Lost & Bound

by Tara Hart

  “Good to see you, son.”

  This time there’s warmth in his voice. He almost sounds genuine. Almost.

  I let my eyes sweep over him. He looks good. His hair has gained more silver and he has lost a few pounds, but he still looks like the same distinguished gentleman. I notice his eyes. They look dark and shifty. I’d never noticed that about him—that his eyes dart all over the place when he’s nervous.

  “When did you get back?” He claps me on the back as he steps aside letting me into the house.

  I open my mouth to answer, but hesitate as I do. Don’t lie, I tell myself. If you lie, he’ll know. He’s a human lie detector.

  I clear my throat. “This morning.”

  A look crosses his face and I immediately think I’ve blown it.

  Fuck, I should have planned for this. He knows I’ve been in the house. He knows everything.

  When I think he’s about to question me further, he presses his lips together and nods his head.

  “Good.” He smiles crookedly. “Come in. Tell me all about Italy.”

  My father is an obnoxious man. I’ve barely said ten words to him and I can already feel the falseness radiating off of him. He is a man who cares about two things. One is the township of Merling. His family was one of the founding families of the town and he saw it as his right to be the mayor.

  The second is what people think of him. He always wants to appear better than everyone else. He wants to have more money, own the nicest car, and host the most prestigious parties.

  In short, my father is a pretentious bastard. Even his name proved this true. William Osborne Mathers. Osborne wasn’t actually part of his given name. It was my mother’s maiden name and a name he bestowed upon himself. Three names signified he was someone important, or so he thought.

  I follow him through to the kitchen. The room is spotless once again and there is no sign of Leila. I don’t know what I was expecting, him to have her shackled to the oven while she prepared his dinner? Of course she’s—hidden.

  “What can I get you? Wine, beer?” He walks to the refrigerator.

  “Water’s fine.”

  He reaches for the canister from the fridge. “Water it is.”

  He grabs two glasses from the cupboard and places them on the bench between us.

  “So, how’s life in Italy? How’s Sofia?”

  He pours two full glasses of water and takes a sip from his. I didn’t expect this—for him to act so normal. Part of me wants to yell at him, to tell him I know about the girl he has hidden in the basement, to tell him this charade is over, but I know I can’t. Patience is key, he taught me that himself.

  I pause for a moment, adding some intensity to my father’s hanging question. “I broke it off with Sofia.”

  He drops his glass to the counter. The base landing with a loud clunk and water spilling out the sides, but he doesn’t notice.

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  She’s a spoiled brat. She’s too high maintenance. She’s a horrible person. I don’t love her…

  “It just wasn’t working,” I say without looking at him. I know he’s disappointed. I can feel his gaze condemning me before I have a chance to explain myself. He doesn’t give two rats about Sofia and I, he only cares about her family, their name and the power they hold in the Italian social scene. To my father power is everything and what I found out today proved that to be true.

  “She’s a good girl, Cal. Don’t let her get away.”

  I try to disguise the eye roll he deserves, but I fail.

  “You can make it work,” he softens his voice. “All relationships go through their ups and downs, but you have to stick around and work through it.”

  Did your relationship with mom have its ups and downs? Did you lock her up and rape her when you needed a release? Fuck, being civil to this guy is proving harder than I imagined.

  “I don’t think we’ll be working through anything, Dad. I don’t have the energy for it anymore.”

  All I did was fight for my relationship, but I wasn’t so sure it was a relationship worth fighting for. I tried to make it work. God knows for the majority of our relationship all I did was try and make it work, but I couldn’t explain that to my father. He’d probably tell me to take a mistress on the side or something absurd.

  “How is Sofia taking it?” His question surprises me. He actually sounds like he gives a shit.

  “She was upset—is upset. I told her I needed some space.”

  “So, there’s still hope then? Good. Never burn any bridges, that’s always been my motto.”

  He smiles at me. My father always hears what he wants to and ignores the rest. I’m used to this.

  He wipes down the bench, as he looks lost in thought, a line wrinkling his forehead. “Are you staying at your house?”

  He’s probably petrified that I want to sleep in my childhood home, what a conflict that would be.

  My own home is a three-bedder that I bought when I was twenty-three and fresh out of college. It sits on the outskirts of Merling. Since my move to Milan three years ago, I rented the house out. I haven’t told the tenants to vacate yet, I’m not even sure I want to stick around.

  “There are tenants in there now,” I tell him. “I’m staying at Eric’s for a few nights.”

  “Right.”

  My father hates Eric. Despises him in fact, and he’s always frowned upon our friendship since we were juniors. Eric had a humble upbringing and my father didn’t approve of our friendship from the start.

  As our conversation runs dry, I struggle to find something to talk about. I haven’t seen this man in three years and yet we can’t hold a conversation for longer than ten minutes.

  “How’s the town going?”

  Just as I bring up my father’s favorite subject, his beloved Merling, his phone rings.

  He looks at the screen and then up at me.

  “Sorry, Cal,” he says, not an ounce of sincerity in his voice. “I have to take this.”

