them up if I happened to walk in on her changing, quick to whip around to face me so her back was hidden.

The scars.

My mom had a lot of scars.

All across her back.

All old, healed, but still slightly raised, white-ish, shiny, standing out against her otherwise perfect skin.

Scars that had troubled me whenever I thought of them, knowing the layout of them was too precise to have been from some freak accident where she got torn up somehow. 

And, besides, if it was just some freak accident, there was really no reason to hide them from me, to keep the truth of it to herself. 

So the reason had to be more personal, more evil than that.

I had wondered once, feeling my loyalty tugged in two directions, if maybe my grandfather had been a different man when he had raised her, if he had been heavy-handed and brutal, in complete contrast to the man who snuck me candy and brought me on wild shopping sprees at the toy or book store.

I had never been able to picture him doing it, picking up some object, and slashing it across my mom's back.

You never really knew what someone was capable of, what ugly resided in their hearts, but I never could accept that as the reality.

But maybe there was a different explanation.

Maybe this woman before me, who had a black hole for a heart, maybe she had been one to find so much fault in her daughter that she sliced her open, made her bleed.

Now that was a reality I could easily accept.

Maybe that was what she meant by they.

My mother and grandfather, who kept this from me, protected me from it.

Not sure what to say, not wanting to show a weakness by protecting my family, I said nothing at all, just listened to my own heartbeat, the steady whooshing sound of my pulse in my ears.

"I've seen them, you know," she went on, clearly having it in her mind to have a heart-to-heart with her long-lost granddaughter. To what end? That was yet to be seen. But if she wanted to talk, it meant more time for me to think, to process, to plan to figure how I could play this to my advantage. 

"My daughter. That thug she calls a husband. Your brothers. Those people you call aunts and uncles. The same people who have refused to tell you about me since you were born, who also conveniently left out that they kept me imprisoned in a cell on your grandfather's property for even longer than that."

I tried not to let her words have impact, tried not to feel anything about them. Which was clearly her motive in telling me.

But how could I not think about it? Feel about it?

Even if I didn't want to - because I loved these people more than I had words to express, and I had a lot of words - there was no stopping it.

The sinking sensation in my gut, a sensation I had no other word for except horror.

I wanted to deny it, to say they weren't capable, no matter what this woman had done to deserve it, of illegally imprisoning her for decades. 

Even if that was where she was headed - to a cell - it had to be done right. Right? You couldn't just catch people, throw them in a cell, and act like life could just go on as normal, like you weren't some makeshift warden.

It was especially hard for me to picture my mother being a part of that. My father, Aunt Lo, I got that. I wasn't naive. Their operations were the types that operated on the fringes of society, that crossed lines normal law-abiding citizens didn't even want to think about.

There were things I generally didn't let myself think about.

Even knowing what I knew about their operations.

I didn't let my mind drift to the uglier things.

Like to maintain their reins at the top, Daddy and Aunt Lo likely had to do things that weren't simply questionable morally, but outright wrong. 

Torture.

Murder.

It was hard to accept that about these people who had braided my hair, who had held my hand at my first dentist appointment, who wiped away tears, who treated bloody knees. 

These were people who had taught me fundamental life lessons that had shaped me into who I turned out to be.

But for all that love and light, there was no denying there was also a healthy dose of dark, or heartlessness.

That was a hard thing to accept.

But there was no way to avoid that harsh truth when there was a woman before you - like it or not, a family member - who was telling you that these people you shared meals with, trained with, laughed with, had put her in a cell to rot.

That being said, I know these people. I knew that whatever it was she had done meant she had earned such a fate.

"I can't imagine you were innocent," I said, shifting my gaze to her man who had decided it was safe to approach me.

It would never be safe to approach me again.

That was the odd, rather unwelcome thought, that crossed my mind right then. But even as I wanted to deny it, I saw the truth in it.

In what she had allowed to happen to me.

She had made it so that even if I escaped, even if I took every precaution to make sure nothing like this could ever happen to me again, it would never go away.

The pulsating, undeniable distrust that flowed through my veins as sure as my blood did. 

Any man's gaze who lingered would set me on edge. Anybody that got too close would make my hands curl into fists to protect myself. Any basement would bring images flooding back like a riptide trying to pull me under the crushing weight of them.

It wouldn't matter how much I trained, over-trained, tried to make my body the weapon I knew it could be.

More determined even than Aunt Janie.

More hardened than Uncle Pagan.

More diverse than Aunt Lo.

More relentless than Lenny. 

I would make myself into a whole other beast entirely

Unstoppable.

Untouchable. 

Un-take-able.

No one would ever again put me in a situation like this woman - my grandmother - had.

No one would ever again make me feel helpless, trapped, hopeless.

And in my heart, I knew that maybe meant something for my future that I would have to face eventually.

But those were thoughts for another time, when I didn't have other, more pressing things to worry about.

My freedom.

Chris'.

Mary's.

That had to be at the forefront of my mind.

Not my father's - and aunts' and uncles' - dealings.

Not what they had done almost two decades ago.

Not what I would do weeks or months from now.

All I had right now was this moment.

This moment with a big guy who wanted to take my weapons from me.

This moment where I was confronted with a psychopath who also happened to be my only living grandmother.

This moment where I wasn't exactly sure what part I was supposed to play - the sympathetic ear, or the badass she had been impressed by.

"Who on this Earth is innocent?" she asked, shrugging one of her shoulders as her gray eyes pierced into me. "No one. Not even you, granddaughter." I must have raised a brow, shown some sign of confusion or interest - both of which I felt at those words - because she went on. "All the petty rebellions. And moon-eyeing a man you know would go to jail if he touched you."

Vance.

It was weird; I hadn't thought about him at all.

It was especially strange seeing as for the past several years, it seemed impossible to think of anything else. At least not for longer than a few minutes. He was like a magnet, and my mind was drawn to thoughts of him, images of him, dreams of him.

But it had been days.

Days when maybe my mind should have drifted, should have sought out his memory, should have found comfort in it.

And... nothing.

It was a really inopportune time for these thoughts - what with Grandma-of-the-Year staring daggers at me - but there was no stopping them once they started.

Like... what did it mean?

Was I maybe not in love with him after all?

Or had I not wanted to feel more of the things I was missing by being trapped? Did I not want to think about the fact that my plan had always been to get to eighteen, finally snag his attention, and let him be my introduction to all things physical... and that this situation could possibly mean that was no longer an option for me?

Even just that thought made my saliva turn acidic again, burning like battery fluid down my throat. 

Yet another thing to contemplate at a different time.

I had a lot of introspection in my future.

If I had one.

Which I would do everything in my power to ensure that I did.

Even if I did decide to go with giving back as good as I got instead of stroking her ego.

"I hardly think having a high school crush on an older guy is even anywhere near the same thing as abducting women, and selling them out to be raped, Grams."

The Grams seemed to be the only part that penetrated her calm, collected, evil witch thing she had going on. Her eyes flashed, edges of daggers caught in the light. Her back stiffened. Her lips pursed.

"Careful," she said after giving it a moment, giving herself a moment to get her guards back up. "Haven't you ever heard the phrase about biting the hand that feeds you?"

There was no stopping the snort that rose up and forced its way out.

"What? The two times in, how many days I have been here?"

"My hospitality doesn't live up to your standards?"

"It doesn't live up to a third world jail's standards."

Her lips curved upward at that, snide, condescending. "It could be worse for you, you know," she said, tone deep, heavily weighted by the reality we both knew she was speaking of. "It really is only my word protecting you from that fate."

"Your word didn't protect my mother from getting scars all over her back," I spat.

"No. My word demanded that. So it might be smart to mark your tone."

"What's a few more scars?" I asked, shooting a look at her man who was slowly approaching. "If it is between bowing to your will, or fighting for my freedom, I will fight every time."

"So be it," she said, waving a dismissive hand. "Get her back in the basement. And try not to get yourself stabbed in the process. It would be a real inconvenience to lose two men in one day."

An inconvenience.

My gaze shifted to her man, looking for a reaction, offense, disgust at hearing that his death would simply be an inconvenience. That was how she would see it. After months or years of loyalty.

There was a flicker in his eyes for a short second before it was banked down. I figured that was a survival mechanism in this environment. Having feelings, even legitimate anger or resentment, could likely spell out death for you.

You had to learn to shut down.

You had to bottle it all up.

Which was likely why her men were so aggressively brutal toward other women. Because they couldn't take it out on the one woman who deserved it. 

I almost - for a second - felt sorry for him. Before I remembered that this man had grabbed me off the street, pulled me away from my loved ones, had hurt me, had shackled me to a wall in a basement where he knew I might be tormented and starved. And had done far worse to both Mary and Chris, along with an unknown number of other women. 

He didn't deserve my pity just because he had a job where he wasn't respected.

"Oh," my grandmother said, having opened the door, then paused, turning back, eyes even more wicked - something I hadn't known was possible - as a smirk pulled at her lips. I didn't know the woman, but I somehow knew to brace myself for whatever words might follow. She left me hanging for a moment, though, dangling with weak fingers, before she stomped down on my knuckles and made me free fall. "And why don't you bring the other girl up? The one my granddaughter here tried to defend. Have some fun with her," she added with the slimiest of smiles that left me feeling slick in the aftermath as she closed the door and disappeared.

There was nothing for a long moment except the distinct and faded click click clicking of her heels down the hall, disappearing to some wing of the home I did not know about.

A moment where her words landed heavily on me, weighed me down until I was sure my feet were sinking into the ground, like the world was attempting to swallow me up.

Of course.

Of course she would use the one clear weakness I had exhibited against me.

My humanity.

My care of another human being.

And Chris would pay for my attitude, for my relation to this raging bitch of a woman. And I had this awful, gut-churning feeling that with the permission of their boss to 'have fun' with her, that whatever happened would be worse, infinitely worse, than what had happened to her in the past.

There was a tightening around my throat, a stinging in my eyes - small remnants of helplessness before I shifted slightly to keep my grandmother's man in my sight, and the movement made the key suddenly dig into the top of my barely-there boob.

Reminding me that helpless was not something I was. Not anymore.

I had wanted to wait.

Until the house was quiet.

Until there was a lesser chance of someone hearing us shuffling through the house. Maybe we could even avoid seeing another person until we were on the grounds which gave us a better chance to take someone down, or avoid them entirely.

But my grandmother was forcing my hand.

It was now or never.

But I had to get back into the basement first.

Catch him off-guard.

That didn't mean, however, that I would go down without a fight.

Seeming to sense this, his head cocked to the side as his hand slipped behind his back.

I knew that move.

From movies. 

From watching people at Hailstorm do it.

Reaching for a gun.

It should have filled me with dread, but all I could think of when he produced the compact black Glock was Uncle Repo. 

This is a 9mm, Uncle Repo had told me once when he had pulled it out of the backpack in the woods. Small, compact, meant to be conceal carried. I got a feeling this - or maybe the Ruger - will be your gun of choice.

