by Stella Noir
I couldn’t even text Sophie and tell her where I was. No one knew where I was. Not even my loving father.
Adrian
“I see you already checked out the new girl,” I heard from behind me as I watched a series of surveillance camera monitors that covered the grounds of the villa and the training rooms in the caverns below. “You know who that is, don’t you?”
“Of course, I know who that is,” I said with an edge to my voice. I had hoped my brother would stay away for a while, that maybe he had gone out of the country on another business trip. I really didn’t feel like talking to him about Brooklyn, or anything for that matter.
“We’re really gonna have some fun with her, aren’t we,” he said as he squeezed my shoulders from behind.
I whipped around and knocked his hands off of my shoulders as I stood up, looking him right in the eye. At 6′2″ he was an inch shorter than me and I made sure he felt that inch.
“Keep your fucking hands off of her, Lucas. I’m not gonna say it again.”
He took a step back and put his hands up like he didn’t want any trouble, which I knew was total bullshit. He was always looking for trouble these days.
“Okay, okay, whatever you say, bro. Whatever you say,” he said with a patronizing smile.
It made me sad to see how things had changed between us over recent years. We used to be really close when we were younger and when we started getting actively involved in the family business, we both took to it quickly. I could tell back then that he approached the job differently than I did but it felt like we were two parts of a team.
Where I found the honor of the family business a driving force, he seemed to get really excited about the killing and the retribution. He started out doing smaller jobs for my father. Whenever there was someone who couldn’t pay back a loan, he would send Lucas out to complete the transaction, as my father always referred to them.
Lucas had no problem whatsoever removing a limb or breaking bones and it didn’t take very long at all before he graduated to killing. And not long after that, he made an art form out of debt repayment and account settling. When our father finally put us in charge of the training aspect of transactions and account settlement Lucas really seemed to come into his own.
“I really don’t see what the problem is, Adrian. She’s here as a transaction, right? So we train her, right? What’s the difference if you do it or I do it?” he asked has he challenged me with his cold stare.
“The difference is she’s mine. You have other girls down there to train, so go mess with them. If you have any questions about this ask Dad, because he’s the one that gave me the order.”
“Since when did you start getting preferential treatment, I’m curious? I mean, she’s really just another girl, right, Adrian? Or do you think Dad knows about your fixation on her?”
I glared at him but didn’t say a word. It pissed me off that he knew. I had never said a word to him about Brooklyn, even when we were all together that summer.
“Don’t you think I remember the two of you, all lovey dovey and staring into each other’s eyes on the beach? It was really touching. And then once we got back how you would act around anything with long blonde hair and blue eyes?
As soon as we’d get a girl that looked anything like her you’d pull your gentle dom act and squirrel her away in your private dungeon, keeping her all to yourself.
You’ve always been so pathetically transparent, Adrian. I don’t know about Dad but you’ve never fooled me, not for one second. You’ve been in love with her for, what has it been, seven, eight years now? And honestly, bro, I can’t fucking wait to see how this all plays out. My bet is on you losing everything,” he said with that creepy goddamned smile plastered on his face.
I fucking hated the way he was looking at me and I was so close to grabbing his head and slamming it against the wall but the phone in my pocket went off.
“Hey, Dad,” I said as I glared at Lucas.
“Yeah, he’s right here. I was just talking to him about the latest transaction. Sure, hold on.”
I held the phone out to Lucas and smiled.
“He wants to talk to you.”
Lucas grabbed the phone out of my hand and turned away from me.
“Yeah? Yeah, he told me. I won’t … Yeah, yeah, I told him I wouldn’t touch her,” he said as he turned back around looking like he wanted to kill me. “I told you, I won’t. Okay, where? When do I need to be there? All right. All right.”
He threw the phone back to me and laughed.
“Wow, you really got that guy wrapped around your finger, don’t you? So, what are you gonna do with her then? Got any big plans for the dreamy dungeon?” he said as he rubbed his hands together.
I just had to ignore him. Letting him get to me wasn’t going to stop his bullshit. If anything he got off on my reaction to him.
“Well, that’s up to me now, isn’t it? It doesn’t have anything to do with you. She doesn’t have anything to do with you, Lucas,” I said as I turned away from him and back to the monitors.
“All right! Geez! I’m getting out of your hair! I’m headed to London. I’ve got one to pick up over there. I’ll probably be there for a while so knock yourself out with your girlfriend while I’m gone.”
“Well, have fun,” I said as I gestured for him to get the hell out of the room. As I watched him leave, I couldn’t believe how much things had changed between us. We used to be best friends, but now I could barely stand the sight of him.
“Hey, wait!” I yelled after Lucas. He popped his head back around the doorway.
“What do you want me to do about the transaction in the training room?”
“You can do whatever you want with her. I’m just going to leave her in her cage. Mario takes water and dog food down there every day and she knows where to shit. If you want to take her out and fuck her face now and again, I’m sure she’d appreciate it,” he said with a chuckle. “And, hey, don’t give me any more of this bullshit about not knowing what to do with the trainees. You know exactly what to do with both of those girls down there,” he said with that fucking smile and a goddamned wink, then turned and left.
