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PROLOGUE
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love~ Sophocles
Tamara
Not so long ago, Joshua Smith kidnapped a girl. A frightened girl who had no idea of the true evil that exists in the world.
He chained me up, whipped me, and locked me away in a dark cellar for weeks on end. He made me dance on an electric plate until I fainted. He bruised me so badly that I could barely limp to the breakfast table. He wrapped a choking collar around my neck and hobbled my ankles with chains so I’d know who owned me, so I couldn’t escape him—not even in my thoughts, not even for a second.
The way he tortured my body wasn’t the worst thing he did to me, though. That wasn’t what broke me.
He also kissed me and stroked me and showed me pleasure like I’d never known before. He made me come so hard that I saw stars. He praised me for my strength and my kindness and bravery. He chased away nightmares that had haunted me for a decade, and lifted a heavy darkness from my soul. He held me in his arms and made me feel like the most beautiful, special girl in the world…only to thrust me away from him in contempt and hurl me back into my lonely prison cell.
He pulled me into his arms and grasped me tightly, then spun me away from him again and again, until I was dizzy and desperate. He stripped away my defenses and invaded my heart and mind, made me crawl for him, made himself my whole existence, my reason for breathing. I lived and died for his approval. I cried oceans of tears for him, but it was never enough.
Despite everything he did to me, I searched deep in my soul for forgiveness, because holding on to the hate was poisoning me from the inside out. I thought I saw the good inside, hidden by thick scars and the walls he’d erected over the years. Now I believe that I was wrong all along. Joshua Smith is exactly as he appears—a cruel steel machine with a fistful of knives where his heart should be.
But he’s finally pushed me too far. He’s committed the one unforgivable sin, and I realize at last I will have to stoop to his level if I want to survive him.
I’m not a broken, frightened girl anymore. Now I’m a woman. A very angry woman, who knows her own worth and who will not be trifled with anymore. A woman with nothing to lose.
What’s that ringing in my ears? Was it me who fired the gun?
It must have been, because I’m clenching it in my sweaty, shaking hand.
I hear gurgling. I smell blood. I close my eyes and search for peace.
This feels familiar. I’ve come full circle from the night when I saw Joshua as he really was for the first time. The night when he took me.
I open my eyes and look down, and I see what I’ve done, and feel nothing but emptiness. Not the release I sought.
“Are you sorry now?” I ask, but there’s no answer. It’s much too late for that.
CHAPTERONE
JOSHUA
Six months earlier…
The throbbing of my foot and nose wrenches me awake, and I lie silent for a moment until I get my bearings.
My thoughts are fractured, floating, confused…until they fly back together and collide with a bang that sends a wave of dizziness sweeping through me.
I remember my Jaguar gliding to a stop as I pumped my foot uselessly on the gas pedal. Charlemagne had sabotaged it. He was controlling it remotely from somewhere nearby. A bitter smell burned my nostrils, and I heard a hissing of gas from the car’s air conditioning vents. I tried to open the door, but the locks wouldn’t function.
I sucked in my breath and scrabbled for my gun, which lay on the seat next to me. I was going to shoot out the window, but whatever gas he’d pumped into the car worked too quickly.
And that was the last thing I remember before I woke up here.
Where is here?
I open my eyes and struggle into a sitting position, bracing my hand on the frost-rimed carpet of leaves. It’s late afternoon. The sun is melting into a bloody lake of fire on the horizon, and my breath makes puffs of vapor in the chill air. October in upstate Maine is bracingly cold.
I can’t breathe through my nose. My hand flies to my face, and I feel crusted blood. The clouds are drifting from my mind, and I remember that Tamara broke my nose.
I’m wrapped in a blanket and I’m nude. And I’m alone. No Charlemagne.
No Tamara.
