by Marie Ellie
“What mark? The red mole?”
And when I said that, Andrew pursed his face, squeezed his eyes so hard he looked 20 years older. William walked towards him and when he put his hand on his shoulder to swear that I was lying, Andrew, pushed it without any sort of sympathy and began to look at him with a fury that I hadn’t expected.
“Andrew calm down, she's lying. The fact that she knows about the mole does not mean anything.”
“True. It just shows how many times I've seen him naked.”
“Shut up!”
“You've been with the hostage! I trusted you, you asked me to keep the cameras out of the bedroom and the main bathroom, and I pleased you because I thought you didn’t want anyone from the team invading your space and seeing you, but it was just to have time alone with the hostage.”
“Andrew, it didn’t happen like that, I never touched her, I swear.”
“What else am I going to find out about today? What else did you do outside of the plans? You didn’t follow the rules, you took advantage of the situation for your own personal gain, and you put the whole operation at risk. What else did you do wrong?”
“Andrew, I can swear by what I love most, she is lying and is getting the reaction she is looking for. Take it easy.”
“Well, I'm going to calm down, but this conversation between us isn’t over.”
“All right.”
Not bad for the first move in this new game. William has been a great pawn, he’s made the King back up and hide. Now we’re going to plan the next move, but this time I have to use a piece with more value. I need to get a winning position on the board, and this time I have to use a knight or a bishop, pieces worth three points that could come to define a closed game.
I have to think, Andrew is still upset, and William is nervous. I can’t let William regain confidence; on the contrary, I have to use this pawn to threaten the king so that the King himself will seek to destroy it. Sometimes it’s necessary to risk a simple pawn that is only worth a point, to achieve a better position. Now, what’s that move going to be, think Grace?
“The food that William ordered in the EDITION was perfect.” I don’t know why I'm making that comment, but it's done.
“And? You liked it?”
“Sure, my favorite dish, exactly as he knew it. I didn’t even have to look at the menu, William knew exactly what to order for me.” I look at William who looks at me confused, not knowing why I’m making those comments and while I look at him from that metal chair that has already warmed up a little I tell him, “it was the best night of all this time, the memory of a spectacularly aphrodisiac dinner that ended as soon as we entered the room without even reaching the bed, there, in the door, on the furniture and with a wine worthy of the occasion to put an end to such an exciting night, just before going to sleep. Thank you! I could die here and now and that memory, my last memory, would take me straight to heaven in a cloud of love and passion.
Andrew's face flashed anger again. He transformed and the only thing he said was “a wine just before going to sleep...” Great. Andrew is really brilliant, all that story decorated and edited was for that, to get to that detail. That morning I woke up with the symptoms that midazolam produced, at that time I didn’t know, but now it was obvious that William gave me the wine just before the marathon of passion that I was waiting to begin. He did everything just like Andrew, probably told him to do, ordered him rather.
But at the end of the day, Andrew wasn’t there, and they couldn’t put cameras in the EDITION so he could say anything and there was no way to prove he was lying. I could swear that it had been the most passionate night of our relationship, when in fact there were no kisses, caresses, and squeezes. I’m very sorry for William but he was looking for it, I discovered that this is Andrew's Achilles heel and because of the situation I find myself in, I have to take advantage of even the smallest detail.
Since that comment about the wine, Andrew hasn’t uttered a word or let William speak. He just started pacing around the basement, from one side to the other, looking down at the ground. He took a moment and pulled his gun from the holster, took out a clip, opened the chamber and pulled out the bullet. He took it between his fingers and showed it to William, while one of his eyebrows reached the top of his forehead. He recovered his cold, calculating gesture, inserted the bullet into the chamber, and replaced the magazine. He walked to the metal stretcher and put his hands on it without letting go of the weapon in his right hand. He looked thoughtfully at the metal stretcher.
The man was angry, a single detail had managed to infuriate him to such a degree that he had already drawn his weapon, had loaded it. I had nothing to lose, my life was crap, so I really wasn’t afraid of what Andrew could do to me. Really, this is what I was looking for myself and, in a way, I deserve what happened to me and anything that happens to me.
If I had listened to my parents when they told me I couldn’t marry the man I just met. But of course, I didn’t listen to them, I just thought of how handsome that new gentleman was. I thought of his cars, of everything he had promised me, of the trips he talked about, of the flowers, of the envy that all my friends would feel when they saw the man who’d married me. I decided to throw myself with everything into him and marry against the will of my parents.
Every time I tried to make them understand the love we felt, they tried to open my eyes in every possible way. I remember that they came to offer me everything as long as I forgot about him: trips, the most recent cars, studying a career in a university abroad. Anyway, they tried everything to convince me, but I thought they were trying to buy me. At that time, I thought that my parents were the most cruel, self-interested and evil people in the world. They were willing to do anything to save their daughter from a real monster, but I believed that my happiness was the last thing that mattered to them. How wrong I was! Hopefully, I can get out of this too and go running back to ask for forgiveness and to tell them how sorry I am for having dragged them into this situation.
