Twenty-One

by D. Victoria BonAnno

  “I’ll take care of this,” Konri said to them. “Move.”

  Chloe flopped like a fish in Konri’s arms as he barreled through the dining room. Her lungs felt like they were growing bigger and thicker, resisting air as much as they craved it. She tried to speak, tried to tell Konri about the latex, but her lips were heavy and useless. He had to know. She had told him about her allergy. He had to know what was in the paint.

  She came down hard on a hardwood floor, knocking precious air from her lungs. She tried to sit up. She was in the study, surrounded by Demetrius’ shelves of books. Konri stood in the doorway, his hand on the door. He was silent as ever, staring at her. His dun-coloured eyes were wide and raking up and down her body as if he hoped to memorize every cough and convulsion. Chloe tried to scream, to beg for help. She reached for the doctor and he brushed her arm aside with his foot as if it were a pebble in his path. In the distance, she heard the cries of attendants. No one was coming for her. Someone called Konri’s name. With one last lingering glance, Konri stepped back and slammed the door. Chloe stared at the door as the air got thinner and thinner.

  Chapter 41

  December 13, 2011

  “Rafe. There’s been an incident at home. I won’t be in tonight. Sarah should be able to handle things.”

  Rafe slipped his cell phone back in his pocket and looked at the girl standing at the bar a few feet away from him. She looked woefully out of place, and not because it was 7 at night and the bar had not yet opened. She was a fully grown, stylish woman, leaning against the bar in a double breasted white coat and designer jeans tucked into black boots, but the way she carried herself made Rafe think of her as very young, or at least vulnerable. Maybe it was how tightly her arms were folded, almost as if she were hugging herself, or the way she looked up at him with her head slightly bowed, her face veiled by the curtain of dark wavy hair. She looked like the doe-eyed freshmen who occasionally wandered in from the nearby campus, in awe of the Oryx. She was not the kind of girl he would expect Demetrius to be affiliated with, but he was the man she had come to the Oryx looking for, begging to be let in to wait for him.

  Now that Rafe had received a voicemail that Demetrius wouldn’t be coming in, he wasn’t sure what to do with the girl. He sighed. Truth be told, he was anxious about letting her see Demetrius. Maybe he planned to do to her what he’d been doing to One…but he had been trying very hard not to think about that. The detectives who had given him the bug told him they would keep him abreast of any new developments…

  “Miss?” Rafe approached the girl, and she looked up at him with that strange expression, as if she were in some sort of trouble and he was the only person who could help her. Her large, liquid brown eyes were red-rimmed, her small nose an adorable shade of pink. He just didn’t know what to make of her.

  “Demetrius isn’t coming in tonight,” he said. “He has to stay home for something.”

  The girl’s lower lip trembled a little.

  “I have to see him,” she said in that urgent, tremulous voice that had caught Rafe off guard at the door earlier. “Do you know where he lives?” she leaned forward and gripped his arm with surprisingly strong fingers.

  Rafe wanted to back away. The look on her face was so raw with grief, or desperation, or something…had he known her even a little, he couldn’t have resisted the urge to wrap his arms around her, to hold her as if he were consoling a child. How could this delicate little piece be related to Demetrius? She was as open as Demetrius was unreadable.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “Boss prefers privacy. He doesn’t like visitors.”

  “Please,” she murmured again. She seemed on the verge of tears. “Please, sir. Demetrius is my only family. I need to see him.”

  Rafe ran a hand over his bald head. He didn’t want this girl to go up to Demetrius’ place alone, but there was no way he could leave the bar. He didn’t particularly want to find out what “incident” had kept Demetrius at home, anyway. But he had never heard someone call Demetrius family before.

  “Please. I know how he seems,” the girl said softly. “But he’d never hurt me.”

  That startled Rafe. He sighed. He didn’t know anything about her, but she seemed to know Demetrius pretty well. “All right...all right. I don’t know the address, but I can tell you how to get there.”

  The girl uttered a small cry and wrapped her arms around him. Rafe was too surprised to move for a moment.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much. Thank you.”

