“Hey,” he says. “You thirsty? I have a whole mouthful of water here for you.” He shakes the plastic bottle in his hand, dangerously close to empty.
I don’t take it. I don’t want it. And I don’t know why.
I stare at the ceiling. Well, it’s too dark to see the ceiling down here, but I stare in its general direction. I feel Rome shift beside me, carefully recapping the water, so he doesn’t waste a drop. He pushes hair off my face, but I still can’t meet his eyes.
“Avery?” he asks. I can’t speak. Can’t move. It’s as if I’m dead, but not.
It’s the moment something flips in my brain. A switch goes off, just like that, a neural pathway that swaps tracks from eventuality A - that we might be rescued - to eventuality B - that we will not.
“Nobody’s coming to save us,” I say softly. It’s as if I’m outside my body, a third party watching this scene unfold. As I watch myself, it strikes me how casual I sound. How matter-of-fact.
How I have given up.
There’s no vengeance left in me, no childish hope that this situation is temporary.
This is it.
This is where it ends.
This is how I die.
“Avery,” Rome says softly. “We’re getting out of here. We are.”
I shake my head. I think I might even laugh. “If you’re saying that for my benefit, stop,” I reply. “And if you’re saying it because you actually believe we might get out of here? You’re not as smart as I thought you were.”
Rome’s stricken face appears above mine. It’s annoying, the way he’s stopping me from staring into the dark. I try to push him away, but he doesn’t budge.
“I’ll get you out of here,” he says. “Even if it kills me.”
Lies, I think to myself. He’s lying, and he doesn’t even know it.
“Do you think they’ll bury us together?” I ask coldly.
“Stop talking like that,” Rome snaps. “You have to hold on. You have to hope.”
That sentence snaps me out of my inertia. I sit up, lunging for him, grabbing at his t-shirt. “Fuck you,” I mutter. “How much hope can one person have? Just accept that this is it for us. It’s easier, trust me.”
Rome’s blue eyes widen. He reaches out a tentative hand, tucking my crazy hair behind my ear. Something cracks inside my chest, something that I thought wasn’t there anymore. It’s grief, I think. All the things I’ve held inside. And not just from this hellish experience. From years and years ago.
“I just want my mom,” I whisper. “Or my sister. You know? I was always so scared of dying, and now I’m not. Because maybe I’ll get to see them again.”
I don’t really believe that. I might be Catholic, but the life I’ve lived has largely taught me that death is death. Whatever afterlife there might be, my soul hasn’t been privy to the wonders of it. I wish I could believe that there was something after this, something better, but my logical mind doesn’t let me. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
“You’re not going to die,” Rome says urgently. But I can hear the lack of conviction in his words.
“What if I want to?” I ask him.
His shoulders slump. Maybe he’s tired of trying to give me hope. Maybe he’s got none left, either.
* * *
Sometimes things are almost … normal, down here. You would think that you'd die in a place like this, but both of our hearts keep on beating. We fall into a routine. Like everyone, we only really need basic things to survive: food, water, shelter. After the first few weeks, as the weather started to turn colder, he began sleeping right next to me, his arm wrapped protectively around my waist each night.
A rich girl like me has never been without everything, except what it takes to survive. Rationed food, dirty water, a bloodstained mattress, and a body that refuses to give in, no matter how often it's forced to bleed.
And it is forced to bleed. They want me to prove I’m alive over and over again. Over and over and over until it almost makes me laugh. How fucked up is that? That I’d laugh at that kind of pain? It’s just another way to mark the time. It takes so much time to split my skin. To coax out the blood. It takes so much time for Rome to bandage me up again.
My idea nags at me. More than that. It becomes my obsession.
What if I don’t want to be alive? I used to think that being here would be better than being dead, but now that I’ve said the words out loud to Rome, I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Being dead wouldn’t be fun, but it would be peaceful. It would be dark and safe and such a fucking relief. Our captors wouldn’t be able to demand any more proof of life from me. I wouldn’t have to watch Rome try and stuff down his fear while he bandages up another wound. I would just be nothing. Nobody. I would just be gone.
