Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“What about your family? Won’t someone come looking?”
“Yes, but it’s complicated.”
I get the sense she doesn’t want to keep talking about that, so I don’t push.
Dread sinks into my stomach. She’s right, I know she’s right, it’s exactly the sort of thing my father would do. Adrienne is nothing to the Russians, and they’d gladly make her suffer for years, or decades even, so long as it means their flow of weed is never interrupted. We mean nothing to them, except for whatever they can extract from our names and our connections.
“Then we have to fight.”
“But not yet. Not here.” She squeezes my hand tight. “Make them trust you first. Then fight.”
“What about you? They’ll kill you. Not all at once, but slowly over weeks and months. They don’t care about you.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I think I’m dead no matter what, but you have a chance.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. I extract myself from her grip and stand. I pace across the room, from one side of the cell to the other, thinking. “I’m not letting them use you against me, and I’m not going to let them kill you, either.”
“Kacia…”
“Stop it. I got you into this and I’ll get you out.” I stand there, worthless tears rolling down my face. Useless crying, it won’t change a damn thing, but I can’t help myself. I feel so defeated and broken, so powerless and small.
This is what the men in my life always do to me. I’m told I’m nothing, I’m too weak, I’m not helpful, I’m not smart enough or fast enough or anything enough. They want me to be quiet, to be obedient, to be pretty.
Everyone except for Luca.
He liked when I sparred with him. He loved when I fought back. Yes, he’s a controlling alpha mobster and he wants me to follow his orders, but he doesn’t make me feel small.
No, he makes me feel good, and I left all that behind.
I’m done feeling weak. I’m done acting like I have no worth, like I have no agency. Adrienne is too injured to fight for herself, which means I’ll do it for her.
“We have to come up with a plan.” I turn to face her, hands on my hips, chin lifted up. I wipe my tears away and get down to business. “We’re not going to sit in here and be victims.”
Adrienne grins. “Okay, I like the sound of that. I definitely don’t want to be a victim. But how do we get out?”
I spend the next half hour searching the room from top to bottom. There are no windows, which means the only weak spot is the door. It’s solid and I remember there are three separate bolts on the outside, which means we can’t break it open, no matter how hard we try. Not that a couple of small girls are going to smash down a solid door anyway.
But there’s one thing the Russians didn’t think about.
“The hinges,” I say and dig my fingernails under the head of the pin that keeps the door connected to the wall. “This is just a regular interior door, it wasn’t built for a prison. The hinges are always on the inside. If we can work this out—” I grunt at the effort, digging my nails under the tip and pushing until it feels like my fingers might break. I growl and give up after a few seconds of trying. “We can take this door apart if we can get these pins out.”
Adrienne joins me, frowning. “You really think we can? We don’t have any tools and you’re not having any luck with your hands.”
“No, but there’s the bucket and the mattress. If we can get a spring from the mattress and use the sharp end to get under the little lip here, we can use it to pop out the hinge pin. Then the door will be floating in the air and held together only by the locks.”
“And when the Russians try to come in later…” Adrienne trails off, excitement in her eyes.
I nod sharply. “Let’s get to it.”
Ripping open the mattress isn’t easy. Adrienne has nails, but the fabric is too thick and we waste a lot of time and strength tearing at it with our hands. I cut myself more than once, but I don’t care, my only goal now in the entire world is to get that stupid pin out. In the end, I break off the handle on the bucket, and use that to dig open a hole in the mattress and rip a long seam along the side. We get it open and stand there, staring.
The inner spring is one large, square section of interwoven metal, and it comes out like a large cage.
I lean it against the wall and we both stare. “How the hell are we going to use that to open that?” She points from the big mess of springs to the two small hinge pins. “There’s no way we can snap off a piece. This thing is much too solid.”