by Nashoda Rose
I came to my feet and paced the length of my study. The warning siren blared in my head getting louder and louder each day I stayed away. It was the same feeling I had when the fire went down in that shitty house London lived in with her friends.
I’d been on my way back to the airport after checking on Dr. Westbrook’s progress on the drug and then spending a few hours watching London as she studied in the library. I’d followed her home and waited until I saw her light turn off in her bedroom before I drove off. Maybe it was purely instinct, maybe it was my obsession getting stronger. Whatever it was, I turned the car around twenty minutes later and went back.
The entire way I was convinced it would be the last time. I’d say goodbye. I’d stop coming to see her. But when I was a few miles away and saw the smoke, I knew. In my fuckin’ gut, I knew it was her house and for the first time since I was a kid, my heart raced so fast it hurt.
I drove like a maniac.
I swore and cursed.
I didn’t stop when I pulled up to the house. I drove right through the back fence and used the hood of my car to reach the ledge of her window and pull myself up to where her room was located. I heard the fire trucks screaming as they drew closer, but the crackle of the fire roared in my head much louder. I wrapped my hand in my shirt then smashed my fist right through her window.
I climbed inside, the jagged pieces of glass cutting into my arms, chest and thighs. For a minute, I couldn’t see a fuckin’ thing as I was engulfed by smoke and heat. But I didn’t have to see or go far when my foot hit the body. I crouched. The smoke wasn’t as thick lower down and that was when I saw her. It was the first fuckin’ time I cared if someone lived or died.
It was the first time I felt as if I had a heart because the thing stopped. It stopped until I pressed my palm to her chest and felt her heartbeat. I picked her up and went out the way I came in.
I carried her to the neighbor’s backyard then gently laid her on the grass. Her eyes opened briefly and if I hadn’t been on my knees, I would’ve been brought to them just seeing her look at me.
I held her for a minute, my finger brushing her hair from her face. She coughed and coughed and I held her, rubbing her back as she sucked in the fresh air. When she finally caught her breath, she tilted her head and our eyes met. That was when I said, “I’ll always come for you, braveheart.”
Her brows lowered and she tried to say something before she coughed again and closed her eyes, lying limp in my arms. I noticed a fireman look in my direction, so I let her go, jogged back to my car and left.
That was when I hired Ernie to watch her. Of course, the only way to appear as if he wasn’t watching her was to be disguised as a homeless guy.
My cell vibrated on the coffee table, jiggling a few inches across the smooth, hard surface. I stared at the blinking screen, unable to see the number, but I didn’t have to. It was the cell phone I had that only one person had the number to.
I reached across, picked it up and then pressed the green circle on the screen before placing it to my ear. “Ernie.”
“No show this morning, boss.”
The storm pushed into me and my hand tightened on the phone. If I were forced to trust anyone, it was Ernie. He wasn’t part of Vault, but knew about them. As an ex-Navy SEAL, he knew about loyalty. Plus, I paid him a shitload of money.
My jaw clenched. “She sick?”
Ernie hesitated; he was a straight-up guy so this cemented the fact that what I was about to hear wouldn’t be good. “Got that feeling. No movement in her windows all morning. Got here around six and left last night after eight. Boss, the window’s closed.”
Fuck.
I stood. “Get in there. Don’t care how you fuckin’ do it.” I strode out of the living room and into my bedroom and threw my bag on the bed. “I’m on the next flight.”
I hung up.
I’ve never felt fear before. Had nothing to fear since it was beaten and tortured out of me when I was a kid. But suddenly that catapulted into me because I didn’t need to take a flight to New York in order to check what was up with London.
I knew.
I’d made a fatal error. I’d spent a week with London and Mother found out about it.
No attachments.
Mother was making sure of that and now London was paying the price.
“FUCK. YOU!” I screamed.
His beefy arm raised and then his hand smacked me across the face so hard I fell to my knees. I put my palm on my throbbing cheek, the impact like I’d been hit with a wooden paddle.
