Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sabrina
Darkness has a way of changing time.
At first, I counted the days, scratching marks into the wall with broken fingernails until my fingertips bled.
I whispered the numbers to myself over and over because I thought that if I stopped counting, I would lose whatever part of me was still real.
Eventually, though, the numbers stopped making sense.
The basement never changed. There was no sunlight down here, no windows except the tiny one near the ceiling that showed nothing but fragments of grey sky whenever the clouds shifted.
The concrete walls stayed cold, the air remained damp, and the smell of mould and rust clung to everything until I could taste it every time I breathed.
My knees were pulled against my chest as I sat in the corner furthest from the stairs, a thin blanket wrapped tightly around me. It did nothing to keep the cold out. My body ached constantly now, and every movement felt heavy and slow, as though my limbs no longer fully belonged to me.
I thought I had been down there for months, maybe even longer. Long enough for the outside world to forget I existed.
Not that there was much waiting for me outside anyway.
Joseph and Jacqueline weren't coming for me. I knew that. At first, I convinced myself they would eventually notice I was gone and call the police. Maybe Joseph would pretend to care enough to look for me because losing me meant losing the monthly check that came with fostering me.
But deep down, I already knew the truth.
They didn't care about me. I was never their daughter, never family. I was just another responsibility they tolerated because they were getting paid to look after me. I wasn't anyone's daughter, and the moment I disappeared, their lives probably became easier.
No one was coming.
The sound of footsteps above me made my entire body tense automatically. I stopped breathing because I knew exactly who they belonged to – the man who had kidnapped me and dragged me away from everything I knew as though my life meant nothing.
Ivan Volkov.
The basement door creaked open a second later, and dim light spilled down the stairs. He appeared at the top before slowly making his way towards me.
Even in the weak lighting, he looked terrifying, as though violence had carved itself directly into his face over the years. His dark eyes landed on me immediately as he descended the stairs, his hands clasped behind his back while his polished shoes echoed across the concrete floor.
He smiled.
I hated that smile. It never reached his eyes.
He muttered something under his breath in Russian as he approached, his voice smooth and calm in a way that somehow made him worse. I didn't understand the words, but I understood enough from his tone to know they weren't kind.
I stayed silent, which seemed to amuse him.
“You are stubborn,” he said finally, his thick accent curling around every word. “Still staring at me like you hate me.”
I didn't answer.
“How long do you think you have been here?”
My throat felt dry when I spoke. “Months.”
Something dark flickered across his expression.
“Two weeks.”
Only two weeks. If two weeks already felt endless, I couldn't imagine what months would feel like, let alone years.
Ivan crouched in front of me, resting his forearms against his knees like we were having a normal conversation instead of whatever this was.
“You know nobody is coming for you, yes?”
I looked away from him, not because the words hurt, but because they didn't. That was the problem.
He noticed my silence and smiled again.
“Good,” he murmured softly. “Acceptance makes things easier.”
The room felt smaller with him this close, as though the air itself had tightened around me.
“You had a life before,” he continued vaguely. “A name. A past. But those things are temporary.”
I frowned slightly despite myself.
Ivan tilted his head, studying me carefully. “Sabrina Hart will not exist anymore.”
The words made something cold crawl down my spine.
“What?”
“You will have a new life now,” he said smoothly. “A new purpose. A new identity.”
Fear tightened in my chest with every sentence. “What are you talking about?”
He ignored the question completely.
“The old life is gone already. No one is searching for Sabrina Hart. No one is missing her.”
Hearing someone else say it made it real.
Ivan reached out suddenly, gripping my chin hard enough to hurt and forcing me to look at him.
“You belong to me now.”
The words wrapped around my throat like chains. Underneath the hatred was something worse: real fear. Deep down, I knew he meant every word he said.
Ivan released me a second later and stood again. He muttered something else in Russian under his breath, almost sounding amused, before turning towards the stairs.
Halfway up, he stopped.
Without looking back, he spoke calmly.
“Mourn your old life while you still remember it.”
Then he left.
The basement door slammed shut, throwing the room back into darkness.
