The wooden floorboards of the cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains were rough, unfinished, and smelled heavily of damp cedar and old pine. There were no flashing red emergency lights here, no hum of jet engines, and no digital screens. The silence of the Virginia wilderness was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic, terrifying scrape of a sharpening stone down on the porch.
Shhhk. Shhhk. Shhhk.
I sat on the edge of a narrow iron cot, my arms wrapped so tightly around Toby that my knuckles were stark white. The luxury of the London mansion and the cold metal of the yacht were gone, replaced by this isolated cage hidden deep in the forest. My dress was still stiff with the dried mud and old blood from the mountain drainage pipe in South Africa. I hadn't been allowed to wash. Silas wanted me to l