The instructions were clear, arrive at the hotel, eat dinner, go up to the room, you give the wine to the bait and to sleep nighty-night for everyone. Everything was easy and simple. Early in the morning Charles, who doesn’t know anything, who is just a pawn, comes and the only thing he had to do was bring her here and keep her locked up. Damn it wasn’t so difficult! It was a piece of cake, one-two, one-two, everything done one-two! But no! The children have decided to do what they think is best. One thought that the wine should be drank after fucking the bait and the other thought that the bait had to be taken to the hospital. The instructions? Oh nothing, you can shove the fucking instructions in your ass.”
“Calm down Andrew that...”
“Calm down!? Calm down, the kid says to me. No William, from the very beginning it was made clear that the one who made the decisions was me and that if there was a problem you call me to consult about it. But no, everyone here has done what they liked, including having sex with the bait, ah William, yes.
Andrew was more than annoyed, he was enraged. His pale white color had already turned into hell red, and all his fury was unleashed on William. The man to whom he had entrusted the entire operation and who at that moment he suspected of violating all the trust and all the plans they had drawn up for more than five years. What's more, he suspected him of having cheated him. All that fury had been unleashed simply and easily by moving one piece at a time on my board.
“Ah, William! You slept with her! You betrayed the operation!”
“No, Andrew, this…”
“And you're not man enough to accept it.”
“But Andrew let…”
“What? Let you do what? Explain what? Grow some balls and talk!”
Andrew was so enraged, so annoyed that he didn’t let William articulate a word. The screams were absorbed by those gray concrete walls, and the ears of William, who being a few inches from Andrew and hearing that comment of growing some balls made him unleash him a truth as de
vastating to Andrew as it was to me.
“Yes! Yes!! Yes!!! I fucked her, once and again and as many times as I could. Every time you forced me to drug her to get her to sleep and take pictures pretending to torture her, I had to return her to the room, undress her, bathe her to remove all the fake blood and prepare her to wake up as if nothing had happened. Yes! I had her naked in my bed, what was I supposed to do? If I'm already the biggest bastard in the world, what does another sin...”
And before he finished talking Andrew wielded his 9mm Glock, pointed it at William, and the shot sounded so deafening that I couldn’t hear anything. The bullet that Andrew had held between his fingers and that he had shown William with his eyebrow raised was now somewhere in William's head. The smell of blood became unbearable just seconds after William fell to the ground and Andrew could not get over his astonishment. He had killed his partner, his friend, his lover and me... I had just learned another truth, which in addition to being his hostage, I had also been raped.
CHAPTER X
STRAIGHT TO THE VAULT
Andrew's rook collapsed, his chess game lost five points, and I feel like I’m the one that has received the blow. The game has gotten out of hand. William raped me. It doesn’t matter how much I wanted to be with him, the nights I spent lying next to him caressing myself as I watched him. It gave me pleasure imagining being in his arms, I wanted him so much. Now what? Now I feel disgusted, not because of the unpleasant smell of iron emanating from William's corpse, but because I wanted the man who used me without my knowing it.
I have always thought that rapists are the most despicable criminals. They are men incapable of taking a woman to bed on their own merits, they have to force them. Rather, they are not men; they are a waste of life. Pleasure is experienced when both people enjoy the moment, when they are accomplices and seek that mutual satisfaction. Rapists are so pathetic that they have to resort to forcing someone and using them as an object for their personal satisfaction because they are incapable of pleasing anyone. I feel disgusted with myself for feeling love and desire for a person who was able to use my body to satisfy himself, taking advantage of my unconscious state. I can’t believe I was in love with a man capable of doing something like that. I can’t believe I slept so confidently by his side.
Now that I see him on the ground, full of blood, smelling of pure iron, I don’t feel sorry. My executioner has died, it’s not that I’m happy, but I feel a sense of peace. I don’t know if it makes me a bad person because of that, but that’s the only way I feel. I can’t lie. I don’t feel sorry; I don’t want to cry, I don’t want to apologize for causing Andrew to shoot. I want to get him out of my sight and hope that somebody gets rid of this unpleasant smell here. This smell of blood, smell of iron, smell of betrayal.
I look at Andrew; he has not yet left his stupor, he has totally disengaged from himself. I didn’t expect him to have had to kill his friend, or whatever he was. Maybe he felt just as betrayed as I did, with the difference that he had a gun and I'm tied to a metal chair that won’t let me move. It seems he felt my gaze because he turned to me as if I had called him by his name. His eyes are now a darker blue than usual. I watch him, and he regains his perfect posture, arranges his shirt, accommodates his sleeves, picks the weapon up that he had left on the stretcher after firing, places the safety on it and puts it in his holster again, all without taking his eyes off me. For now, I'm sure, Andrew has no intention to keep shooting, at least not with his gun.
“It seems that William broke some rules and that is not acceptable in this business. That's the consequences of his actions,” he said while pointing at William's body without turning to it.