I would never submit to these assholes. They could beat me until my last breath. I wasn’t giving in to them.
“No. You’re the one who will be fucked.” He laughed and the sound was like fingernails running down a chalkboard. I wanted to take his fingernails and rip each one off and shove them into his eyeballs. I had no idea where that came from because I wasn’t like that. I always tried to find the good in people. But this man grinned and looked giddy when he inflicted pain. He liked hurting others. He enjoyed it and that wasn’t just mean-hearted, it was evil and cruel.
I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d been kidnapped. But I was taken a week after Kai walked out and I knew that because I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I’d counted the days, hoping it would get easier¸ every morning when I woke. It hadn’t.
I’d tried to get back to my routine, but I’d been in a daze, unable to sleep or study. Even Ernie noticed a change in me and asked if I was okay.
I told him I was stressed over school, but that was a lie, and I think he knew it by the way he shook his head and frowned as if disappointed in something.
I hated myself for thinking about Kai and yet no matter what I did, he was there in my thoughts. Maybe that was how they kidnapped me so easily. I’d opened my door to what I thought was my order of Thai food and the next moment, blackness. I hadn’t even had time to scream.
And since then, I’d been drugged with some kind of sedative. I was transported in a windowless van and switched vehicles several times, but I couldn’t tell who moved me or what anyone looked like because my vision was all fucked up. I was force fed and had to pee at the side of the road before being thrown in the van again.
Finally, they stopped drugging me and I started to process the reality of the situation. And it was so terrifying that I wanted the drugs back. I wanted to stay in the fog and not wake up again until I was back home. I cried for hours in the van, quietly so they wouldn’t hear me, but they were choking sobs of fear. The unknown gripping my chest so tightly I hyperventilated.
Once the tears were gone, the anger rose and that was where I was emotionally when the van stopped. I was angry at them. Angry at myself for crying. Angry at opening the door in my loft. Angry at feeling helpless.
I was dragged from the van, and taken inside a massive house. I only had a second to process it, but the place obviously belonged to someone exceptionally wealthy with the elaborate front hall that had beautiful paintings on the peachy-brown stucco walls. I heard voices approaching and they weren’t speaking English. It sounded like Spanish.
The bruising grip on my arm tightened as he yanked me forward and I stumbled. “Move.”
He pulled me down a hall, opened a door, and I was dragged down a flight of stairs. A few more steps and another door, which he opened, then shoved me inside. He stood in the doorway as I did a quick scan of the room with cement walls and no windows. The anger had invaded, but the fear was fighting for the top position because being locked in here… it was my worst nightmare.
I swallowed back the bile as I faced the man. “Whatever you plan… it will be by force because I won’t do it any other way.”
He smiled. It was a cruel, malicious smile that revealed his one crooked, lower front tooth. Despite the sweltering heat, shivers ran through me and I crossed my arms in an attempt to control my shaking.
“We’ll see.” He slammed the door and the lock clicked.
Oh,
God.
Even though I knew the door was locked, I still tried it. I even attempted to undo the screws of the doorknob with my fingernails, but I broke all ten of them in the process.
Not that I’d be able to escape once I was out of this cell, but trying was a hell of a lot better than sitting and doing nothing while hoping someone would find me. Anyone.
But after days, my hope shifted from being found to being given water and food for my cramping stomach. My throat was so dry that I could no longer swallow and my lips were cracked and bleeding. But the worst was being trapped, no windows, being below ground and feeling like I never had enough oxygen.
I was sitting on the floor when the lock finally clicked and the door opened. I scrambled to my bare feet, spine against the wall. My plan had been to jump whoever walked in. That plan slowly diminished over the days as I grew weaker. No doubt it was their plan. Make me submit by doing nothing, by just shutting me in a room for days until all I could think about was begging for someone to help. Begging them for help.
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t do that.
