by Emma Renshaw
“How long were you gone before someone reported you missing?”
“How can you report a missing person if you don’t know they’re missing?” Savannah states without missing a beat. It takes a moment to register what she is saying. There’s no anger or sadness in her voice. I search her tone and words for any sign of resentment.
My muscles are twitching from holding her so tightly and holding in so much hostility toward this asshole. “No one reported you missing?” I ask incredulously.
“They didn’t know. I don’t think my parents ever forgave themselves. He had my phone. He would text them updates about our ‘trip,’” she says, adding in the finger quotations. “I didn’t know all of this until later. I thought they would be looking for me. They were coming home the next day. I thought help was coming.”
Savannah takes more deep breaths. I’m collecting every damn morsel she drops like a starving man, and my only saving grace is her words, her story, her heart. “I’m here, Savannah. Take as much time as you need.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t get it. If I stop, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get to this point again. I have to keep going.”
Her bravery and tenacity leave me in awe.
She continues. “At first, he didn’t do anything to me except try to convince me that I loved him and we belong together. He told me that as soon as I realize I loved him, he’d set me free. My first breakout attempt was when that all changed. I convinced him to take off the cuffs, so I could use the restroom and shower. Before that, I could only use the restroom with my cuffs attached to a weight, something so heavy I could barely move with it. He watched me use the restroom, and he started stroking himself as I got undressed.” She pauses, more tears falling. I bring her face up to look at mine, but her eyes are glassy and far away. She’s in whatever hellhole he kept her in. My gut is flipping over on itself.
“I yanked down the pole holding the shower curtain and hit him over the head.”
I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face. My little fighter. Pride surges through my chest, thinking the worst is over until I remember she said it was her first escape attempt. Dread fills my stomach when she opens her mouth, knowing everything she just told me is the easy stuff. The worst is yet to come.
30
SAVANNAH
Every word is slicing me deeper and taking me farther and farther back into the recesses of my memories and farther away from this room with Liam. I keep speaking to him, recounting my memories out loud as they play like a movie in my head. Every thought and memory passes my lips as I completely slip into the past, and I recount it all to Liam.
I smell the cedar of the cabin where he kept me. I remember the rainfall of the showerhead and the clinging of the metal hooks holding the shower curtain sliding over the rod as I held it above my head. Aiden stood there, eyes closed, dick in hands like he was getting ready for a show. When he heard the metal rings slide, he opened his eyes just in time to see it come crashing down on his head.
“Fuck,” he howled. Blinding fear filled my stomach when he stepped toward me, hand outstretched. My back was to a wall. I thought he would fall. He didn’t. The hit didn’t even make him stumble. Spittle flew out of his mouth as he was breathing through his rage. His face was turning so damn red. He was vibrating with anger.
“Goddammit, Savannah!” he yelled into my face has his hand clamped over my throat. I scratched his hands and grabbed his wrists, trying to pry them away from my neck. No air was escaping from my lungs. I tore one hand away, feeling the wall around me for anything I could reach. There was nothing. I had no one. I had fucking nothing. Nothing except the dots hazing in on my vision. I reached my hands out trying to scratch his face, his eyes, something. But he held it so far away from me. I couldn’t do anything. I slapped his arms and scratched. He kept yelling, more and more anger building with each word. I thought I was going to die in that moment, so I gritted out through my teeth, “Fuck you.”
My words sounded so garbled to my ears, but I knew he understood. He yelled in fury then used his hands on my neck to bring my head forward, only to slam it back into the wall.
My breathing was still ragged when I woke up chained back on the bed. I was clean. He washed me while I was passed out, dressed me in fresh lingerie. I looked around the room expecting to find him there, I didn’t. I didn’t yell this time. I knew there was only one person who was going to walk through that fucking wood door. The sole window in the room was boarded up. I didn’t know how long I was there, if it was day or night. I sat there waiting for him to come back in. I knew it wasn’t over.
“You’re awake. Finally, sleepy head. I missed you.”
I had been staring at the wall, lost in a sea of pain and oblivion. I rolled my head toward him, sneering. How dare he act like he didn’t try to choke the life out of me? How dare he come in here with fucking endearments? He sat on the edge of the bed. I rolled my face away from his hand when he tried to cup my cheek. He gripped my chin in his hand, holding me there. “You will listen to me, Savannah. My Vannah girl. You’re mine. You’ll always be mine. You love me. I know you do. It’s time to start treating your man right.”
“You’re no man,” I whispered. My voice sounded broken, my throat raw and bruised from the earlier trauma. He balled the V of the neckline of the white silk nighty he dressed me in. “I’ll remind you that I am a man since you seem to have forgotten. I haven’t though. I still stroke myself daily thinking of your sweet cunt, how you scream for me.”
Terror like I’ve never known seeped into every fiber of my being. Yes, he had hurt me at this point, but I never thought, I never thought...
He ripped the silk straight down the middle, baring me to him. He grabbed each of my breasts in his hands, playing with them roughly. I couldn’t control the sobs as I pleaded with him. I told him I would cooperate, just please stop. “Please, please, please, not this,” I begged.