I turned around and sat back down in the chair in front of the monitors. I had a night vision camera on in the cell that Brooklyn was in so I could see what she was doing even in the dark. That was where we always put the new transactions, sort of a place for them to get adjusted to life in the caves.
The training grounds used to be the family wine cellar for the production of wine on our family vineyard. But instead of making and storing wine down in the caverns, the way it had been done for the last century, the grapes were now shipped off to a centralized location and were blended with grapes from most of the vineyards in this region.
The wine cellar caves have functioned as the transaction training area for decades because they were secure and soundproof and pretty much undetectable. The girls down there could scream their heads off and no one would hear them even if they were standing directly above the training rooms.
The caverns stretched on for quite a while and connected three of the buildings in the villa, my house, Lucas’s house and the building where we had the business offices. It had been very convenient when one of us needed to access the trainees, but I was starting to wish I had a private place to put Brooklyn that Lucas had no access to whatsoever.
Brooklyn was still lying in bed. She had gotten up a couple times to drink some of the water that had been brought in on the tray but she hadn’t used the Turkish toilet yet. I didn’t blame her, those things were horrible. But it’s all we offered the trainees. No modern conveniences or anything comfortable allowed.
This was usually as far as I went with the trainees, except to use them when I felt the urge. But I never went down into the training rooms when I knew Lucas was around anymore. I had no interest in seeing him with one of the trainees and I didn’t think what I did with them was any of his business, anyway.
&nbs
p; We would usually leave the new girl isolated in the cell until she was completely disoriented and desensitized to the outside world. She would spend the majority of her time in the dark with water that kept her sedated and no contact with anyone other than the guard, Mario, who would bring the trays of food and water in and make sure everything was secure.
Every time Brooklyn drank a little bit of the water she would get back in bed and sleep for another three or four hours. I don’t know if she knew that the water was drugged or not or if she was just so thirsty that she didn’t care. I still didn’t know what to do with her, though, so keeping her drugged seemed like the best option at the moment.
Every once in a while Mario would take advantage of his position and fuck one of the girls in the induction cell and that was another reason I wanted to figure out how to get Brooklyn out of there as soon as possible. I figured I would just tell Mario to take care of the other trainee, use her however he wanted to, and I would make sure he didn’t have a key to the induction cell.
The sound of my shoes clicking on the stone floor and echoing down the cavern walls filled the dark, empty space as I approached Brooklyn’s cell in the dark. I could hear her breathing as well as an adorable little snore as I got closer to the bars. I stood there for a few moments just listening and imagining what was going to happen when she saw who was holding her captive. I wondered if she remembered me, if she remembered that summer we spent together at all.
I turned to leave but dropped the metal ring of keys out of my hand, and when they hit the stone floor the clatter magnified as it bounced off the walls. I heard Brooklyn gasp and sit up in the bed, then I heard her make some sad little noises like a wounded animal.
“Who’s there?” she asked in a shaky voice. “Please, tell me where I am.”
My heart sank as I thought about her in there in the dark, all alone and terrified. I had never thought about any of the other girls like that. Like Lucas said, there were girls that I had treated differently, given preferential treatment to. But I still only saw them as objects and their begging and pleading and crying usually just amused me or made me hard more than anything.
I was having a hard time seeing Brooklyn that way. In fact, it felt impossible to see her like the other girls. I wanted to take her out of that cell and walk right out the front door of my house with her and never look back. But that really was impossible.
As I picked up the keys and turned and walked back down the dark corridor, I wondered if my father would kill me if I tried to leave the business. And with every step I took I became more sure that I was never going to be free of this horrible place.
I walked up to the cage that held Lucas’s trainee. There was always a dim light burning in the main training room where the girls were kept and I could see her curled up in a corner on a blanket. It didn’t look like she had bathed in over a week so I wasn’t too anxious to stick my dick in either of the holes between her legs. But suddenly I really just needed to get off and she was more than available.
I didn’t even want to take the time to open up the cage and let her out. I just wanted to release the intensity that was building up inside me. So, I told her to get down on her knees and I stuck my cock in between the bars. She immediately started sucking and before I knew it the head of my cock was sliding down her throat. Lucas had really trained her well.
I grabbed the back of her head and thrust myself into her mouth and down her throat faster and faster until I finally exploded and pulled out. I couldn’t even look at her after I was done I just zipped up and walked out. The intensity that had been building up inside me had lessened but it was immediately replaced by a feeling of disgust.
I was no better than Lucas. I didn’t give a damn about that girl. When I thought about her in that cage I felt nothing. I was a monster and this cavern of prison cells was where I belonged.
