Chapter 44
The first thing I notice is the smell—damp, iron, and something sour that curls under my nose like smoke. My eyes flutter open, and the light makes my head throb. It’s low and grey, seeping through what I realise are small, high-up windows with bars across them.
I try to move. My arms feel heavy, my wrists stiff, and the bench I’m lying on is hard and splintered. My legs are cramped, my bare feet cold. I sit up slowly, everything aching, and my stomach lurches when I take in the room.
It’s a cell. Concrete walls, narrow and suffocating.
A dozen women in slip dresses that cover nothing and offer no warmth sit on benches or the floor, heads bowed, faces pale or bruised, eyes empty and wary.
Some whisper quietly, some rock back and forth, some stare at me like I might vanish if they blink, but they all have the same haunted look about them.
My pulse quickens. Panic tries to claw its way up my throat, but I clamp down on it, forcing myself to breathe. I can’t scream. The last thing I want to do is draw unwanted attention to myself.
“Where…?” My voice comes out hoarse, foreign even to me.
A woman nearby shifts. Dark hair slips across her face, catching on the raised lines of old scars.
She can’t be more than thirty, but there’s something about the way she holds herself—curved inward, defensive—that makes her seem much older.
Like the weight of this place has pressed years into her bones.
“Shh,” she hisses. “They’ll hear you.”
“They?” I whisper back, my throat dry. “Who—why —”
She shakes her head and touches her own wrist. “Questions won’t help.”
I glance down at my own hands. No restraints, but the dull ache in my joints tells me something was done—a drug, something to make me compliant. The thought makes my stomach twist.
I try to take stock. The room is small, maybe fifteen feet long and ten feet wide.
Concrete floor, two narrow benches, a single sink in the corner, a barred door that looks like it could hold back a hurricane.
There are no obvious exits, no windows I could reach.
Every instinct in me screams to run, to fight, but there’s nowhere to go.
My mind spins back to the business card. The high-rise office. The ginger shot. The edge of something metallic in the glass… I swallow hard, nausea rising. How did I let myself trust some mysterious investor? How did I ever think this was a good idea?
I scan the other women. Some are younger, some older.
They don’t speak, but their silence feels heavy, filled with the stories I don’t know.
One of them, a girl with a fiery braid falling over her shoulder, glances at me.
Her sapphire eyes are tired but alert. She mouths a sentence—stay calm—and I nod, almost reflexively.
The first thing I need is information. What do they want? Who are they? Why me?
The second thing I need is a plan. Even if the answer isn’t here yet, even if the walls are closing in, I need a way out. I tighten my hands into fists, feel the tremor of adrenaline start to burn through me.
Somewhere far away, Matt is in London, oblivious. He thinks I’m safe in Lyon, wrapped up in our stolen weekend and my showcase. He doesn’t know I’m here—with a dozen other women who all carry the same fear in their eyes—in a place where no one is coming for me.
The thought should break me. Instead, it lights something stubborn and raw in my chest.
I will not stay silent. I will not disappear quietly.
I draw in a slow breath, forcing my panic into something colder, sharper.
Survival instincts and strategy, that’s what will get me out of here.
I need names, faces, routines, weak points.
Anything. Every second I waste spiralling is a second I stay trapped.
Every second I stay alert is a second closer to getting out.
It doesn’t matter if no one knows I’m missing.
It doesn’t matter if no one is looking for me.
I will get out of here.
The first hour drags thick and slow, like wading through wet cement. The silence feels living—pressing against my ears, my chest, my throat—until my own heartbeat becomes the loudest thing in the room.
I force myself to stay still on the bench, letting everything settle into focus. The metallic tang in the air. The chill that sinks bone-deep. The low, almost inaudible shuffling of the other women.
They’re quiet, every single one of them.
I make sure my posture looks small, trying to reassure them without words that I mean them no harm. But inside my chest, something refuses to curl in on itself. I will not go slack. I will not give up the fire in my ribs.
I focus on the girl with the braid.