He laughed. He got up from the bed. I sagged in relief, thinking he was just trying to scare me, when he walked out of the room. I couldn’t stop crying and thanking God that he walked away. My heart stopped when he came back into the room, holding something I’d only seen on the internet. A ball gag. He strapped it around my head.
He licked up my neck and whispered in my ear, “When you’ve learned to be a good girl, we can remove that. The only begging I want hear is when you beg for me.”
I shook my head and screamed around the gag. He stroked himself before shoving himself into me. My eyes bulged from the pain of being ripped in half, bile crept up my throat. I tried to hold it down, knowing it had nowhere to go past the gag.
He pumped in and out of me roughly as I cried. His hands were all over my body. I prayed. I prayed for it to end. I prayed to escape. And, when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I prayed for my own death.
The beatings and the rapes kept happening, multiple times a day for I don’t even know how long. My body was exhausted from the torture and brutality. Each time he came into the room, he’d dress me in a new set of lingerie. In the seconds my hands or feet were unsecured, I’d fight as hard as I could, but my strength was diminishing. He kept me on a diet of chicken broth and bread. He said he’d make my favorite meal if I agreed I would love him for all of eternity. I wasn’t sure I could lie without throwing up.
Aiden came into the room with a bowl of broth. I could see the steam rising from it as soon as he walked in. He usually let the broth cool to room temperature before serving it to me. “I’m so fucking horny for your hungry cunt,” he told me. “I couldn’t wait any longer. Eat your food then I’ll treasure this body of mine.”
The sip of broth burned the roof of my mouth. A plan formed in my mind, one I didn’t thoroughly think through, but I had to do something. My will to live was slipping each second. I’d be lost if I didn’t try. I hesitated to open my mouth for the next spoonful, like I didn’t want it.
He leaned closer to me. “Eat, Van. Now.”
He held his face, screaming in pain. He ran out of the room, leaving spilled broth on the floor. I yanked and pulled at my binds, trying to break them from the bed or slip my hand free from the loop. I was still struggling when I noticed Aiden standing menacingly in the doorway. He strapped the ball gag around my head, but not even that would stop the scream when he pulled a knife from his pocket.
“You are mine. All mine. I will never let you belong to anyone else. It’s me or death. There are no other options.” He laughed, his eyes wild. He ripped apart the fabric, exposing me again. He squeezed my breasts. “These are mine.” I shook my head, but he slapped me and held the knife to my throat. “You fucking love me. You love this. If you wanted these games, Van, all you had to do was ask. I would give you anything. I never want you to forget who you belong to.”
He removed the knife from my throat, dragging it down my body. “Where should I do this?”
He squeezed a breast again, dragging the tip of the blade across my sensitive flesh. “These would make a nice statement, but they’re too pretty to ruin. Same goes for this,” he said, shoving the handle of the knife into my vagina. I screamed in pain around the gag. The tears wouldn’t stop falling or blurring my vision. He pulled the handle out of me, flipping it, dragging the blade across my skin. I bucked, trying to get him off me.
He sliced down my hip. “Stop that,” he yelled into my face.
I opened my eyes as wide as I could, cursing around the gag, calling him every vile thing I could think of. Each scream or buck was met with a slash across my skin. I kept going until I was too weak to move. “I think I decided, Vanny. I know where I want to mark you.” He rubbed his hand over my stomach. “One day when this is fat with my child, I’ll be able to see my name stretched across your skin.” He rubbed his hard dick against my pelvis. “Just the thought makes me hard.”
He brought the point down to my skin, pushing into the flesh. Blood was all over the white sheets from each cut he had made so far. He suddenly stopped, dragging the knife away. He undid his pants to free himself. “This is going to get me so hot, if I don’t do this, I’ll come too quick inside of you.”
I looked at the wall, too weak to scream. He screamed in my face, “You'll always belong to me. You're mine. This is just a little present, so you don't forget. YOU. BELONG. TO. ME.”
I could only cry as he carved his name into my skin and came in his palm. He repeated over and over that I was his and now I’ll never forget it.
31
LIAM
I don’t think I’ve breathed once in the last hour it has taken Savannah to recount the horrors of her past. She slipped away from me, her mind in a hell I desperately want to destroy. She spoke through her tears racing too fast down her cheeks for me to catch them all, but I tried—alternating from my thumb to my lips, trying to catch each one that raced down her perfect cheeks. She didn’t even notice me. She’s stopped noticing me as she kept speaking, she was so far gone.
She hasn’t spoken in several minutes.
“Savannah?”
Her entire body jolts, her gaze coming slowly up to meet mine. She looks bewildered and lost, like she doesn’t know how she got here.
“It’s okay, baby, you’ve been here with me the whole time. You were with me. I’m here with you, baby.”
She nods, lying back down on my chest.
“My God, Savannah.” I hug her tighter, squeezing everything I can’t say to her in that hug. I can’t fathom how she escaped.
“How did you get out of there?” I ask her. I intend to kiss each scar that marks her body. I understand why she is hiding them behind the beautiful artwork, but everything under that makes her more beautiful to me. She’s so damn strong and fierce.