He had been right.

I took to the Ruger.

But I knew how to handle a Glock.

I knew how to pop out the magazine, check for bullets, stick it back in, aim, and shoot.

I needed that gun.

That gun might make all the difference.

Between freedom and perpetual captivity.

Between us getting away tonight, or being pulled back into the basement where I would be forced to accept the fact that Chris would be the one paying for my attempt to break us out.

I lifted my chin, all false bravado because, while I was comfortable with guns, had trained with Aunt Janie on how to disarm someone with one, even using real ones for training, I had never had a loaded one pointed at me with pretty darn good aim.

"You can't kill me," I informed him, proud of the fact that my voice didn't shake. 

"No," he agreed, "But V would probably let me get away with putting a really painful hole in you somewhere that wouldn't be fatal. So just calm the fuck down, let me cut off those zip ties, and follow me back downstairs, so you can avoid that. Been shot before. Can tell you it fucking sucks."

I lifted my chin higher still, but held out my wrists.

Not because I had any intention of going along with his instructions, but because I wanted him to think I would.

He lowered the gun, reaching into his pocket to produce a pocket knife, flicking it open. I had a second to realize that it was the same one I had, that Uncle Wolf had given me for my thirteenth birthday, making me swear I would never go anywhere without it. I didn't, either. I even had it on me when I was taken, hidden in the zipper compartment of my purse along with my just-in-case tampons. 

That purse was lost now.

I would never see that knife again.

There was a distinct sadness at that little loss.

The blade tip slipped under the zip tie on my left wrist, making the other side of it crush deeper into the already open and bloody wound there.

My air caught, but I managed to keep the hiss of pain inside as he pulled harder, trying to make the thick, stubborn plastic break.

It - and the piece of wood that had been between it and my wrist on the bottom - fell to the ground as he got to work on my other wrist. 

It was then, when his head was ducked, the very second that the zip tie gave, that my other hand opened, the bottom of my palm extended, slamming upward, catching him under the nose, making him fly backward with a cry of pain as blood immediately trickled out, red and ugly, slipping from his nostrils to his lips, down his chin, and dripping onto his shirt as he was able to think through the pain, and charge me.

I skittered back, giving up ground, trapping myself closer to the wall to avoid the full force of a man who was twice my size's fist as it unavoidably cracked across my cheek and into my nose, making my eyes water, making the pain overtake half my face, all but guaranteeing a black eye or two within an hour.

My arm shot out, elbow catching his chin as I fought to get the wetness to stop flooding my eyes, making it harder to see.

"E-fucking-nough," he growled, raising the other side, still holding the gun, making my stomach plummet, knowing I might have been strong, but I probably wasn't strong enough to handle a gunshot without crying in pain.

But he turned it in his giant palm, making me all-too-aware of what was to follow.

It was a silly, overused term.

And accurate.

Pistol-whip.

Even as the thought formed, I could feel the first pang of pain to the side of my head.

But just for a second.

After that, everything went black.

EIGHT

Ferryn

Panic was the first thing I was aware of as I gained consciousness, the sensation of loss of time, loss of perception, loss of reality.

Was it too late?

My gut dropped as my heart found a new home in my throat, cutting off air, as my brain tried to fully surface.

But as I finally did, as my mind and body found the connection they had been missing, I could feel my upper body bouncing, a solid, painful unyielding pressure on my belly.

A body.

I was over someone's shoulder.

Bouncing because we were descending stairs.

I had only been out maybe a couple long seconds.

Even as my eyes watched the door, left carelessly open, I could feel the insistent pounding in my temples, immediately making nausea swirl through my belly and throat.

I prayed - though I wasn't sure what kind of faith I even had left anymore - that it was just from the blow, that I hadn't gotten another concussion.

Uncle Pagan had been the one to warn me about them, having been in a ring maybe more than anyone else could claim.

Gotta be careful with headshots, Fer. Easy to get brain damage from concussions. Or second-impact syndrome. Drop dead from a simple tap because you already got so much fucking damage up there.

One nice thing about Uncle Pagan was he refused to dumb things down or even censor his speech.

But maybe, just this once, I would have been happy not to have the idea of possible death in my future if I whack my head against a cabinet because I had a couple head injuries during this ordeal.

My body jolted one final time, knocking a bit more of my air out, as we hit the landing, pulling me out of my useless anxiety.

If I was going to be anxious about something, it should have been what I was about to do, about how I didn't even know how I was going to do what  I needed to do. 

My body jumped again, less violently, as he walked over toward my spot, hauling me down, almost dropping me on my butt full-force before he thought better of it, grabbing my upper arm as I dropped. 

The shackle was on my foot in a blink, and he was turning.

Turning.

Toward Chris.

My gaze went in that direction too, finding her watching me with small, confused eyes, not understanding why I hadn't come back damaged, broken, a shadow of the girl I had been when I left.

There would be time for explanations and assurances later. 

Now, I had to act.

Before he took her.

Before he and his friends made her pay for my mistakes, for my connections, for my ignorance of them.

Had I known from the beginning, I don't know, maybe I could have used that to my advantage. Maybe I could have gotten Chris at least freed in exchange for compliance, for whatever that nutjob of a grandmother wanted from me.

But even if she agreed, even if Chris disappeared one day, who the heck knew if she would be free?

It was better this way, I decided, as I took the key out of its hiding place, and stabbed it into the lock.

It sounded loud, metal scraping metal, to my overly-sensitive, paranoid ears. 

But there was no time to think about that as I carefully slid it off my ankle, settling it down on the ground, pushing myself silently up, eyes dashing around the room for something I could use.

There was nothing.

They gave us nothing.

Except...

I almost felt my lips curve up as I tip-toe-ran across the room, closing my hands around the porcelain tank cover of the toilet.

Heavy.

Solid.

Perfect.

I lifted it up with a grimace before turning to find Chris' ankle was already freed, and that bastard's greedy hands were sinking into her hips.

She was going to shut down.

And I needed her here with me.

I needed her to be able to carry her own weight.

I had to act fast.

I flew across the room, not silently, my feet slapping on the concrete floors, drawing his attention.

But late.

Too late.

By the time his eyes could even relay the message of what was about to happen to his brain, I was pulling back, swinging, slamming the porcelain into the side of his face with every ounce of force in my body, half toppling forward from the momentum before I caught myself.

The crack was hauntingly loud, a sound I would likely hear in nightmares. The look of shock on his face froze there as his body crumpled to the side, out cold.

But there was no telling how long someone would stay out.

Seconds, like I had.

Longer, like I likely had been in the trunk of the car.

Who knew.

We had to move.

"Get up!" I whisper-yelled at Chris who I had caught just in time, before she slipped away to the beach or to Christmases of times gone by. Her eyes were saucers, lips parted wide. "Get up. We're getting out of here," I demanded again, grabbing at the man's still body, still enough that it almost seemed lifeless, digging out the gun, popping out the magazine.

Six.

I had six bullets.

Better than nothing, but if we hit trouble, six was not a lot. Not if she had dozens of men. Which, if she thought of them as disposable as paper dinner plates, she likely did.

I would have to save them, use my hands, use heavy objects, doing whatever I could to ensure I had them if or when I really needed them.

I rummaged for his pocketknife, knowing I would have to tuck it into my bra, being without pockets or shoes, and needing a hand free to open doors, but figuring any weapon was useful to have, even if it wasn't literally at-hand.

"Chris! Now!" I barked, knowing I was yelling at a traumatized woman made weak from pain and malnutrition, but I couldn't put on kid gloves now. Our lives were in my hands. I needed a good grip.

Her head jerked, like my words were a slap cracking across her cheek, making her jolt, jump suddenly upward. 

Feeling a small bit of triumph, I darted across the floor, freeing Mary's ankle, slapping my hands into her zoned-out face. 

Drugged.

She was high.

"Snap out of it. We need to get out of here," I demanded, hands framing her face - one with the gun in it, pressing against her cheek - voice a kind of desperate I needed not to sound like right now.

"She won't come," Chris' voice called, soft, quiet, afraid of being heard.

"She has to." 

"Have your father come back for her," Chris reasoned.

Her entire body jolted violently as a low, deep, masculine grumble came from between the lips of the man on the floor.

My hand felt for the cool ceramic again, rising to my feet, ready to bolt across the room, when suddenly... something switched on in Chris.

Her anger.

Her righteous, too-long-buried, all-consuming rage.

It overtook her body that had always seemed so broken, barely capable of holding her up, livened, straightened, steeled itself with purpose.

And that purpose?

That would be kicking the ever-loving-hell out of the man on the floor, the man who had likely abducted her too, had trapped her in this basement, who had carried her upstairs to be raped and beaten, who had maybe participated himself. 

There were grunts and hisses as her foot met stomach, ribs, groin, then silence when she pulled back, and with every bit of force in her body - which, at the moment, was a lot - she slammed it forward into his face.

Once.

Twice.

"Chris," I said, reaching out with my free hand to touch her arm. "Chris, he's out. He's out," I tried again as she kicked two more times. "There will be other guys to beat up," I added, and, somehow, that snapped her out of her daze. 

Her gaze shifted to me, focusing, nodding. "Garage?" she asked, jerking her chin up toward the stairs.

"I think that is the best bet," I agreed, holding out the toilet tank top toward her, knowing I would need both hands to swing it, but I had to hold the gun. "Both hands. And HAAM like you just went on him," I told her, watching her look down at his prone body, his mouth and nose bleeding alarmingly, doing so with glacial indifference. 

"Got it," she agreed with a firm nod, closing both her hands around it, following me as we made our way to the stairs, both spreading our legs wide to step only on the outsides of the planks where they were stapled down, where they were least likely to creak.

Getting to the top, my stomach swirling, my pulse pounding, I pushed the door open, steeling myself for any possible encounter as I poked out my head.

But there was no one.

Not even the sounds of anyone.

And, well, why would there be?

They were probably all figuring their comrade had it under control, gearing up for the "fun" they were supposed to be having with Chris.

I looked back, giving her a small smile, not quite victorious because we were nowhere near freedom yet, but letting her know that we had won a small battle in the war.

I moved out a foot only to feel my arm snagged in a surprisingly strong grip. Turning, Chris pointed toward the far end of the hall. Likely because it was quieter. And since she had a lot more experience with this place than I did, I moved across the hall with her barely two feet behind, sneaking like curious kids through the halls on Christmas Eve night.

The thoughts moved through my mind, unbidden, as I was worried even thinking them might jinx us, as we rounded a corner that I knew from counting my steps that first night would lead to the garage.

This is too easy.

But why would they feel the need to station guards all around when they kept us chained in a basement behind a locked door?

My breath was stuck in my lungs as my hand grabbed the doorknob, feeling it turn easily in my hand, opening without a sound.

Unable to help it, I shot Chris an incredulous look over my shoulder before moving into the dark space. Unable to see, I felt Chris brush against me as she came in.

