My heels tap along the floorboards as I make my way down the shadowed hall of my new temporary home.
It’s nice here. Quiet.
I no longer need to constantly straddle fight or flight. There are no monsters knocking at the door. Only the haunting thoughts of my past to interrupt the peace.
I enter the living room, the warm lights illuminating the man waiting for me on the sofa.
Luca Hart.
He’s my savior. My protector. An undefeatable force who rescued me from a life of sexual slavery.
His mouth kicks in a subtle grin, the coaxing tease of lips making me wish I could return the gesture with equal measure.
“You look nice.” His gaze treks my body, from my face to my toes and all the way back again.
Normally, that sort of admiration would make me shudder, but the shiver wracking my body stems from something inquisitive. Something more aligned with anticipation.
He has a way of bleaching my past to make me feel clean, despite my mind’s determination to do the opposite.
“Thank you.” I lower my focus to take in the beautiful dress clinging to my waist, the shiny satin, the polished shoes. This isn’t an outfit I’d usually enjoy wearing. In fact, it’s something I would despise after the years being forced into exquisite attire by my puppet master, but Luca makes everything easier.
He pushes to his feet, all tall, broad and handsome, his black suit tailored to perfection. “Are you ready to leave?” He stops before me, his lingering gaze intense, yet somehow kind.
“Yes. I just need—”
A burst of noise assaults my ears. Glass rains to the floor from the French doors across the other side of the room.
Luca’s smile vanishes. His body jolts in slow motion.
Everything slows—my mind, my movements, and my comprehension. What’s happening?
“Luca?” I reach for him and that’s when I see it—the blood. The approaching death.
A lake of deep crimson seeps out from beneath his jacket, the crisp white of his shirt transforming before my eyes.
Snapshots of a similar injury assail me.
Chloe was shot like this. Exactly like this. One minute, she was alive. The next, she was dead.
Please, no. Not again.
The world snaps back to match the hammering pace of my heart. “Tell me what to do.”
Blood splutters from his lips as he stands immobile, his eyes blinking without focus.
Fear consumes me, pummeling me with sickening heartache. I grasp his arm, clutching tight, but he doesn’t respond. “Luca.”
I don’t know what to do. I’m lost. Helpless.
Those demons usually kept at bay rush back to attack me. They taunt me about losing my protector. They cackle about my approaching demise.
I’m nothing without him. I won’t survive. I don’t want to.
“Luca, please.”
He slips from my grip, falling to the tile, his head hitting with a reverberating thwack.
“Oh, God, no.” I collapse beside him, smothering his wound, trying to stem the blood even though it gushes through my fingers. “Don’t leave me.”
He stares at me. Gurgles. Chokes.
“No.” I beg. “Don’t do this. Stay with me.”
“There’s no use.”
I freeze at the familiar voice coming from the other side of the room. The icy chill of horror slithers through my veins. I don’t want to raise my eyes, but there he is, standing before the French doors.
Robert—the man I was promised to like an object, and now he’s here to claim me.
But it can’t be real.
He’s meant to be dead.
I scamper to my feet, blood dripping from my fingers, bile rising up my throat. “No.”
“Penny.” He starts toward me, one slow step after another, his voice getting louder and louder. “Penny.”
“No.” I prepare to run toward him. To kill him with my bare hands for taking Luca from me. But my legs won’t move. “You should’ve shot me,” I scream. “Why didn’t you shoot me?”
He smirks, chilling my veins. “Penny.”
I startle and shoot upright in bed. I gasp for breath, as I cling to the soft sheets, my body coated in a sticky layer of sweat.
Every night, it’s the same. One nightmare after another. One death that follows the next.
It’s either my brother, Sebastian, my protector, Luca, my parents, or one of the many women I lost while living beneath the roof of a sex traffickers’ mansion.
I’ve witnessed everyone I care about being taken from me. Always by the same man. The