“Where the hell are her clothes?”

Milligan shrugged. “This is how he sent her. You’ve got fifteen minutes to get her cleaned up.” He backed out of the room and shut the door.

Kenley crossed the small space and set a canvas bag on the floor, then dropped onto her knees in front of me, brushing hair back from my forehead.

“How long?” I asked, staring at the mattress while she dug in her bag.

She pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to me. “Almost six weeks,” she said, and I could hear the sob in her voice, though she tried to hold it back.

“I’m fine.” I cracked the top on the bottle, scared by how much effort that took, then unscrewed the lid. I’d gulped half of it before I remembered I should go slow.

“You’re not fine. I thought you were dead. Jake kept saying you were alive, but he wouldn’t let me see you. I was sure he was lying, just to keep me working.” Tears formed in her eyes and when she blinked, they rolled down her cheeks.

“No. Don’t cry, Kenni,” I whispered, because they were listening. They were always listening, and they were probably watching through the one-way glass. I licked the moisture from my lips. “Don’t ever let those steel-hearted sons of bitches see you cry. If they know you can be broken, they’ll fuckin’ break you just for sport.”

Like they’d tried to break me.

She nodded, jaw clenched against sobs she was visibly choking back.

I opened my mouth to tell her it would be okay. I would make it okay. But then my stomach revolted, and I lurched for the toilet. I retched hard enough to wrench my injured shoulder, and the water came up. It was too much, too fast. I should have known better. I’d been sipping half handfuls of clean water from the back of the toilet tank since the bottles had stopped coming, but that was different from gulping half a bottle, ice-cold.

Kenley pulled my hair from my face and I sat up, wiping my mouth with the back of one bare arm. My stomach was still pitching, but there was nothing left to lose.

“No one knew where you were.” She handed me the bottle again, and I rinsed my mouth, then spit into the toilet, thinking about how wrong she was. Some people knew where I was. Some of them had seen me, through the one-way glass. “Tower was shot, and you were shot, then he woke up and you disappeared. What happened, Kori? No one knows what really happened.”

What happened? I’d been buried in the basement, at the mercy of the monsters. But that wasn’t what she was asking.

“Liv said she needed my help, so I went. But it was a trap. They were waiting for me. They took my key and used it to break in.” I was the breach in security that got one of our men killed, two more shot, and Tower’s prize blood donor—my murdered friend Noelle’s only daughter—taken. “Ruben Cavazos shot us both.” I ran my fingers over the dirty bandage on my shoulder.

I should have run, regardless of the risk. I would have run, if not for Kenley. I couldn’t leave her alone with Tower. Alone in the syndicate. My sister and I were a package deal, from start to finish.

“You’re lucky he didn’t have you killed,” she said, but I shook my head.

“He can’t. He still needs me.” I had no clue why I had to be the one to recruit Ian Holt, but if Jake didn’t need me, I would be dead.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” She stood and headed for the canvas bag, but her shoulders were shaking and it took me a minute to realize why.

“Kenley, this isn’t your fault.” I used the edge of the toilet to push myself to my feet.

“Of course it’s my fault.” She dug in the bag and pulled out a bottle of shampoo, then crossed the room toward the narrow, curtainless shower stall in one corner. “I sealed the binding between you and Liv, so you have to do what she asks. Because of me.”

Kenley was a Binder. A scary-good Binder. She was so good Jake hid her from the world, to protect her and every contract she’d ever sealed for him. He kept her under twenty-four-hour guard, and he threatened me to control her, just like he threatened her to control me.

“It wasn’t like that this time,” I insisted, as she turned on the shower—it only worked when they wanted it to. “Liv didn’t officially ask and I wasn’t compelled. I went to help her on my own.” Because it was the right thing to do. I was sure of that, even after everything that had come since.

“It’s my fault you’re here in the first place, Kori.” Kenley aimed the shower spray at the opposite wall, then turned to look at me, arms crossed over her chest, and I sighed. I’d never been able to effectively argue with that one. But again, I had to try.

“I make my own decisions. We came into the syndicate together, and we’ll leave together.” Or not at all. “Four years,” I whispered leaning with my forehead against her shoulder, while stray droplets of water sprayed us both. “We can do four more years, right?”

She nodded, but she looked far from sure. I’d been shot, starved, abused and locked in the dark for almost six weeks, but she was the one I worried about. Kenley was fragile, so I had to be strong enough for both of us. And Jake knew it. He knew what cards we held—what mattered to us—so he always won the game.

“Let me see your shoulder.” Kenley blinked away more tears, and I leaned against the wall for balance while she peeled medical tape and gauze from my gunshot wound. I’d done my best to keep it clean, and I’d taken all the antibiotics Jonah had brought in the first couple of weeks, back when I was being fed and showered regularly, because he was the bulk of my punishment. But then Jake had figured out that his brother wasn’t enough to break me, and that’s when the darkness and isolation had dropped into place around me.