Chapter 1

The whole time the compound's men were dragging me back toward that room, I could not put words to what I felt.

Claire had not come to save me.

She was in a little white dress, arm hooked through Derek Vaughn's like the two of them were out on a date.

Derek.

The guy she grew up with.

She'd talked about him constantly.

His family had no money, she always said. He dropped out before he finished eighth grade and went to work.

"You made it all the way inside the compound and you're still not behaving.

"Guess you have to take a beating first."

Derek stood over me, looking down, his voice half mockery and half amusement.

I stared back at him with something bitter turning over in my chest, and all I could manage was a crooked smile.

Claire looked at me and adopted a reasonable tone.

"Ryan, you're a smart guy. Smart people read the room.

"I know you've got a lot of rich friends. Just settle in, stay put, help us get their money.

"Then we let you walk out."

I didn't buy a word of it. I'd read enough news. Of the people who get sold into these places, how many go home in one piece?

And anyway, who told her I had rich friends?

"I don't know any rich people.

"Claire, I'm a broke student."

She didn't believe me. She held out her hand and showed me the ring on her finger.

"Don't lie to me.

"The stone on this is not cheap. You're a student. If your family didn't have money, how would you afford it?"

I asked her the only question that mattered.

"So you were with me because you thought I was rich?"

"What else?"

Not a flicker of guilt. Like playing with what I felt for her had only ever been a game.

I thought about the night I met her.

My classmates and I were out together and there she was on a street corner, selling cocktails out of a cart.

Sweat on the collar of her white shirt. Under the moon she looked like something behind a veil.

One look and I went straight down into it.

To be with her I kept up my classes and hauled brick on a construction site and tutored middle schoolers on the side.

Filthy work, exhausting work, I did all of it, because I wanted money to buy her things.

What she never knew was that I'm an orphan. The place I live is a school dormitory.

Rich, me?

Every cent of that money was money I broke my back for and then handed to her.

"Quit wasting breath on him," Derek said.

"He's just stubborn. He doesn't want to cooperate.

"One beating and he'll behave.

"I've handled plenty of rich boys. All bone and attitude right up until the baton touches them, then they wet themselves.

"Baby, you might want to cover your eyes in a minute. Don't let it scare you."

He stroked Claire's shoulder while he said it, gentle about it.

She made a contemptuous noise.

"Scare me? I've seen him uglier than this.

"Any time he didn't come in first, he'd sit in front of me and sob himself hoarse.

"Snot and tears everywhere. It was genuinely something to look at."

Hearing that did something to me I can't describe.

Night after night I had peeled myself open and let her see the softest part of me.

And she had filed every bit of it away as a weapon.

Just then one of the men walked in carrying a stun baton.