Ashley's eyes went wide with a terror that went beyond anything she'd felt yet. Her body seemed to short-circuit—going numb from the inside out, her stomach dropping, every muscle in her shutting down at once. Before she could control it, she'd wet herself. Pavlov dissolved into howling, delighted laughter. "Kurva se samo naljutila!" [The slut pissed herself!] Nicolai joined him, both men apparently finding the whole thing hilarious in some deeply broken way. Then Nicolai took a step toward her with the machete. Pavlov put out an arm and stopped him. "Sta je to?" [What is it?] "Ne zaboravljate li nesto, Nic?" [Are you not forgetting something, Nic?] "Hajde, covece. Nemamo vremena!" [Come on, man! We don't have the time!] "Pogledaj to dupe!" [But look at that piece of ass!] A pause. Then Nicolai relented. "Ok, dobro, ali nemojte to reci nasem vođi!" [Fine. But don't breathe a word to our leader.] Pavlov signaled his understanding, and Nicolai turned to leave. "Imat

Anyone who has ever walked through the doors of Palmer House has left with their mind slightly rearranged. The mansion holds over two hundred rooms inside walls that enclose more than fifty thousand square feet. Beyond the bedrooms and living rooms, there are playrooms, study rooms, gymnasiums, music rooms, hearth rooms, parlor rooms, sunrooms—each one more excessive than the last, and each one impeccably maintained. The household has exactly one child. It also has five full-fledged playrooms. The largest of them has polished stone walls painted with magical forest murals—mushroom stools, friendly woodland creatures, an overhead star map that can be lit up at night to turn the whole ceiling into a sky. Inside: enormous Duplo Lego sets, indoor slides, a toy train set, and more stuffed animals than any one child could ever love. Any child in the city would call it a dreamland. Little Ashley prefers the guest hall. It's an oblong, windowless chamber just beside the parlor—the room

Ashley's eyes opened a crack. Cramped, dim, moving. She lay on her back, wrists and ankles taped. The air reeked of mildew and unwashed bodies. A splitting headache threatened to detonate behind her eyes, and nausea rose fast in her throat—she swallowed it down and held still. Her eyes adjusted. Two thickset men loomed in the space around her. The Serbs. Zetelica. They weren't paying her any attention—she was supposed to be out cold. It took another minute for Ashley to register the vibration beneath her, the rumble of an engine, the sway of a vehicle eating up road. A van. Or a large wagon. The lighting was too poor for her to see more. A migraine rolled in for a few blinding seconds. Ashley breathed through it and let the memories arrange themselves. 'The testosterone capsules worked. I woke up earlier than I was supposed to—before they reached wherever they're taking me.' A pause. 'But what does that actually change? Am I just going to die the same way, only awake fo

The fiftieth floor of Malory Towers housed a banquet hall so vast it dwarfed Norwich City's town hall by a comfortable margin. Ten years ago, when the fiftieth story was finished, Jake's late father Richard Grayson had christened the cavernous space Chive Hall—named after a street in rural Scotland where he'd grown up. It was a sentimental name for a sentimental man. Richard's journey from a hapless boy in the back streets of central Scotland to the wealthiest man in one of America's leading cities was the kind of story that screenwriters spent careers trying to find. He'd carried that street with him all the way to the top. Three years ago, Richard suffered a fatal heart attack and left his staggering empire to Jake. His son had the business instincts, the swagger, and the drive—he took Grayson Enterprises to heights even Richard hadn't managed. What Jake didn't share was his father's sentimentality. The previous year, he'd quietly renamed the hall Elysium. Elysium Hall, at least

"Hi! Miss Fox, is it?" Rory James was the only casually dressed guest in Elysium Hall, and he looked exactly like his YouTube videos—which was, in some sense, the whole point. Close-cropped ash-blond hair. That particular youthful charm that he'd built an entire brand around. A Versace pullover, Escada jeans. Even here, at his best friend's bachelor party, he was quietly advertising Nike, Apple, and Rolex—a habit so ingrained he probably didn't notice it anymore. His casual wear cost more than most of the suits in the room. The truth, known only to his inner circle, was that Rory preferred suits. His boyfriend shopped for both of them at Armani and REISS, and Rory looked considerably better in a tuxedo. But his audience didn't know about the boyfriend or the tuxedos, and he intended to keep it that way. The cool, carefree, casually unstoppable straight guy was his internet identity. Anything that complicated it could cost him millions. On Jake's signal, he'd followed Claire's ex