  Rafe found himself putting his arms around the stranger, even stroking her hair.

  “Just be careful,” he said. “All right? Don’t make me regret this.”

  Chapter 42

  December 13, 2011

  Demetrius leapt out of his car, already at a run up the driveway. He had been about halfway to the Oryx when Charity had sent him an urgent text about Seventeen. At first, he didn’t plan on turning around. Charity had simply texted 417, 4 being their code for a slave lashing out followed by their number. At this point, Gabe could easily handle Seventeen’s outbursts on his own, even if she hadn’t had one in quite some time. But a minute later he received another text, a single word: Break. It meant that a slave broke from their submissive state completely. It often happened early on, when a slave was particularly convincing with false compliance, and then would attempt escape in some way. But it never happened this late in the season, and never with a slave as well trained as Seventeen.

  The dining room was secure. The attendants held their charges on the floor, flat on their stomachs, as was protocol. He saw Abigail, Gabe, and the twins standing on the podium. Faith and Charity were holding hands, a typical sign of distress in the two, and Abigail stood beside him with her arms shielding her torso, one hand at the base of her throat. Gabe was drenched in water, atypically pale for his Samoan skin. Something had gone wrong. Konri knelt a few feet away, his hand at the neck of a limp slave sprawled on the floor, coated in ripped green latex, her wet black hair fanned out around her on the marble.

  Demetrius blew past the attendants and their slaves and dropped to his knees beside Seventeen. He pushed Konri’s hand out of the way and pressed his fingers against the side of her neck, confirming what her glassy eyes had already told him. Rage ignited, a burst of flame just under the skin. He cut his eyes to Gabe. Abigail and the twins took a step away from the attendant. Gabe’s face was horror-stricken. He stared at the corpse of his charge, oblivious to the danger everyone else sensed. Gabe was a careful and patient attendant, yes, one of Demetrius’ best. He had a way of calming the fiercest slaves, which was why Demetrius had assigned him to Seventeen. It was very unlikely that Gabe had lost his temper and accidentally drowned the girl.

  “Gabe,” Demetrius muttered, biting back his anger.

  “I don’t even know what happened.” Gabe’s voice was barely a whisper. “I did the same thing I do every time. She didn’t even slow down. She was just fighting and screaming, and then…”

  Demetrius looked over the body. She hadn’t lost much of her colour yet, but those lovely lips of hers would soon be blue beneath the green paint. He noted burst blood vessels in her eyes.

  “Did she speak?” he asked.

  A heavy silence followed his words. Glances shifted back and forth. Finally Faith looked at him, a nervous hand buried in her hair.

  “She said…her birth name,” she said. “And that she wasn’t a slave.”

  Demetrius bowed his head, his hair falling over his face. He had seen this type of rebellion before, but never so late in the season from a slave long broken. Six months of breaking, of training, of discipline, wasted. Six months and probably a profit of millions lost to suicide. How could this have happened this close to the auction, this far into the training process? There had to have been signs, there always were. He had given Seventeen a great deal of one-on-one attention, far more than the other slaves, at least until he’d found Twenty-One.


  Demetrius’ head snapped up. A hollow pit formed in his stomach, a gnawing sense of dread. He scanned the room. Nineteen slaves were on the floor, their attendants beside them, watching him. Abigail’s nine slaves lay in a line as well. Demetrius rose.

  “Abigail, where is Twenty-One?”

  Abigail looked at him, her eyes unfocussed, uncomprehending. She looked around the room.

  “I-”

  “Did you put her somewhere?” Demetrius’ heart jolted, but he smothered the frantic feeling in his chest with anger. Abigail took a step back, her hand returning to the base of her throat, a sure sign of stress.

  “No, D,” she said, glancing at Konri, still on his knees next to Seventeen. “I thought Konri-“

  “-I saw her standing while the others went down,” said Konri, standing and brushing off his slacks, “but I don’t remember seeing her since. She may have taken the opportunity to run again.”

  Demetrius turned to the twins, who had huddled closer together.

