by Willow Rose
I showed her the note that Ryan had drawn for me. Lori looked at it, then nodded.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. What is NYX? How does it work? What do they do?”
Lori leaned in over her desk, folded her hands, then exhaled. “NYX is a self-help organization. Or that’s their cover. It’s built around the founder, Christopher Daniels. It’s supposed to be a way for you to get a better life. Daniels has written several books, and you can take his self-help classes or workshops with the aim to take power back over your own life.”
“But the classes are expensive, right?” I asked. “It’s not for just everyone.”
“Very. A five-day workshop would cost you between seven and ten thousand dollars. And it does work. It has helped a lot of people. Many who graduated from his classes have managed to stop smoking, to overcome their fear of flying or public speaking, and so on. It empowered them to do things they didn’t know they could.”
“As far as I have read,” I said, “it has attracted a lot of famous and successful people. Billionaire heiresses and businesspeople, even actors and the daughter of Venezuela’s former president. But there is more to it than just self-help, am I right?”
“Yes. I was introduced to it through a friend when I went through losing my dad in a car crash. I was going through a rough time dealing with the grief. The courses were mostly self-improvement workshops, based on therapeutic techniques, including hypnosis and Neuro-linguistic Programming, which is basically a behavior modification regimen. But the deeper I got, the more I realized something was off. There was a group within the group, like a sorority that my friend became a member of, but soon things started to change with her. She withdrew from me, became more secretive, and she lost weight, a lot of it. I realized it was all part of the behavior modification technique. She told me she had to lose her identity to gain a new one, that she was starving herself as a part of the therapy because it helped her connect with her inner self, her true self. I think she was just easier to control that way, and that Christopher Daniels just wanted to make sure she didn’t resist him. I sensed that something was very wrong and left. I tried to warn my friend and asked her to come with me, but she wouldn’t. She seemed scared. It’s hard to explain, but I felt like I lost her completely, like they were controlling her. They said it was all about women’s empowerment, but what I saw was the exact opposite.”
“Wow,” Sydney said. “I think I heard about this before. One of my friends talked about joining something like it and explained how taking those classes changed her life. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“You’re Kelly Stone, aren’t you?” Lori suddenly asked, smiling. “I thought I recognized you downstairs. I love your work.”
Sydney nodded. I didn’t mind that Lori recognized her since I had a feeling that made her feel more comfortable with us. She didn’t seem to recognize me, which was fortunate. I guessed a woman like her was too busy to keep up with the news of wanted criminals, which worked to my advantage.
“You be careful you don’t end up in their claws,” Lori said addressed to Sydney. “They’d love to have someone like you in their inner circle. You’re just their type. Rich, successful, and famous.”
Sydney chuckled. “I’ll remember that.”
I stared at the woman while thinking about this cult and the leader. I had no idea where I was going with this, but my instinct told me it was important. Ryan had seen the NYX sign at the attack somehow, and my daughter was on the surveillance camera footage. How, or if these things were connected, I had no chance of knowing. But it was all I had, and I was clinging onto it for dear life.
“Have you ever heard of the Iron Fist?” I asked.
Lori shook her head.
It was a long shot; I knew it was. But I had to try.
“Tell me about the founder, Christopher Daniels,” I said. “I read that he is quite mysterious and rarely seen in public.”
“That is true. I never met him myself, as I said, only the inner circle people get to do that.”
“Do you have any idea how to get in contact with him?” I asked.
“Are you sure you want that?” she asked while grabbing a sticky note and writing on it. She ripped it off, then slid it across the table. “This is the NYX estate. He lives there, as far as I know. I know this because I was supposed to meet with him a couple of weeks ago in order to join this so-called inner circle, but I never showed up. I don’t want to end up like my friend.”
I grabbed the note and looked at it. “Did they get angry with you for not showing up or for speaking up afterward?”
She shrugged. “Their lawyers tried to shut down my blog, but I have lawyers too. They can try all they want. They can’t touch me.”
Chapter 30
They brought in new girls. Olivia was sitting on her mattress, crying when the door opened, and they came in. A young girl, no more than thirteen or so, landed next to her. Her face was swollen from being beaten. She looked up at Olivia like she expected her to explain to her what would happen now, but how could she? How could Olivia tell her what was about to happen to her?
“What’s your name?” the girl asked.
“Olivia,” she answered without looking at her. She didn’t want to care for her; she didn’t want to become friends with her. If there was one thing she couldn’t do in this place, it was to care for any of the other girls. So many had come and gone, and that taught Olivia an important lesson. If she was going to survive this, she had to keep to herself and never care about anyone else. It was easy with the girls who came from China or Ukraine as some of them did because she didn’t understand their language, at least not most of them. It was easy to keep them at a distance, but this girl was American like Olivia. That made it harder to cut her off.
