Twenty-One

by D. Victoria BonAnno

  “Sold for sixty million. Congratulations, Doctor.”

  Gabe grinned and patted Chloe’s head. “Ooh, that’s lucky. She’s going to Ireland,” he fed her a spoonful of soup. “Professor Touissant’s in Dubai. Not the best place for Rodney to spend Christmas.”

  Chloe’s chest hurt. Three had been the closest thing she’d call a friend in this twisted place. What would become of her in Ireland? What would become of all of them?

  Gabe and Chloe watched the auction, with Gabe chiming in as if he were watching a football game as the slaves she had come to know went on and off the auction block, prancing, posing, their faces tense, their eyes empty. Chloe tried to keep numb. She didn’t want to think about the other slaves. She had already failed to save them. It was too late now. They were already gone; gone the moment Demetrius had dragged them into his world. And so was she.

  The suite door began to beep just as Gabe picked up the soup bowl to depart. Abigail sauntered in, tall and beautiful in a black dress that was somewhere between an evening gown and a nightgown, her blonde hair thick and loose over her shoulders. The moment she locked eyes with Chloe, a pit of dread formed in Chloe’s stomach. Abigail seemed very pleased, almost smug. Chloe slid off the bed and into position, eyes to the floor.

  “Hey, Abigail,” Gabe greeted. “We were just watching the auction.”

  Abigail’s tone was sweet and pleasant. “It was quite a success, all things considered. I do have some good news for you, though, Gabe. It looks like you get a vacation after all.”

  The satin hem of Abigail’s dress appeared in front of Chloe. She tried not to tense.

  “What’s happening?” asked Gabe.

  Chloe felt Abigail’s hand in her hair, her nails gliding delicately across her scalp. She did not dare breathe.

  “Due to the issues we’ve had this season,” said Abigail, “we’ve decided that it’s best to abandon this Model Slave experiment.”

  Chloe’s heart stopped.

  “We might try it next year,” Abigail continued, idly stroking Chloe’s hair. “But I doubt it. It seems a bit…unnecessary, don’t you think?”

  Chloe tried to keep her face as blank as possible while the world spun around her. Panic pumped through her limbs. It was all she could do not to spring up and run. But she had nowhere to run. Her frail sense of security in this place had disintegrated. What would become of her? Gabe’s voice was a blurred hum beneath the barrage of her thoughts. Abigail’s reply cut through the din.

  “We sold Seventeen’s body to Dr. Ghede in St. Croix,” said Abigail, “and we decided to sell him Twenty-One as a token of good faith. With all the trouble we’ve had with her, we could only ask for so much, but he was gracious enough to take her off our hands for sixty thousand. That gives you a six grand bonus in addition to your cut from Seventeen.”

  Chloe looked up at Gabe. His dark eyebrows were raised. He looked from Chloe to Abigail.

  “Well, I thought you’d be happy, Gabe,” said Abigail with a theatrical pout. “You get a tropical vacation and two bonuses.”

  Gabe nodded, flashing a tight grin. “Oh, no, that’s awesome, trust me, I’m on cloud nine right now. I’m just confused. Or surprised, really. Demetrius seems pretty attached to-”

  “Yes, well, you know D,” Abigail interrupted with a toss of her hair. “He may have his little preoccupations once in a while, but in the end, he’s a businessman.”

  Chloe didn’t even feel the tears rise. They simply appeared in rivulets on her cheeks. All questions stilled in her mind, eclipsed by a pain that turned her body to stone. Gabe and Abigail conversed. Nothing they said mattered anymore. She thought of her last encounter with Demetrius, of his mangled lips on her skin, of what he told her about himself. Maybe that was why he changed his mind about keeping her. He knew she could never truly be his slave again. She belonged to someone else now, someone who also bought Seventeen’s corpse. Why would someone want a corpse? What sort of life could she expect in St. Croix?

  Abigail met Chloe’s eyes. “I guess this is goodbye, little girl.” Her words held a sting to them, a sting that summoned Ash’s face to Chloe’s memory. “You be good for your new Master.” She gave Chloe a kiss with those small, well-formed lips, the coldest kiss Chloe had ever received. Then she retreated, addressing Gabe over her shoulder.

