Viktorya Radu woke to find herself in a pitch-dark room. The painkillers she’d been given had knocked her out cold, and she’d dreamed she was at home with her mother. It had been so vivid, she wasn’t immediately sure if that had been real and this was the dream. But the all-too-real pain that covered every inch of her body when she rolled over told her that she was far from the comforts of home.
As her vision began to adjust, she picked out the hazy outlines of unfamiliar furniture in the room. The bedsprings creaked when she sat up, and she gripped the edge of the mattress when a bitter taste flooded her mouth. Her head felt heavy and fuzzy, and she needed the toilet, so she dropped her feet to the floor and tentatively stood up.
Blindly feeling her way over to the door, she cried out in pain when she smashed her knee on the corner of a chest of drawers she hadn’t noticed. Almost immediately, a tapping sound came through the wall, and she froze when someone whispered: ‘Are you OK, love?’
It was a male voice with a British accent, and she began to tremble violently when a vision of the blond man with the teardrop tattoos flashed into her mind – along with the memory of the vicious beating he had given her.
‘I know you must be scared,’ the man behind the wall was saying. ‘But I’m not one of them, I promise. My name’s Frank, and this is my house. I’m locked in, as well, and I heard what they did to you, so I wanted to check you’re all right?’
Viktorya stared at the wall, as if doing so would allow her to see right through it. The man sounded sincere, but she no longer trusted her own judgement. How could she when she’d allowed herself to be duped into coming to this country by someone who had convinced not only her, but also her entire family, that his friend ran a modelling agency in England and could make her a star?
Alexander had been handsome, charming, and extremely generous: insisting on paying her air fare, and promising to arrange for a limousine to pick her up at the airport and take her to a luxury apartment in the city centre.
It had all been a lie. The limousine had turned out to be a scruffy van with a filthy mattress in the back, upon which three other girls had already been sitting when she had climbed in. They all claimed to have been hand-picked by Alexander for catwalk stardom, and had chattered excitedly on the way here about the glamorous lives they were going to live now they were in England – the money they would be able to send home to their families.
That excitement had quickly turned to confusion when they’d found themselves at this house instead of the fancy apartments they had been promised. But when the dark-eyed man had walked outside and smiled at Viktorya, she had thought that maybe things were still on track, after all: that maybe he was the big-shot agent Alexander had told her about, and he’d had them brought here, to his home, so he could greet them personally before they were taken into the city.
She’d realized her mistake when the woman had brought them into the house and the blond man had followed them in and demanded they hand over their possessions before attacking her.
‘Are you still there, love?’ the man behind the wall asked, bringing her back to the present.
Afraid to reply in case it was some kind of trick, Viktorya backed away from the wall. The man had said that he, too, was locked in, so she guessed there was no point in trying the door. Instead, she felt her way over to the window and eased one of the heavy curtains aside. At first, all she could see was inky darkness, but then the moon emerged from behind a cloud and her face was bathed in its milky glow. And in the few seconds before it disappeared again, she saw that the window was nailed shut.
‘I’m so sorry this is happening to you,’ the invisible man was saying, his voice fainter now she’d moved away from the wall. ‘But I’m going to get you and your friends out of here. I don’t know how, or how long it’ll take, but I’ll find a way, I promise.’
Viktorya stared at the spot on the wall where the voice appeared to be coming from and covered her mouth with her hand when hot tears trickled from the corners of her swollen eyes and burned a path down her bruised cheeks. She so wanted to believe that he could help her, but if he was telling the truth about being locked in, he was clearly no match for these people.
On the other side of the wall, Frank held his breath and waited for the girl to respond. When she didn’t, he sighed heavily and went back over to his bed. He had heard the fear in her voice when she’d cried out, and he’d hoped it might bring her some comfort if she heard that she wasn’t alone. It obviously hadn’t worked, and his heart ached when he thought about the terror she must be feeling. Her and her friends, who he’d seen Nick and one of the other men herd into the van shortly after Evan had left this evening. God only knew where they’d been taken, but Frank couldn’t imagine they would be treated any better there than they were being treated here, and it sickened him to think that these animals were getting away with this. But he’d meant what he told that girl: one way or another, even if it meant sacrificing his own safety to achieve it, he was determined to save them.