She studied Karel’s face out of the corner of her eye as she plated the food. Frank’s bedroom sat between theirs and the one in which the girls were being held, so they were the only rooms he could have heard Karel going into. He’d insisted he had only said it to cause trouble, but instinct and past experience told Irena otherwise. Viktorya wasn’t the first girl to catch Karel’s eye, but Irena knew better than to confront him about it. If she forced his hand and he made the wrong choice, it could only end one way: Viktorya would take Irena’s place, and Karel would make Irena take hers. And she would rather die than go back to that life, so she would keep her mouth shut – and pray that Karel’s interest in Viktorya died as quickly as it had with the others.

32

You’re too pretty to waste, so I’m going to keep you for myself . . . And if you’re good, I’ll make you my number one girl. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

The whispered words were at the forefront of Viktorya’s mind as she broke through the fog, but they evaporated when her eyes flickered open, and she recoiled in disgust when she saw a filthy foot lying on the pillow in front of her mouth. The other girls had still been out the last time she’d been conscious, but they were back now, and she had to squeeze herself out from between their naked bodies.

The room was stiflingly hot, and the combined odour of sweat and stale cigarette smoke made her feel nauseous. Sitting up, she dropped her feet to the floor and gazed around. The lamp on the bedside table was switched on, and she frowned when she saw that the window had been boarded over. When had that happened? And how had she not heard the nails being hammered into the wood?

Struggling to remember, she stared at the bruises on her thighs. The colours had intensified since the last time she’d looked at them, but – thankfully – the pain had lessened.

Apart from the ache between her legs, which felt new and raw.

A vision of the boss man’s face flashed before her eyes, and she remembered the words she’d heard as she was waking. But had she dreamed them, or had the man actually spoken them? she wondered.

Twisting her head at the sound of a groan, Viktorya peered at the faces of the sleeping girls. They had all looked so young and pretty when she’d met them in the back of that van, but dark shadows now encircled their eyes, and their cheeks were sunken. The girl closest to her rolled over, and she frowned when she noticed several puncture marks in the crook of her elbow, and crusted sores on the back of her hand which looked like cigarette burns.