I closed the door with a quiet click as Chris's hand felt around the wall, found a switch, flicked on a fluttering bulb overhead.

I cringed at it, wondering if the light might draw attention, but it was pitch. We needed to be able to make out our surroundings.

The car that had been my very temporary prison was gone, leaving nothing but a drip spot darkening the concrete of the floor. 

Long, weather-worn workbenches lined one wall, tools of every form, for every task, hung and lay there, some new and shiny, others dusty, connected to one another by long filmy strips of old cobwebs.

It smelled like a garage too - all dirt and oil and airlessness. 

"There's a door," Chris declared, waving a hand out to the side of the electric garage door - something that would make too much noise, but would have been the only option otherwise.

I nodded at her, eyes moving across the workbenches for anything of use. "Do you see a flashlight? It's nighttime," I added since it was easy to lose track of day cycles in a darkened basement. "I don't know if we are escaping into the woods or what, but a flashlight would be handy."

And a lighter.

Something weatherproof.

But I wasn't hoping for miracles.

We would make do.

"There," I whispered, seeing the telltale silver of a Maglite butted up on a shelf near the door.

We moved in that direction, Chris instinctively taking my six, letting me lead, trusting me.

Trusting me.

When  I was as young as she was.

But, I reminded myself, squashing down the insecurity that had been bubbling up, I had led a very different life, had very distinct skills that she likely lacked. She probably picked up on that, decided I was better equipped to take the lead.

My hand reached for the flashlight, closing over the reassuring weight, knowing it could easily break a nose or eye-socket. Or front tooth. Like what happened to Malc a few months back, giving everyone nightmares about it for weeks while he got a nice crown and acted like it was no big deal.

I hoped it had batteries as my palm slipped over the grips on the handle, my thumb finding the button on the end, pushing. 

And it lit up.

Right on something very familiar on the floor beside the door.

Something I had with me when they took me.

Something they had used to pull me back, catch me off-guard.

My purse.

I didn't even think.

Didn't stop to wonder if the contents were worth taking it, worth the extra weight. It was like there was some primal drive not to have any part of me left here save for maybe some blood stains on the floor. 

I grabbed it, throwing it over my shoulder, but keeping the flashlight in my hand, just flicking it back off.

"Take a deep breath," I told Chris.

Because we were likely going to run like we never had before.

But also because we had no idea what we were walking into, what we might have to face, and a steadying breath was likely something we both desperately needed.

I sucked one in until my lungs burned, until my belly was distended, holding it for a second before letting it slowly out. 

"Ready?"

"Yes."

There was conviction in that word, something deep and certain, something that said she felt it right down to her marrow.

And that determination was only going to do us good as I reached for the door, turned the lock, and moved outside.

The air felt colder than I expected, prickling over my too-exposed skin, making goosebumps form over every inch of me as a shiver racked my system.

The moon was blessedly bright, not hiding behind some clouds, making an already difficult task downright impossible, illuminating the grounds, massive and tree-lined. 

We must have been facing the side property, a giant, crumbling retaining wall holding back a mass of overgrown vegetation, trees that were more like weeds, brambles, leaves that looks suspiciously shiny even in the nighttime - poison ivy. 

It would have been the closest way to freedom, the side yard.

And while I was a pretty decent climber, I didn't know about Chris. And this didn't exactly seem like the time for a long conversation about anything. 

I moved out a few feet, keeping my body pinned to the side of the house as Chris moved back a foot, shutting the door with a click that was quieted by the sounds of the night. Wind rustling leaves. Crickets chirping - 'stridulating,' Rey would have informed me, being a bottomless pit of critter knowledge. Whatever it was, it was loud, a symphony playing our escape music.

I was sure I would never hear it the same way again.

I took a few more steps, pulling in another breath before I popped my head out from the corner of the house to check out the backyard.

I yanked back with a hiss, heart slamming.

"What?" Chris whispered, barely loud enough to meet my ear, and I was only inches away.

"Three guys," I told her, leaving out that they had semi-automatics strapped around them, one hand on the guns themselves, ready to use them.

If there was that kind of force in the back, the front was likely no better. But we had to check. 

Worst case, we could scale it. 

I wasn't the strongest of girls, but with fear and adrenaline coursing through me, I was sure I could pull Chris up with me if she couldn't manage on her own.

I moved around her, nodding toward the front. "Gotta check," I whispered, hip brushing against hers as I moved.

It was only maybe twelve feet, but felt the length of a football field before I was at the other corner, steadying myself as I peeked my head around to see.

There was one guy toward the far end of the property, eyes scanning around before there was the distinct - but indecipherable from this far away - sound of a man's voice. I froze, watching as the man in the front smiled, then followed the voice, seemingly toward the back with his friends.

"We need to run like hell," I told Chris, giving her just a second of eye-contact to be sure she was with me, then turning back.

I didn't think.

I didn't weigh the pros and cons.

I just threw my legs out - suddenly incredibly thankful that I had inherited them from my father - and ran as fast as they could carry me, heart slamming, wind whipping through my hair, the sound whooshing against my ears.

I didn't realize I was alone until I heard her.

Not Chris.

No.

V.

My grandmother.

"Missing something, Ferryn?" her voiced called, sickly sweet, like a witch asking children to come inside for tea when she intended to bake them into cookies.

I knew.

I knew without turning.

But turn was what I did.

To face my grandmother.

To find her with Chris right in front of her, a gun pointed at her temple.

She must have frozen.

Chris.

She must have frozen when she felt a hand grab her, because she was still holding the top to the toilet tank, could have used it before that gun pressed into her temple.

I wondered a bit fleetingly if she knew V, if she knew she was behind the whole operation, if she understood what was happening right now.

One look at her face showed sheer panic, her eyes taking on the look of a deer in the headlights, her body trembling visibly even from a distance. 

"Give it up!" I demanded, voice raising enough to make the man who had abandoned his post a moment ago coming running back.

"Excuse me?" V asked, seemingly put off that I wasn't similarly shaking, wasn't begging for our lives.

"Give it up. What do you stand to gain here? What do you want from me? My mom? She's too smart to walk in here without a plan and backup, and you know it."

"A mother will do just about anything for the love of her child."

"Love," I scoffed, trying to keep her talking, trying to give Chris a chance to fight or even just sink to the ground, get out of the path of a bullet. "What could you possibly know about love with that black hole of a heart in your chest?"

"Love has many forms," V insisted, a muscle starting to tick in her jaw.

"Really? And scars across your daughter's back, and threats of rape against your granddaughter... what kind of love could that possibly be?"

There was no answer to that.

She fumbled with that realization for a second as my eyes begged Chris to do something. Anything at all. 

But all she could do was shake.

Mouth I'm sorry to me.

She was sorry.

Her.

Not my grandmother.

Her.

Somehow, that made the rage boil through my veins again. 

There wasn't a single thing this girl who had been brutalized for months, with no hope of an end, should be sorry for.

But the woman behind her?

The woman with a gun?

The woman who wanted to use her to get to me?

To have her men abuse her in my name?

Yeah, no, that bitch had everything to be sorry for.

"Get back in the house, Ferryn," she finally said, breaking the deafening silence, sounding so much like a frustrated mom that it was almost laughable.

But she wasn't a mom.

She was a demon wearing the flesh of a woman who once so happened to give birth to someone.

That was all.

My chin was in the process of lifting a bit higher, something almost all of the women in the girls club did, a sign of pride and stubbornness I was proud to inherit, when she spoke again.

"Do it now, Ferryn," she said, voice low and lethal. The woman had a blade of a knife instead of a tongue. "If you make this difficult, I will make you watch while the men have fun with your friend, just so you know what damage your insolence has."

I didn't think.

I wasn't even aware that the signal had gone from my brain to my arm until my eyes noticed it lifting.

I wasn't capable of being aware of thoughts when all I could feel was the kind of rage that felt like an out of control wildfire ravaging through my system, destroying everything in its wake.

My finger slipped to the trigger.

Pulled.

Everything seemed to slow as I felt the explosion of the bullet leaving the muzzle, felt the kickback of it through my hand and arm.

I'd swear I saw it as it barreled outward, a small flash and a lethal metallic bullet slicing through the air.

But even as I became aware of that, it was suddenly soaring through the air faster than an eye could follow.

The next thing I knew, a hole was forced into the skull of my grandmother, stark red blood and pink brain matter exploding outward from the pressure, splattering the side of Chris' face as - just like that - the life left my grandmother.

Her body swayed on its feet for a long second, her face plastered in her death-shock, eyes - so much like mine - huge, lips parted, like she couldn't believe this pathetic standoff was what finally put her in the ground, closer to the depths of hell where she had clearly come from.

There was no time for the realization to hit me as the man - V's man - roared, making me horrifyingly aware of the semi-automatic in his hand, the kind of damage he could do with it. Easily. With no effort at all.

Even as I thought it, the boots of the others on the ground as they scrambled to see what was going on filled my ears.

But then there was something else.

A whoosh.

A thump.

I knew that sound.

I knew it.

But I couldn't place it until I saw the man's body jolt, then fall backward, likely dead before his body hit the ground.

The whoosh.

That was a gun with a silencer.

The thunk was the bullet hitting home.

There was a mere second of utter silence before the other men appeared, each jolting and falling as soon as they were in view.

I knew then.

Without having to look.

Without having to hear them.

Without having to see them.

But I turned anyway, eyes scanning the woods, prying into the darkness. 

It was the eyes I saw first.

My eyes.

Her eyes.

Our dead relative's eyes.

Mom.

Mom was here.

And if Mom was here, so was Dad, so was Aunt Lo, Aunt Janie, all the men and women at Hailstorm and The Henchmen compound.

I was surrounded.

Safe.

I was safer than I had been in a good long time.

I should have felt relief.

I should have felt warmth enveloping me like an embrace.

But all I felt was the rage still, and - what was more unsettling - a coldness, a deep, awful coldness that I had never known before, that was seeping into my bloodstream, organs, bones, until it was encoded into my DNA. 

I don't know what prompted it.

When I had made the decision.

If it was a spur of the moment thing, or something that I had been considering for much longer.

But as soon as I saw Dad and Aunt Lo break out of the tree line, as soon as I knew Chris - and Mary too - were safe, I couldn't seem to stop the urge. I couldn't seem to command that my body carry me toward them.

No.

I turned.

I ran.

Away.

I ran away.

"That's my dad," I told Chris who was still just standing there shaking, unable, it seemed, to truly process what had happened. "And Aunt and Mom," I added, thinking maybe women would be of more comfort for someone who had been through what she had. "They'll take care of you," I added, running past. 

Running.

Running away.

Even as my name split the night air.

Pained, worried.

My mother.

And another time.

Pained, commanding.

My father.

And others still, a chorus of the people who loved me enough to move heaven and earth to find me, to take lives without a second thought, to storm a heavily armed compound just to bring me home.

And here I was, leaving them all behind.