One morning - hell, it could be midnight, and I wouldn’t know the difference - I lie next to Rome in the half-light and take stock of my options.
At this point, one thing is clear: it’s us, or it’s them. Escaping with Rome is a pipe dream. He can keep that dream, if he wants. I have other dreams. Waking dreams. Waking nightmares. I don’t know what’s real and what’s pretend anymore. Everything is a dream and a nightmare. I can’t tell where the edge of reality stops, and the hallucinations begin.
Rome rolls over, watching me. I watch the ceiling. He puts his hand in mine and squeezes. I drag my fingers along his palm. Above me, on the ceiling, clouds roll over. A blue sky. A yellow sun. The heat of a nameless private island. How fucked up is that, a private island? I’ve been to so many of them, and not a single day on the beach in a couture bikini has come to anything.
It all comes to nothing. Nothing matters.
But Rome isn’t nothing.
He squeezes my hand again.
“What are you looking at?”
I turn my head an inch and look into his eyes. They look like they’re a thousand miles deep. I could tip forward and fall right into them, plummeting until I hit bottom. That wouldn’t be a bad way to go. Drowning isn’t peaceful, but drowning in Rome’s eyes might be. You never know until you try. Something’s come unhinged in my mind. Unhooked. I’m like a boat. Unmoored—that’s the word I was looking for. Even huge yachts can get into trouble if they’re not anchored properly. If someone forces you to become unmoored, you could float away into the ocean and never, ever come back.
Never coming back appeals to me.
I could ascend to another plane. Or descend. The direction doesn’t particularly matter, as long as it’s not this plane. This room. And as long as Rome can come with me.
That makes me laugh. It’s more of a high giggle. That’s not like me at all. Little girls giggle, and I haven’t been a little girl for a very long time. Then again, nothing about this situation is like me.
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
“Now you have to tell me.” Rome’s voice is firm, like an anchor. “Laughing? Come on, Aves. It’s fucking creepy when you laugh in here.”
I turn on my side, so it doesn’t take as much energy to stare into his eyes. “I’m wondering what heaven is like.”
A dark cloud passes over the blue of his eyes, but his expression doesn’t waver. If he’s hopeless, he hides it from me. It’s his right, I guess. He can hide the fact that he’s hopeless. I’m not going to be able to hide the fact that I’ve moved past hopelessness and into active planning. Because I know the truth. There is a way out of here. But Rome’s not going to like it.
A smile breaks over his bruised face. It’s unexpected, this smile, and it makes me pay attention.
“Did I ever tell you about the place where my dad lives?” Rome asks.
“I don’t know. Tell me again.” I half-remember the details, but maybe they’re all wrong. It’s not like Rome and I have spent the last several years trading stories like old friends. That’s my fault, obviously. Obviously. “Tell me about this place.”
It feels like I’m hovering above the king-size mattress now, looking into his eyes. I’m ready to fall. It�
��s funny how the pain bleeds out of my body sometimes and then I feel like nothing at all. I’ve slept in a lot of beds over the years, a lot of luxury mattresses in five-star places, but this is the first one that feels like a cloud.
“My dad lives in this hippie commune at Joshua Tree.”
Joshua Tree. An image springs into my mind. Two deserts crashing against one another. Gnarled trees under a vast midnight sky. I looked into glamping there once, but I didn’t go. Still, those two words paint the vivid image of sprawling stretches of desert sand and vast mountains rising out of the ground.
“Did you say...a hippie commune?”
I’m dreaming again, and my hallucinations burst to life around me, as if I were actually lying in the middle of this magical place Rome is describing. Tents burst from the land below the mountains, springing up like enormous desert flowers. The tents are made of giant flowers. Bare-feet women wearing long dresses carry stacks of neatly folded laundry. There are children running around, men talking as they build a giant bonfire. It makes me laugh again.