  “Sure, no problem,” I tell him.

  “Why don’t you take a look in the fridge and choose something for us to heat for dinner?”

  He doesn’t wait for my response before turning his back and leaving the room.

  “Hugh, how’s it going?” His voice bellows down the hallway.

  When he’s out of sight I rush to the basement door. Pausing, I listen for his footsteps. None. He is still, probably sitting in his office at the end of the hall. I can hear his deep voice carrying down the corridor, he lets out a gruff laugh and I figure I have some time to spare, five minutes at best.

  I silently push the door open and step into the darkness. I don’t remember ever coming down here as a child. Maybe it was always my father’s sex dungeon, even when we lived here as a family and I was none the wiser.

  When I’m halfway down the staircase I notice a dim light illuminating the corner of the room.

  “Leila,” I half say, half whisper. “Leila, are you here?”

  “Callum,” her heavy accent fills my ears and I find myself smiling.

  I descend the last few steps and look around the area. I don’t know what I expected to find down here, but the space isn’t entirely dreary.

  There’s a huge four-poster bed on the far side of the room, set against an exposed brick wall. The linen is all white and crisp. The exposed wood beams and the high ceiling make the space cold, my arms instantly covering in goose bumps.

  “This is where I live.” Leila indicates the room around us. She’s sitting at a white antique dressing table near the bed. She’s brushing her hair, the long brown tresses shine, even in the dimly lit room.

  She stands and walks over to me. She’s wearing the same pink satin robe as earlier in the day, but now her face is painted by makeup. Her lips are pink and her cheeks rosy. Is she getting ready for him?

  I swallow roughly. It feels like I’m swallowing razorblades.

  Glancing to my right, I notice there’s an archw
ay that leads to another room. A sofa, coffee table and a small fireplace fill the space and then lead to another door. A bathroom, I presume.

  “I didn’t know when I would see you again.” She smiles at me, her manner casual despite meeting me just hours ago. “Where is he?” She says “he” as if she’s afraid of the word and equally afraid to utter his name.

  “He’s upstairs, on the phone,” I whisper. “We haven’t got long.”

  She nods at me knowingly. Taking a step closer, she purses her lips as if she’s about to tell me something. She’s so close that I’m distracted by her scent, a sweet flowery scent that reminds me of my mother. It takes a moment for my brain to process this. She wears my mother’s perfume. I glance at the dressing table behind her looking for the familiar crystal shaped bottle.

  I spot the bottle and walk over to take a closer look. I pick it up, take a whiff and let the memories come flooding back.

  “What is it?” Leila asks from behind me.

  “This perfume, it’s my mother’s.”

  I turn to look at her and her lips part slightly as she struggles to speak. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “I take it you don’t wear it by choice?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologizes again.

  I place a hand on her shoulder. She flinches as first, but then she leans into my touch. I stroke my thumb over her silk robe, a comforting gesture, nothing more. But as I continue tracing my thumb along the line of her shoulder and down to her elbow the way her body reacts tells me she’s enjoying the contact more than she should.

  I look at her standing before me, her face full of kindness, the trust she holds in me painted all over her face. My father has used this poor girl to replace my mother. He makes her apply the same lipstick, wear the same perfume, he even uses my mother’s name when he refers to her, but Leila is nothing like my mother.

  She’s the total opposite of my mother’s body type, Leila being five inches shorter and much more shapely. So why her?

  “Callum?” she questions, wondering where my attention is.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s having a party.” Her eyes are wide, her tone serious. “On Friday.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “He told me so.”

  “What happens at this type of party?” I ask, not sure if I’m ready to hear the answer.

  “The men…they come…and I have to put on a show and maybe please them.”

  What. The. Fuck. This thing just went to a whole new level of fucked up.

  I’m not sure what’s more disturbing. That in Leila’s world, this kind of party is actually the norm or that my father is the one who hosts such parties. Merling is a small town, how many perverted men live here?

  “I’ll come to the party,” I say without thinking.

  “You can’t.” She grabs onto my arm, her gaze pleading with me to reconsider. “He will know we spoke.”

  “What if I pretend I’m one of them?” I ask and her eyes immediately meet mine.

  “One of them,” she repeats, pronouncing each word carefully.

  “Leave it to me, okay?”

  I grasp her shoulders and look into her eyes.

  “I will help you, Leila.”

  She nods her head to confirm that she believes me.

  When I make my way back upstairs my father is still on the phone. I choose a meal from the selection in the fridge and put it in the microwave to warm. I grab a beer from the fridge and uncap it before taking a long swig.

  After everything I’ve found out today it’ll take more than a few beers to shake thoughts of my father and Leila from my mind. I take another mouthful and mentally prepare myself for Friday.

  Chapter 6

  Leila

  The room is dark, apart from a spotlight that is set on me. It glares into my eyes making it hard to open them. The stage turns around slowly making the nausea rise to the surface again. I feel a draft, causing my whole body to prickle with goose bumps. I look down and notice I’m naked apart from a flimsy silver thong that barely covers my slit.

