by Anne Connor
My heart races inside my chest. The room is sparse, without much furniture, and dim. The ceiling light is busted, and as I look up, I close my mouth and my eyes because the ceiling is covered with dust. The only light is coming from a small lamp on the desk tucked into the corner, and aside from the bed and the chair I’m sitting in, the room doesn’t have much else.
The air conditioner hums noisily in the corner. I swallow and shake my head and hold my wrists where the zip ties were. My skin is red and puffy where the plastic dug in, but I’m okay otherwise.
I carefully walk over to the window and peel back a corner of the curtain. Bright sunlight bleeds into the room and I shield my eyes, trying to determine where I am.
I’m right off the strip. I can see if from here. Outside the window is a parking lot...it could be the same parking lot where Sean made me agree to go along with his plan. But this room is so different from the ones I saw before.
I’m not on a high floor. I can’t see very far. I’m probably on the third floor of this shit hole.
Acceptance starts to bleed into my consciousness, and my mind goes numb as I begin to recall what the man from the casino told me.
I don’t know whether I should even bother fighting now. I don’t know if it will do any good.
I sit back down on the chair.
I don’t know if I will ever see Sean again.
Looking over at the door, I wonder where he is, and where he went last night when he left me. He knew he was leaving me. I don’t know if the man who took me knew when Sean was leaving, or if he even knew at all.
I don’t know if I want to find out now.
I don’t know what the man meant when he said Sean didn’t want him to have me.
Sean knew that I was going to let this man use me so I could pay off my father’s debt? And he stopped it? Was it so I wouldn’t have to go through with selling myself, letting some stranger use me...or was it because he wanted to use me instead...
The numbness inside my head radiates out into my body as my body grows cold, and I shiver against the wall as I struggle to remain standing.
I want to give up. I don’t want to fight. I can’t fight any longer.
Sean did this to me.
I ball up my fists and clench my jaw. I trusted him.
And now, he isn’t going to come save me. He didn’t rescue me.
He captured me.
And now, I only have myself to rely on.
The realization that I never should have trusted Sean makes me sick. But it sparks something inside me. Something deep down, and hidden. And it brightens me from the inside, makes me feel a little spot of warmth inside my body, otherwise cold and tight and nearly trembling.
I want to survive. I have to survive. If not for Sean, and if not for myself, then for Dad. If he ever comes out of his coma, I have to tell him what a son of a bitch Sean is, and how he would never have wanted me to be with someone who would betray me like that. I want to know if my father and Sean were ever really friends to begin with.
If…
I look out the window again. The ground is three stories down, or maybe only two. If I could get the window open, I might be able to jump down. I might be able to escape.
I might be able to get myself out of here after all.
And I won’t cry. Not for Sean. Not right now.
Not ever.
I struggle with the window, trying to get it open. When it won’t budge, I look around the room for something I can haul at the thick glass to break it open.
With enough strength, maybe I can throw the chair at the window and break it. Just a small crack is all I need, and then I can chip away at it, little by little. I can do this.
I throw open the curtains and take a deep breath, and a cacophony erupts behind me.
I turn around quickly to see the door being thrown slammed , and it’s the man from the casino. He seems on edge. I cower into the corner of the room, tripping as I back up against the chair I was planning to use in my escape.
He walks up to me, his face hard but expressionless. I back up and collapse into the chair, my knees weak and unsteady.
Two figures come through the door after him as he strides over to me and sits at the edge of the bed.
“Why did you leave her in here?” one of the men says. “This isn’t where we take them.”
I know him; it’s Sean’s cousin. I would recognize him anywhere. He has the same broad shoulders and a face as handsome as Sean’s. But his face is devoid of any warmth. That sympathy I felt come off of Sean, that warm energy on him when I first saw him out on the strip, none of that is on his cousin. There’s no spark behind this man’s eyes. Everything’s dead inside. He can’t feel sympathy for me, because I don’t even know if he can feel anything for himself.
I see it in his eyes as he comes over to me, and I freeze in place.
I don’t remember his name, but it doesn’t matter. He’s one of Sean’s cousins. Fear overtakes me, from deep inside his bones. He doesn’t have anger on his face. No, what’s inside his eyes is far more insidious. There’s just nothing there. He has nothing to gain and nothing to lose. He’s the man I have to fear the most.
I swallow hard as my breathing picks up, but I struggle not to gasp. When he grabs each of my hands and zip-ties my arms to each of the arms on the chair, and then does the same to my ankles, I look past his stone fast to the other men, pleading silently for their help. I can’t help myself now. Not if I’m bound like this. There’s nothing I can do.
They’ve taken me, and now they’re going to break me.
Without Sean, I have nothing. He was the key to everything. He was the only reason I got out of this shit. But he’s also the reason I’m back in it. And without him, now that I’m bound in place, I have nothing.
I know what happens to the women who do wrong by these men. My ex, when he took me to the casino for my birthday last year, he used it to try to put fear into me. It didn’t work at the time, because I knew I’d never get involved with them.