  “I’ll have her passport ready in a few hours,” she said. “And some clothes. And Gabe, it’d be best if you kept her out of D’s sight. He’s still being moody, and she’s been a thorn in his side for quite a while now.”

  Chloe was too numb for her words to hurt.

  Gabe opened the door for Abigail. “I’ll just keep her up here. Will he be around when we leave?”

  “No, he’ll be out. Some interview or something.”

  Abigail was gone. Chloe let her hands drop from her neck. She had no will to keep her manners. A cloud had come over Gabe’s face. He looked at her and forced a weak smile.

  “Looks like we leave in the morning, sweetie,” he said. “You’d better get some rest.”

  Chapter 49

  December 19, 2011

  Detective Paul Billman was too tense to even light a cigarette. He and five uniformed police officers stood in the backyard of Demetrius Heart’s mansion, waiting for word from the SWAT team that had just entered the basement from the back entry way Zachary Rhoades had informed them of. It had only been a few minutes, but every second that passed was agonizing. This case had gone on for too long. Securing a warrant had been a miracle and they only had a miniscule window of time in which to strike. If the SWAT team messed anything up now, the whole case might be blown.

  “Sir,” came an officer on the SWAT team over the radio, “the scene is secure.”

  Billman practically sprinted down the stone stairs, mentally bracing himself. He’d dealt with cases of human trafficking before, and though Rhoades didn’t describe it as such, Billman found himself expecting a scene similar to his past cases: half-starved women lying on mounds of old sheets and ratty blankets with the stench of sweat and human waste thick in the air.

  He entered the basement. The SWAT team stood over a crowd of thirty of forty people, lying on their stomachs, their hands behind their backs. Most of the men were clothed in black, and the women were half-clad or completely nude. The basement itself was neat, almost immaculate, a large cement space with rows of strange shackled tables and doors the SWAT team had left open.

  “Everyone was in a room with a bunch of beds,” Officer Hayden, in full SWAT gear, informed Billman. “They were putting clothes on the ones with collars.”

  Billman nodded. “Cuff everyone. We’ll question whomever we can. Separate the men from the ones with collars. Trafficking victims are hard to get answers out of when their captors are around.”

  “Trafficking? Are you serious?” came a voice by Billman’s feet. He looked down at a tall man in black sprawled on the floor. He smiled at the officers. His face was tomato red all the way up to his blonde crew cut.

  “Keep your head down,” Hayden ordered, planting his boot between the man’s shoulder blades. The man complied, but he laughed into the cement floor.

  “Officers,” he said, “this isn’t trafficking. It’s just Master slave shit. BDSM. Nobody’s forced to be here. We’re just a fet community.”

  “Fet?” Hayden looked at Billman. Billman shrugged.

  “Fetish community,” another man on the floor said into the floor.

  The man with the crew cut dared to roll his face up at the officers. “We’re a kink group. Doms and subs. We do a retreat here every year, man. These girls sign up for this. We all do. We do our BDSM shit and then we go home.” He grinned up at Billman. “Does this look like human trafficking?”

  Again Billman swept the room. The women seemed in perfectly good shape, unlike the starved and beaten waifs he had encountered in other trafficking cases. He noticed handcuffs and small floggers on the belts of some of the men, two tools more affiliated with BDSM than anyt
hing criminal. The SWAT team made no mention of drug paraphernalia, which was so often seen in tandem with trafficking. He remembered his interview with Zachary Rhoades. There was no way the young man had been talking about a BDSM retreat.

  “This is all just kink.” The man with the crew cut turned his head toward a nude woman beside him. “Tell them, One. You may speak. See, guys, we don’t even use names here. It’s an anonymous BDSM retreat, that’s all.”

  Billman knelt down beside the woman. She remained frozen, her head pressed into the cement. She was small and mocha-skinned with braided hair and a small glass collar around her neck. Her breath was shivering.

  “Miss?” Billman said carefully. He reached out and touched her elbow. “…One?”