“After that incident, I knew I needed to make him kill me or find a way to escape. I wanted to die, Liam. If I’m honest, if I thought that was the easy choice, I might have taken that option. Somewhere deep inside, I knew he wouldn’t kill me for a long time. It wouldn’t matter what I said. He had me prisoner, he could lock up my mouth and use me any way he wanted. He could live in a fantasy. The easier option was escape.”
Savannah runs her hand over her mouth, like she’s holding something in.
“Let it go, baby.”
She shakes her head. “When I think about what I did next, it makes me sick. He was playing with me like a toy, so I decided to do the same. When he came in after that time, I started to be nicer. On the third visit, I told him that he showed me how much he loved me and I would be stupid not to feel the same way. I let him rape me again, but I didn’t scream or protest, so there was no ball gag.”
My stomach churns, wanting to be sick, too, imagining her saying those things to him after everything he did to her.
“It was pretty easy, to be honest, to convince him to let me sleep next to him. He wanted to believe me so badly that he didn’t question me too much. He was giddy. He released me from my chains and brought me into the master room of the cabin.”
I don’t want to think of her in bed with another man, especially this psychopath. We’re getting close to the end, I can feel it in my bones. Each drop she spills, she’s becoming everything to me.
“That night, I slept. I needed a restful night’s sleep. The next day, he made me three meals. I filled up, gathering my strength. That night while he was raping me, I pushed him off of me and ran to grab a knife. There wasn’t anything in the bedroom for me to use as a weapon. He stopped me on the way to the kitchen.
“He was screaming and raving. We wrestled, falling to the ground. He wound up on top, again choking me. I was too close, though. Too close to freedom. I wouldn’t accept death. We were close to a side table with a metal lamp. I pulled the cord, tugging the lamp closer. He was too wrapped up in his grief, he didn’t realize what I was doing. I grabbed the lamp and beat him over the head until he released me. Each hit loosened his grip. He passed out from the blows. I ran.”
Savannah is breathing so hard, her hands twisting, I can feel her anxiety rolling off her in waves. “We were in the middle of woods. I don’t know how I found my way to a road, but I did. I was a mess by the time I made it, my feet were torn apart, the cuts had re-opened, leaving me bleeding. I was in nothing but the nightie I grabbed from the floor on my way out. I walked along the road until I saw a car. I stepped in front of it with my arms waving in the air, trying to stop them.”
I cringe, imagining her out there in the middle of the night, car barreling toward her. I know she lives because she’s here safe in my arms, but I’m on the edge of my figurative seat to know if the car sees her in time.
“They stopped. I begged them to call 911, telling them I was kidnapped by my ex-boyfriend. I got in their car, and they took me to the hospital, where I slept for days, healing. I came in and out as my family and Valerie surrounded me.”
Savannah breathes out a sigh of relief. I need to know more though. There’s so much unanswered.
“Can I ask questions?” I ask quietly, worried I will say or do the wrong thing.
“I’m not done, but yes.”
I can’t even fathom how she’s not done. “Is he dead?” That is really the gist of what I need to know.
“No,” she whispers.
My stomach drops like an anchor.
32
SAVANNAH
Liam’s hand balls into a fist. “That fucker is still alive?”
“Yes, that’s all I have left. I left him alive. I didn’t even think that night he’d be dead. I knew he was still breathing. When that nice couple picked me up, the husband called it in, giving a location of where I ran from. Aiden was still at the cabin when police arrived. He was arrested. We went to trial.”
“Please tell me he’s on death row, in jail for life, something.”
I sigh. “Seven years fo
r kidnapping, sexual assault, and battery.”
“Not long enough,” Liam hisses. I can feel the anger pouring off of him in waves.
“I know,” I whisper.
Liam and I are silent for a few minutes, both processing what is happening, what has been spilled. I’m wondering if we’re both still here. If he’ll be here when each piece of me is left on the floor. I’ve been in a trance most of the night, and I haven’t worried too much about him leaving or stopping me, telling me that’s enough, that he’s done and doesn’t want to hear more.
The part I am most worried about is yet to come. What will he think of me then?
“I moved here a year after the attack. I barely left the house. I couldn’t be around people, especially men. I covered every mirror, so I wouldn’t have to see his evidence on my body. I decided to get a tattoo.”
“And, that’s where you met James,” Liam says, surprising me.
“How do you know?”
“I might have tried to get James to tell me some information on you. Don’t worry, he didn’t spill anything.”
I smile. “I wasn’t worried. I know he would never.”
Liam sighs, like he wants to say something, but stops. I don’t want him to be jealous of James, he’s always only been a friend. He’s extremely important to me. “James was there the first time I went to the tattoo shop. It took several times before I even uttered a word. The first few times, I just ran out the door. I told myself one day that it was now or never. Thankfully, when I went in, it was just two guys, Dex and James. I didn’t want to be in a room alone with a man I don’t know, so I raised my shirt and showed him my scars. James was behind me, trying to give us privacy. He held my hand when I started to cry.”