For a long time, I didn't move. Eventually, I dragged myself beneath the tiny window near the ceiling and looked up at the grey sky. It was beautiful, and tears slipped silently down my face as I mourned the life I already knew I was losing.
For Sabrina Hart.
For whatever Ivan Volkov planned to turn me into next.
***
For the first few weeks after Ivan Volkov kidnapped me, I still believed escape was possible.
That was the cruellest part of all of it.
Hope is cruel because it keeps people alive long enough to suffer more.
The basement door was left unlocked one night.
I noticed it immediately when I pushed against it and felt it move beneath my hand. For a moment, I simply stared at it, frozen in the darkness while my heartbeat turned uneven.
Ivan's men were never careless. Nothing inside this house happened accidentally. Every movement felt controlled, monitored and calculated. Doors stayed locked, footsteps followed routines, meals arrived at exact times, and the lights upstairs switched off at the same hour every night.
There were rules for everything here.
So the unlocked door should have terrified me.
Instead, it filled me with something dangerous: hope.
I sat there for almost ten minutes, debating whether to move.
My body ached constantly from sleeping on concrete and surviving off barely enough food to keep me conscious.
Bruises covered my arms in fading shades of purple and yellow, while the ropes that had once bound my wrists had left raw marks against my skin that still burned whenever I touched them.
I should have known better.
But I was still Sabrina Hart back then, still stupid enough to believe freedom might actually exist outside that basement door.
Slowly, carefully, I pushed it open wider.
The stairs creaked beneath my feet as I climbed upward, every sound making my pulse jump violently. I kept waiting for someone to grab me from behind, waiting for shouting, gunshots or laughter.
Nothing came.
The hallway upstairs was empty.
The silence felt wrong immediately, but then I saw the front door at the end of the corridor, and suddenly none of that mattered anymore. Freedom was right there in front of me.
For the first time in weeks, air actually filled my lungs properly.
I moved before I could think too hard about it.
My bare feet slammed against the cold wooden floor as I ran towards the door. My breathing sounded too loud in the quiet house while panic and adrenaline blurred together inside my chest. Every instinct screamed at me to keep moving before someone realised what was happening.
The front door was unlocked too.
The second the cold night air hit my face, I nearly cried from relief. Freedom smelled like rain, pine trees, winter air and the outside world.
I ran immediately.
Branches tore against my arms as I sprinted through the forest surrounding the property, stumbling over roots and rocks hidden beneath the darkness.
My lungs burned painfully after only a few minutes, but I forced myself to keep going.
The cold air cut through my chest with every breath while mud soaked into the bottoms of my feet.
None of it mattered.
I was getting out.
The words repeated in my head like a prayer as I forced myself onward.
No one chased me. No shouting echoed through the trees, no gunshots followed behind me, and no headlights appeared in the distance searching for me.
That should have frightened me more than it did, but desperation had a way of silencing instincts.
Eventually, lights appeared ahead through the trees.
A road.
The relief nearly dropped me to my knees. Cars meant people, and people meant help.
I stumbled towards the road so quickly I almost fell, my chest tightening painfully from exhaustion as I reached the pavement. My body shook violently, partly from the cold and partly from disbelief.
I actually made it.
For one horrible, naive moment, I thought I'd won.
Then headlights appeared in the distance.
A black car.
Something cold settled in my stomach immediately.
The car slowed as it approached before stopping directly in front of me.
The passenger door swung open.
Ivan Volkov stepped out.
My entire body went numb.
He looked untouched by the rain. Calm. Perfectly composed. His dark coat was buttoned neatly, black gloves covered his hands, and his scarred face remained unreadable beneath the weak glow of the headlights, as though he hadn't spent the last hour hunting me through the woods.
Rain dripped steadily from the trees around us while I stood frozen in the middle of the road, breathing hard enough that my lungs hurt.
Ivan smiled.
I hated that smile more than anything.
“You run very fast,” he said conversationally.
Terror hit me so violently that I physically stepped backwards.
And then I understood.
The unlocked basement door. The empty hallway. The missing guards. No one chasing after me.
None of it had been real.
Ivan had let me escape.
He wanted me to fail.
His smile widened.
“There it is,” he said. “You understand now.”
Tears burned my eyes instantly, but I refused to let them fall.