She can’t be more than eighteen, but there’s a sharpness in her gaze that no one’s managed to beat out of her yet.
Alert. Wary. Afraid but not hollowed. The set of her shoulders, the slight curl of her lip, the way she watches everything without looking like she’s watching at all—it all says the same thing.
She’s a fighter.
And she’ll be damned if she doesn’t make it out of here.
My kind of girl.
“Hi,” I whisper, barely parting my lips.
Her head tilts—measured, cautious. She studies me like she’s trying to decide whether I’m a threat or an ally. When she doesn’t look away, I risk a little more.
“Do you… know anything? About where we are? Or them?”
The question sits between us like glass. Dangerous to touch.
She hesitates and a bead of sweat slips down her temple. Her throat works as she swallows, then she gives the smallest shake of her head.
“Not much,” she breathes, and the faint Scottish lilt in her voice catches me off guard—sharp enough to sting. It makes me think of Logan, which in turn makes me think of Abbie, of home, of things I can’t afford to linger on.
“They don’t talk to us,” she continues. “Only come down to toss food… or take someone.” Her fingers curl tight around her bare knee, knuckles blanching. “But we watch for guard patterns, deliveries, noises from upstairs. Lights under the door. Little things, little changes.”
She lifts her blue eyes to mine, something steady sparking there despite the fear.
“We track them,” she adds quietly. “You know?”
Her message is clear enough—Watch. Learn. Survive.
I force my breathing to steady, trying to let the panic bleed out slowly instead of exploding. This room… it’s more than a cage. It’s a test to see who bends, who breaks, who waits, who fights.
I’m not built to wait.
I study the women again, slower now, letting details settle and arrange themselves into something useful.
Some of the girls are too far gone—eyes glazed over, breath shallow, their spirit wrung out of them like water from a cloth.
Others are exhausted but aware, tracking movement with the dull focus of people who’ve learned the cost of standing out.
A handful, though… there’s tension there.
Anger that hasn’t burned out yet. Deep, buried sparks.
Sparks can become fire if you know how to light them.
My gaze drifts to the older woman—the scarred one. She sits with her back to the wall, shoulders squared, spine straight, like she’s refusing to give this place even a fraction more of herself than it’s already stolen.
When her green eyes meet mine, something passes between us. Not recognition—just understanding. She sees exactly what I’m doing, but she’s not stopping me. Doesn’t encourage me either. She just watches, steady and assessing, with something like approval… or a warning not to move too fast.
Either way, I clock it, and offer her a small nod in return.
I’m already mapping the cell—distances, exits, the rhythm of footsteps in the corridor, the faint shift of light beneath the door.
The more I catalogue, the more the fog in my head thins, replaced by purpose.
Fear is still there—a cold knot under my ribs—but it’s no longer holding me back. It’s fuel.
Because even if help is coming, it won’t be fast enough.
I know Matt will tear the world apart to find me, but I can’t sit here and wait for the fallout to land on my head.
I can’t be passive. Not when these girls keep glancing at the door like it might devour them.
Not when every instinct I have is screaming that something worse is coming.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know the layout beyond this room, how many guards there are, or what comes next. I don’t even know where I am.
But I do know this—people make mistakes.
Patterns slip, guards get lazy, keys jangle, doors open. Opportunities exist in seconds, not hours.
And when one appears…
I’ll be ready.
Not just to survive.
To escape.
For all of us.
I am not going to disappear in a room like this. I am not going to let them hollow me out and turn me into another empty-eyed shape on the floor.
I’ll find the cracks in their system, the overlooked girl, the predictable routine, the blind corner, the guard who thinks we’re too frightened, too broken to try. Whatever it is.
For too long, I’ve been running from the inevitable. Chasing things that felt unattainable, doing whatever it took just to survive.
But this is where that ends.
I will claw my way out of here, dragging every woman I can with me, even if it costs me everything I have left.
Because I have a life to live and it is mine.
I refuse—down to my marrow—to let men who trade in fear and flesh decide how my story ends.
And I am not done fighting.