  “Find her,” he ordered. “Everyone search the grounds.”

  He turned on his heel and headed back toward the front door. In his rush, he’d left his car keys in the ignition. If she had escaped through the front, she could feasibly get in the car and drive off. If he lost her…

  A soft scratching noise stopped him from passing the study door. He cracked it open, and there she was, on the ground, and something was wrong. She lay limp on her side, her chest convulsing, her arm outstretched toward the door. Her face looked terrible, red and strained, the whites of her eyes flashing between fluttering eyelids. Liquid latex coated her neck and chest, ripped as if she had tried to peel it off. The skin beneath the paint was red and swollen. She opened her mouth to breathe, and the sound was labored, frantic, as if she were choking on air.

  Mon Dieu, no.

  Demetrius gathered her into his arms. Her limbs were limp and heavy.

  “Konri!” he bellowed.

  He pushed through the study and into his bedroom, setting the barely conscious girl on the bed. He brushed her sweat-drenched hair from her face and ran his hands over her neck and chest and ribs, feeling for some sort of clue.

  “Chloe,” he urged, gripping her shoulders. “Chloe, tell me what’s happening. Look at me.”

  Her eyes fluttered and for a moment he caught a flash of hazel. She brought her hand to her throat, trying to curl her fingers around the shreds of latex, but she was too weak. She opened her mouth and the tiny wheeze of breath she took in made his stomach knot. At once, it clicked. Konri appeared at his door.

  “It’s anaphylaxis,” Demetrius said to him. “Get me an epi pen. Now.”

  But the girl on the bed had stopped struggling. She went limp, her eyelids growing still, her mouth open in a silent gasp. Demetrius straddled her waist, ripping latex paint off her skin with experienced fingers. Her airway was closing. If he didn’t do something soon, she’d suffocate. He tilted her chin back, shoved his mask aside, and blew into her mouth. Her chest lifted, just barely. He blew into her again. Breathe, Chloe. he thought, as if she could hear his mind screaming. Breathe!

  Konri came into the room with an epi pen and a bottle of antihistamines. Demetrius held out his hand, throwing his hair over his right side to shield his unmasked face. Konri only hesitated a moment before handing him the drugs.

  “Out,” was all Demetrius said.

  Konri went, shutting the door behind him. Demetrius sat up, fumbling with the epi pen. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this frantic. Chloe’s chest stopped moving. Demetrius ripped off the cap and jammed the epinephrine into her thigh.

  xxi

  Chloe was floating, drifting in fog. The pain in her lungs, the terror of being unable to take a breath, was gone now. In fact, she felt nothing; no fear, but no sense of peace that allegedly came with death. She simply was, and distantly she knew that she would not be for much longer. She was lost in the darkness of Seventeen’s eyes, and it pulled her down deeper and deeper into itself, into numbness.

  Then air came, and with it came light and pain.

  Chloe gasped, gulping in air. She was hot, so very hot, as if her skin was molten, hissing and bubbling over her bones. But air, oh, God, it filled her aching lungs until she feared they would burst. The light and blurred shapes, a face looming over hers, shrouded by black hair. Fingers pressed into her mouth, depositing several small oblong things into it. Water filled her and she panicked, but the fingers sealed her mouth shut until she swallowed. Slowly she became aware of a low, urgent voice murmuring her name.

  “That’s it, Chloe. You’re okay, little one.”

  Focus returned. It was Demetrius in front of her, his grey eyes wide. Chloe blinked, trying to clear her vision. Something was different. Something was missing, but he wrenched her against his chest, clutching her to him, rocking back and forth. His breath was hot on her neck.

  “Oh, Chloe, Chloe…”

  His voice was clear, as clear as the night he had blindfolded her. She pulled back from his arms and found out why. His ever-present mask was gone, and for the first time, Chloe saw her Master’s face.

