I have no intention of falling for their trick, but as I wait there, bound and in the worst pain of my life, I’m not strong enough to stop the anxiety from creeping up on me. I should be grateful for this respite from torture, but I’m not.

I would gladly let Majid cut off every one of my limbs if only I could be certain that Nora is safe.

I don’t know how much time passes while I wait in torment, but finally I hear voices outside. The door opens, and Majid drags in a small figure dressed in a pair of Uggs and a man’s shirt that hangs down to her knees. Her hands are bound behind her back, and there is a bloody stain on the underside of her left arm.

My stomach drops and cold horror spreads through my veins as Nora’s dark eyes lock on my face.

My worst fear has come to pass.

They have the only person who matters to me in the whole fucking world.

They have my Nora—and this time, I can’t rescue her.

28

Nora

Trembling from head to toe, I stare at Julian, my chest squeezing with agony at the sight. There is a rough, dirty-looking bandage on his shoulder, with blood seeping out of it, and his naked body is a mass of cuts, bruises, and scrapes. His face is even worse. Below the old bandage on his forehead, there isn’t a spot left that isn’t discolored or swollen. The most horrifying thing of all, however, is the huge bleeding gash running through his left cheek and all the way up into his eyebrow—a mess of ragged flesh where his eye used to be.

Where his eye used to be.

They cut out his eye.

I can’t even begin to process that at the moment, so I don’t try. For now, Julian is alive, and that’s all that matters.

He’s tied to a metal chair, his legs bound apart and his arms restrained behind his back. I can see the shock and horror on his bloodied face as he takes in my presence, and I want to tell him that everything will be all right—that this time I am saving him—but I can’t. Not yet.

Not until Peter has a chance to get here with the reinforcements.

My bruised cheekbone is throbbing where they hit me, and the underside of my left arm is burning with pain from the open wound there. They stripped off my clothes and cut out my birth control implant while I was knocked out, probably fearing that it was a tracker of some kind. I hadn’t expected that—I figured, if anything, they would find one of the real trackers—but it worked out even better than I’d hoped. After cutting out the implant and seeing that it was nothing more than a simple plastic rod, they must’ve dismissed me as a threat, thinking that I am exactly what I was pretending to be: a naïve girl who went to see her parents, oblivious of any remaining danger. It makes me glad that I had the foresight to leave the bracelet tracker at the estate, so as not to arouse their suspicions.