by Nashoda Rose
His hand came down on the back of my neck. Then he pulled and there was a loud tearing sound. He gripped a handful of my hair, yanked backwards, then straddled me and gagged me with the piece of material he’d torn from my blouse. He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder and walked down a hallway out the back door and then through a wooden gate into a back alley.
Lance tossed me into the backseat of a rusted old car with tinted windows and jumped in after me. I made a dive for the other door, but Molly was there with the gun pointed at me. She got in and then I heard the locks click as the driver pulled away.
“You best behave, princess.”
“I’m not a goddamn princess, fuckhead,” I muffled under the gag.
Lance’s brows rose. “Perhaps not … anymore.” A cold shiver ran over me as I saw his eyes pause on the scar on my cheek. Then he looked at Molly. “I think you overestimated Ben.” Who the hell was Ben? “He fucked it up. Her face should’ve been a lot worse.”
Oh my God. Lance knew who attacked me? Had he helped the intruder get in the building? Maybe that’s why the security cameras never caught the guy because Lance had let him in the back door. And if Molly was in on it then the perpetrator could’ve been kept informed as to when Matt was coming home. I shook with fury. They did this. All of this. But why?
“He was supposed to rape her so Ream wouldn’t want her. The scars were your gift. Now look at what we’ve had to do.” Molly flung her hair back over her shoulder and crossed her legs, the gun resting on her thigh. “I didn’t want this problem. Now we’re going to have issues with that military guy. I don’t like issues.”
Lance scowled and tapped his fingers on the armrest while he stared at me. “We’ll deal with it. It will be fine.”
“How so? Kat vanishes and Deck will hunt us down.”
So what were they planning? To take Ream? Deck would come for him too. How did she think she’d get away with this?
“Listen, Alexa, I wasn’t the one who struck her. You’re the one who lost your cool over your little obsession.”
I figured she had to be some psychotic fan of Ream’s. Found out where he hung out and got a job at Avalanche and was waiting for him to come back from tour. Shit, maybe this bitch had been following Ream for years. The bad news was I was a threat to her.
She picked up her gun and pointed it at my head. My heart started pounding unsteadily and the gag was all wet from my saliva. I breathed so hard it made a slurping sound with every breath.
“Alexa, don’t be stupid.” He put his hand on her arm.
I heard the hammer cock.
“Alexa. You want issues, then killing her will give you them,” Lance warned.
“This is your fault, Lance. You were supposed to have her fall for you. Keep her out of the picture until I got him back.” She turned to me and the gun wavered as she spoke. “And you. Dancing provocatively right in front of him—repulsive slut. He had to get up and hold you, didn’t he?” At Avalanche. Oh God, she’d been watching us. “Didn’t he,” she screeched.
She was insane. I stared back at her; the rage teetering on edge as my mind whirled at what she’d done. The hurt Ream and I had been through, the betrayal. My brother took her in. We trusted her. I wanted to wrap my hands around her fragile neck and squeeze the life out of her.
“Didn’t he?” she yelled.
I slowly nodded, my eyes watching her finger on the trigger. Not that I could do anything if she pressed it. At the moment I was more concerned about what else they had planned because whatever it was involved Ream and it made me ill thinking that he’d be subjected to this crazy bitch after all he’d been through in his life.
She lowered the gun and started rambling to Lance about what it was like having to be nice to everyone at the bar pretending she liked us. “I waited too long for this to have her screw it up.”
“Alexa,” Lance soothed. “You’ll have him back. Calm down.”
Back? What did he mean back? Had Ream slept with this crazy ass chick? He told me he hadn’t slept with anyone since the first time he’d been with me. Was it before that? But then he’d remember her even if it was years ago. Okay, guys drank and slept with random chicks and maybe didn’t remember much in the morning, but Ream … Ream I knew without a doubt wouldn’t do that. Oh God, why didn’t I see the truth? Why didn’t he? He’d never cheat on me no matter how fucked up he was.
