begin to adjust to the darkness, I have to hold back a gasp, the noise barely stifled by my gag. The large room is filled with more than three dozen girls just like Lucy, Emmaline, and Dee. All of them bruised and battered, ragged and beat to hell. They don’t huddle against each other. They don’t touch at all, actually, spread out an eerie distance from each other. They’re all wearing thin camisoles and shorts.
I don’t know how long the van ride was, but I know exactly where I am—where I must be.
This is the warehouse where Lucy said the women were being kept.
It’s fucking cold in here. Despite the fact that it’s late spring, the concrete is hard and freezing beneath my ass. I didn’t grab my jacket before I left the house, and the assholes who abducted me certainly didn’t go back to pick it up for me.
I want to puke. Bile rises in my throat, but I swallow it back. I have to keep my wits about me.
Some of the girls doze with their arms wrapped around themselves. Other girls stare into space with blank eyes that gleam in the thin beams of moonlight that make it through the dirty windows high on the walls.
Jesus. How long have these girls been here?
There are men stationed around the room, weapons resting easily in their hands, and although I don’t recognize any of them, I know they’re Rook men.
Pawns of my mother.
Camilla.
As if summoned by my thoughts, she emerges from a shadowed hallway on the other side of the room, two guards flanking her. Her footsteps echo on the concrete, each one like a gunshot.
“You had to interfere, didn’t you, Grace?” she asks, her voice calm. But there’s the slightest note of triumph behind her words. “You almost ruined everything, all the planning I’ve been doing for months and months. My own daughter, pitted against me.”
Dressed head to toe in white, she should look like an angel. Her honey-blonde hair, the hair that she gave me, either hasn’t started graying or has been expertly dyed. Her makeup is minimal, only enough to accentuate her already elegant features. She looks perfectly put together. Just like always.
I want to spit in her face, but I can’t. I struggle against the gag, trying to tear it from my lips, holding her gaze.
I don’t recognize the woman in front of me. Not anymore.
When we first met in the warehouse, I could see something of the mother who had left me behind, who’d abandoned me and my father and sold out Landon Novak, the woman who’d faked her own death.
But all I see in front of me now is a coldhearted murderer, an obsessive woman who cares only for herself. She may have built up her own syndicate, but she doesn’t care for them in the way that Hale cares for his men, their wives, and their children. She won’t give a fuck if the muscled, stone-faced men standing on either side of her die—in fact, she would be the first to pull the trigger and blow their brains out if she had to.
Camilla only wants power, and she doesn’t care how she gets it.
I hate her with everything inside of me.
“I gave you the chance.” She sighs, looking almost sad. It’s just another lie, and I can see through it now. I don’t think Camilla is capable of feeling sorrow. She doesn’t feel anything other than arrogance and pride in what she’s doing right now. “I gave you the chance to come with me, to join me. All of this… the power, the money, it could have been yours, if you’d only listened to your mother.”
Working my jaw hard, I manage to loosen the gag around my mouth, spitting it out.
“I don’t want any of this,” I say hoarsely, struggling for air. “I don’t see power here. I don’t see money. I see a fucked up woman who is so desperate for both of those things that she’s stooped as low as it’s possible to get—selling other human lives. Turning perfectly innocent girls into slaves.”
“No one is innocent, Grace.” She shakes her head. “No one is good. I wish I could make you understand that.” She gestures at the girls gathered around the warehouse. “Any one of these women would shoot you themselves if I told them that was what it would take for them to walk free. Don’t you see? We all have to look out for ourselves. Help ourselves. Because no