But I couldn't seem to think better of it.

I couldn't seem to think at all.

I just flew across the grounds, ever proof of why the track coaches had courted me relentlessly, my long legs giving me speed any of the team members would envy, even if I hated running, hated the uselessness of running in a circle to win some makeshift award.

But before I even felt my lungs starting to burn, I found myself buried in the woods, the canopy above blocking the light except for in sporadic slivers.

My bare feet met dirt and leaves, sticks, rocks, breaking them open, the searing pain something that somehow did manage to break through the blanket covering my mind, keeping thoughts at bay.

But I still didn't turn around.

I kept running.

While my lungs burned.

My muscles ached.

Until sweat was trickling over almost every inch of skin.

Until I hit a road.

Then disappeared into another set of woods.

Then hit another road.

Followed it until I found a bus stop, remembering at the last possible second to tuck the gun away.

I paid my fare, ignoring the concerned eyes of the driver and lone passenger, a guy maybe only a year or so older than me.

It felt like it took hours, but a look at the clock on the radio showed barely twenty minutes before we did it.

Broke into Navesink Bank.

I hopped off miles from my house, tearing down a back road, coming up through a space no larger than my body between fences like I had done countless times before. It was one of the few situations I was genuinely glad I had the frame of a pre-pubescent boy because no one else would ever fit.

Iggy's house was dark, quiet, as it should be for the hour. As it always was after nine p.m. when her parents' declared it was time for lights out.

I slipped through her backyard, coming up on the side of the house, knocking my knuckles on the pane of glass in a code we had used for as long as we figured out how to get past her parents' too-strict rules.

There was a pause.

Maybe confusion inside.

I tapped again.

There was a shuffle for a second before the blind moved.

And there she was.

Face ghost-white at seeing me.

At seeing whatever mess my face was in.

I didn't even know.

I hadn't seen it in so long.

She wasn't in pajamas like I thought she would be.

She was in jeans and a tee, some makeup even on her eyes.

Like she was going to go out.

There was a long pause before her hands grabbed frantically at her window, yanking it up, her voice not even quiet as she declared, "Ferryn! Oh, my God! Where have... does your Dad know you're... what are you doing here?"

"Let me in," I demanded, tapping on the screen that we had used to sneak me in so often that it barely fit within its track anymore.

"Okay, but Ferryn, your face..."

"Is a mess, I bet," I agreed, tone a little deader than usual. "Please. I will explain. But I need to come in. I need a shower. And food. Please."

Finally free to display the desperation that had been bubbling under the surface for days - and I still didn't even exactly know how many days - it seeped into every word, something Iggy picked up on, not asking any more questions.

The screen popped out as I climbed up top the little plastic fake rock monstrosity that her parents used to hide the cap for the well, hauling myself up and in, finding that with all the adrenaline depleted, my arms and legs were feeling like Jell-O.

"Shower first?" she asked, making me suddenly wonder self-consciously if I actually smelled. I never smelled. Never. I made sure of it. It was pretty much universally accepted that stinky people were the type of people that no one else wanted to be around.

"While you make me food?" I asked, going automatically to her closet to drag out things that might fit me even though I was a few inches taller and a bit more narrow.

God, new clothes.

Fresh underwear.

There were some things you never realized it was even possible to take for granted until the luxury of them were taken from you.

"Of course. Yeah. I will make..."

"Not eggs," I demanded a bit frantically. "Or rice and beans."

"O...kay," she agreed, tone hesitant, questioning, but accepting of the agreement we had made.

"But, Iggs, a lot of it. Please," I said. If it was possible to hear hunger, you could hear it in my voice then.

She must have sensed it, too, because she gave me a rapid nod before shuffling quietly off.

I let myself in through a door inside her room that led into her own private full bath, something I had always been jealous of in the past, but now was just incredibly grateful for as I put the clothes down, grabbed a towel, turned on the water, and stripped out of the clothes that had been sticking to me with grime and sweat for hours, days.

I had always been a shower freak, having to listen to Fallon or Finn slamming on the door at home, annoyed that I was taking so long.

But this was different.

This wasn't about enjoyment per se.

This was about feeling like I needed to get not only the dirt and sweat and blood off of me, but the experience as a whole.

A useless task.

I scrubbed until my skin was red and aching from the attention, but still felt a slime covering me, an invisible coat of anger, helplessness, disgust, hunger, and fear that I was worried would always be a part of me, always be a reminder of what I had been through, even if I managed to move on from it.

If.

"Here, let me do that," Iggy offered as I pulled out a first aid kit from under her sink to deal with my feet. I had scrubbed the dirt off as best I could with how raw they were, but was not looking forward to treating and dressing them. "You sit. Eat," she invited, holding out a plate stacked with sandwiches, thick with meat and cheese, bright green romaine peeking out from under the rye bread.

My stomach groaned as I dropped my butt down on the top of the toilet, taking the plate while kicking up my legs on her lap as she sat off the side of the tub, digging through the kit to find witch hazel and triple antibiotic.

"Okay," she said when I was on my third half sandwich, finding the hole in my belly felt no more full than it had been before I started eating. "Talk to me, Ferr," she asked, securing the gauze on my foot with tape. 

I did.

Words tumbling out of trembling lips, knowing that if there was a single person in the world who I could trust with my vulnerability, it was Iggy.

"That bitch," she snapped when I finished, shoving half of a sandwich whole into my mouth, chewing until my jaw hurt. "I'm so sorry," she added.

"I need to do something, Iggs," I said, heart fluttering around at even thinking about speaking these awful thoughts aloud.

"What?"

"I need to go."

"Go?" she asked, eyes small.

"I don't understand it either," I agreed, looking away, feeling my eyes glistening. "But I need to go."

"Go where?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "Somewhere that someone can turn me into a weapon," I added, cringing at how silly those words sounded spoken aloud.

"But, Ferr, wouldn't Hailstorm be the place for that?"

"Maybe," I agreed, nodding. "But they have trained me all my life. I barely held my own."

"You were surprised," she corrected, likely meaning when the men caught me from behind.

"I never should have been surprised. I never should have hesitated. I think... having my dad as my dad and my aunts and uncles as my aunts and uncles has always given me this safety net, this false sense of security. But it is false. This whole situation just proved that I'm not safer because of them. I am at a much bigger risk."

"Yeah, but... going off on your own will put a target on your back."

"Not if no one knows who I am," I said, shrugging. "Which brings me to the next - and last - thing I have to ask of you tonight."

"What?" she asked, sounding like she was dreading what I might ask.

"Does your mom still groom Peaches?" I asked, referring to the malti-poo that had a better life than most humans.

"Ah, yeah."

"Can you get me the buzzer?"

"Why?"

"I want to get rid of my hair."

"What? No! Your hair is gorgeous."

"I don't want to be gorgeous. I want to be lethal," I said, so much conviction in my tone that my voice shook slightly.

"But like... a pixie cut, right?"

"Like Demi Moore in G.I. Jane I corrected." She was shaking her head even before I finished speaking. "You do it, or I do, Iggs."

"You'd be all uneven if you did it," she objected.

To which I shrugged, making her huff her air out.

"Fine. But when you hate it, I'm not to blame."

Ten minutes later, I stood in the mirror, looking at a reflection that I barely recognized. It wasn't just the hair. My eyes looked harder, closed off. My face was a smattering of bruises. There was a stubborn set to my jaw and lips.

"Okay. I lied."

"I knew you would hate it!"

"No," I said, smiling a little, feeling a small bit of warmth swarm my chest. "I meant I lied about that being my last favor. I need a hoodie and shoes."

"You can't really be going."

"I know it doesn't make sense. And maybe I am just in shock. Have post-traumatic stress or something. But I need to do this. I can't explain it. But I have to go. Maybe it will be a mistake. Maybe I will realize halfway into the bus ride that I screwed up, that I was just crazy. But I can turn around. Or call my parents."

"Your parents..." she said, eyes and voice sad. She'd always had a soft spot for them. Likely in response to the soft spot they had for her.

"I am going to let them know. And I'm not asking you to lie for me. They'll show up here and ask where I went."

"But I don't know--"

"Exactly," I cut her off. "I'm not putting you in the middle. I will call them or write them. Tell them that. Tell them that I love them," I added, feeling my eyes water, my throat tighten.

"Ferryn, it's safe now. Just go home," she begged.

"No," I said, swiping the tears off my cheeks. "I can't," I added, slipping socks over the bandages on my feet so I could walk back into the bedroom, snagging a gray hoodie and a pair of slip-on shoes, taking a deep breath, knowing I had to go. I had spent too much time here already.

"Wait... take this," she said, grabbing her old laptop off a shelf, one that her parents had replaced simply because the new one they got her had better parental controls. "You'll need it. You know you will," she said when I started to object. Finding a backpack in her closet, she shoved it inside along with a change of clothes. "And this," she added, holding up a necklace she had gotten for her communion. "I hate it. You know I hate it," she insisted when I began to object. "And it will be worth a couple hundred if you hock it."

"I'll pay you back, Iggs," I told her. "I will get a job and pay you back."

"I know it is pointless to argue with you," she said with a smile I knew she didn't feel as she held the bag out to me.

"Do me a favor," I said when we stood there awkwardly, knowing this was going to be the last time we saw each other for a long time.

"Anything."

"Find some way to take classes at Aunt Lo's gym. Tell her I said to do it. For free. She will believe you. You should... every girl should have some training," I insisted, thinking of Chris. Of Mary. Of the countless others.

"I promise," she told me. And since we had a long track record of never breaking promises to each other, I knew she would keep it.

"I love you," I told her, reaching out with my one free arm, giving her a short, but hard, hug. "Oh, God," I hissed when I heard a car pull into the drive.

"It's Vance," Iggy assured me. "He's worried about me. I'm worried about him. We were going for coffee at the all-night. He will be so happy to know you're okay."

Vance.

There was a faint fluttering sensation much like I always used to get when I thought of him as I ducked out the window, hearing Iggy following, coming with me toward the front of the house where Vance was just languidly lifting himself from the front seat of his T-bird.

He looked as good as I remembered.

Better maybe.

But there were bags under his eyes.

Like he hadn't been sleeping.

And I guess that made sense.

"Ferryn?" he hissed as his eyes moved to me, confused for a second, likely about my new bruised and shaved look.

"Vance," I agreed, taking a deep breath.

I didn't even think about it.

I didn't hesitate.

I closed the distance between us, reaching up, snagging him by the back of the neck, dragging him down, and sealing my lips over his.

It should have been the most exciting moment of my life. It would have been had it happened a week ago.

But excitement wasn't something I was seeking anymore.

This was determination.

This was the culmination of something I had wanted for far too long without acting on it.

His body had stiffened for a moment, knowing he was supposed to pull away, but softened a second later as my lips demanded a response, then got one, as he finally took over until my body felt like it was thrumming with need.

Then and only then did I pull back, break away, finding his eyes hooded with desire but somehow also widened with shock as he looked at me.