  His cheekbones were sharper than she would have thought, the lower half of his face more angular than the mask allowed to show. His lips were full and perfect and only a shade darker than his pale skin, with two stud piercings below his lower lip on one side. That side of his face was beautiful, so beautiful that her heart ached to look at it. But the other side of his face tore her newfound breath from her lungs. The first thing she noticed, oddly enough, was the unnatural sheen of the scar tissue, almost glimmering in the low bedroom light. The word mangled lodged itself in her mind. The right corner of his mouth was split with a lattice-like scar crawling to his cheekbone, a permanent and grotesque grin. This was the longest and the deepest wound, but other deep, dark, chaotic grooves gored his cheeks, along his strong jawline, some nearly to the beginning of his earlobe. His skin didn’t seem to sit right on that side of his face, as if it had been stretched too tightly.

  Demetrius’ eyes studied hers, reading her shock. He began to recoil, but Chloe leaned forward without making the decision to, as if she were meant to, and pressed her lips to his.

  She expected Demetrius to stiffen, to hesitate, but all he did was whisper, “Oh, God” into her mouth before he melted into her, delivering that devouring kiss, as insatiable as it had been when a storm had whirled around them in the backyard. He split her lips with his tongue and claimed her mouth, his hands snaking up her spine. Chloe matched his kiss, feeding off his ruined mouth, running her tongue along the pad of scar tissue at its corner. Desire roiled inside of her as it never had, an all-consuming need that threatened madness. He uttered a sound she had never heard before and he came to his feet, lifting her by the waist and pressing her into the wall above the headboard. He ground himself into her, hard behind his black jeans, tearing a moan from her. He held her pinned against the wall with his body, kissing down her neck and back up to her lips as he pulled his sex from his jeans. Chloe was swallowed by the need to have his mouth on hers, filling her with fire. Yes. Yes, the only word her mind understood as he tasted every inch of her neck, her chest, starved for her flesh. His mouth closed around her nipple and he thrust inside of her. She became light and heat, ignited by the rough brush of scars against her breasts, the flex of his strong fingers in her hair, the length of him inside of her, pressing her against the wall until her skin bruised. She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him in deeper, sinking her teeth into the soft saltiness of his neck, gripping his hair. There was nothing but this, nothing but his body melded to hers. Their mouths found each other again, as they were meant to, colliding flesh and scar and metal, and the world vanished.

  Chapter 43

  December 13, 2011

  “Look, I already told you, I don’t know their names,” Zachary Rhoades insisted. “Demetrius gives them numbers instead, like Three and Eight and Nineteen.”

  “And why does he do that?” Detect
ive Gatz asked as she sifted through the Leroux file in her hands.

  “He said it helps break them,” said Zachary, taking a deep drag from a cigarette he had bummed off Billman. “It makes them forget they’re people.”

  Billman had called her in when he had finally convinced Zachary to make a statement. The more detail he went into about what went on in Demetrius Heart’s home, the more agitated he became, his round face dewy with sweat. Gatz allowed him to smoke but drew the line at chewing. Her stomach had become a mass of knots while Zachary had described the horrific goings on at the manor, and watching Zachary spit tobacco juice into a cup might tip her into full nausea. She couldn’t believe the story he told. Starving, beaten, naked women, collared and categorized like dog breeds, assaulted and brainwashed over a period of months. She’d heard similar stories of starvation and mental manipulation in other cases of human trafficking, but not to this extent. Zachary described Mr. Heart’s “methods” as if it were part of a business plan, meticulous and painstakingly structured. If everything he said was true, when this story broke, Gatz suspected psychiatrists would spend a very long time analyzing this twisted system of poses and mantras and depersonalization. Had this really been going on for six years, as Zachary claimed?

  “So you don’t know names,” said Billman, who had been pacing for the last hour and a half. “Do you know anything about them? Like where they come from?”

  Zachary shrugged, fiddling with the little silver horseshoe pierced through his septum.

  “We’re not supposed to talk about it. D said some of them are hookers, escorts, whatever, from all around. But we don’t, like, ask them or anything. They’re not allowed to say anything except yes, Sir, and stuff like that.”

  “Would you be able to identify any of them if we showed you pictures of missing persons?” asked Gatz.