Don’t think you’re going to run off with one of those thugs, Cherry. They might seem like they have everything, but if you cross them, they’re sell you out in a second, he’d told me. Do you know what they do? They give the girls drugs, they make them become addicted, and then they control them. Those girls will do anything once they’re hooked. They’ll sell their bodies to feed their need. They’ll wrap themselves around a pole, or worse. You don’t want that to happen to you, do you?
I told him I only wanted him, but he refused to believe me. And then he used it against me.
Don’t think of leaving me for one of those guys, he’d say. A lot of girls want the money or the status. But don’t think of it.
I left, but it was hard.
But for all the lies he told and all the times he cheated on me, he was telling me the truth when he told me that these men are dangerous.
I could tell they’re dangerous just by looking at them, though. The way I saw Sean...he looked like trouble.
He was trouble. And he still is, wherever he is right now.
“I’ll pay,” I say calmly. “I’ll give you the money I owe, if that’s what it takes. I have it. I swear.”
The man still standing at the door holds up a duffel bag and laughs. It’s the one that Sean packed up for me.
“You mean this? Yeah, that’s not your money. Sean can’t cover for you anymore.”
I shake my head and struggle in a small way against the restraints, but they’re too tight. I cannot move.
“Where is he?” I ask. “Where is Sean?”
“It doesn’t matter now, Cherry,” the man from the casino laughs. “He can’t help you this time. No one can.”
Sean’s cousin steps behind me and closes the curtains, shutting them tight. He steps around me and makes a lewd kissing face at me as he retreats from the room with the men.
“You’re going to have to pay your debt a different way now, sweetheart.”
When th
e door closes behind him, I realize I’ve been holding my breath as I exhale shakily. Tears start to quake through my eyes and I sputter a few choking sobs.
I feel lost. And now, I belong to them.
Sean
I’ve never killed a man, but that doesn’t make me good. It doesn’t make me any better than the men I associate with. It doesn’t make me any better than my cousins or any of the men I do business with.
I throw my car into reverse and grind out of the parking lot. I don’t know where Cherry is, but I need to find her.
I roll my windows down as the hot asphalt grinds under my wheels. I find my rhythm and the friction beneath me grinds, rubber against the road, as I peel toward my house.
Time passes by in a blur. The ride back to my place takes forever, but when I get there I feel like I’ve never left. I let myself in and I’m met with her scent, hanging in the air. Her boots are on the floor in my kitchen. The bowl from her soup is still in the sink.
“Cherry?”
I shoulder through the short hallway and check the bedroom. She’s gone. My side of the bed, which I made neat before I left, has been laid on.
I check the bathroom. She isn’t there, and there's no sign that the shower’s been used. The bag I set up for her with the cash and some extra clothes has been taken. I start to turn to leave, my heart beating frantically inside my chest, deep and heavy, when I spot the photo of her and her old man on the dresser.
Now I know she's been taken away from me. She wouldn’t leave that photo behind. Someone left it for me to see. Somehow who knows that I'd take this personally.
Someone who’s family.
Someone who wants me to take this fucking personally.
And it’s someone who knows the truth about me and Cherry. Someone who has figured out that I’ve been living a lie for the past 24 hours.
I leave my house and get back into my car. It’s a hundred miles back into Vegas City Limits, and I’m going to make the trip shorter anyway I can. I’d move a mountain for her.
After everything she’s been through and the things she’d made me feel, I won’t give her up now. Now, I’ll put everything on the line for her.
I told her to trust me, and I’d promise that nothing would happen to her. I’m not going to let anything get in the way of that truth.
Because the truth is that these past 24 hours haven’t been a lie - far fucking from it. And I knew that all along. I told her she was mine the first time I saw her body laid out in front of me, and she was mine then. She’s mine now. I’m not letting her go.
I know this business, and I know what happens to girls when they can’t pay. It’s why I took her to be mine. Because I knew a worse fate awaited her if I didn’t.
And then...then something else happened between us. Something more.
She took to me so well. She opened up her sweet little mouth and I made her mine.
My heart clenches and my cock twitches as I make my way to my room inside the hotel.
I got past security with no problem. If this is a trap and my uncle is waiting for me somewhere, he’s letting me in, letting me come to him.
I won’t have a problem taking the most extreme measures to save Cherry. Maybe that’s where my uncle is wrong about me. If he’s set this trap for me and is letting me walk into it willingly, he’s made a huge fucking mistake.
Because now that it’s her at stake, I won’t draw the line somewhere that he’ll be happy with.
I get to my room, adrenaline coursing through me. I’ve been able to rely on my cousins for my whole life, but now that I’ve gone against the family, lied to my uncle, I know which side they’ll land on.
I guess I was never really part of the family to begin with.
I punch in the combination to the safe and trade out for a glock. The weight of the chrome feels light in my hands. I brush my hand softly over one of my pistols. I’ve never killed someone, but I’ve instilled fear into men with the use of my guns. Today will be no different.
Today, I’ll do whatever it takes.