“That’s where my dad lives with all my half-siblings and his new wife. His wife of the earth. He says she’s timeless.”
“And they live in tents made of flowers?” I imagine a giant petal, as big as a house, bowing over me like some kind of shelter while I stare up at unfamiliar constellations. The constellations would be the same, I know, but maybe in Rome’s dad’s magical land they’d be different. “Flower tents?”
“Jesus, Avery, no. They live in trailers.”
It’s so serious, those trailers, that I crumple in on myself, shaking with laughter. I’m laughing so hard I’d cry if I had any moisture left in my body to spare. Rome and me—we’re like two deserts crashing together. Only deserts have more water, don’t they?
“They’re nice trailers.” Rome laughs too, his muscled arms lifting, covering his mouth with his hands. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was high. Maybe he is high. They’ve got to be drugging our food. All I know is that nothing, nothing is funnier than the way he said trailers. How many? All in a row? Joshua trees coming in through the windows? “There’s almost no cell phone reception. No internet. No television. No neighbors. No skyscrapers. No cars. There’s no pollution. You can see the stars at night like you wouldn’t believe.”
Rome stops long enough to brush a thumb across my bottom lip. “It’s not heaven, but it’s pretty damn close.”
That is possibly the most sincere thing I’ve ever heard Rome say. It sobers me a little, but not enough to stop the laughter that bubbles up like champagne in the middle of my chest. In my heart. In my veins. If I died right now, it wouldn’t be so bad. I’d be able to go out with the warmth of laughter covering all my wounds.
“I want to go there one day,” I tell Rome. It’s half-wish, half-storytelling. In another story, I’d tell him that, and we’d get on the next flight out. I don’t think I’ll ever go to Joshua Tree in this version of my life, unless I swing by on my way to hell.
Rome takes both of my hands in his and raises my knuckles to his lips. He kisses each one, lingering for just a moment. Ten kisses. Ten promises.
“I’ll take you there, Avery,” he vows.
He doesn’t have to say if we survive.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROME
I’m losing my grip on time. Who could fucking blame me? It’s a hellhole down here. I’ve seen hellholes before, but nothing like this. Being a Montague taught me a thing or two about kicking down doors, but not doors with four locks. I keep trying to think my way around it, but I always end up in the same place.
Door. Locks. Another door. More locks.
What the fuck are we going to do?
Not waltz out of here and go to my dad’s place in Joshua Tree, that’s for fucking sure. Avery keeps talking about it, letting out high giggles that, frankly, scare the shit out of me. She’s never been the type to get excited over desert communes, but I’ve painted a pretty picture. Avery has swallowed it whole.
If I’m losing my grip on time, Avery’s losing her grip on life.
Sometimes, when she’s not tracing an invisible cloud pattern in the sky, her face falls into this wistful longing. It makes my heart pound, and my bullet wound throb. It’s a fucking nightmare.
And she said as much to me. Didn’t even bother to hide it. Avery’s thinking of an alternate exit. She’s thinking of death instead of life, of surrender instead of survival, of acceptance instead of hope.
What am I supposed to say to her? With every day that passes, surviving down here becomes less of a life and more of a base biological function. Eventually, her heart will give out. Eventually, she’ll lose too much blood. But long before then, she’s going to lose her will to go on.
Which—fuck. I swore to her I’d get her out. I keep swearing it. I keep lying to her, and it’s the worst lie anyone could ever tell. Because it might seem merciful to keep promising I’ll save her, to spare her the truth of how impossible that promise will be to carry out - but there is no mercy in dragging out the torture of misplaced hope.
I keep trying to think my way out of this dungeon we’ve found ourselves in. I think so much that my head hurts. At night, I lie on the mattress and strain to hear the sounds of the people up above. What the hell is that woman doing? What are they all doing? I can’t relax. Time crawls by, every heartbeat taking a fucking eternity.
And then, suddenly, the eternity is over.
At first, I think I’m imagining the heavy door swinging open because I’ve been drifting. I don’t want to fall asleep. Fuck that. But we’ve been down here so long that it’s getting harder and harder to keep my focus.
