Chapter 1

One

R uby

"Your father is dead."

Cold. I don't even feel shocked, and I can't muster another tear. Not for anything. Not even for him.

Daddy.

After the last month—has it been a month?—there is no clock or calendar in my underground, windowless room.

This is the first time I've been brought up in, I don't know, weeks, maybe? Since he first took me down the stairs, to the dungeon where I remained. After I destroyed the pretty prison, I'd known before the dungeon, that is. The room draped in cream and splashed in red. Like my hair. Like the gems of my namesake. Like blood.

Before being brought to the cool, dank, dark space below the house, I hadn't even fathomed that dungeons were still a thing. A real thing. And that people still kept other people in them.

"Your father is dead."

Daddy…

My heart finds the strength to throb. It hurts.

I'd followed the suited lackey up the stairs that started as cool, damp concrete, transitioning to raw wood, and then gleaming hardwood. The bone-deep cold that settled after my first few nights in the dungeon throbbed in my marrow with every step, relentless.

Now, my bare toes curl in the plush carpet of the monster's cavernous office. Heat radiates from the flames that dance in the fireplace. I fight the urge to shiver under the flame I desperately want to scoot closer to, to soak up the delicious warmth the fire offers. Such a tease.

I'm so cold.

The monster watches me closely from where he sits behind his desk. The thing is a sprawling beast of gleaming dark wood. The painfully handsome man behind it is even more beastly than the black dog who stands sentry at his side.

"The Devil was beautiful, Ruby. Beware a beautiful man." Mama's words echo in my mind, and another stab of grief sinks its needle into the abused pincushion of my heart.

First Mama, now Daddy.

Does it really matter what happens to me now that they're gone?

"Ruby?" the large man with the dark hair and darker eyes calls my name. In the beginning, I would flinch. But he's visited me most every day. I think it's every day . He opens the cage of my barren cellar and sits in the single chair that squats in the corner of my cell, opposite my narrow bed. In the beginning, he interrogated me—always about my father and my life on the outskirts of the small town of Madison, Georgia.

The interrogations stopped, but the visits continued. Sometimes he talked. Sometimes he simply watched me with those dark eyes.

I never talked back.

I have nothing to say to him.

I tried in the beginning, with my own questions. They were never answered.

I still don't know why I'm here.

"Ruby?" he calls again, sharper this time. My eyes lift from the large fist of his linked hands where they rest on the surface of his gleaming desk, to his eyes. My heart skips. They're so dark. Bottomless. "Are you listening to me?"

I blink. He sighs, a weary thing.

Pushing back from his desk, he moves to close the space between us. His massive dog stands but doesn't move to follow. Breath gets caught in my throat as I prepare for a physical attack of some sort. Even though he's never hurt me.

There's a first time for everything.

He stands so close to me; I smell that same scent of musky maleness and rich cedar tinged with the spice of flame that lingers in my cell long after his every visit.

His big hands come to land on either side of my face. My lips part. My body trembles.

He terrifies me.

When I'd first arrived, I'd fought. I'd thrown bitter words and more tude than ever before in my life. I'd quickly been humbled by the fact this man is far stronger than me. He's also capable of great and terrible punishments.

My fight, I am sad to report, is gone.

Firmly, his cold, dark eyes on mine, he repeats, "Your father is dead."

I don't mean to speak the words, but they're between us before I can pull them back. "Did you kill him?"

Surprise lifts his brows, but only slightly. I suspect he is a man not often taken by surprise .

"No." A breath of relief begins to leave my lungs, but freezes when he adds, "My brother killed him."

My eyes shutter closed. An image of my father's smiling face flashes behind my lids. He'd been such a strong man. The strongest I'd ever known. Until I met my kidnapper, my monster, my master puppeteer. He's far stronger than any other I've ever encountered. Far crueler. Inhumane.

Why? Why Daddy?

A memory plays like a video. The way Daddy would catch me in his strong hands and lift me high over his head, the loud barrel of his deep laugh cocooning me in joy whenever he came home from his months away at work overseas. I was a small girl, and I grew into a small woman, but he'd done that until I was well into my teen years. I'd always thought him undefeatable. Until this monster.

I gasp. It's a sound of unfiltered grief.

I don't know much about what Daddy did for work, but I do know that some of his destinations had been dangerous. That he'd traded the goods he transported to people who could be less than savory. He'd told me this often: the reason me and Mama weren't permitted to accompany him on his travels. Not ever. The reason I wasn't given his last name at birth. Why Mama kept hers.

But he'd been honorable, bringing goods to countries in need despite the danger. He used his shipping company to better the world. A missionary…

"He's one of the good ones, baby. It's our burden to share him with those who need him," Mama would soothe on the nights I ached for Daddy, missing the kisses he'd press to my forehead in the gifted nights we had him. Although I cherished the soft stroke of her hand through my hair, I'd grown up with the constant pang of missing him a hollow drumming in my heart.

"Why?" I hear myself croak. I don't even care that weakness drips from my words like acid to burn away the wall I've built to defend myself against him . "He was—he was good ."

My kidnapper's eyes widen. Then they shutter, that bottomless darkness yawning with the expanding of his pupils. His nostrils flare, and I dip my chin. My eyes land on the bare toes I wiggle in the soft carpet.

I sniff, praying to a God who hasn't answered my pleas since the moment I was taken by this devil's goons. I've been abandoned after a lifetime of servitude.

Still, I pray. I pray that I won't cry in front of the devil. I pray that I'll one day know freedom again.

I pray that Mama and Daddy are together in Heaven. That they don't know the despair I suffer here in this hell with this monster.

I pray…

"I think we're finished for today." His English is thickly accented in rich, dark Russian tones that call gooseflesh to the surface of my skin. I've always loved the Russian accent, for it reminded me of Daddy. But now I can't help the shiver that shudders through my body, the violence of it calling his gaze once again to me.

Behind me, I hear the soft thud of footsteps. My shuddering intensifies.

I hate myself for it, but I bow my head and whisper, "Please."

I can feel the weight of his dark gaze on me. Sharp like the blade of a knife carving into my skin. He sighs, his finger sliding under my chin to lift my face to his.

I hate the way my body trembles. I loathe the weakness. The fear.

He's broken me…

"Please, what?"

"Please. It's so cold in the cellar." I can't make myself call it a dungeon. Not out loud. My arms lift to hug my body. "I'm so cold."

He's still holding my chin, so I see the way his granite eyes scan the length of me. A muscle jumps in his hard, square jaw, unhidden by the scruff of dark hair. I hold my breath.

Finally, when I don't think I can stand it a moment longer, he speaks to the soldier behind me. "Get her another blanket."

I think my soul dies a little more.