  The woman turned her head, flashing him bright green eyes.

  “Is Rafe safe?” she whispered, her voice as fierce as her gaze.

  Billman frowned. “What? Rafe, the bouncer at the Oryx?”

  “One…” the man with the crew cut warned, but Hayden silenced him with a shout.

  The young woman’s gaze tore through Billman. He was speechless for a moment.

  “Is he?” she demanded.

  “I…yes, so far as I know, he’s fine. Why?”

  The woman closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A thin stream of tears seeped from the crease in her eyelids.

  “My name is Adrienne Danto,” she whispered. “I’m here against my will.”

  Chapter 50

  December 19, 2011

  Demetrius sat back in the chair of Detective Gatz’s makeshift office, a local detective’s office she had borrowed for the time being. While Demetrius was surprised that the FBI had been called in on a three-year-old missing person’s case, he easily gleaned that Gatz had next to no evidence tying him to the disappearance of Anthony Ramirez. They had found information about the Oryx on the missing man’s laptop, and from the way Gatz led the questioning (Do you remember a time around three years ago where someone was lingering around your truck?), Demetrius was certain they had spoken to Mariane. He answered her questions calmly, careful not to let his impatience invade his tone. Detective Gatz had tried multiple times to trip him up, to catch him being inconsistent. It was transparent and tiresome. Still, he kept his demeanor pleasant, bordering on helpful.

  “It’s just been years since he might have come to the Oryx,” he said, injecting an apologetic lilt into his voice, “and I meet new people every night I work there. I might have met him, but I just…don’t remember.”

  He looked at the photograph of the man who had shot him through the shoulder and gave Gatz a blank expression. The ball was in her court. She had very few directions left to go with his interview without revealing that Mariane had spoken with her. He wished she would mention Mariane already so he could discredit the little bitch and go home. The attendants were clothing the slaves today, and having clothes on led to monetary back slides in some slaves. He needed to be there to reinforce the depersonalization, though truthfully, he didn’t want to deal with that either. He wanted this disastrous season to be over, for his home to be clear of naked slaves and chatty attendants. He wanted to be alone. Or rather, he wanted to be alone with Chloe. He had no idea how he would react to seeing her after that bizarre encounter in his bedroom. After Dia. But if he thought about that again, he would snap.

  Someone knocked a quiet but frantic pattern on the office door. Gatz practically leapt from her chair, yet she didn’t seem startled. Rather than drawing in to herself in some way, she sprung up right for the door. She wasn’t startled. She was eager. Demetrius watched her closely as she cracked open the door and a young officer muttered to her.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but Paul is on the line out here.”

  Gatz nodded. She then closed the door, an odd thing to do if she was going to step back out in a moment.

  “I have to take this,” she said. “If you don’t mind staying just a little longer, Mr. Heart, I only have a couple more questions for you and this will all be cleared up.”

  Nothing in her words or her tone indicated deception. In that department, she was well trained. But as she spoke, her entire body shifted to face Demetrius, blocking the door with her frame. Blocking his exit. She wanted him to stay here, badly. He knew then that he had to leave as quickly as he could. He stood up, stretching his arms, as if sitting for an hour had been a draining activity.

  “I’d be happy to, Detective,” he said, smiling, though she couldn’t see it through the cotton mask. “I just need a quick smoke break.”

  Detective Gatz tensed around her mouth. She didn’t like that idea, no, no, but she had no way of keeping him inside. Oh, yes, he had to get out of here. Something was going on. Something was terribly wrong.

  He approached Detective Gatz and opened the door for her.

  “Your phone call won’t take too long, right?” he asked. “I won’t keep you waiting if I smoke, will I?”

  “No,” Gatz’s word was clipped. “No, it’ll be quick.”

  Demetrius almost smiled to himself. Gatz was a good detective, but she needed to work on her mannerisms. She was still a bit too readable.

  “Meet back here in five, then?” he asked, stopping just short of winking at her.