The man in the doorway wasn’t the same as the one who brought me to my cell, but I’d caught glimpses of him in the van through my drugged fog. I never heard him speak, smile, or do anything. His expression had been cold and blank. No smirk. No scowl, just blank and unreadable. The unknown.
He was tall and bulky, a muscled bulky, with dark, almost black hair and naturally sun-tanned skin. It was his beady, brown eyes that were the scariest though because they stared at me like I was nothing more than an inconvenience, a piece of garbage he had to deal with.
“What do you want? Who are you? Why am I here?” In the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think of Kai and the scars across his chest. Were these the people responsible for that? Were they the ones he worked for? Had I become insurance anyway? Did they have my father, too? “My father? Where is he?”
“At home, I imagine.” I sighed with relief. Okay, my dad was okay.
The man raised his brows as he examined all the scratch marks on the doorknob, then he looked at me and gestured with his chin to the cot. “Lie down.”
My heart pounded wildly. “No,” I retorted. No way in hell was I lying on the cot. Only one thought came to me why he wanted me to. No. I wouldn’t.
“Are you sure you want to take that approach?” He stepped further into the room and my eyes narrowed as I watched him. He was confident, and he should be. The asshole had all the power against a defenseless woman.
“Are you sure you want to?” I stupidly said back. But he’d left the door ajar and I was thinking about escape and not what I was saying.
I never saw it coming, how could I? His gun was in the back of his pants. He pulled it out and shot me in the thigh.
I fell to the floor clutching my leg, blood seeping between my fingers. The sharp pain went right through my body and I rolled on the floor trying to stop myself from screaming and giving him the satisfaction.
“On the cot.”
“You shot me!” I’d been shot. Oh, God, I didn’t want to die. No matter where I was or what they did to me, I wanted to live.
He raised the gun. “And I will again if you don’t do as I say.”
I had no doubt he would. I also had no doubt that the situation I was in could be my last. I pressed my palm to my leg as I crawled to my feet then limped to the bed. He obviously didn’t want to kill me; he could’ve done that days ago.
“Hands above your head.”
Shit. I didn’t want to do it, especially when I saw the rope in his hands. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of me begging. Never. I may have been the quiet geek in school, but I was also stubborn and determined.
But I wasn’t stupid and had to be careful what I said next time.
I screamed as the gun went off again. This time, he hit the cot and stuffing billowed out into the air beside my left leg.
Oh, God. Help me.
I gritted my teeth against the throbbing pain pulsing in my thigh and raised my arms above my head, fingers curling around the metal bar. He walked over, his steps quiet and slow, the opposite of what was happening inside me.
He stopped beside the bed and I glared at him, refusing to flinch under his stare. “I have a feeling we’re going to be here a while.”
“What are you going to do? Why are you doing this?”
He leaned over me and wrapped the coarse rope around my wrists then to the cot’s bedframe. The tiny hairs of the material cut into my skin and I sharply inhaled when he yanked and the rope tightened.
His eyes traveled the length of me, hesitated on my thigh as if assessing whether I was going to bleed to death or not. He crouched, elbows casually resting on the cot beside me.
This time I did flinch when he reached out and pushed my hair back from my face. Then he said in a low, calm voice, “My name is Jacob and I’m your worst nightmare.”
Dust. That was what I’d become. A speck of dust, floating, falling, fading. Something to be wiped away with a swipe of a finger and disappear.
Physically I existed, but the remains of who I’d been had been erased. The fight to hold onto who I was slipped away. That five-year-old girl who told her teacher she was going to stop people all over the world from getting sick had vanished.
Day by day a layer of me was peeled away and I was left raw and exposed. I never thought I’d ever choose to die. But I did. I begged for death. Not to them, I wouldn’t give them that, but when I was alone in the darkness.
But I didn’t die. So I existed.
I survived. And within the speck of dust, I had a speck of hope.
