I had until midnight.

Alone, in international waters, drugged, surrounded by people who wore my family’s love like a costume — I had until midnight to become someone who could survive this.

Chapter 6 — The False Bottom

So I did the only thing I could think to do: I hurt myself, on purpose, to stay awake.

I pinched the soft skin inside my thigh until my eyes watered, and used the small bright pain to hold the fog at bay, and I crawled — actually crawled, on my hands and knees along the passage — back into the suite.

I dug down under a stack of folded cashmere in my luggage and found the false bottom I’d had built into the case, and I want to stop here and tell you about my father, because he is the reason I am alive.