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“I am sorry, Mal, there’s nothing,” he grunts in his thick Russian accent. His eyes drift to mine. “Found family is important. Mine saved me. I don’t know you, but I think maybe yours savedyou.” His blinking slows. “Before, I didn’t trust you with Freya. But I do now. You care for her.”
My voice cracks. “I do. Very fucking much so.”
“Da, good. Then find her. Find our found families…”
His eyes start to flicker closed. His words slur as the morphine takes hold.
“Family does not need to be blood,” Isaak murmurs. “Family is where you call home.”
It hits me just as he fades out.
Family is where you call home.
I’m out of my seat and bolting for the door in an instant.
I think I know where that psychopath took her.
The air iscold and heavy as I step out of the SUV into the stillness of the Norwegian night.
I’ve been awake for thirty-two hours. I’m exhausted, disheveled, and I need a fucking shower.
Darkness and an eerie fog swallow the landscape around me. The wind howls through the trees, echoes of a place I swore I’d never return to.
The farm on the edge of a black lake, surrounded by black woods.
My grandfather’s prison camp, the birthplace of almost every nightmare I’ve carried with me since the day I killed the bastard and fled into those very woods.
The land is empty and desolate, the farmhouse and barn rising out of the ghostly moonlight like a broken monument to everything I’ve tried so hard to bury. I take a deep breath, the sharp, bitterly cold air cutting into my lungs.
It’s been twenty years since I last set foot here. Twenty years since I watched Filip die, snapped, and turned on Kasper.
But I know Jonas. I know how his twisted mind works. If he’s holding Freya and Hana anywhere, possibly Kir too, it’s here.
It has to be.
I check the house first. It’s dark and half gone to nature, with the roof caved in on one side, and what looks like the remains of a squatters’ camp in what was once the kitchen. The stairs tothe second floor are mostly gone, but it’s clear there’s nothing up there but bird shit and demons.
The basement brings a fresh wave of nausea as I stand in the middle of the empty space, staring at notches I remember all too well on one of the crumbling support beams.
A hook on the wall where a wooden paddle once hung, carved with the swastika and eagle, so it would leave the imprints of hate on your skin.
My blood staining the floor—faded, but still there, after all these fucking years.
But that’s all I find in that forsaken basement: blood, dust, and the ghosts of my past.
No Freya. No Hana. No Kir.
Outside, I push open the barn door, the creak of the wood echoing in the dead silence. My footsteps are loud on the dirt floor as I slip through the shadows, my heart pounding in my chest.
More memories hit me like blows—Kasper’s brutal “lessons”…Filip’s innocent eyes filled with terror…and Jonas, always watching, his face twisted in a mixture of admiration, fear, andexcitementas Kasper spouted his sick, hateful dogma.
I stare at the spot where Filip died, where Kasper broke him beyond repair. I can still hear his screams, still see the way his body crumpled under Kasper’s whip—and then, minutes later, the way Jonas looked at me when I ran that hay fork through Kasper.
I walk through the barn, my heart sinking lower with every step.
They’re not here.
I’m furious at myself for thinking it would be this easy. That Jonas would be stupid enough to bring themhereof all places, when it’smewho’s looking for them.