"Just so you don't forget me," I told him, taking a steadying breath I desperately needed, turning, and running off, ignoring the stabbing in my feet, ducking in and out of backyards until I reached the convenience store a town over, taking a card out of my wallet. 

My 'for emergencies' card.

Except it was simply a card to my parents' checking account.

With a lump in my belly, I withdrew eight-hundred, reminding myself that - like Iggy - I would pay them back as soon as I could.

I bought a ticket.

I climbed on a bus.

And I watched as Navesink Bank drifted into the distance.

I would be back.

When I was stronger.

When I could stand on my own.

When no one else could ever use me again.

Yeah, I would be back.

Someday.

NINE

Summer

My daughter shot my mother.

My daughter killed my mother.

I was pretty sure that in no version of my reality that I had ever thought that those were words I could think.

But there was no other way to put it.

Because that was exactly what had happened.

I almost hadn't gotten the chance to know that fact. At least not in real time.

They weren't going to tell me.

My husband.

Our friends. 

They were going to leave me at Hailstorm wringing my hands, worrying the floors, pretending to put on a brave face for the boys. Boys who were getting older. Boys who knew something was up. Boys who had a lot of questions, and disbelieving brow raises at my makeshift answers. 

If I hadn't walked outside at the exact moment I saw my husband climbing into one of Lo's SUVs, I might have been left behind.

I swallowed back my undeniable bruised pride, hurt feelings at still being thought of as weaker, as someone too soft to handle all the hard in their lives, and planted my feet, steeled my spine, demanded they take me to save my daughter.

There were a lot of frightful people in the world, but there was none more terrifying, more unpredictable, more formidable than a worried mother.

Needless to say, they took me along.

I was even handed a gun.

Then we drove.

The most frustrating revelation was finding out that she wasn't that far. She could have been anywhere in the world. Indeed there were people looking for her in every damn corner of it. But she was just a few towns over.

A few towns on a big piece of property with an old, abandoned house, protected by a handful of armed guards.

A small, pitiful empire.

It must have irked V to know that, to know she had been brought so low, to know she had so high to rise still. 

She was an appearances person.

She was a reputation person.

And hers had clearly not recovered as fast as she had planned.

Her contacts she had built over decades of ruling the trafficking trade on the east coast had likely moved on, aligned with other people, established new bonds, forgetting all about her existence.

If I knew the woman, and I thought I maybe had gotten to know how her brain worked over the years, analyzing what had happened with my imprisonment, listening to the stories my father told me about the conversations he had held with her, then I knew that she would have made up for her insecurities by being extra vicious, showing her men the kind of ruthless leader she was, forcing their allegiance through sheer terror rather than respect or hard-won loyalty.

And my daughter, my perfect innocent, brilliant, willful, amazing daughter had been in her grips for six days.

Six.

I wasn't sure I had slept that many hours all put together since she had gone missing, making me antsy, frazzled, sick to my stomach wondering what Ferryn was going through.

Had she met V yet?

Had she learned of the betrayal at our hands for never having told her?

And it was a betrayal, no matter how we tried to dress it up. 

She wasn't a child anymore. She hadn't been for a good long while, whether I wanted to accept that or not.

And she deserved honesty from us, not evasions and half-truths, rules enforced for reasons we refused to disclose to her.

Had she been angry when she learned?

Upset?

Indifferent because there were more pressing things for her to worry about.

God, what if things were being done to her like they had been done to me? 

Or, heaven forbid, worse?

"Stop, baby," Reign had demanded from beside me, his big hand landing mid-thigh, giving it a hard squeeze.

"I can't help it," I had admitted, not even bothering to pretend I didn't know exactly what he was talking about. After all these years, we barely needed to have full conversations anymore to get things across to one another.

"We'll have her soon."

Yes.

But what her?

There was no denying there would be changes.

I had changed after V had taken me.

And I had been older.

I had more life experience.

And pain, hunger, fear, and humiliation, they altered people, they got into your bones and changed your cells and altered your DNA.

The Ferryn we brought home was going to need time, love, space, rest, food, understanding.

And even then, there was no guarantee she would be our same sweet, rebellious girl.

We would have to get to know the new parts of her, show her that they were just as lovable. 

Everyone had just gotten into place hidden in the tree line, most of us out front, most of Lo's men out back, trying to take stock of the surroundings, of the men, of the firepower.

And I couldn't deny the almost overwhelming surge of gratitude that overcame me at that moment, for all these people who would do anything, not just because they were commanded to, but because they thought of Ferryn as one of their own, wanted her safe return just as much as we did.

As many trained, hardened professionals that surrounded us, I was pretty sure not one was saved the heart attack of seeing the garage door open, and two girls sneak outside.

Escape.

Our girl.

My girl.

And another around the same age, with lighter hair and eyes, her clothes tattered and blood-stained.

Both were worse for the wear.

My eyes noticed that before they noticed the gun in my daughter's hand, the toilet tank cover in the other's. There were bruises and blooded bits. There were haunted, terrified looks in their eyes. 

That was what the mom in me took in first.

"She's got a gun," Reign's voice whispered into my ear, making me aware of it. But only after noticing how raw her wrists were. From some sort of binding. I remembered that pain well. 

But she did.

She had a gun.

How?

That was a good question.

And I knew the answer involved violence.

The answer involved her needing to take one of these men down to get it.

There was a small swelling of pride, in her drive, in her ability to pull that off, to utilize her many years of training. But that was all drowned out by the knowledge of how bad the situation must have been for her to take that leap.

Because she had to know we were coming. She had to know that we were using every tool available to us to get her home. She knew that she could have waited it out.

But something had happened to make her feel like that was not an option.

Something had driven her to rise up, to take charge, to free not only herself but this other girl as well.

My stomach twisted to think of what that motivator could have been.

We all watched in stunned silence as she eyed the crumbling retaining wall. She could do it. We all knew she could do it. She had been climbing trees and walls and anything else she could get her hands on since she was old enough to pull up her own weight. And after a few hard hits and skinned knees and palms, she learned how to do it without getting hurt. 

She could do it.

But she didn't.

And I couldn't help but wonder if it was because she intrinsically knew that the girl with her could not make it. 

The survival instinct was an interesting thing, wild and primal.

And usually selfish.

If it came to life or death, most people worried only about themselves. With a few exceptions being made for children.

But my daughter - my good, sweet, amazing daughter - was willing to take a more risky route in order to save this other girl who she barely knew.

Her body shifted, peeking out into the back of the grounds, finding danger, and jerking back.

Then she was moving toward the front, toward me, toward us.

She didn't know we were there.

She didn't know we had her back.

But she continued on with her friend behind her, looking at the lone guard in the front, seeing him get called away, then whispering something to the other girl before they both ran like hell.

But her friend was snagged from behind, her young body jerking violently back, slamming into V's shoulder. Her beautiful, broken face seemed to crumble as the cold muzzle of a gun pressed into her temple, like the weight of the world was on her, like she knew what was ahead for her when she got dragged back inside, how V would make her suffer for trying to escape. My heart broke for her, even knowing we were going to save her, get her back at any cost, take her away from this hell, I could feel - even from across a field - the deep, hopeless anguish coming from her even as V taunted Ferryn, made her stop dead in her tracks, turning back, away from me, making it impossible to see if there was fear there, horror, uncertainty on how to proceed.

She could have chosen the easy path.

She could have kept running.

To her freedom.

Leave the doomed girl to her fate.

But no.

Not my daughter.

My daughter screamed across the field, told my mother to give it up, informed her that she had a black hole for a heart, reminded her of the torture she had inflicted upon me all those years ago.

But then the girl, her friend, mouthed an apology, making Ferryn's shoulders widen, her spine straighten.

And then V - my mother - signed her death certificate.

By threatening to have the girl raped in front of my daughter, forcing her to watch, blaming her for the incident.

I didn't fully seem to register the arm raising, the gun pointing.

The only thing I was aware of was the bang of the explosion as the bullet left the barrel.

As it soared through the air.

As it hit V right in the forehead.

"Oh my God," I hissed, unable to quite grasp it, to accept that my daughter - this girl so innocent in life aside from silly teenaged stuff - had just taken a life.

But there was no time to think on that as men came running, as Henchmen and Hailstorm men and women took them out.

Ferryn stayed frozen at first, watching the carnage before finally turning, seeking us in the tree line.

And she looked right at me.

Right at me.

I couldn't explain the look I found in her eyes - eyes so much like my own that I had always found them easily readable.

And that was chilling.

Not to be able to read her.

To have her staring right at me, somehow seeing me even in the distance, and not be able to know what she was thinking.

Her look was shut down.

Not blank.

Guarded.

Reinforced.

As I sat too stunned to move, Reign broke free from my side, Lo from my other, both of them charging forward.

I saw the second she recognized them.

But there wasn't relief.

There was something else.

Something that almost looked like a grim determination.

Before she did something that, no matter how I thought on it after, I could never understand.

She turn and ran.

But not before telling her friend that she was safe, that her dad and aunt and me would take care of her.

I jumped up as I saw her disappear toward the back of the house, watching as Cash, Virgin, and Pagan took off after her.

I wasn't even aware of the sensation of running until I was in the back of the property, seeing Malcolm and Edison tear into the woods as well, on her trail.

They wouldn't catch her.

Don't ask me why I thought that, how I knew that, but I did.

They wouldn't catch her.

And maybe part of that had to do with the fact that she was fast. So fast that sometimes she blurred when she ran.

But a bigger part, I was sure, had to do with the decision to go.

The decision to leave.

To run away from us instead of toward us.

When she was clearly in her right mind enough to know that she was safe, that we were a means of protection since she told her friend exactly that. 

I would never catch her.

I felt an overwhelming sense of uselessness as I stood in that yard as half a dozen of my loved ones - my husband included - tore into those woods after her, while the rest stayed behind, guns out, moving inside the house.

The house where there were likely still threats.

Threats that could open up a window and shoot out at any moment, take my life right from me.

But I couldn't seem to muster the drive to find shelter until the storm passed as I stood planted there, eyes on the woods.

Minutes.

Hours passed.

And then Reign re-emerged.

One look at the shocked, desperate, worried look on his face told me all I needed to know.

She was gone.

Ferryn was gone.

And don't ask me how or why, but I simply knew she wasn't coming back.

And it was right about then that it hit me.

That I couldn't find the strength to hold it together anymore.

And I just broke.

--

Lo

The leader in me knew I should have gone into the house, neutralized the threats with my team.

But everything within me felt pulled to the girl who slowly lowered down to her knees in the front yard, like they had finally, finally given up on her.

She dropped down there, just an inch from the dead body of a woman who had held her captive for an untold amount of time, seemingly unable to find any strength even to move a few feet away.

Just giving up.

And I knew that look.

In her eyes.

I knew that goddamn look.

I had seen it so many times.

Too many times.

On the faces of far too many girls and women.