Light slices into the dark of the room. Our eternal darkness is over, for now at least. Fuck. I sit upright as carefully as I can, pain lancing through my shoulder. That shit is not getting better. It never will—not until we get out. Not unless we get out.
Avery doesn’t seem to notice.
She’s got her head cocked to the side, staring up at the ceiling, her lips moving slightly. “Maybe we’ll take one of those old highway routes,” she whispers.
Highway routes. From a girl who demands nothing less than a private jet.
There’s a scuffle at the door, which has been open for longer than it usually is. I missed an opportunity. Guilt pins me like a spotlight.
“Avery.” I shake her shoulder. Can’t do it too hard, because she’s all beat up inside. The thought sends rage heaving into my throat. “Avery, get up. Get up.”
She frowns, a thoughtful little thing, then swings her head toward the door. “Oh, God.”
“That’s right,” says the masked man. He turns around and hauls something into the room.
Not something. Someone.
It’s a young woman, around twenty years old, her long, dark hair caked with blood. Our captor has her in a chokehold, the triangle his arm creates around her neck making her wheeze for air around the cloth gag in her mouth. She’s in her underwear, a plain white bra and panties both stained with blood, her wrists bound in front of her with zip-ties. She looks like she was pretty before - now her face is swollen and bruised and ten different shades of purple and red.
Her fingers are long and graceful, like a piano player’s might be. Her wrists are a mess of blood under the tight zip-ties - a testament to her struggles. Her eyes are green and filled with tears.
I wonder how long she’s been here. How long since she was snatched from her life. How long until she’ll be dead, or wishing she was.
She’s trying to fight the guy holding her—good for her—but it’s pointless. It’s pointless for me, and for Avery, and for her. Plus, with the way he’s got his arm around her neck, there’s nothing to be done.
My body tries to summon some adrenaline to help me get through this. It tries, and it fails. There’s nothing left to give. All I get is a horrifying numbness, like discovering you’re out of drugs after the high. The weight of life in this place drills me into the ground. I can
’t cut another woman. If I have to cut Avery again, I might die.
He hasn’t given one of his fucked-up orders yet. I’m disgusted with myself that I wish he would. Then I would know what to expect. I would know what comes next. The silence is almost worse than the pain I know is coming.
Avery scrambles up and reaches for my hand. There’s no point in scrambling, since there’s nowhere to go, but she does it anyway. It breaks my fucking heart. Avery’s expression is blank, with only faint sparks of worry in her eyes. We back toward the table. That piece of shit, that inhuman monster, raped Avery on that table. The last thing I want to do is cuddle up with it. But he’s pushing us, dragging the woman—a young woman, very recently a girl—toward the king-size mattress.
She howls around the cloth gag in her mouth. It’s such a despairing sound that it just about sucks the life out of me right there. Maybe she thought we’d be here to help her, but I’m already doing the math on the single bottle of water we get. It’s not good math. It’s gonna be her or us...if she stays.
The guy in the mask shoves her onto the mattress face down and wedges his shoe underneath her hip. My gut churns. It’s pure revulsion. I thought I’d felt it before, but I haven’t. Not until I got here.
“Up. Up.”
Tears stream down her face, soaking the gag, but she lifts her hips up.
“Spread your legs.”
The girl obeys, shakily. Her wet, ragged breathing fills the room. What the fuck is this guy’s plan? To rape her in front of us?
“Oh, no,” Avery whispers. “Oh, fuck. Oh, no.”
The captor pulls a gun.
He crosses the room with an easy stride and by the time I’m ready to fight him, to kill him, he’s grabbed Avery around her neck. She folds into his arm. There’s only the slightest twitch as she tries to get away, but she doesn’t try hard. She only looks at me with an unbearable sadness in her eyes. Avery understands something that I don’t. Why can’t I understand it?
It’s because my mind cannot comprehend what comes next.
VENGEFUL QUEEN Page 5