“I’m Tiffany,” she said with a sniffle. “I’m from Chowchilla, California. Do you know where we are?”
Olivia shook her head, trying to not look at the girl. Why was she so talkative? Normally, when new girls arrived, they wouldn’t say a word for the first day or so.
“I don’t know,” Olivia whispered.
“I have been so many places,” she continued, crying lightly. “It was my mother’s boyfriend who took me. He beat me up at the house where we lived, and when my mother didn’t do anything, I ran away. But I had nowhere to go, and he picked me up on the side of the road. Not knowing what else to do, I got in the car, and then he took me to his friend’s house. That friend raped me. He kept going for hours and hours till I couldn’t scream anymore. Then another of his friends came to his trailer, and they put me in a van and drove off. Since then, I have been so many places; I have no idea where I am or who I’m with.”
Olivia exhaled. She had heard similar stories repeatedly over the past few months while being held there. It was so much tragedy; she couldn’t bear it. It also frightened her to the core, especially when she heard of the amount of time some of these kids had been kept as slaves.
Was she ever getting out? Would she ever go home?
Olivia looked up toward the ceiling, stifling her tears. She’d had a lot of time to think about how to get out, and so far, come up with only one way. But it was too dangerous, and she wasn’t sure she dared to follow through with it.
“Do they rape you here?” Tiffany asked.
Olivia shook her head. “No.”
“Really?” Tiffany said, her eyes gleaming with hope.
“Yes, really. But they make you work for them.”
“What type of work?”
“Cleaning chickens, mostly. In a factory. But there’s other stuff too.”
“Like what?” she asked.
Olivia put her head down on the mattress. She didn’t want to kill this girl’s hope by telling her the truth.
“Just stuff. You’ll see. Now, go to sleep. They usually come at night, so you won’t get any sleep if you don’t sleep during the day.”
Chapter 31
Sydney brought me coffee from downstairs and placed it in front of me. I sent her a grateful smile and sipped it, leaning back in my chair in the hotel room.
“Anything?” she asked and blew cautiously on her coffee before sipping it.
I exhaled. “I’ve gone through everything I could. I couldn’t even find a driver’s license for him in the DMV register. I tried to get information on his financial situation, but according to the IRS, he hasn’t made any money in the past ten years. Yet he lives in a mansion in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the world. But the house isn’t in his name. It’s registered to a woman, whose name I also found on the board of NYX.”
“Wow.”
“He had another company earlier on, under the name Daniels, but that was shut down fifteen years ago because it was accused of being a pyramid scheme. He has a file with the FBI from back then, and it states that he doesn’t even have a bank account in his name. He’s keeping his name out of everything, so they can’t get him for anything. Yet the company owns a jet.”
Sydney lifted her eyebrows. “Are you logging into the FBI database? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Probably not. I’m using my former partner’s login, though, and I don’t think he’ll notice. But listen to this. I looked through old articles written about the group, and in 2011, a woman disappeared after an NYX session in California. Her car was found abandoned in a parking lot, and on her phone, they found a video she had recorded of herself saying that she was brainwashed, that she didn’t realize it, but she was already dead. Then she told whoever found the video to please contact her parents and tell them how sorry she was. Her body was never found.”
Sydney almost choked on her coffee. She stared at me, eyes wide. “Did she kill herself; do you think?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? But something is off. Something is very much off here. I can smell it.”
Sydney placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her.
“I smell it too, Eva Rae, but what about Olivia? I thought we came down here to try and find her? All we know is that you think you saw her on the platform after the gas attack.”
I stared at my sister, feeling a pinch of guilt in my stomach. I knew she was right. I was getting off track here. I feared that too. The fact was, I had no idea if it really was Olivia I saw on that clip, and I had let myself be blinded by the investigation into this strange cult instead.
It was time for me to get back on track — back to what I had come there for in the first place.
To track down the Iron Fist.
Chapter 32
Sydney watched TV, flipping through the many news stations and their breaking news about the possible terrorist attack on a local Catholic church in Miami. Meanwhile, I sat by the laptop and, through a downloaded Tor-browser, I accessed the Dark Web, using a VPN for protection.
Now, the Dark Web is pretty easy to get access to, and thereby to all the illegal stuff going on there, but the hard part is finding the right sites. You have to know where you’re going once you enter the browser. And I did. Back when I started my search for Olivia, I had found a list of pages where human trafficking was taking place. I knew that the FBI had a team of operators operating on the Dark Web to catch people engaged in criminal activity, and I gained access to their files. After finding a lot on murderers for hire, child pornography, illicit sale of body parts, and weapons for sale, I had found the pages that were known to the FBI to facilitate human trafficking, the buying and selling of people as slaves. Going to those sites got ugly really fast, and it made me sick to my stomach, plus I risked getting all kinds of malware on my computer. But it was on one of those sites that Piatkowski had sold my daughter, so I kept going back to see if the Iron Fist showed his ugly face.
