Without even thinking, I grabbed Veronica's wrist and pulled her into my hotel, slamming and locking the door behind us. I run with her up the stairs all four floors to my room past Bill's open door, not stopping until I had pulled her in my room and locked the door behind us. I stood against the door, turned away from her; both of us breathing heavily.

"Tom-I-"

I turned and pulled her into my arms without even thinking and held on to her like a life raft, saving me from the depths my dark world. She returned my embrace without hesitation. Tears began falling from both of our eyes out of pure joy.

"Is it really you?" I whispered in her ear.

She nodded her head in response.

"Yes, it's really me. I'm so sorry, I should've told you."

"It's ok, baby. It's ok."

The shock had worn off and was now replaced by an overwhelming sense of elation. I pulled her tighter to me, boggled by the fact that she was standing right in front of me. She was safe. She was alive; and she would always be with me now. Because I would never let her out of my sight again; ever.

Neither of us could move for what seemed like the longest time. We just stood there with our arms wrapped tightly around one another.

"Tom? Lynn? What's going on?"

"Lynn, your father just sped off in his car, where's he going?"

Bill and Gustav started banging on the door, wondering what was going on. I smiled into Veronica's hair before pulling back to look at her face.

"They're never going to believe it's you with that black hair," I observed.

She just smiled and bent forward, flipping her hair over. She then pulled up at something I couldn't see, but a moment later I understood as the wig she had been wearing fell to the floor and all of the long, dirty blonde locks I remembered fell forward. She stood up and I almost burst into tears again from seeing her look almost identical to the young woman I remembered.

"Does this look more like my former self?" she asked.

"Exactly the same," I told her as I put my arm around her waist and steered her towards the door.

I opened the door, hiding Veronica from the worried Bill and Gustav, acting totally casual.

"Tom, what's going on?" Bill asked before I got one word out. "And what are you smiling at?"

"Look what I found," I simply said as I opened the door all the way.

Bill and Gustav's eyes suddenly opened to the size of eggs and their jaws dropped straight to the ground floor of our hotel. They moved their mouths as if to say something, but couldn't find the right words. Veronica suppressed a giggle and just smiled at them.

"You're allowed to talk, you know," she said in her soft voice.

They suddenly flung themselves around her, wrapping her in a tight embrace and snatching her out from my grasp, which panicked me for a moment. I could tell from the look on her face she wasn't too thrilled about their unannounced action, either. She suddenly went rigid and pale, wide eyes looking up the ceiling with a terrified expression on her face. Her breathing was shaky and panicked, and then she started trembling. Sensing this, Bill and Gustav let go of her shaking body and backed away. The small, petrified Veronica collapsed to the floor, supporting her torso on her still shaking arms. The two of them dropped to their knees beside her, not sure what to do. I rushed to her side on the floor, collecting her in my arms.

"Baby, what's wrong?" I asked her while I rubbed her back.

She looked up from the floor into my eyes, showing me the same expression as the night when He-, point is, the sudden feeling of being restrained and squeezed tightly brought back too many horrific memories of being tortured by that madman. I hugged her closer to me, whispering softly to her.

"It's ok; he's not here; you're safe now; I'm right here; it was only Bill and Gustav."

"Veronica, we're sorry; we had no idea-" Bill started to say, realizing why she was acting this way. He suddenly stopped talking when she looked up at him. She had somewhat stopped trembling, at least now it wasn't noticeable by looking at her. She sat up and put her arms around Bill's chest. He carefully put his arms around her small body.

"We missed you," he said to her softly.

"I missed you, too," came her softer reply.

Gustav, feeling left out, reached over and pulled Veronica off Bill. She turned around and did the same thing with him. After a minute or two, I pulled her back in my lap, holding her securely in my arms.

"You were really right next door the entire time we were talking to 'Lynn'." Gustav more or less stated.

"Uh-huh. I'm sorry," she said.

"It's ok, it wasn't your fault," Bill told her.

We all sat there on the floor for a while; us looking at her, her looking at all of us. There seemed to be no need for verbal communication at that time. The expression in her eyes told us everything; her relief for revealing who she was, joy for being found, fear that He would come back. We all looked at her with a response to each emotion she had; finally knowing she was safe took a huge weight off our shoulders, we could breathe again knowing she was with us, and we would never let Him come within a hundred kilometers of her again.

A look of confusion suddenly crossed her face.

"Where's Georg?"

We all looked up at each other; we had been so wrapped up in the shock of finding her no one had thought to tell him she had been found.

"When your father-whoever that guy was left he was yelling to your unc- the other guys over there to "move it, there's no time to grab anything, they found us out, we have to leave"," Gustav said. "So I told him to call the police. Who were those guys anyway?"

"The same people who abducted us in the first place," I told him. I could tell she didn't want to talk about them. She freaked out enough when reminded how they restrained her, talking about them would've driven her insane.

After a few beats of silence Georg knocked on the door and let himself in. I stood up, still holding Veronica in my arms which was very easy to do considering she was just skin and bones now. He looked first at Bill and Gustav sitting on the floor, then up at Veronica and me. Seemingly calmly, he walked up to us and took her out of my arms. He stood holding her, in shock that she was really there, as the rest of us were.

When he finally gave her back to me, I walked over to the large sofa two feet away and sat down with her in my lap. The others followed almost immediately, sitting next to us and pulling up chairs in front of us.

"What's gonna happen to them now?" she asked to no one in particular.

"Well, hopefully the police will catch them, and throw them in prison for the rest of eternity," Bill said.

"In solitary confinement," added Georg.

"Where they can slowly go insane," Gustav finished.

I would've added more to their response, but I was too preoccupied looking at Veronica's angelic face. She seemed to be comforted by the idea of those monsters being locked away for good. Sensing my eyes on her, she looked up at me and smiled that smile I had been dreaming of for so long. After sitting in silence except for our breathing, there was a weird groaning sound that seemed to come from the small person in my lap.

"Was that your stomach?" I asked her.

"If you remember correctly, they didn't feed me very often," was her somewhat joking response, but none of us found it funny.

"Do you want to order something?"

"Please!" her response was almost immediate. Now we all laughed.

Gustav got up from his chair and ordered several pizzas from the restaurant around the corner. He left soon after to pick them up. He seemed sad that he would miss out on the conversation we were bound to have about the past year, but he went without argument.

"So how did you end up in Russia when we were—taken in Italy?" Bill asked out of the blue.

"They didn't want anyone to find them, so they decided to leave for somewhere where no one cared what they did or who they said they were."

"It's weird that we ended up in the hotel right next to where you were-lucky, I should say," Georg threw in.

"Yeah, when I first saw you guys over here, I wanted to scream out in joy. I would've, too if I ever had a moment alone."

"They never left you alone?" I asked. They left us in rooms by ourselves all the time.

"Never. They were too afraid I would call the police or escape or something. They even had someone in my room at night when they wanted me to sleep."

Now that I thought about it, I always did see someone in her room at night. Sometimes they got in the bed with her. Those were the nights I tried not to think about.

"What about those two months I talked to you?"

"I was supposed to be 'working' a stoner party. They always passed out by the time I got there, so I talked to you."

Gustav came back in the room with four boxes of pizza just then, Veronica looking up with an anxious look in her eyes. I stood up, still holding her, as Gustav got plates out of the cabinet.

"Tom, you can put me down now," she said.

As soon as I released her, she practically sprinted to the pizza and grabbed two slices, throwing them on a plate. By the time the rest of us got up to get our first slices, she was grabbing another two. I had a feeling this would be going on for quite a while.