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Only that he’d created a mess I’d have to clean up.

I grabbed the keys and left.

As soon as Mom was safe, I could come back to clean up, then I’d go on with my fucking miserable life here in Park Ridge.

No moreDaddyin my life, or Mom’s. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

Chapter 1

Maddie

Present day

The new-paint smell burned mynostrils, which said a lot about my next prison. I had inhaled some real bad shit in my life. Blood, burned flesh, days old feces, old cum—everything that could be rancid and gut wrenching. My nose had sniffed it all.

Sold into sex slavery at twelve, I’d seen it.

Lived through it.

Survived it.

Now, they slathered new paint on the walls and called it fucking good. Such a contradiction. Nothing was good about me. Signora told me often how tainted I was, and it was true.

The door creaked open, and I stiffened, shuffling back against the wall.

Just do whatever they want, Maddie, I told myself.

I was good at following orders. “A pretty little puppet,” Signora had always said, but she slapped me and clawed at me anyway. How good of a girl could I have been to have earned the lashes?

A man stepped in, wearing a white lab coat. Something abouthim, though, said the lab coat wasn’t a common part of his wardrobe.

I faced him, knowing what men like him wanted. They wanted to play doctor, but I wouldn’t tolerate being cut up anymore! No more knives to be pressed into my skin or layers of flesh peeled back like I was a grape. Nobody would do those things to me and watch with wonder as juice oozed out.

I was too old for most of Signora’s customers, save for the few who had particular tastes where age didn’t matter.

“Hiya, Maddie,” said the doctor. “Everyone here calls me Doc. Do you remember me? We met when you were brought in.”

Brought in? To where? This sterile place wasn’t the shit show I had known for sixteen years, but one prison had been replaced with this.

One jailer with another.

“Your injuries were superficial, but you were very anxious,” continued the doctor. “We had to separate you from the others when you arrived. You tried to claw my eyes out.” He chuckled and pointed to a scratch on his cheek. “Nearly took out my eyeball.”

The last memories I had were at Barton Mill with Signora. And the flash of bikers?

I didn’t remember much of how I came to my new prison. Maybe Melanie was there? I searched my useless memory, something that tended to block out shit at will. There were so many black holes.

Melanie had always been with me, even when she wasn’t. It was like her spirit or whatever haunted my waking dreams and thrived deep in my nightmares. She had grown up free of such darkness. And while I would never wish my experiences on anyone, I resented her for being the lucky one.

At those hallucinations, I pretended I wasn’t alone. And she’d always been the ghost I could yell at and blame. Venomous words I could only utter in my head or in my nightmares.

But that was a child’s game, a talent I had for embracing my imaginary friend. When I saw her again in Signora’s office, I couldn’t think about anything except how healthy she looked. How I would look if I hadn’t spent so long in cages and used by all sorts of depraved people. She was the pure version of us.

But me, I was the ruined one.

The one with scars, both physical and slashed across my soul.

When I had been alone at Barton Mill or around people at one of the clubs or with one person in a hotel room, I disconnected from my body. The best way to deal had always been to allow the clients to use my body and escape into the labyrinth of my fractured mind.

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