It was a male voice with a British accent, and she began to tremble violently when a vision of the blond man with the teardrop tattoos flashed into her mind – along with the memory of the vicious beating he had given her.

‘I know you must be scared,’ the man behind the wall was saying. ‘But I’m not one of them, I promise. My name’s Frank, and this is my house. I’m locked in, as well, and I heard what they did to you, so I wanted to check you’re all right?’

Viktorya stared at the wall, as if doing so would allow her to see right through it. The man sounded sincere, but she no longer trusted her own judgement. How could she when she’d allowed herself to be duped into coming to this country by someone who had convinced not only her, but also her entire family, that his friend ran a modelling agency in England and could make her a star?

Alexander had been handsome, charming, and extremely generous: insisting on paying her air fare, and promising to arrange for a limousine to pick her up at the airport and take her to a luxury apartment in the city centre.

It had all been a lie. The limousine had turned out to be a scruffy van with a filthy mattress in the back, upon which three other girls had already been sitting when she had climbed in. They all claimed to have been hand-picked by Alexander for catwalk stardom, and had chattered excitedly on the way here about the glamorous lives they were going to live now they were in England – the money they would be able to send home to their families.

That excitement had quickly turned to confusion when they’d found themselves at this house instead of the fancy apartments they had been promised. But when the dark-eyed man had walked outside and smiled at Viktorya, she had thought that maybe things were still on track, after all: that maybe he was the big-shot agent Alexander had told her about, and he’d had them brought here, to his home, so he could greet them personally before they were taken into the city.

She’d realized her mistake when the woman had brought them into the house and the blond man had followed them in and demanded they hand over their possessions before attacking her.

‘Are you still there, love?’ the man behind the wall asked, bringing her back to the present.