  The detective nodded. She forced herself out the door, her legs stiff. She watched him walk down the hall toward the front door. Demetrius fished around his pockets for an imaginary cigarette, nodding at her as he went. He picked up the pace the moment he was out of her eye line. Gatz was inexperienced, but she wasn’t stupid. She would probably send an officer out to pretend to smoke and keep an eye on him. He had precious moments to get out.

  He pushed his way through the doors, waving to a couple of incoming police officers, both patrolmen with whom he dealt regularly at the Oryx. Their smiles were too tight and they waved from the hip. Demetrius’ heart began to pound. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. He leaned against his car, making a show of taking out his lighter, until the officers had gone inside. When the coast was clear, he slid into his car and waited until he was a safe distance away from the precinct before dialing Abigail’s number, his heart pounding faster with every passing moment.

  Chapter 51

  December 20, 2011

  Chloe had been wearing clothes for twenty-three hours and they still felt foreign to her. The jeans felt too tight, the light cotton shirt scratchy and confining. The bra was completely unbearable, reminding her of its presence around her every time she breathed.

  The past day had been terrifying. She hadn’t been out of Demetrius’ house in months, with only Demetrius and company interacting with her. She and Gabe boarded a private jet provided by Dr. Ghede, her soon-to-be Master, at the Toledo airport. Though the jet was located on the other side of the airport than the commercial airlines, Chloe felt trapped. The world outside the Manor was a massive and terrifying place with hoards of strangers swarming around like bees in a hive. She clung to Gabe every moment she could, staring at the shoes on her feet as they walked through the airport.

  Gabe was devoid of his usual cheer. He held her close to him, a supportive lover or spouse to the casual onlooker, but his tight grip on her arm reminded her of what she was and why she was on this trip. They spent the plane ride in silence, Chloe longing for sleep but too frightened to doze. She hadn’t been on a plane in years, and a private jet was a new experience entirely. It was strange to be the only two people on the plane with a pilot. It felt simultaneously intimate and isolating.

  Gabe fastened Chloe’s seatbelt for the final descent. They were landing in St. Croix. Chloe’s terror bloomed afresh. She looked over at Gabe, at his weary face, as she checked messages on his cell.

  “Oh, my God,” he murmured under his breath. He met Chloe’s eyes for the first time during their trip. “It’s a girl,” he whispered. “I’m having a girl.”

  Chloe actually smiled. She couldn’t help it. It was a kneejerk reaction to such news, to the expression of awe on his face.


  “Congratulations,” she whispered.

  Gabe grinned, staring at his phone, and Chloe thought about how strange it was to share such a joyous moment with the man who was there to ensure her delivery to her new captor.

  “Wow,” he muttered. “A daughter.” It was as if the melancholy that had hung over him for the entire trip had evaporated. He laughed. “I can’t believe it. We’re going to spend the next four months arguing over names. I don’t even know what to name a little girl.” He patted Chloe’s knee, his first tender gesture since he’d clothed her.

  “What’s your name, sweetie?” he asked. He seemed as surprised by the question as she was. He swallowed, but kept his gaze on her, expecting her to speak, though she could only muster a murmur.

  “Chloe.”

  Gabe’s eyes darkened. The joy faded from his smile.

  “Chloe,” he repeated. “That’s beautiful.”

  He looked away from her, patting her knee absently, as if she were a table to drum his fingers against.

  “I…can’t do this anymore.”

  Chloe was too stunned to reply, too afraid to break the moment. Gabe stared at the screen on his phone.

  “I’m about to be a father,” he said, his voice thickening with tears. “To a little girl. And this is my job. I…I help steal…” he buried his face in his hands. Chloe wanted to pat his shoulder, but she didn’t dare move.

  “I mean, what am I going to do?” he asked. “Every year, just drop a woman off at some rich sadist’s warehouse and go meet my wife and daughter on the beach for a little family vacation? What the fuck?”

  Chloe began to cry. The plane had landed but Gabe didn’t seem to have noticed. He gripped her knee almost painfully.

  “I drowned a girl for saying her name.”

  Chloe thought of Seventeen, drifting weightless in the swim tank.

  Gabe shook his head as if he could dislodge the memories. He clutched Chloe’s hand.