I stopped fighting a while ago.
Every bump and jolt in the van jars my bones. My wrists are raw, chafing against the ropes binding them behind my back. The gag cuts into the corners of my mouth, the damp fabric suffocating.
I have no idea how long we’ve been driving since Vera stuck a gun in my face and forced me downstairs into the van parked behind the apartment building.
She hasn’t said a word since she shut the van door. It’s that silence that’s worse than anything.
The not understanding.
I flinch as the van suddenly jerks to a stop and the engine shuts off.
Terror curls through me as a car door opens and then slams shut. Boots scrape against the ground. Next is the click of the back door unlocking.
Light from a phone flashlight floods in, temporarily blinding me.
I squeeze my eyes shut against it, breathing through my nose, my chest rising and falling in frantic, shallow gasps.
Panic explodes through me as Vera grabs the ropes behind my back and yanks me out of the van. My bound wrists keep me from catching myself as I fall to the ground, my knees hitting dirt and gravel.
Pain screams up my legs, but it’s nothing compared to what I feel when I finally lift my head and see where we are.
No.
The house looms in front of me, a blackened scar against the night. The porch sags a bit, and the windows are gaping holes, eyes that’ve been gouged out.
This is the place from my nightmares.
My throat constricts. My lungs seize up.
I can’t breathe.
I start to hyperventilate, dragging ragged breaths through the gag in my mouth. But only thin wisps of air filter in, and black spots begin to swim at the edges of my vision.
My eyes bulge. My chest screams desperately for oxygen.
Finally, Vera marches over and yanks the gag out of my mouth. I choke and sputter, sucking in raw, gasping breaths of air.
“Mom!” I choke, still wheezing as I look up at her in horror. “What is this?!”
Vera doesn’t respond. She just hauls me to my feet, shoving me forward. My legs barely hold me up, but it’s clear I have no choice but to keep moving.
I glance around us. The forest seems to have grown closer to the house than I remember. The three neighboring houses on the street are all boarded up and look foreclosed on.
As if anyone would want to live here, in the shadow of this cursed house.
“Mom, please,” I beg, my voice breaking. “Why are you—”
“Because I’m broke, Lyra,” she finally says, her voice cold, matter of fact. Emotionless. “I’m in debt to some very, very bad people.”
I trip over the steps as she forces me onto the porch.
“I need money. Lots of it.”
The door yawns open, and I’m shoved inside.
My nightmares come roaring back: the echoes of my screams from all those years ago. The terror closing in on me.
The chains.
The cages.
The rack of dresses and the nauseating sound of flesh on flesh.
Vera keeps pushing me down the hall, to the door that leads to the basement.
No. I can’t go down there.
I start thrashing and yanking in Vera’s grip.
“Mom!” I sob, my vision swimming. “Mom, please!” A sob wrenches from my throat as she heedlessly shoves me toward the door to the basement. “I can’t go down there! MOM!”
Suddenly, she freezes. Her grip on my wrists tightens, and she sucks in an angry breath of air.
“Stop calling me that.”
I flinch as the venomous words spit from her lips. My pulse skips, my stomach knotting as I turn to stare at her. But she won’t even look at me.
I blink, my head shaking slowly. “Mom, what are you—”
“I said stop calling me that!” Vera whirls on me, gun in hand, her face twisting sharply.
My blood runs cold.
“Get down the stairs, Lyra. Now.”
Vera shoves me forward toward the basement door. My knees lock up, my heels scrabble against the floor, but she’s more determined than I am desperate.
She wants me down there.
The air feels like it’s getting thicker, suffocating, pressing down on me and wrapping around my throat. My vision swims, vicious memories slamming through me so rapidly I feel like I’m being pulled under.
I can hear the echoes of my own screams, still embedded in the walls of this house. I can smell the blood, the filth.
I can see my father’s hands around that girl’s throat.
“Mom, please,” I sob. “Please don’t make me go down there!”
Her fingers dig into my arms, forcing me closer.
“You’re my mother!” I choke, tears streaming down my face. “Please! Why are you doing this? If you need money—”
“I told you to stop calling me that,” she hisses, her tone razor-thin and cutting deep.
I shake my head, my vision blurred with tears. “I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Why are you saying that?!”
Vera’s jaw tightens, her lips pressing into a thin line. She looks like she’s about to break, like something is ripping her in two different directions. Like saying the words out loud has physically hurt her.
“Because I’m not your fucking mother,” she snaps.
Her voice rings through the basement, loud and harsh, slamming into me like a physical blow. I stagger, my chest hollowing out.
But I don’t have time to process it. Because suddenly, we’re at the sub-basement door.
The floor tilts.
“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t—”
Vera yanks open the door and shoves me in.
I stumble down the stairs in a nightmarish haze of agony, my vision blurring, my chest tightening like there are iron bands around my lungs.
The chains and cages are gone. But the metal hooks sunk into the walls are still there. So are the scrape marks on the floor, and the scratches on the wall where a rack of girls’ dresses once dragged against it.
The door at the end that led to the other room is still there, too.
The one with the mattress. With the lights, and the camera.
With him.
I collapse into the folding metal chair Vera pushes me into, my body too weak and broken to resist anymore.
I hear the snap of duct tape, and then my arms are wrenched behind the chair back, still tied together, and my ankles are taped to the legs of it.
I don’t fight back. I can’t.
I just sit there, numb, drowning in a horror I can’t escape.
A loud beeping sound suddenly pings through the room. Vera turns away from me, stalking toward a small laptop set up on a desk. The screen shows a security feed of the outside the house, and my heart surges when I follow her gaze and see the black Lamborghini tearing up the driveway come to a screeching stop next to the van.
Carmine.
“Vera,” I croak, my voice thin and shaky. “Whatever you need, let me help you. I can get you money, or anything else—”
She swings the gun toward me.
“Stop. Talking.”
Vera shakes her head, a cold, bitter smile twisting her lips.
“I was going to see what your husband would pay to get you back,” she murmurs thoughtfully. “But now I’ll see what his family will pay to get him back—the don of the whole organization should get a good price, huh?”
Then she turns to me, coldness on her face like a mask, and roughly tapes me tighter to the chair.
I struggle, but the duct tape leaves me with no way to escape. She shoves the gag back into my mouth, knotting it behind my head as the tears flow down my cheeks.
Suddenly, I hear footsteps descending the basement stairs.
I let out a muffled scream, thrashing against the chair. Vera gives me a warning look, shaking her head and holding a finger to her lips before she slips back into the shadows, behind an empty rack of shelves near the bottom of the steps.
The sub-basement door groans open.
A gun cocks.
Feet descend cautiously, a figure coming slowly into view across the room.
Black dress shoes. Black slacks. Veined, strong hands gripping a raised gun.
It’s him.
Carmine’s body is taut and dangerous, burning with raw fury as he descends the stairs. Then his gaze lands on me, gagged and duct taped to the chair.
His eyes lock on mine.
“Lyra—”
I try to warn him through the gag, but Vera lunges from the shadows, and my scream turns bloodcurdling when she slams the brick in her hand to the back of Carmine’s skull with a sickening crack.
Carmine’s body jerks, his gun clattering to the floor.
Then he crumples and drops, motionless.
