Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Melissa
The cold comes first—not the ache splitting my skull or the copper flooding my mouth. This cold burrows deep, works its way through muscle and marrow until I'm nothing but frozen meat waiting to crack. Or be cracked.
My eyes open. Everything blurs. Doubles. Spins.
Everything snaps into focus through my haze of pain.
Cold metal above. Gray concrete closing in.
Black mold creeps along the seams where the walls meet the ceiling, alive with slow decay.
The air isn’t just blood—it’s old blood, the kind that’s had time to thicken, to curdle with something fouler beneath it.
The kind that means this place has seen screaming.
Where the fuck — Fire lances through my ankles. Not the dull throb of a bruise, but the white-hot bite of teeth sinking into bone, crushing. My breath locks.
I jerk. Nothing moves. My arms stretch overhead, wrists trapped in unyielding metal. Toes scrape concrete—just enough to keep my shoulders from tearing free, not enough to hold my weight.
They’ve hung me.
Like a slab.
Like something waiting to be carved.
Blood drips down my forehead, sliding past my eye. I blink it away, but more comes. A slow, steady trickle from whatever split open my scalp.
How long have I been out?
I force my head up. The movement sends fresh agony cascading through my skull, but I need to see. Need to understand where the fuck I am.
A basement widens out in front. Long. Industrial. A corridor of metal cell doors lining both walls, disappearing into shadow. How many people have died down here?
A sob cuts through the silence.
My head snaps right. Fresh pain. Don't care.
Millie hangs opposite, maybe ten feet away. Same setup. Same metal restraints. Blood crusts under her nose. Her white shirt torn at the shoulder, as if someone had tried to stop her from running.
“Millie.” My voice scrapes out raw. Shredded. Someone took sandpaper to my throat.
She doesn't respond. Just keeps sobbing. Her whole body convulses with each breath.
“Millie.” Louder this time. “Look at me.”
Her head lifts inch by inch. Tears run down her cheeks, mixing with the blood from her nose—red on red, salt and copper.
When her eyes finally find mine, something cold slides through my gut.
It terrifies me more than the restraints cutting into my wrists, more than this basement that reeks of rot and piss, more than the death hanging thick in the air between us.
Guilt.
Pure, crushing guilt. Of course she’d think this was all her fault.
“I'm so sorry.” The words tumble out between sobs. “I'm so, so sorry, Melissa. This is all my fault. I dragged you into this. I should have—I never should have—”
“Stop.” I try to put force behind the word, but my head's pounding and everything hurts. “Stop apologizing and help me figure out how to get us out of here.”
“We can't.” Her head jerks back and forth, violent and erratic. “We can't get out. There's no way. They're going to—”
“Shut up.” I pull against the restraints binding my wrists. The metal bites into skin—industrial-grade, zero give. Fuck. Think. “We're getting out. I'm not dying in some fucking basement.” Not now. Not after everything.
Olive.
Her face slams into my thoughts. Those green eyes. That gap-toothed smile. The way she threw her arms around Hella's neck and called him Dad without hesitation, without question.
“I'm getting home to my daughter.” I force the words out through gritted teeth. “And you're coming with me. So stop crying and start thinking.”
Millie's sob catches. Hiccups. “How can you—after everything I've done—”
“You didn't do anything.” I shift my weight, trying to ease the pressure on my ankles. The metal cuts deeper until warm blood trickles down into my shoes. “This isn't your fault.”
“It is.” Her voice breaks. “It's all my fault. If I had—if I'd been honest—”
“About what?”
She goes quiet. Her eyes drop.
“Millie.” I hiss through the pounding in my skull. “About what?”
She doesn't answer. On any other day, it would piss me off, but right now we’re about to be carved like a Christmas roast and I’m not real fond of that idea.
I test the ankle restraints next. Same result. These aren't coming off without tools or keys or a fucking miracle.
Think. There has to be something. Fuck. I can’t think, and the blood dripping down my face isn't helping. Concussion. Probably.
“Millie, I need you to focus.” I try again, keeping my voice steady. Calm. “Who did this? Who took us?”
“I don't know.” But her voice wavers. She's lying.
“Bullshit. You know something. So start talking.”
More silence.
I'm about to push harder when movement catches my eye. Across the basement, past Millie, one of the cell doors sits slightly ajar. Darkness beyond it. Complete and absolute.
Is someone in there?
Are they watching us?
The thought sends ice down my spine that has nothing to do with the cold.
