Intelligent, confident and beautiful, Antoinette Vaughn had it all until one night she went to help a friend and paid for it...with a life sentence in hell. Four years later, Toni?s judgment is overturned, but the damage is already done. She walks from the prison a free woman, but she?s hardly free. Actually, she?s hardly alive. A prison without rules can do that to a person. She was raised amidst garden parties, stables and tennis courts, but now a dingy flat in a decrepit building is what Toni calls home. It?s cold, dark and barren just like her heart, but it suits her. She doesn?t want to leave much behind when she?s gone, but the simplicity of her sheltered existence begins to unravel when a beautiful stranger comes into her life. How does anyone survive in a world that terrifies them? How do you learn to trust again when everyone is your enemy? How do you take your next breath and not wish it were your last? And if your past returned...what would you do?