I take the short way down to the basement. I know where they keep the girls they take and where they store them for my cousin to break them in. It isn’t pretty, but it’s what they do to keep them in line. Sometime they’ll give the girls drugs, that’s if they aren’t already hooked on something. Sometimes, they’re already hooked and that’s how they get mixed up in this fucked up world we inhabit.
Sometimes, like Cherry, they don’t know that they’re in over their heads until it’s too late.
But it’s not too late for her, because I’m coming for her.
Cherry
When I come to, Sean’s cousin is standing over me. I can only see his silhouette in the dark.
Panic floods me after I have a split second of peace and respite. After I realize where I am, and what happened.
And after the panic begins to flood my veins, I taste the metallic liquid inside my mouth. My lip is split open, and blood is trickling between my parted lips. I don’t know what’s happened to me. I don’t know what he’s done.
“Please,” I say to him. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Just please let me go.”
He looks at me with malice, dismissing me with one glance. He isn’t interested in my pleas. He’s going to do what he wants to me.
“This all could have been so simple, Cherry.” He laughs at gets up from the mattress in the middle of the room. We’re in a windowless room with simple white walls. There are no sheets on the bed. “You know that prostitution is legal in Nevada, don’t you?”
“Y...yes,” I choke. “I know that. Look, I’ll do anything you want. Just let me go.” My voice is barely a whimper. The taste of my own blood is making me feel weak. It’s making me feel unable to fight. I’ve already been hurt.
He laughs and pulls a cigarette from his pack, tossing it onto the bed and taking a deep drag from it. He looks like Sean’s doppelganger, an evil twin sent to hurt me instead of save me.
But Sean didn’t save me. I thought he saved me, but he didn’t...he ruined me.
“I’m not a sick fuck, Cherry. I’m a nice guy.” He walks over to a small table and pours a small glass with a clear liquid from a bottle nearby on the table. “I don’t want this to hurt. But you have to learn how to behave.”
He presses the cigarette between his lips and walks over to me, the glass pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Squatting down in front of me, he puts his hand on my knee and puts the glass up to my lips. It’s vodka, or maybe something stronger, and I move my head away. The sharp scent fills my nostrils and makes my mouth water with sickness.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want it.”
“It’s okay, you won’t even feel a thing. Be a good girl and take a sip.”
I press my lips into a tight line and he takes the cigarette out of his mouth, blowing the smoke straight into my eyes. I wince and whimper, keeping my mouth shut as he reaches out to tip my chin up and press the rim of the glass between my lips. I can’t say no. I just keep dodging the rim of the glass, until he forces it between my lips. The smell is so strong and I feel so weak next to it. But still, I fight, even as hot tears begin to swell in my eyes and roll down my cheeks, mixing with the blood on my lips, falling into the glass.
“That’s a good girl,” he says, tipping my mouth back farther. I close my eyes and hold my breath as he forces my mouth open, tilting the contents of the glass into me. The liquid isn’t vodka; it’s something else, and it burns my tongue and then my throat as it goes down. Its stinging stench hits my core, and I cough, desperate to close my mouth and my throat, but it goes down anyway.
“Don’t fight,” he says, a twisted smile spreading across his face. He doesn’t look into my eyes. He looks at me everywhere else, though. At my lips, my cheeks. I’m wearing a thin white t-shit and no bra or panties, and his eyes drag down my body, lingering on the swell of my breasts. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. I’m not a bad guy, you know that? I’m not
going to hurt you.”
The stinging liquid feels thick in my throat, even after I’ve swallowed it. I can still feel it. My guts still churn, but the panic is beginning to subside. He’s made my anger begin to falter. The liquid did that to me.
He goes over to the table again, stamping out his cigarette and refilling the glass with the liquid. I think now that it’s grain alcohol, and it’s positively sickening. It feels like lighter fluid inside my empty belly. I feel it seeping into my brain, making me become weaker by the second.
I try struggling against the restraints again, but it’s no use. I will never get out of this chair on my own.
“You know, I think you’ll learn to like this,” he says, turning his back to me. His muscles flex inside his shirt as he takes a sip from the glass. There’s specks of blood on the rim, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. “You could have done very well for yourself on the open market. But you know that already, don’t you? I bet now you wish you could have sold yourself to Cullen after all.”
My heart races and drops into my stomach.
“You think I like this?” I look up at him as he walks over, averting my eyes. He’s focused on my body, his eyes taking in every inch of me. “You think I want to be tied up like this just because I was ready to make a stupid choice in a moment of desperation?”
He lunges at me and takes my chin in his hand, nearly lifting me off the floor with the chair I’m strapped into. He licks his lips, a lewd grunt coming from inside his chest as he looks at my busted lip.
“Why don’t you look me in the eye?” I spit out. “Or don’t you really want to see what you’re doing to me?”
His eyes shift and lock onto mine, their ferocious intensity frightening, making me wish I hadn’t pushed him.
“Like this, Cherry?” He presses his thumb to the cut in my lip, the alcohol on his hand burning into my busted flesh. “This what you want?”
Sean