She nodded, her eyes gleaming wild. “Yes. Yes. He should’ve never left me. Now, look what I’ve had to do.”
I had no clue what they were talking about, but I wasn’t putting up with the saliva dripping from the corners of my mouth any longer. I turned my head to the side and used my shoulder to roll the gag from my mouth, not caring if they saw me do it. I wasn’t sitting here drooling like some dog, and I suspected if they wanted me dead they’d have easily done it by now.
Neither of them said anything, and I suspected because wherever we were no one would hear me scream anyway.
“He’ll cause problems for you, Alexa. He’s not like how you remember him. It’s been a long time and you were just kids. He’s not going to do whatever you say.”
A slow smile formed and her eyes gleamed as she looked at me. “Oh, I think he will. We may be able to use her as an … extra insurance policy.”
“We have insurance. We don’t need her to get to Ream.” Lance kicked the back of the vinyl seat. “I say, dump her, get Ream on the phone, and play our ace card. Then let’s get the hell out of here before we have that bastard Deck and his cop friends on our ass.”
“We have time. That guy is in the Middle East and I’m paying you to shut the fuck up and do what I say, not for advice.”
“If we have Deck coming after us, you’re not paying me enough.”
I hated her perfect white teeth, and I wanted to kick them out and watch her smile with a blood-filled mouth. “Kat, did he tell you about his colorful childhood? How he used to kneel in front of the toilet and throw up every Friday night. Do you know where he went? Or was that too much for your princess ears.”
“Fuck you, Molly.”
“Alexa,” she corrected.
“What-the-fuck-ever, bitch.”
I had nowhere to go as she hauled off and slapped me. Fuck. My cheek was going to have welts from this woman.
“What did Ream ever do to you?” And then it hit me so hard it felt like she slapped me across the face again.
She knew about his past.
She knew where he’d been forced to go every Friday and Saturday night.
Matt said she was twenty-four. I remember because he had her driver’s license checked. She must have had her name changed or was using her middle name.
She laughed and the sound made me gag. “He did tell you? Fascinating. Yes, I think this will turn out better, after all.” She clucked her tongue and sighed. “Poor Ream. But he will have me now.”
“He was forced to—”
She cut me off in an abrupt angry tone. “I took care of him. He was mine. He is mine.”
Oh God. No. Ream. The girl. Ream told me Lenny had a child. A girl. She’d been a couple of years younger than him.
“So he told you about me? I see it on your face. Yes, I’m Lenny’s daughter Alexandria Molly Reynolds.” She tapped her foot on the floor, her thigh shaking with the movement. “Ream and his pathetic innocent sister left me all alone. I had no one. He promised to never leave me. But he lied. He left me in that disgusting house with Uncle Olaf.” Her voice got louder, the tone higher-pitched. “He ruined everything when he killed Gerard. Just because the guy was having some fun with Ream’s precious little angel.” She tsked, shaking her head back and forth. “I convinced Olaf to let him go, you know. He found out they were staying in some old lady’s shed and wanted to kill him, but I couldn’t let that happen, so I told him I saw Haven smash the statue down on Gerard and kill him. I don’t think he believed me but, Olaf liked me and I was good at making him … happy.” She shrugged. “It was Haven’s
fault anyway. She should’ve kept her mouth shut. She had to pay for her mistake.”
My eyes widened as her words washed a cold fear over me.
“I was going to be his angel, not her.” Oh God, no. Alexa smiled. “Yes, of course it was me. She wouldn’t be so precious after the drugs and Gerard, would she? I’d be his angel. Me.” Haven. God, the poor girl already abandoned by her mother and then Alexa’s jealousy and wanting to destroy her. “I set it up for Gerard. I saw him watching her every time he came over. I knew he’d do anything to have her, and I gave him the drugs from Olaf’s stash to help him with her.” Her voice crackled and broke. “I was the one who looked out for Ream. I soothed him when he was sick. I waited for him at the top of the basement stairs every Sunday. That was me.”