  I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hide my breasts from…who? Are there people here?

  I can’t see anyone. The black abyss before me is empty as far as I can tell and yet I can feel their eyes on me. Looking me up and down, taking me in as one would a piece of art. It’s an unsettling feeling to know I’m not alone.

  I start to feel woozy, like I can no longer stand upright. The damn stage keeps spinning.

  Around and around and around.

  “Let me go!” I shout in English, not Portuguese. “I want to get out of here,” I cry into the darkness.

  Tears streak my face as the stage continues to turn. No matter how loud I yell, how much I beg, the stage doesn’t stop moving.

  I hear footsteps. Someone is coming.

  I’m not alone. Someone is coming to help me, to save me.

  “Help me, please,” I cry.

  I hear the muttering of two people, maybe three, and then a loud bellowing voice fills my ears.

  The gruff voice shouts over the top of my pleas. “Sold.”

  I hear the word but don’t immediately understand its meaning. “Sold,” I repeat helplessly. “Sold?” I question once more, but no one answers. No one hears me.

  And then I wake up.

  I had that dream again. I sit upright in bed and wipe the back of my hand over my forehead. It’s slick with sweat.

  “It’s just a dream,” I tell myself.

  In truth, I never know if it’s a memory or a dream. Maybe I’ll never know, but it feels so real. Something tells me there’s more to it, but I can’t piece the information together. I can’t conjure the memory when I’m awake and lucid.

  I take the glass of water from my nightstand and down its contents in one long gulp. The clock reads 2:00 a.m. and even though I’m tired, sleep doesn’t take me in.

  Ever since I arrived here my sleep has been a cycle of broken, restless nights. I think back to the night when I first woke up here, finding myself in a foreign bed in this cold basement. I was tucked into bed so tight. Not until I tried to move did I realize my hands were bound by rope. The rope dug into my skin so deep that the burn marks lasted for weeks after.

  I wasn’t sure what to think of him at first. Whether to be scared, intimidated or disgusted. He was kind when he spoke. His words always soft and comforting, but that was a front. He didn’t rape me until my second week here. He gave me time to come down from my high before he assaulted my body for the first time.

  I will always remember that night. It was raining. There are no windows in the basement, but I knew it was raining because of the leak in the bathroom ceiling. I focused on that noise.

  Rain drops hitting the cold, cement floor.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  He didn’t last long. It was probably less than two minutes of him thrusting inside me. As much as I tried to block it out, I always remember the smell. He smelled like the leather seat of an old car and alcohol. Those smells I now associate with him.

  “Emmy,” he whispered against my skin.

  I shuddered. That’s not my name.

  “You will call me Osborne,” he said like he’d just pulled the name out of thin air.

  His breath hit my face as his eyes studied me. A smirk on his lips that made me want to vomit.

  “What’s my name?” he asked, his fingers digging into my chin while forcing me to look at his face.

  I didn’t answer straight away. Even though my English was poor I understood what he wanted from me, but I couldn’t speak.

  “Emmy, what’s my name?” This time his tone was much more severe.

  He wrapped his hand around my jaw, his nails sinking further into my skin.

  “Speak, damn you.”

  “Osborne,” my voice wavered.

  I hadn’t spoken in over a week. I didn’t recognize the voice as my o
wn at first. It was low and husky, and hurt as it travelled off my tongue.

  “Good girl.” He smiled, revealing his perfect white teeth and more of his liquor soaked breath.

  That was the first night he raped me. He didn’t make me dress up in one of his ridiculous outfits. He didn’t tie me to the bedposts and spank my ass until my skin was red and raw. He just fucked me like I was his to fuck. The whole time I was as limp as a rag doll. I remember thinking to myself that I would never get used to this man invading my body. And I never have.

  And that was how this nightmare started. It didn’t hurt so much to think about now. Now I have hope. Hope that Callum will set me free. And with that thought, I’m finally able to drift off into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  Chapter 7

  Callum

  I hesitate before ringing the doorbell. I’ve been internally debating whether this is a good idea or not. Rocking up to my dad’s house unannounced could prove to be an amateur move, but I know I need to attend this party to see things for myself.

  There are at least ten cars in the horseshoe driveway, about eight more than I expected.

  Merling is a small town and I had no idea how many sick, perverted men could be living within its boundaries.

  A burly guy stands at the foot of the stairway that leads up to the door. He doesn’t acknowledge me when I look him up and down. Security guard, I assume. Perhaps the same one who caught Leila the night she tried to escape.

  I finally pluck up the courage to press the doorbell. It surprises me when the door finally opens and the man staring back at me is not my father. It’s a short man who I don’t recognize. He is dressed in a penguin suit, complete with black bow tie and top hat. He looks ridiculous.

  “Your name?” he asks.

  I’m the guy that grew up in this house.

  I offer him a sleazy smile, my best attempt at fitting in with these creeps. “Callum Mathers,” I utter the words and watch the realization cross penguin suits face.

  “Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Mathers.” He clears his throat. “Is your father expecting you?”