Brooklyn
I heard the lock on the cell door click and footsteps cross the stone floor. I didn’t know how long I’d been in that prison because there was no way to tell when it was day or night, but it felt like it had been a month. I could barely open my eyes to see who was in the room but I just didn’t care. All I knew anymore was darkness and sleep. I didn’t want to open my eyes or be aware of anything. I just wanted to go back to sleep.
I knew the water that they had been bringing me was drugged. Every time I took even a sip of it I just wanted to go back to sleep. I considered stopping drinking it but the thing is, I felt so much better when I was asleep. At least there I could dream that I was somewhere else. But even when I didn’t dream, when I slept I wasn’t aware of the fact that I was being held prisoner in this horribly cold stone room. So, I continued to drink the water so that I didn’t have to be there anymore.
I felt hands underneath my body. That was the first time anyone had touched me since I had been put in the cell. I tried to open my eyes but the room was pitch black and I couldn’t see a thing so I just closed them again. I was scooped up and wrapped in the blanket that was covering me, then lifted off the bed. I was so weak and tired that I couldn’t hold my head up and it just fell backward and dangled as it left the pillow.
I heard the steady click of footsteps as I felt myself move through space. After quite a few steps I heard the familiar moan of the female voice that would appear just before and just after the tray of food and water had been brought into my cell. She was right near me somewhere. I opened my eyes but everything was a blur and upside down from my perspective, so I just shut my eyes again and prayed that I wasn’t going somewhere worse than I had already been.
After being carried up a few different flights of stairs and down a carpeted hallway, I felt my body being set down onto a soft bed and a thick fluffy down comforter pulled over me. It was so soft and warm and cozy that I almost started to cry, but instead I just drifted off to sleep again.
When I finally opened my eyes, I just lay there for a few minutes trying to adjust to the light that was streaming in the window. I was confused because I didn’t feel the heavy weight of my drugged eyelids or the thick fog in my brain like I had when I woke up in the dark cell. The room wasn’t bright, but there was natural light streaming in through the curtains and I could see that I was in a furnished room.
I had been drugged and in the dark for so long that at first I had a hard time recalling what my bedroom in my apartment looked like. But then I realized that I wasn’t back home, or in my old bedroom in my father’s house. My brain was still moving a bit slowly and being in an unfamiliar room didn’t help. I was still very disoriented, even though I didn’t feel drugged anymore.
I used to know immediately where I was when I woke up in the morning. I used to know what day it was and I could tell by the angle that the sun came in through the window if I had slept through a class or the whole day and was actually waking up at five o’clock at night. But that was all gone now like someone had taken an eraser and wiped that part of my brain away.
I pushed myself up so that I was leaning on my hands and I looked around. The room was enormous with a dressing table and a desk and round table that was surrounded by chairs. There were also a variety of stuffed chairs scattered around the room that were all dark in color so I didn’t realize right away that there was someone sitting in one of them. When I did it startled me but because all of my reactions seem to be dulled I just sat there leaning on my hands and staring at the shadow in the shape of a man.
“Good morning, Brooklyn,” a deep voice said from across the room. “How are you feeling?”
“How am I feeling?” I didn’t even know how to answer that question. Confused … angry … scared. Those were a few words that I could use to describe the way that I was feeling, I suppose. But I didn’t choose any of them.
“Dead.”
“Dead? You look very much alive to me,” the voice said as its owner remained in the shadows.
“Well, I might as well be from what I understand. Where am I?” I asked as I started to feel stea
dier.
“You’re at my villa … my family’s villa.”
“Villa? Like as in France?”
“Italy.”
“How long have I been here?” My words were coming out so slowly it felt like my thoughts were being poured out like molasses.
“Six days,” said the voice. “You haven’t eaten much. I imagine that’s why you’re feeling so weak.”
“Yeah, that or the drugs you’ve been feeding me.”
“Yes, I imagine that you feel disoriented from the sedatives as well.”
“How do you know how I feel? You don’t know me.”
“Well, I do know who you are, and I know a little bit about you.”
“What do you know about me?”
“I know that you lived in Manhattan and that you were studying fashion design at Parsons. And that you had a dream once where you wore a long pink dress that was made out of feathers and when you woke up you realized that you wanted to design beautiful dresses.”
I looked into the dark shadows at the shape that was sitting on the chair and I immediately knew who it was. There is only one person in the world I had ever said that to, that I had ever told about my dream.
When I was sixteen years old, my mother and father took me to a remote island resort for the summer that only certain families even knew about. Certain wealthy families, but also families with certain connections, but I didn’t find out about that part until much later.
My father always impressed upon me how lucky I was whenever we were at exclusive restaurants or resorts, like the private island we were vacationing on. I always felt like he thought that I wasn’t grateful enough unless I knew how much money he was spending.
I blushed as I remembered that dream. It was so long ago I had almost forgotten it. Almost but not quite. But the part I remembered most wasn’t the dream. It was the look on Adrian’s face as I was telling it to him. I kept expecting him to laugh but he never did. He just smiled as he listened and then told me he thought I would look gorgeous in a dress like that. That was when I started to fall in love with him.