I put my hand over my mouth and looked around frantically for something to throw up in. I managed to grab a plastic grocery bag from the floor, even with my wrists tied in front of me. Lance held out his handkerchief when I finished emptying the contents of my stomach and I shoved his hand away.
Alexa was laughing and took great pleasure in all of this.
“He didn’t sleep with your roommates or whoever the hell they were, did he? They were hired pieces of shit.” I didn’t have to ask because I already knew. Working at the bar to watch us, becoming our friend, Lance. The gallery. Oh God, the gallery.
I turned to Lance. “You don’t own two galleries in New York, do you?”
“No. I don’t know shit about art. Rented the gallery after the previous owner had an … untimely accident.” Oh God. They did it so Lance could get close to me so I’d stay away from Ream when he came back from tour. He’d had me hire Molly for my art show, he asked me to get Brett and Emily to invite their friends because Lance didn’t have any connections except maybe street druggies.
But Alexa’s plan to keep Ream and I apart didn’t work so she went further. She tried to have me raped. She scarred my face, hoping Ream would not want me. But none of it worked, so she set him up. Convinced him to come inside her house, pretending she was scared, then gave him a drink, drugged no doubt. In the morning, she texted me that Ream was there so I would catch him cheating. But he hadn’t been cheating had he?
Oh God, Ream. I felt like curling up in a ball and crying for us and at the same time screaming my head off and diving on top of Alexa and ripping her apart with my fingernails.
The car jerked to a stop. “Oh here we are. Ready for some fun, Kat.” Alexa bounced out of the car like she was going to an amusement park.
“Out. Now,” Lance ordered when I remained seated trying to calm my body for what I was about to do.
I stepped out of the car and instantly gagged on the scent of rotten garbage. We were parked in a driveway with a broken down picket fence on the right that led up to an old run down house. The windows were all boarded up with plywood and there were bars on the basement windows. Holy Christ. I had to get out of here. If I walked into that house I had a feeling I’d never walk out again. I’d rather be shot than live my final days in that place.
A guy, I assumed the driver, grabbed my arm and yanked me forward. I stumbled and went down on one knee. As soon as he leaned over to pull me up, I bolted upright and jerked my knee into his face at the same time. I felt the crunch of his nose hitting my knee cap. He swore and I ran.
I hadn’t run since the new symptom of my legs acting up, and I didn’t know how far I could make it, but I wasn’t going to be some chicken lured into a crazy-ass bitch’s haunted house of horrors.
My legs had other ideas and the exertion was too much. I fell face first into the pavement, and my legs had a total freak out. I screamed as a hand fisted my hair and yanked me upwards. I tried to gain my feet, but they wouldn’t support me, and I was off balance.
He pulled hard. “Get up.”
“I can’t you bastard.”
“Bitch, you’re going to fucking walk.” He kicked me in the ribs and it felt like one of the bones broke and punctured my lung as agony tore through me. “Get up.” He kicked me again and I tried tearing my hair from his grip, but it wouldn’t give. He hooved me in the stomach, and I hung in his grasp as I choked for air.
“Stop. Pick her up. Don’t be a lazy bastard, Greg,” Lance said. “We have to...” he looked at me “...tie up some things.”
***
The tying up was me.
I was stripped of my clothes except for my underwear and bra, and it wasn’t an easy task. I fought the bastard Greg with everything I had. Even with my hands tied, I managed a sweet-ass kick to his solar plexus, which left him gasping for air, then I spit in his face. He cuffed me across the head, and it hurt like hell, but it was worth it to watch my saliva hit him in the eye.
Lance stood by and watched, merely looking amused at my pointless struggle. Alexa vanished somewhere inside the run-down house.
Was this where Ream and Haven spent two years of their youth?
We had bypassed a filthy kitchen with dishes piled high in the sink and what looked like tomato sauce splattered all over the smoke-stained white walls. We’d gone down a set of wooden stairs and into a dark, dusty basement. Shudders tiptoed over my body as the ominous feeling grew like a drum quietly beating then thumping louder and louder. God, this had to be where Ream was taken every Friday and Saturday night. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the terror a young boy must have endured walking down here.
