Introduction

My whole life was about getting out of this blue-collar town.

Ivy League scholarships were my ticket, and I lived and breathed SAT prep.

My best friend, Bree Van Doren, struggled with her studies, her family's hardware store failing.

She always said I made it look so easy.

Then Bree suggested a "study retreat" at her remote family cabin in the Adirondacks.

After she handed me a bottle of water, that's the last thing I remembered before darkness.

I woke up on a dirt floor, head pounding, in a filthy shack.

This was no cabin; this was a nightmare.

The Petersons, a rough, menacing family, treated me like an animal.

Then Bree appeared, her face shockingly cold, flatly admitting she sold me to them.

For a few hundred bucks and a beat-up snowmobile, my "best friend" had erased her academic competition.

I was to "keep Cletus company."

Sold. Like an object. For a snowmobile.

Every Ivy League dream I had, reduced to ash.

Panic clawed at my throat. How? Why?

Even my own cousin, Jake, seeing me bruised and desperate, didn't recognize me.

But a silent scream of "NO" echoed in my mind.

I would not break.

I was Sarah Miller, and my formidable grandparents, Eli and Agnes Miller, would find me.

And when they did, Bree Van Doren would pay.