But the one that came to mind the most, the one that looked as wrecked as she did right then wasn't one of those masses.

It was Janie.

She looked just like Janie had.

When I found her.

When I simply knew what she had been through, tried to save her.

When she begged for me to just let her die.

That was who this girl looked like.

That was the haunted terror in her eyes.

That was the hopelessness there, the realization that even if her body were now safe, her mind would never be.

I felt it back then, and I felt it as I carefully approached this girl.

A deep-rooted need to wrap her up, to protect her, to love her, to give her some of my strength, to convince her that this wasn't the end, to build her back up, to make her into the woman I knew she could be, a woman who wasn't defined by something that happened to her, a woman who would pave her own way in life.

It was an animalistic thing, something encoded into my DNA.

Something, maybe, just maybe, I would call a maternal instinct.

"Honey," I said, tone low and lilting, the kind you'd use on a scared animal. Which, well, was - if you thought about it - exactly what I was dealing with. I slowly knelt down in front of her. "My name is Lo. I'm Ferryn's aunt," I explained, wondering if she was even hearing me. She seemed zoned out, somewhere else entirely. "What's your name?" I asked, pushing the AK backward, making the strap between my breasts make a scratching sound against the material of my shirt.

I didn't even think twice about it until her eyes sought the gun, making me wonder if I should have discarded it before approaching her.

But she didn't jerk back or stiffen up; she just looked at where it was poking out at my hip for a long moment before her gaze rose to mine.

"Chris. I'm Chris."

"Chris," I agreed, nodding a little. "Do you maybe want to get out of here?" I asked. "I have a car. We can go anywhere you want."

"I want a shower," she said immediately, making me aware suddenly of the dried blood and dirt on her skin, the grease and mats in her hair.

A shower was the last thing you wanted to do after being raped.

It destroyed evidence.

And there was no mistaking it.

She had been raped.

If I knew anything about it - and I did - many, many times. By many men.

But my people, well, they had orders.

Namely, we were cleaning house.

No prisoners.

Just bodies.

There was no redeeming these people.

Our court system seemed unwilling to take rape cases to trial, let alone convict them.

So we were handling justice this time.

Whether that was right or not was open to interpretation.

But it was what was going to happen.

So there would be no need for evidence collection.

There was no reason she couldn't shower.

"Okay. A shower. We can do that," I agreed, standing slowly, reaching my hand down toward her.

She looked at it for a long moment before placing hers there, letting me pull her onto her feet.

"And food," she added, voice barely a whisper as she fell into step beside me, her hand still clutching the toilet tank cover.

She could keep it.

On the walk back to the car, the drive out of this town and into Navesink bank, then the short walk up the driveway of mine and Cash's home, she did, she kept it.

Just in case.

She could keep it.

As long as she needed it.

Then I would replace it.

With a knife.

A gun.

She would never feel defenseless again if I had any say in the matter.

And as I handed her a pile of fresh clothes that made tears well up in her eyes, and switched on the water for her, seeing her head hang as she finally let the tears come, not even bothering to swat them away, knowing more would just replace them, I decided I would.

Have a say in it.

"Don't," she yelped when I slowly started backing toward the door, deciding to let her have her moment in peace.

"Don't what?" I asked, watching her back.

"Don't leave," she begged, turning over her shoulder to look at me.

Raw.

She was so raw.

A bleeding, open wound.

My heart - hardened by so many years of witnessing the evils of my fellow humans - softened, crushed at seeing it. 

"Okay," I agreed, nodding, closing the door behind me, leaning into it.

In case Cash came home.

Looking for me.

Full of questions.

Barreling in because there had never been a reason to knock over showers before.

"Why don't you get in at the end, then throw your clothes out?" I suggested when she just stood there, torn for her need of my presence, and that for modesty. 

"Okay."

With that, she did.

Her clothes were flung out.

After that, I heard the clatter of bottles as she sorted out body wash, shampoo, and soap. Likely reapplying ten times, but not feeling any cleaner.

Then there was nothing.

Just the sniffles as she cried silently.

For ten minutes.

Twenty.

Until the whole bathroom steamed up, making my shirt stick to me with sweat.

Then, finally, likely out of hot water, her hand stuck out, reaching for a towel, then another.

"Do you want me to leave, so you can get dressed? I can go order food."

More like have Cash do it.

Because I could hear him coming in the front door.

"Okay."

"What kind of food? It's late, but the Chinese place is open. And the diner. So they have anything."

"Fries," she said immediately, making me smile slightly. Sometimes teenagers - even horribly abused ones - were just, well, teenagers. "And mozzarella sticks. Grilled cheese."

"Anything else?" I asked, sensing a hesitation like she was worried she was asking for too much.

"A salad," she surprised me by saying. I must have shown my confusion, because she shrugged a shoulder. "I haven't had a vegetable in four months," she supplied, reminding me of V's many atrocities. She didn't just like to have women raped. She liked to starve them too.

"You got it. I will be right downstairs. Or if you want, there is a bedroom right across the hall."

With that, I left her, running down the stairs, my hand slamming into Cash's chest as he tried to turn to go up them as well.

"Sh," I demanded, pushing him through the house out to the front door. 

"You brought the girl here," he guessed when we were outside.

"Yeah. She wanted a shower."

His face, already pale, seemed to pale further in the realization of why that would be. "She's young."

"Fifteen or sixteen," I agreed.

"Probably got parents worried sick about her," he said, giving me a much-needed reminder. Not all lost girls were strays I could take in. I had to have that talk with her when I went back inside.

"Yeah. We haven't gotten that far yet. She wanted a shower. And I need you to go get her food. Fries. Mozzarella sticks. Grilled cheese. And a salad. Maybe a side of veggies too."

"And you want me to leave the bags on the step," he guessed.

"I'm sorry," I said immediately, knowing I should have asked him first, knowing this wasn't just my home, my decisions to make. 

"Don't apologize, sweetheart. You're doing the right thing. I just wanted to check on you before I headed out."

I didn't even know what happened.

Hadn't thought to check my phone.

I had only one focus.

But my team - and Reign's team - were all trained and capable of handling what might have gone down.

"Out where?"

"Ferryn ran away," he told me, the words a punch to the gut.

"What?" I asked, knowing she had run, but figuring it was just shock, that someone she knew would catch her, calm her down, bring her home.

"Dunno. She took off into the forest. No one could find her."

"Get Gunner. Baird's guy. Get him to try to track her."

He nodded at that. "He's on his way."

"I'm so sorry, Cash," I said, moving forward, wrapping my arms around him.

This was supposed to be it.

We were going to get our girl back.

Get her home safe.

The worry that had been churning inside of us for days would be gone.

But there would be no relief.

Not until we found her.

Not until we knew she was okay. 

"That fucking bitch," he growled into my ear, making me have to take a deep breath at the pain behind his words.

"She's dead," I reminded him, giving him a squeeze.

"Yeah, but what damage had she done first?"

"Don't jump to conclusions," I said, even though I couldn't seem to fathom why else she would run like that. "We don't know that happened."

"It better not the fuck have."

There was determination in his voice. Even though there was nothing to be done even if that had happened. 

V was dead.

Her men were dead.

There was no one else to take vengeance on.

"She killed her," he added. 

I exhaled hard. "Yeah," I agreed. 

She'd killed someone.

And while I was glad she had the know-how to do it, had the guts to follow through in the moment when she felt she needed to, I hated that she had to. 

I never thought all the training I had done with her over the years would be necessary in a real-life scenario.

Because we always made sure she was safe.

We were never going to let her get into situations where she might need to use those skills.

Except we'd failed her.

She'd needed to.

"Killing someone takes something from you," I reminded him, though he damn well knew this himself. "Especially that first time. And especially that young. She's probably just freaked, trying to process it. She's going to come back, Cash."

"She has to," he agreed, voice shattered.

Without having them ourselves, the kids of the club in general had become like kids to us as well. Especially so with Ferryn, the oldest, the first to come drooling and crying into our lives on weekends when we would take her so Reign and Summer could have some free time, time to just be two people, a couple. 

The older she got, the more involved we seemed to get. Training and teaching her things.

I couldn't say how many times I had walked into the room to hear her talking to Cash about the music back in his day, and seeing the taken aback look on his face at realizing music he had listened to at her age was now considered classic. 

I would come in from work to find the two of them eating pizza straight from the box while watching action movies on the couch. 

And each time I saw them together, I got a little squeeze in my chest.

I couldn't fathom never seeing that again, never feeling that again.

She had to come back.

Not just for Reign and Summer whose worry I could only begin to understand, but for me and Cash, and Wolf and Janie, Malc, everyone whose life she had been a part of - and bettered for her presence alone.

The stairs behind me creaked as Chris came down, making Cash and I break apart.

"We both have things to handle," I said, watching as he smiled at my Hailstorm-voice. "We can be mushy and feel shit later."

"Yeah," he agreed, leaning in to kiss my forehead. "Keep your phone charged."

I nodded as he ran off, watching for a second before turning back into the house, finding Chris standing there, watching me with guarded, but curious, eyes.

"Is that your husband?"

"Cash? Yes. He's Ferryn's uncle," I added. 

"Is Ferryn okay?"

This was a time when maybe others would sugar-coat it, or lie altogether.

But that had never really been my style.

Women - even severely traumatized women - were a hell of a lot stronger than anyone gave them credit for.

"We don't know," I told her, closing and locking the door behind me. "She just... ran away."

"She's okay," Chris said, conviction seeping into her voice, making her words firm, unyielding, inarguable. "She's strong," she added when I said nothing. "If she ran, she has a reason. And I think she can take care of herself."

She wasn't wrong.

Ferryn had a lot of life skills.

From surviving less than ideal situations to navigating modern life things like how to ride buses and trains by herself, you named it, someone had thought of teaching her.

Just in case.

There were always so many 'just in cases' in our lives. 

And Ferryn, the oldest, the oldest girl, had gotten far more individualized attention than likely any other kid on the planet.

She would be okay, technically.

But would she be okay mentally?

Emotionally?

Where would she sleep at night when she was too young to rent a room?

I guess it was one of those things that time would tell.

"They never took her," Chris said, snapping me out of my swirling thoughts. "At least... not like me," she hedged, not there yet, not ready to say the words. 

It felt wrong to feel relief, standing here with a girl just the same age, just the same amount of innocent, but there was no denying it. Whatever she had to face up for herself, that was not a part of it.

"They just took her up earlier today. And she came back a few hours later with her wrists torn up, some bruises, but not.... broken. If anything, she seemed almost, I don't know, triumphant. I didn't get it at the time. But as he was coming to take me, she had a key to unlock her shackle. She grabbed the toilet tank cover. And then she knocked him out. Freed me. And we ran."

I nodded at that, walking past her, holding out an arm in invitation as I went into the kitchen. "Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate?"

"Tea," she told me, sounding surprised.

