THIRTY-SEVEN: INTERSTATE LOVE SONG
THIRTY-EIGHT: ALL THE YOUNG DUDES
THIRTY-NINE: JANIE’S GOT A GUN
FORTY-TWO: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
FORTY-FOUR: GANGSTA’S PARADISE
FORTY-FIVE: DON’T FEAR THE REAPER
FORTY-SIX: SUGAR, WE’RE GOIN’ DOWN
Madison Brooks grudgingly surrendered the fading remnants of her dream and blinked into the blackness before her. The room was soundless, still. The air hung weighty and stale. Despite the promise of sleep, her waking life remained a living hell.
While she had plenty of fears—fear of forgetting her lines during a live performance, fear of her secret past being revealed—a fear of the dark had never been among them. Even as a child she understood that the mythical monster dwelling under the bed could only pale in comparison to the all-too-real parental monsters getting high in the den.
And it was no different now.
She pushed away from the soiled mattress she’d slept on and crept toward the solid steel door, alerted to any hint of scent, sound—anything that might provide a clue as to who had taken her, where they had taken her, and why. Over thirty days spent in captivity, and Madison was no closer to answers than the night she’d been snatched. She’d gone over the incident countless times—the memory playing on a continuous loop as she searched frame by frame, hunting for revelations, some small but crucial detail she might’ve missed. Yet every viewing remained stubbornly the same.
She’d broken up with Ryan only to be rescued by Tommy, and after sharing a few beers (along with a few memorable kisses), she’d received a text from Paul instructing her to meet him at Night for Night, and she’d fled without question. Though she should’ve known the moment she arrived at the closed and empty club that something had gone terribly wrong. Paul was professional. Punctual. If he’d truly intended to meet her, he would’ve been there already. She’d walked straight into a trap, but that was all hindsight now. Yet another item to add to the long list of things she’d chosen to ignore until she found herself with nothing but time to second-guess and berate herself.
How could she have been so trusting? So naive?
Why had she continued to wait on the terrace, reminiscing about a past she was desperate to keep buried while ignoring her gut instinct that urged her to flee?
Last thing she remembered was a curl of wind at her back, the wisp of a scent she still couldn’t place; then a hand was clasped firmly over her mouth and time folded in on itself.
And now, several weeks later, she remained locked in a windowless cell that offered little more than a sink, a toilet, a bare mattress tossed on the floor, and a succession of bland, lumpy meals served three times a day.
Not a single sign of her captor.
Not a clue as to why she’d been taken.
Her diamond-encrusted Piaget watch, the hoop earrings Ryan had given her, the Gucci stilettos she’d worn, and the cashmere wrap she now used as a blanket served as the only reminders of her former Hollywood It Girl status.
If it was money they were after, they would’ve stripped her of the luxuries long ago. Allowing her to keep them seemed almost cruel. Like they wanted her to remember who she’d once been, if only to show her how quickly they could strip it away.
She sprawled on the cold cement floor with her legs splayed before her, wondering, as she always did, what was happening outside the cinder-block walls. Surely the whole world knew of her disappearance. There was probably even a task force specifically assigned to her case. So why was it taking them so long to find her? And more importantly, why hadn’t Paul directed them to her when he was the one who’d insisted on embedding the microchip tracker into her arm, just under the burn scar, in anticipation of this very thing?
Right on schedule, the lights switched on—sending the fluorescent bulbs flickering, humming, and washing the room in a garish green glow. A moment later, when the slot snapped open, Madison crouched right beside it, stretched her mouth wide, and screamed from the very depths of her belly.
But just like every other day, the tray of lumpy food shot past, the slot slammed shut, and Madison’s cries for help languished hollow and unheard.
She kicked the food aside and glanced around the small room, searching for something she might’ve missed, something she could use to defend herself with. Paul had taught her how to see past the mundane. Nearly everything has a dual purpose, he’d told her. Even the most ordinary item can be used as a defense. But even if she could fashion her stiletto heel into a weapon, there was no opponent—no one to fight. She was trapped all alone in her cinder-block cell.
With a frustrated sigh, she turned her attention to the pictures of her eight-year-old self spread across the ceiling and walls. The repeating image was occasionally spliced by a random strip of mirror meant to reflect the sorry state she currently found herself in. In the photo, her hair was tangled, her feet dirty and bare, an old doll dangled from the tips of her fingers as she regarded the camera with a deep violet stare.
It was the same picture someone had sent Paul as an unspoken threat.
The one he’d assured her had burned long ago with everything else from her past.
In the ten years since the photo was taken she’d traveled such a great distance, rose to great heights, only to come full circle and find herself as powerless, desperate, and filthy as she’d been as a child.
Everything Paul had told her was a lie. Her past had never been erased. It had been there all along, patiently waiting for just the right moment to remind her of the sins she’d committed on her rise to the top.
Someone had connected the dots between the hopeless child she’d been to the triumphant star she’d become.
Someone