So far, I had no such luck.
Until today.
I had recently entered a hacker forum and found someone willing to track down the Iron Fist for me, for an indecent number of bitcoins, naturally. Now, as I entered the chatroom, he wrote to me that he had found him. He then shared a link with me that would lead me to a chatroom he was in. I stared at the screen, my palms growing sweaty. I knew that if this link led me to child pornography, I was in trouble. I would be doing something illegal. I took in a deep breath, then decided to trust this hacker, and I clicked the link.
I held my breath as the page appeared, and a chat opened. Then I saw his name in the forum. There he was. Right in front of me. The Iron Fist. He was writing in the chat, asking for help. He needed four girls, fast.
I almost threw up.
Why is he asking for more girls? What is he doing with them? Does that mean he doesn’t have Olivia anymore? What did he do to her? Did he sell her to someone else? Did he kill her?
Someone answered. He had a shipment coming in, tonight. PortMiami. Midnight.
I stared at the chat as they agreed on a price, then went silent. I snapped a picture of the entire conversation on my phone. There was no way of tracking people who entered the Dark Web, but this was the best I could do. I stared at it, my hands shaking, my breath caught in my throat. I looked at my watch. There were still four hours until midnight.
I lifted my glance and studied Sydney for a second. She was engrossed in the news broadcast from the church. I wondered what to do about her. I couldn’t really bring her. I didn’t want her to get too deeply involved in what I was doing. It was too much of a risk for her. She had a career to think about.
I had to do it alone.
Chapter 33
THEN
“Aren’t you going to ask me any questions?”
Helen looked at Christopher, her legs feeling wobbly. He was standing in front of her now, looking into her eyes, moving a lock of hair. It felt like his eyes saw straight through her.
“About myself?”
Christopher chuckled. “I already know everything.”
“How so?”
“Just by looking at you, I can tell that you are strong, a lot stronger than you think. You have a defiant air about you. You’re a rebel. I know that you showed up to your first workshop in a ripped T-shirt, refusing to look like the others, refusing to show off your wealth and take part in in the upper-class materialistic way of life. I know that you are protesting against the bourgeois environment in which you grew up. I know that you are angry at the world and that you think more highly of animals than humans and that you would rather be with horses than humans. I also know that you have a terrible relationship with your father, who thinks he can buy anything or anyone. I also know that, through my workshops, you have looked deep into your psyche and been able to get rid of fears that have tormented you for years. I know that you can’t have children and that you suffered from depression before you came to us for help. I know you married a man who left you when he realized you couldn’t have children.”
Helen stared at him, out of breath.
“Wow.”
He took her face between his hands. “You are no surprise to me, Helen. I know you better than you know yourself. And now it is time for you to submit to me fully.”
Helen swallowed. “W-what does that…”
He hushed her, and she stopped talking. He touched her hair gently, then ran a hand down her chest, lingering a few seconds by her breast before continuing down her arm, where he stopped by her wrist. He
held it tight in his hand when the doors opened, and two women wearing white dresses entered.
“Who are they?” Helen asked. “What are they doing here?”
He hushed her again, then looked into her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
She swallowed hard, then nodded. “Y-yes.”
“Good,” he said.
He nodded, and the women approached. One of them held a cauterizing device. Christopher took it in his hand, then looked at Helen. It was sizzling in his hand — one of the women filmed with her phone.
“It is time for you to let go of your past, Helen. You’re a part of us now. Your old family is holding you back from becoming all you can be. We’re your family, and with this mark, I brand you, so you’ll know where you belong always. You belong to me. Say these words after me: I give you, Christopher Daniels, full and complete control over my life.”
Helen gasped lightly, but one look from his blue eyes made her feel at peace with this. It was the right thing to do. It was the next step, and she wanted it badly.
“I g-give you, Christopher Daniels, full and complete control of my life.”
He then placed the cauterizing pen on her arm and pressed it down on her skin. Helen screamed in pain. Christopher smiled and lifted it again, and a mark was left on the skin, burning like crazy.
Helen looked down at it, then up at the two women, who clapped and cheered.
“Congratulations,” one of them said. “You’re one tough woman.”
“And now you’re one of us,” the other said. As she spoke, she lifted her arm proudly to show Helen her own branding mark.
Christopher grabbed her by her chin, then turned her head to face him. He then leaned forward and placed a deep kiss on her lips.
“You belong to me now. Come,” he said and pulled her by the hand. “Don’t resist me. It’s your upbringing that makes you think you need to resist me, but you need to liberate yourself from it. Only then can you reach healing.”