"That woman," I started as I poured water into the pot, as I found teabags, "she was Ferryn's grandmother." I chanced a look over, finding her watching me, eyes penetrating, but saying nothing. "She didn't know. V had been locked up for all of Ferryn's life because she had once tortured Ferryn's mom. It's a long story. If you want all those details sometime, I can give you them. But they're not important. But V wanted, well, we don't know what she wanted when she took Ferryn. To use her as leverage, maybe."

"She killed her own grandmother."

"You know that phrase, Chris, about blood being thicker than water?"

"Yeah."

"The funny thing is... everyone has that saying wrong. It is actually 'the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,' which is exactly opposite of what everyone thinks. Sharing blood, sharing DNA with someone... it doesn't mean anything. The bonds we form out of love we choose from the people we choose are the strongest bonds. I don't think Ferryn was looking at it quite so much like she was killing her grandmother, but more like she was killing someone who threatened her and someone she cared about."

"You mean me? She barely knew me."

"Maybe. But I know Ferryn. And she has a strong moral compass. She has a giant heart. She would never have let something happen to you because of her. Not if she could do anything in her power to stop it. So she did."

"I could have stopped her," Chris said, voice hollow. "When she grabbed me? I could have done something. I didn't."

"Look at me," I demanded, tone a little firm because she needed it. "Ferryn has had something like eleven years of training from experts in many fields. You, I would wager, are just a normal girl from a normal life. How could anyone expect you to know how to handle a situation like that?" She nodded a bit, swallowing hard. "If you want, I can teach you."

"Teach me?"

"How to react in a situation like that," I clarified. "I don't know if you know what Hailstorm is, but I run it. I also own a gym that teaches self-defense. I can teach you. We can teach you. If you want that," I added. "And, you know, if your parents would allow it," I finished, remembering what Cash had said.

"I don't have any family," she whispered as I turned to flick off the stove, pour the steaming water. I turned back at that, arm aloft with the teapot still. "My mom died. I was in the system when... when they took me."

"For a long time?" I asked, putting the pot down, then turning fully to her. 

"Long enough to know it was not the same as a real family."

"Fair enough. I'm sorry about your mom, Chris. And I know everything is overwhelming now, but I need to ask you something."

"Okay?" she said, feet shuffling, thumb from one hand stroking across the surface of the one on the other.

"Where do you want to go from here?"

"I don't think I understand the question."

"You're a child still. Technically. There needs to be a plan for your future."

"I can't go back. In the system. Not after..."

"Okay," I agreed, nodding.

Her head turned away, looking out the back window at the streaks of dawn creeping across the sky in the distance.

"You said you could train me."

"Yes."

"Can you... can I just... stay here?" she asked, each word its own sentence, dragged down by her fear of rejection, her uncertain future if I said no. "Just until I can figure something else out," she added.

"I have a husband," I started.

"You'd need to ask him," she cut me off.

I chuckled a bit at that, never having quite gotten used to the idea of having to check with anyone. Not even after all these years. But then again, there had never really been any of those 'big decisions' for us. We didn't have kids. We didn't have pets because our schedules were so unpredictable. So what was there to really 'check with' him about? The color of the bedspread?

Well, okay.

I should have checked with him about the bedspread.

But when you found a floral one that spoke to your soul, you just had to buy it, right? To hell with the consequences. 

At least they're not pink and purple. That was what he said when he came home to see it, throwing the blanket back, then breaking it in with me.

"I was thinking more that... I know men might be an issue for you right now," I said carefully.

"Not all men are bad," she said just as carefully.

"Look at me," I demanded, waiting for her to do so. "I can guarantee you that Cash would never lay a hand on you. I would bet my life on it."

She nodded a bit at that, swallowing hard.

"Okay," she agreed, making a tugging sensation start in my chest, in my heart. "His name is really Cash?"

"Legally," I agreed with a smile.

She waited a beat, nodding her head a little.

"He's too old for his haircut," she declared, catching me off-guard, making me throw my head back and laugh.

So that was how Cash and I became parents.

To a teenager.

--

Cash

Gunner was able to find hints of her, traces of blood from cut feet, but they suddenly disappeared right next to a bus stop.

Hailstorm was on the bus situation.

And, more useless than I had ever felt in my life, I asked Lo if it was safe to stop by, then made my way home to my woman.

"Where is she?" I asked, walking in to find Lo sitting on the couch cross-legged, one of her books opened on her thigh like a bookmark.

"Sleeping."

"She has no family?" I asked, dropping down beside her.

"Well... sort of."

"How can you sort of have family?"

Her face turned to me then, a face I knew so well that she often didn't even need to speak, I could just tell what was up by looking at her.

But this was a look I was sure I had never seen before.

It made her brown eyes bright, but not with amusement, not even pure happiness. It was something else. Something like hope and fear and tentative joy, a combination I had no way of interpreting.

"Congratulations, Daddy... it's a girl?"

I was equally lost hearing those words as I was trying to explain her expression.

My system seemed assaulted all at once with a mixture of sensations.

Confusion.

Understanding.

Fear.

Anxiety. 

But underneath all of that, trapped somewhere so deep, I wasn't even sure it existed until right that moment, a need.

It had been - for us - an easy decision not to have children. We could have tried. We could have attempted adoption. But that need had never been there. And if you didn't desire it more than you desired everything else in your life, well, then you had no business taking on a child.

And it wasn't like we were lacking in the kid department. It seemed like every couple of months, someone was popping another one out. We were surrounded by baby giggles and Play-Doh, and Legos to step on, and Barbies to look at and genuinely sit and wonder if it was a sign of something bad that someone had painted the faces like death masks, or just kids being weirdos.

I got to teach someone how to ride a bike.

I got to be the designated court jester to an otherwise all-female kingdom.

I got to play catch, kick a soccer ball, attend about a thousand school functions, birthday parties, spend thousands of dollars on toys every Christmas.

It was like having kids, with the nice break of a full night of sleep, and the freedom of having wild, sweaty sex anywhere we wanted without having to worry about scarring kids for life.

That was the life we had chosen.

Happily, I might add.

Without a single regret.

But hearing that she didn't just want to do what she had done a dozen times before - take someone in at Hailstorm. Like she had with Janie once upon a time.

She wanted to bring her home.

With us.

Yeah, that meant something more than I could put words to.

"She knows about me, right?" I asked.

"Yes. She's okay with it. She said she recognizes that not all men are like the ones she knew at V's place. Maybe a bit of a wide berth physically for a while would be wise, but I think engaging her would be smart. Maybe I will have Mina and Renny over for dinner in a week or so, let them get a feel for her, give us some direction."

"Janie turned out great, baby," I reminded her, grabbing her book, carefully tucking a weekly advert between the pages because I knew she would flay me if I dog-eared the page, then tossing it on the coffee table, pulling her legs over my lap. 

"I just want to be sure," she insisted. "Janie seemed great, but struggled for a long time. Years. Not sleeping. Never getting involved with men. If Mina or Renny could give us some advice on how to avoid that, maybe she could be just a tad more well-adjusted."

"Or meet her own Wolf someday," I suggested, knowing that had been a turning point. For her. For him. Never had I seen a love so capable of healing, a couple more suited.

Lo snorted, rolling her eyes at me. "Love doesn't save people, Cash."

"No?" I asked, raising a brow.

"What did love save you from?" she demanded to know.

I shrugged a shoulder, smirking. "A life of debauchery."

"Right. Because we are a couple of squares," she teased, poking me in the ribs with the tips of her toes. "Oh, speaking of square, parental things. Your new daughter thinks you are getting too old for your haircut."

"What?" my voice hissed out of me as my hand rose to rub up the shaved side of my head.

"Hey, you're someone's old man now. It's time for one of those haircuts that says you've given up on life."

"Or maybe I will dye it bright blue, and humiliate her everywhere we go."

"There's a real dad talking," she said, smile warmer than I had maybe ever seen it as she scooted until her ass landed in my lap, her head tucking under my chin.

"We're gonna have to move," I voiced my thoughts aloud a long couple of minutes later. We had a one bedroom. And while we had a basement, I figured that was a place she was never going to want to live in, not even if we refinished it.

"There's a house for sale across from Repo and Maze," Lo agreed. "Two beds, two baths. Two minutes from the compound."

"I'll call the agent sometime tomorrow."

She made a murmuring noise, her fingers tracing down my arm, then twining her fingers between mine.

"I want our girl back," she said, articulating what we were both thinking. 

"Me too," I agreed, trying not to harp on the pit in my stomach, trying to remember that Ferryn, for all her youth, was mature for her age. She would be okay. If she survived V's compound in one piece, she could survive anything.

"What are we going to do about the legality of this?" I asked, knowing that a girl suddenly popping up in the town might make some people -  like the cops - rather curious.

"I have a judge who will grant us guardianship."

"What'd he do?" I asked as my hands sifted through her hair, wondering as I so often did how it was always so soft. I knew Lo and her people had something on everyone, something they could use against them, use to blackmail them. If you were a person in power, Hailstorm had a file with your name on it jam-packed full of dirty secrets.

"Before or after his trip to Neigh Ranch?"

"Do I even want to know what Neigh Ranch is?"

"Ever hear of pony play?" she asked, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

"You're shitting me."

"His Honor Mister Ed," she agreed. "Have some very private pictures of him getting brushed down with blinders on. It's good stuff. His wife - who spends every waking hour working at the local church - would not like getting her hands on those."

I had an evil genius for a wife, one who read raunchy shit and wanted to reenact it and put flower blankets on the bed and, well, I still fucking loved it.

More and more each day if I were being honest.

"Babe?"

"Yeah?" she asked, sounding half-asleep. As she should be. She hadn't slept in days. 

"Feel like I should know our daughter's name."

"Oh, Chris," she supplied, shaking the sleep away. 

"Short for?"

"Christienne."

Christienne.

"She likes tea. And cats. And speaks French."

"So we can look forward to her one day cussing us out in another language?"

"Maybe it's time for some night classes," she agreed, leaning up to kiss the underside of my chin.

"Our whole world is about to change," I said.

"I know," she agreed, squeezing my hand. "I kind of love it."

"Me too."

--

Reign

The car came screeching up to the gates.

For the second time.

That T-bird.

With the same guy at the wheel.

Vance.

But this time, with his sister Iggy in the passenger seat, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

He muttered something to her, huffing out a breath when all she did was shake her head at him, then climbing out of the car alone.

"Ferryn was at my parents' house a little while ago," he supplied immediately, cutting through all the bullshit. "She's gone already. And she wouldn't tell Iggy where she was going because she didn't want to put her in the middle. But I thought you would want to know. She showered, ate, took care of her cuts, shaved her head, and took off."

"Shaved her head?" I couldn't help but repeat, brows drawing together.

While, as a whole, Ferryn was pretty down to earth and level-headed, there was always a small bit of vanity in her, as with just about anyone her age. She was fanatical about her hair. It seemed so unlike her to shave it off.

But that was important to know.

