Prologue

Pain.

It slashed through the young woman’s body and drew a resounding scream from her blue, cracked lips. The relentless current of electricity made her buck, had her every muscle tightening and coiling until they stood out in clear relief under her fragile skin. Her limbs jerked involuntarily at the restraints that kept her on the steel table in the center of the tiled room.

Disembodied voices droned commands into her ears, battering her resistance without pause. A blaze of light hammered down on her tear-streaked face, making it impossible for her to see, sapping even more of her willpower.

No relief. And nowhere to hide.

There was only pain, with no end to hope for—of what seemed to have lasted an eternity already.

Endless torture, along with the drugs, erased memory upon memory. The destructive deluge raged through her mind, leaving nothing untouched. Only emptiness remained.

But she was strong. She had fought long and hard, holding onto the faint spark that was the very core of her being. She endured. The way she always had.

Her purpose—so very clear—was her sole buoy in the storm that threatened to sweep her away. Desperately, the woman clung to the memories she still had. She recalled detailed events from the turbulent life she had led, but the voices behind the piercing light would not cease, kept urging her to forget.

To surrender.

“No!” The scream was torn from her. She wouldn’t. Not ever! She would die before she gave up who she was, would fight with every fiber of her being.

Mindless, she pulled at the shackles, her fierce defiance arching her away from the cold steel.

She couldn’t give up! She was Nina—Spanish for girl-child, she remembered. And yet, inner boundaries were crumbling under the all-encompassing assault on her senses, her thoughts, and her tortured body.

Another electrical charge pounded her resistance with the force of a sledgehammer.

“Never,” she whimpered.

Cold water streamed over her, as it had many times before. It kept her alert when everything inside her screamed for the relief of unconsciousness.

“Surrender!” commanded the voice she had come to hate. “You will submit.”

She shook her head in mute denial.

Finally, against all odds, one shackle snapped loose, releasing her mangled wrist. Lashing out in the direction of the voice, she struck flesh.

A startled cry came from her tormentor. He had been with her from the start, she vaguely recalled.

“Grab her!”

Sounds of crashing medical equipment penetrated her muddled thoughts.

No!

Frantically, she groped at the strap that held her other wrist and then dove for her ankles to yank the buckles loose. Blurry images flickered in and out of sight. Freed at last, she flinched away to tumble off the table and crash to the cold, unforgiving floor.

Her hands braced, she sought to find solidity in the world that seemed to cant and dip like a ship on a stormy sea. Bare feet slid over moist tiles as the squeak of rubber soles announced the advance of her captors. A frenzied cry escaped her.

Old instincts clamoring to the surface, she lashed out a well-aimed kick toward a leg that appeared in her distorted vision. The resulting exclamation of pain barely registered. Her mind could only think of one thing.

Escape.

Cruel hands grabbed hold and pulled her to her feet, heedless of her struggles. Roughly, she was lifted into the air and returned to the table.

“Hold her down,” the voice ordered.

Blindly, she twisted and bucked, every muscle straining. Their grip was unbreakable, and despair swamped her.

“Give it up, little girl,” the voice said with a sneer.

A painful stab of a needle drew another cry from her—an involuntary reaction to a violation that was minor compared to all that had been done to her.

“There’s no place you can hide from me,” he told her. The distorted image of a face appeared in front of the light. “You are mine.”

It was then the combination of drugs and torture became too much. With the horror of those three words, the last remnants of her resistance shattered with a resounding scream, leaving nothing but ruins of the strong woman she had once been.

Nina was lost.

But from the shards of her turbulent past, a multitude of personalities came into being. They would continue to fight, with but one purpose.

Save Nina.