“We're going to make it.” I say it as much for myself as for Millie.
“We're going to get out of here. I'm going home to Olive. And you—” I force myself to look at her.
Really look at her. My baby sister. Nineteen years old and already so broken by whatever's been chasing her.
“You're going to tell me the truth about what's going on.
And then we're going to fix it together. Like always.”
That makes her cry harder.
“I haven't been honest with you.” The words come out strangled. Desperate. “About any of it. About Prague. About why I left. About what I—”
She cuts herself off, pressing her lips together like she's physically trying to keep the words inside.
I stop struggling with the restraints, my full attention snapping to her.
“What do you mean?”
“The nunnery in Prague.” Her voice drops to barely above a whisper. “It's not what you think.”
“Okay.” I keep my tone level. Millie is like a cornered animal on the best of days. One slight raise in your voice and she’ll cave. “What is it?”
“It's owned by an organization called Triple Zero.” She swallows hard. “No one knows who they are. How many there are. Where they operate from. But they're—” Her voice cracks. “They're everywhere. They control everything.”
“Everything like what?”
“All of it.” The words rush out now. Like she's been holding them in for too long and they're finally breaking free.
“Human trafficking. Drugs. Weapons. Every gross, underground deal you can think of.
Every horror you've ever read about in the news. Every nightmare that keeps you up at night wondering how humans can be so evil.”
My mouth goes dry. “Millie—”
“They're an empire.” She's not crying anymore. Staring at me with hollow eyes. “Built on suffering. On taking people's worst impulses and monetizing them. And the nunnery—” Her voice breaks again. “The nunnery is one of their operations.”
I don't want to ask the next question. Don't want to know the answer. But I force it out anyway.
“What kind of operation?”
Millie's face crumples. “They sell the nuns.”
White noise rings out through my ears. What the fuck.
“They what?”
“To the highest bidder.” She's sobbing again now. “As virgins. That's why they take them so young. Train them. Keep them pure. And then when they're old enough—” She can't finish the sentence.
Horror crawls up my throat. “The orphanage.”
“Yes.”
“Is that—” I can barely form the words. “Is that the same one I was in? When I gave birth to Olive?”
The silence that follows answers everything.
“No.” The word rips out of me. “No. Tell me it's not the same one.”
“I didn't know.” Millie's voice rises to a wail.
“I swear to God, Melissa, I didn't know.
Not until months after you'd already left. Not until I started digging into what they were doing and found the records and saw your name and I—” She's hyperventilating now.
“I didn't know. Please, you have to believe me.
I would never—if I'd known what they were going to do to her—”
“What did they do to her?” The question comes out deadly quiet.
She shakes her head, sniffing. “Nothing. The babies really do get placed in homes. Good homes with one requirement, that they must be Catholic.” I squeeze my eyes closed.
“I never understood why that was and still don’t, but Melissa, the babies that are born there aren’t in danger.
It’s the sisters. They come from all over the world, either by their parents force or whatever.
” She sniffs. “And when we hit eighteen, we’re sold. ”
I know her words should ease my panic, but they don’t. “But you’re nineteen?”
She freezes, forcing all her secrets back into the dark corner. “I guess, I don’t know. I didn’t fit the bill.” That makes no fucking sense. I couldn’t even count how many times I’ve wanted to strangle my little sister, but this definitely makes top three.
“Millie.” My voice comes out steady, because I can kill her when we’re out of here and aren’t about to for real die. “How do we kill them?”
She stares at me as if I've lost my mind. “What?”
“These Triple Zero assholes. How do we kill them? All of them.”
“You can't—that's not—Melissa, you don't understand. They're—”
“I don't care.” I cut her off. “I don’t know what shit you’re hiding, and when we get out of here I’m going to ride your ass about it, but right now, we need to get out, whether that means we go through them to get there or not.”
“They are untouchable,” she whispers, ever the pessimist.
“Bullshit.” I flash my teeth, working on the restraints again. “No one is that untouchable. Everyone bleeds. Everyone dies. We need to figure out how to make them do both.”
She glares. “You sound insane.”
“Maybe I am.” The adrenaline's kicking in now. Pushing back the pain. “But I'm also a mother. And I will burn down the entire fucking world to get back to her. I did not just go through what I did for it to be all over now.”
My shoulders sag as I blow out a breath. Deep down, I know I can’t break these restraints. The reality of it loosens all tension in my muscles.