Maybe that was how I survived. Because without hope, there was nothing.
I sat in the corner of my room, my legs to my chest, my palm on the floor as my fingers scratched slow and methodically back and forth on the cement. I no longer had a bed frame, just a thin ragged mattress on the floor. They took that away after I used it to try and get out of my cell.
The door opened and I didn’t look up, merely continued my rhythmic movement.
“Get up,” Alfonzo ordered. After two months of being here, I’d discovered his name. He was the one who handled me when I’d been kidnapped and brought here. He was also the second worst next to Jacob.
Alfonzo liked sex. Jacob liked pain.
I stood, kept my eyes on the floor and followed him out the door. He didn’t have to make certain I was behind him. He didn’t have to force me. He didn’t have to do anything because I wouldn’t disobey him.
Not anymore.
Alfonzo was my trainer so to speak. Jacob hurt me, terrified me, he made me submit. But Alfonzo… he humiliated me. He treated me like an object and after a while, I became an object. I was nothing more than an expendable item to give pleasure to him and I wore a collar around my neck to prove it.
We walked upstairs, through the dining hall and out onto the terrace. I hadn’t been outside in weeks. The heat felt good on my skin, even with the welts scoring across the backs of my thighs from a few days earlier.
I stepped on a sharp stone and it dug into the sole of my foot, but the pain was minimal to what I was accustomed to. I did my best to keep my steps even and quiet like I was taught—compliant and invisible.
I stopped when Alfonzo did, keeping my eyes down.
“Leave us,” a voice ordered.
Alfonzo pushed by me and I was left standing on the hot patio stones, the soles of my feet burning. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth trying to numb out the pain. I was good at numbing out the pain.
I recognized Raul’s voice. He owned the compound and he owned me. I’d seen him a number of times at meals when I was in the dining hall, not eating but being played with.
“Come closer.”
I took several steps forward until I stood under the shaded canopy and kneeled. I’d never been brought to Raul before. Fear crept across my skin as I wondered what he wanted with me. It was insane to feel this way, but comfort came with
routine, with knowing.
And this was unusual.
“This is the girl. Raven. Of course, that’s not her real name. Alfonzo named her. Said she reminded him of a raven because she is so intelligent. A problem solver.” He chuckled. “She pushed her bedframe up on its edge against the wall, then climbed it so she could reach the ceiling. Then she used the sheet wrapped around her hand to dig through the plaster between the wall and ceiling. Smart. She knew when she could do it and when my men would be checking on her even without a window to tell the time.” Every day I dug a little further until Alfonzo walked in unexpectedly one day and saw me. That’s when they took my bedframe away. “Raven is the daughter of a well-known scientist.”
I inhaled deeply to try and settle my nerves and that was when his scent hit me.
A slight whimper escaped and I started to look up, but stopped myself. I couldn’t breathe because I knew that scent. I’d never forget it. My heart pounded and sparks darted over my skin.
I wanted to fall on the ground and sob, but I was too scared to do anything but keep my head down and remain as still as I could.
So many emotions traipsed all over me and through me. It was like my adrenaline had been drowned and now it was being pulled from the depths of the ocean and given life again.
Kai.
Maybe I was wrong in assuming he was here to save me. Maybe it was the stupidest thought I’d ever had. But it was all I had.
“Obedient. Now. Took Alfonzo and Jacob weeks to break this one.” Raul laughed and it crackled as if he smoked too much.
“She’s a risk,” Kai said.
I choked on the sob as his voice blanketed me. I dug my cracked, split nails into my naked thighs to keep myself from looking up at him, to see for myself that it was really him.
“Perhaps. But my understanding is you enjoy risk, Kai,” Raul said.
I heard the click of a lighter and then the smell of cigar smoke billowed in the air.
“A high-profile missing girl is a liability.” Kai’s voice was controlled and casual. What was he saying? It sounded like… no. No. It wasn’t true. “No matter how beautiful.”