Greg opened a door then dumped me on the cement floor. I was about to scramble away when he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me across the rough surface. I frantically grabbed at his wrists, trying to relieve the pressure on my scalp, then pushed back with my feet.
“Stop. I can walk. You bastard. Stop.”
He let me go briefly and I looked around, my heart pounding faster and faster as I took in the canopy bed with the sheer white curtain pulled back. Then I noticed the chains attached to the bedposts and the stone wall with the array of contraptions. There was something that reminded me of a vaulting beam gymnasts used in the corner. It had a red pad on top and then padded cuffs attached to the foot of it.
Fear skipped across my body like pebbles being thrown at me. It was painful to breathe, my lungs gasping for air as I realized that this … this place was where Ream had come every Friday and Saturday night.
He’d said downstairs. In the basement.
Ream. No. No. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like as a fourteen your old boy coming down here. To have to … “Oh God.” I violently shuddered and then crawled over to the bin beside the bed and vomited.
“Fuck,” Greg muttered. “Stupid bitch.” He waited until my stomach stopped heaving and then hauled me up and threw me on the bed.
I tried to scramble off the other side, but he snagged my ankle, yanked me back, then put a cold metal clamp around it that was attached to a bedpost.
“No. Fuck no,” I screamed as I tugged and yanked on it to get free while Greg grabbed my wrists and untied them. As soon as they were free I pulled frantically on the manacles around my ankles. He grabbed a wrist and repeated the process until I was laying spread eagle on my back, heaving and writhing, chains clanking against the bedposts as I fought their hold.
“I’d save your strength. Your first client should be here within the hour, and he enjoys a good tussle.” Greg laughed and then I heard the door slam shut.
There was no point in screaming. But I did anyway. There was no point in trying to escape the manacles—but I did anyway. And I did until I was bleeding and my throat was so raw that when I screamed I had a coughing attack.
No one came.
And I lay shivering on the bed, dried blood on my wrists and ankles from fighting the manacles. I constantly listened for footsteps, for the door opening, and perpetual fear that I was soon going to be raped.
But the door never opened for hours.
Then it did.
***
“What did I tell you?”
He was mad again. I made him mad beca
use I tried to get away.
I couldn’t help it. I hated him so much. It hurt so badly. The women never hurt me; they took care of me. It didn’t hurt. He hurt me.
I had to protect her.
“Please, Uncle Ben. I didn’t mean to.” I never had an Uncle. Don’t even know if I had any relatives. Ben insisted I call him that. He liked it.
He stared at me long and hard, his eyes glaring at me but lust filled. I wanted to run and vomit. My stomach cramped.
“Be a good boy then. Turn over and let me do this.”
I closed my eyes and took my mind to somewhere nice like the park where Haven and I went after school the other day. It was fun. I laughed, so did Haven.
I put my face in the pillow, my fingers clenching around the material.
Then I went far away.
I couldn’t see who was approaching the bed as the chains were too tight for me to sit up. My lips stuck together from the dryness, and it felt as if my eyelids had weights glued onto them. I’d been terrified to fall asleep, but my body fought me, the mental and physical exhaustion trying to make me slip into darkness.
When the girl came into view holding a water bottle, I just about begged. But I didn’t have to; she cracked the plastic lid and then held it between my lips and tipped the bottle.
The cool liquid easily slid down my throat, and I sucked it back so fast that the bottle started crackling as the air left it. She pulled it away and I yanked upward on the chains trying to get it back.
She merely waited until the bottle’s shape came back and then placed it to my lips again. I chugged it back until I sucked it dry. The girl pulled it away and then stared down at me. I stared back wondering if she was a prostitute. If she was, then she’d have a lot of business because she was stunning. Soft features, frail and subtle to match her eyes that were the oddest color—gray with a hint of pale green speckled within the depths. They were the same shape as Ream’s, drooping slightly but vivid and with so much expression. I recognized the torment like I had in Ream.