We had to get that out there to all the people looking for her, the police stations, everyone. A shaved head would make her look completely different.

"Okay," I said, nodding. "Thank you. Anything else,  Iggs?" I asked, moving toward her open window.

I had a good enough rapport with her after about two thousand visits to our house.

"She said that... she needed to become lethal," she told me, eyes a little red-rimmed and watery. With as tight as those two had always been, I knew this was weighing on her as well.

"Lethal," I repeated, not quite grasping it.

"She said she needs to be a weapon, that she can't rely on you all to protect her anymore."

Because we had failed her.

I'd failed her.

Even though I had a text from Lo that claimed the other girl - Chris - said that Ferryn hadn't been abused. Other than the bumps and bruises she got for striking out first.

It wasn't about the severity of the damage done to her.

It was that no harm should have ever come to her on my watch. And my watch was twenty-four-fucking-seven hours a day.

That was my one goddamn job.

And I failed at it.

I had failed her.

So badly that she now couldn't trust me to do a better job in the future.

So badly that she thought the only answer was to run off, find someone to turn her into an even more lethal weapon than she already was.

And then what?

Even if she managed to sneak away with all of us looking for her, what was the plan?

Weeks?

Months?

God, years?

I couldn't fucking fathom that reality.

"She said she was going to call or write," Iggy said, seeming to sense my worry, my uncertainty, my confusion. "She said as soon as she lands somewhere, she was going to get in contact. She doesn't want you to worry."

Right.

Like there was any chance of us not worrying.

For however long she was gone.

Didn't matter if four years passed, she was over twenty, and had a life of her own going. I would still worry. Every fucking moment of the day.

And Summer.

Fuck.

Summer.

She had to have known what this would do to her mother, her mother who already felt guilty about the entire V situation as a whole even though she had no hand in it, couldn't help where she had come from.

And she had just started to come back to us. After Lyon's murder right there in front of her eyes. After the long spell of grief that came from that.

Then this fucking V shit.

And now Ferryn was going off on her own.

At sixteen years old?

Couldn't even drive a car yet, and she was going to make a life for herself without us?

God, I hoped she at least had the sense to take money. Hell, fucking drain the account for all I cared. Whatever she needed so she never felt desperate, never had to stay in unsafe areas, never had to defend herself against predatory hands again.

"Anything else you can think to tell me, Iggs?" I asked, watching as she seemed to replay the whole situation in her head.

"I gave her a piece of jewelry to hock if she needs it. And my laptop."

"You're a good kid, Iggs. I'll pay you back for that."

"That's not necessary," Vance cut back in.

"It is," I countered. "And if you two need anything, you let me know. You two did everything you could to help me find my girl. I won't forget that."

They left a few minutes later.

I didn't see Iggs for years.

Or the dark-haired guy who used to sit in the driveway not looking at my daughter.

Not until he showed up at my gates for a third time.

Calling in his marker.

Wanting to prospect.

But that was a story for another day.

--

Summer

Everyone was watching me as though they expected me to splinter apart.

Maze had called in the girls club like some emergency intervention, like they would all be there with tweezers and glue in case I needed to be put back together.

My daughter was gone.

My daughter who I had spent every single day with for sixteen years... was gone.

The most surreal part of that whole realization was that it couldn't overtake everything, it couldn't change the fact that, well, even with her absence a giant hole in our home, in our hearts, life had to go on.

Dishes still piled in the sink, needing to be cleaned. Laundry piled in the hampers, needing to be washed. My hollow-legged boys still needed three - or, let's face it, at their age... five - square meals a day. Homework needed to be done. Bills needed to be paid. 

Life had to keep moving forward.

Even as her bedroom collected dust bunnies in corners.

Even as her library books went so overdue that Reese showed up to the house to retrieve them herself. 

Even as our phone didn't ring.

Even as our mail never brought word from her.

And I couldn't get a moment alone to process the whole situation. Even when the boys went back to school, giving me my mornings and early afternoons. 

Even then, the times when I was usually left to my own devices to catch up on chores, or wallow as I wanted to do now, there was no peace.

Someone showed up at the door with food, with plans to go out, with demands I come back to training.

As if keeping me busy could make me forget that my daughter was missing. That a giant chunk of my life was gone. That life would never again be the same.

At least not until she came home.

If she came home. 

"Mom," Fallon said, making me jolt hard away from the potato I was supposed to be peeling as Reign sat just a few feet away, casting worried glances in my direction every few minutes. 

"Yeah, bud?" I asked, forcing a small smile.

"Where's Ferryn?" he asked.

He hadn't.

Asked.

Finn had. 

Twice.

He was younger.

He was easier to placate with a careful white lie.

Fallon? 

Yeah, he was getting older, smarter. 

And, like I had come to expect from him with his quiet introspection, he bided his time, weighed his words. 

Then came for the gut-punch.

Two weeks later.

When I had taken a breath finally, thinking he was just going to let it go, that it was one thing off of my very full plate.

"And don't tell me that camp story," he added when I opened my mouth to tell him exactly that.

My gaze found Reign's, seeing his opinion there before he even opened his mouth to tell me it. "He's not a kid anymore."

I looked back at Fallon, unable to see him as anything other than my little boy. 

But, at the same time, I could see my mistakes so clearly in hindsight.

The lies or evasions we had fed to Ferryn over the years, over the last several months especially. 

Had she been in on things from the beginning, would the situation had played out differently? Would she never have slipped her guard? Would she have understood why we had been so strict? Would she never have been taken? Would she be here right now with me?

And because I had no answers, because all I had was the harsh reality that may have stemmed from our silence, I took a deep breath, and I told our son what had happened, where his sister had gone.

He was silent for a long few moments after, thinking it through, considering his words.

"She'll be back," he decided, tone full of a confidence I wish I possessed. "You know her. She'll be back. When she feels ready," he added. "And until she's ready, I don't think you're going to find her."

There had been no leads.

Some bus drivers who remembered her, though had mistaken her for a boy, but couldn't remember in which direction she had taken off in after they dropped her.

Janie and Alex and a whole slew of hackers they had hired for the job hadn't found a single trace of her. 

They looked in the most likely of places.

New York

Philly.

Chicago.

Nothing.

Not a single breadcrumb.

Not even Gunner, who had been on it day and night, could pick up a trace.

Our girl was a ghost.

Utterly un-find-able.

Just how she wanted to be.

And Fallon was right.

We would only find her when she was ready.

When she wanted to be found.

That was a hard reality to accept.

First, as an adult, a whole team of worldly, experienced adults actually, to be bested, thwarted by a teenager. 

Second, as a parent, to be unable to know the most basic of things - if their baby was okay. If they were eating. If they had a roof over their heads at night. If they were safe.

But that was the reality we were forced to live with.

It was a full month before we got a letter with no return address, though the postmark was from Pennsylvania. 

"Mom, Dad, and, well, everyone else - 

I know you're worried. I know you don't understand. But I had to do this. I promise I am safe. I'm eating - you can even tell Rey that I am eating the veggies she always tried to push on me. I have a place to stay. I don't know how long I will be here. But I am welcome for however long I need to be. And when I am ready, I promise I will come home. 

And until then, I'll write. 

Mom, I know you need more than that. So, I will write once every week. 

Dad, stop beating yourself up. This isn't your fault. This is just something I had to do for myself. 

Fallon, watching other kids play Minecraft is a waste of time. Go take some lessons with Uncle Pagan. 

Give Finn my room. He's too old to share with Fallon now.

And please tell Aunt Lo and Uncle Cash to take care of Chris. She needs them. She was so broken. But if there is anyone I know with a steady hand with glue, it's Aunt Lo. 

Tell Aunt Janie, and Uncle Malc, and, well, anyone who ever trained me for even one afternoon that it helped. It all helped. When I wanted to give up, give in, just surrender to it all, it was their voices in my head telling me to get up, to fight. And thank you, Mom. Because I know you were the one who made sure I got that training. 

Oh, and my library books are overdue. Can you give them back before Aunt Reese has a heart attack? 

I love you, more than you know. And I'm sorry I am making you worry. But I promise I am fine. 

XOXO Ferryn."

Fallon started lessons the next day.

Finn moved into Ferryn's room a few months later, when we knew for sure that there was no reason to leave it as a shrine.

And me, well, I waited for that letter.

Every single week.

Of every single month.

Of every single year.

It always came.

Until one week... it didn't.

TEN

Ferryn

You could count the time that passed in many different ways.

By the birthdays of my brothers I missed, and felt an almost crippling stab of guilt over.

By the Christmases I didn't spend baking cookies with my mother.

By the sheer volume of times I considered giving up, giving in, going home.

You could even measure it by other things.

Newer things.

Like by the number of bruises I had accumulated over the course of each twelve-month period.

How many times I broke the little bones in my hands.

How many times I had to have something stitched.

How many new styles of fighting I learned.

How much skill I had managed to pack into that time.

Until one day, I did it.

I bested my teacher.

A feat never before accomplished.

One I never thought would occur.

But I did it.

And that meant one thing.

I had no idea what I might return to.

What hurt feelings there might be to be found.

What resentments I would have to bear.

What awkwardness I would have to endure as people grew without me.

What new faces and connections I would have to learn.

But regardless of all of that, it was time.

I was going back to Navesink Bank.

DON'T FORGET

Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking time out of your life to read this book. If you loved this book, I would really appreciate it if you could hop onto Goodreads or Amazon and tell me your favorite parts. You can also spread the word by recommending the book  to friends or sending digital copies that can be received via kindle or kindle app on any device. 

ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

If you liked this book, check out these other series and titles in the NAVESINK BANK UNIVERSE:

The Henchmen MC

Reign

Cash

Wolf

Repo

Duke

Renny

Lazarus

Pagan

Cyrus

Edison

Reeve

Sugar

The Savages

Monster 

Killer

Savior

Mallick Brothers

For A Good Time, Call

Shane

Ryan

Mark

Eli

Investigators 

367 Days

14 Weeks

Dark 

Dark Mysteries

Dark Secrets

Dark Horse

Professionals

The Fixer

The Ghost

STANDALONES WITHIN NAVESINK BANK:

Vigilante

Grudge Match

OTHER SERIES AND STANDALONES:

Stars Landing

What The Heart Needs

What The Heart Wants

What The Heart Finds

What The Heart Knows

The Stars Landing Deviant

Surrogate 

The Sex Surrogate

Dr. Chase Hudson

DEBT

Dissent

Into The Green

Stuffed: A Thanksgiving Romance

Unwrapped

Peace, Love, & Macarons

A Navesink Bank Christmas

Don't Come

Fix It Up

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jessica Gadziala is a full-time writer, parrot enthusiast, and coffee drinker from New Jersey. She enjoys short rides to the book store, sad songs, and cold weather. 

She is very active on Goodreads, Facebook, as well as her personal groups on those sites. Join in. She's friendly.

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Goodreads Group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/177944-jessica-gadziala-books-and-bullsh 

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<3/ Jessica