“You aren’t going to ask me to pray for his salvation after what I heard.”
“It's not in my plans to pray. No.”
“Good, because I don’t feel sorry for him.”
“Well my dear Grace, you are stronger than I thought. That makes me happy. You’re going to have to be so from now on.”
“Why? If you're going to kill me, do it at once and let's finish with this.”
“Kill you? No! Never! It’s not in the plans to kill you, on the contrary, your life gives us a lot of advantage and we can’t risk it.”
“So? What do you plan to do to me?”
“For the time being, I need to take care of the corpse here and now. We can’t leave this disaster here because then the vermin and bacteria will come and it’ll turn into a chaos. So, first things first, we have to get someone in here to clean it all up.”
“Wow, it seems that the vault won’t be so secret if you’re going to keep sending people down here just to clean up.”
“You’re right, someone in the family will have to come. But don’t worry, I'll take care of everything. Meanwhile, I'm going to untie you from that ugly chair. Now that I’m looking at it, it needs a new upholstery. Then I’ll take care of the cleaning while you stay in your room. Room! What am I saying! In your presidential suite.”
Andrew undid all the straps that kept me tied to the chair and took me to the vault. He told me to get comfortable and closed the door. Now what? I’m inside a vault, alone and it’s true that it has what it takes to survive but how long can I stay in here without going crazy. I've been through a lot in the last few days, days, what am I saying! For the last few years. How can you become a hostage without knowing it? How can you be a piece that everyone moves at will and not realize it? I always considered myself very intelligent, but I was wrong, I’m a fool, they played with me, they took advantage of me, they threatened my father, and I didn’t even realize what I gave myself up. You have to be very silly to do that. Now I’m inside a vault, and obviously, I don’t have an escape plan because it’s clearly impossible. I have to wait and meanwhile, what? I can concentrate on the chess game. Better not, the last move went a little badly, besides I don’t know any more pieces on Andrew's board.
I lay back on the green military cot. It looked like it was more uncomfortable than it really is. There’s no pillow, so I lay totally horizontally on the cot. I look up at the ceiling of the vault, begin to feel cold and start looking around for a blanket. I don’t find anything to wrap myself up with so I keep looking up. I found a point on the ceiling of the vault that keeps me focused. Looking at that fixed point, I tried to think of something that would keep me lucid. If I keep thinking that I can’t leave, I’ll end up crazy, and that is definitely counterproductive. There are certain facts that I can’t change, I am a hostage, and I have been for five years, I was raped by what I thought was my husband, they just killed the person who I thought was my husband and now I’m locked in a vault in the basement of my house with no way of getting out. It doesn’t seem to be a situation that can be easily escaped from. However, I have to keep my senses alert for when I have the opportunity to do so.
I stared at that point that I had imagined and looked at it so fixedly that my mind and body decided it was time to rest. I couldn’t stay awake any longer and fell into the deepest of dreams. A dream that took me out of that hell and took me to the most beautiful memories of my childhood with my parents. I came across a particular memory, a visit to Niagara Falls that we did when I was a teenager. I remembered that while watching the wild water capable of dragging anything to its watery depths, I told my father, “whoever falls in the water is a dead man.” My dad looked at me and, far from saying I was right, he told me, “as impossible as it seems to come out of a difficult situation, never let yourself be dragged down without a fight.”
That phrase bounced around in my head so hard that I was woken up with the sensation of falling off the cot. That telltale dream had come to give me the strength I needed. I had to get out of there; I had to be strong and not get carried away by that stream of lies that had been my life. My heart began to beat stronger, I felt it, I could hear it, and that sound was confused with the one that came from the basement. There is someone in the basement. I stood up and walked to the door of the vault, you could hear fo
otsteps out there, but nobody was speaking. There is movement on one side then the other, but I can’t distinguish anything. The vaults must have some noise isolation system because, no matter how hard I try, I can hardly hear anything concrete. But yes, there is movement.
They must be cleaning the pool of blood Andrew made out there. I never thought he was going to shoot William, I just tried to create a little distrust between them and see what happened. Of course, I don’t feel guilty, if William hadn’t said what he said, Andrew wouldn’t have reacted like that, so violently. I wonder what else he did. What other things William was able to do while he was faking our marriage. I'm very curious to know but it's too late now, William is dead, and I won’t say it was my fault, and I don’t apologize or feel sorry. Maybe I'm going to hell for that, but in reality, I didn’t have anything to do with his death or at least I want to think that's the way it is.
The door! There is someone entering the combination of numbers that opens the door of the vault. I can’t help but feel fear, or nerves, I don’t really know what I feel but the seconds are eternal. My heart is racing, I’ve been locked up for several hours now without knowing what's happening out there and now I don’t know who’s opening the door. On the one hand I want someone to open it and let me out, but on the other hand, at least I'm safe inside here. I see the big round door start to open inwards, I step back a few steps to give it space, and when I look a little, I see his face.