by Nicole Casey
I stood up slowly and turned to face what was behind me.
Three men. Two strangers, one of them with a gun pressed to Donovan’s head. Yeah—like that was going to stop me. The guy could blow his head off for all I cared. The only thing in the world that mattered was lying on the floor behind me.
Something was wrong though. Out of place. A disturbance in the power play that prickled down my spine.
The other stranger stood just apart enough to mark a separation between him and the others. Was he the one in charge, carefully trying to conceal it behind hunched shoulders and downcast eyes?
I caught sight of the phone in his hand when it slid from inside his sleeve and into the palm of his hand. A phone?—for what? He pressed a button and the phone in my pocket vibrated silently a second later.
What the hell? This was the mystery man? Was this his trap, or had he been dragged into the cage as well?
“Now then, Derek,” the one holding the gun drew my attention back to him. “Let me welcome you to my home. My name is Filipe Ruiz. I must say, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for quite some time.”
“I’m afraid I can’t say the feeling’s mutual.”
He laughed. Or was it a cackle? He stepped closer, forcing Donovan with him. It was strange though that he made no effort to have me pat down for more weapons. Did he really think that gun was the only one I had?
Yes, I realized, he did. It was clear in the surety in his stance. And that was interesting information, indeed.
“Come, you can sample my slaves later. For now, let us have a drink and get to know one another better. James has told me so much about you. He was so determined to have you to himself, but I’m sure you understand I can’t have that.”
Was this asshole for real? There was no fucking way I was letting Scar out of my sight ever again.
I forced my shoulders to relax though and loosened my limbs. Outwardly, I was the pinnacle of calm.
And then I reached for it. I had the other gun out of its holster, in my hand and cocked so fast, the stranger didn’t have time to switch his aim from Donovan to me. The bang of my gun reverberated off the stone walls around us, but Filipe Ruiz didn’t make a sound. He couldn’t. I’d shot him dead center between the eyes. He fell to the ground in a heap of worthless flesh.
The phone in my pocket vibrated against my chest. Another signal?—for what?
“Get away from my merchandise, Derek,” Donovan demanded as he aimed the gun he must have been concealing behind his back.
That’s what mystery man had been trying to signal. The whole fucked up mess crashed down on me in that second. It had all been a lie. The bastard I’d just shot had been nothing more than a decoy. Donovan had known exactly where Scar was from the moment I’d called him because he was the one who had her put here. His own daughter, for fuck’s sake. Maybe not by blood, but it shouldn’t have fucking mattered.
“How could you, you sick fuck?” I seethed as I inhaled rage and it seeped into my cells.
“She’s the spawn of a whore and a traitorous bastard. What other future was there for her? I’d intended to turn her into Marcos’ slave before you came along and fucked up my plan. When he’d used her body in every vile way imaginable…then I was going to reveal the truth to him—that it was his own daughter he’d tortured. Unfortunately, you beat me to it, and Marcos has been resting in hell for some time now, hasn’t he?”
He raised the gun higher and I stared down the barrel. I was going to die, but with my finger on the trigger, so was he. I had to trust that the mystery man who’d helped me get to her would help her get out.
“I loved you,” Scar’s voice spoke from behind me. She was no longer on the ground. It sounded like she was right behind my shoulder. And though her voice was hoarse, it wasn’t weak.
“After the horrible way you treated me, the hell you put me through, I still loved you,” she continued.
And then she shocked the fucking hell out of me.
“I love you,” she whispered, and then the gunshot reverberated off the walls.
With his face contorted in fear and surprise, he fell to the ground. And then so did she.
She wasn’t shot. Donovan hadn’t shot her. His gun had discharged, but the bullet had hit my arm, on the opposite side of where she stood. It hadn’t hit Scar.
She was on her knees, bent over with her arms pressed against her stomach. My heart soared at the demonstration of her strength while at the same time, her hoarse sobs threatened to tear it apart.
“You have to leave. Quickly,” the mystery man said. He hadn’t moved from the place he’d been standing when I’d first turned around.
I didn’t want to scare her or hurt her, but he was right. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed four men were missing. So, I stripped off my shirt, draped it over her and bent down to gather her up as gently as I could.
She resisted. “Please, just leave. I don’t want to go with you,” she choked out between sobs.
I refused to acknowledge the twist of the knife in my heart, and I picked her up anyways. She fought to get down, but she was so weak it equated to little more than writhing in my arms. The struggle subsided quickly and she laid still in my arms, now huddling closer to my chest. I could feel the exhales of her breath against my bare skin. It was the most comforting thing I’d ever felt.
Up the stairs and out the door that led to the four-foot foyer, but the mystery man stopped there. “You’re not coming?” I asked.
“I’ve sat in front of those cameras for six years. Six years, and I didn’t do a god damned thing. I couldn’t. Or maybe I was just too much of a coward. I’ll do something now though. Stay here. As soon as I send the next text, get her the hell away from here. I hear it’s going to get awfully hot soon—like a big-ass bonfire.”
I nodded, but I needed to know, “Why?”
“She reminded me of my wife—looked an awful lot like her actually. Alicia was taken from me and sold eight years ago because I fucked up. When you showed up in the driveway, I knew you were looking for her,” he inclined his head toward Scar. “I guess I did what I wished someone had done for Alicia.”
Eight years ago. A girl who looked a lot like Scar. Fuck. It could be a coincidence, but what were the fucking chances of that? The girl Marcos had tortured. Guilt washed through me, but there wasn’t time for it. Not until Scar was safe.
I had a feeling mystery man intended to go up in a blaze along with the house, but who was I to object? Hell, if I’d lost Scar, I wouldn’t have lasted eight days, never mind eight years.
And the second the phone vibrated, the door unlocked and I took off, back along the side of the house to the car still waiting at the top of the drive. I placed her in the passenger seat as gently as I could and buckled her seatbelt when she made no move to do it herself. In the driver’s seat seconds later, I revved the engine, but then it hit me. The guard post.
As if reading my thoughts, the phone vibrated. “All clear up ahead,” the message read.
It was a good thing mystery man had been thinking further ahead than I’d been. I started down the drive with the phone still in one hand.
“Name?” I texted.
“Michael.”
“Thank you, Michael.” There weren’t many times in my life when gratitude had been warranted. This was one of them.
“Take care of her, Derek.”
8
Derek
I slipped the phone into my pocket and focused on the road ahead as we passed the guard post unnoticed. But now what? I glanced over at Scar. She hadn’t moved a muscle, and while her eyes were open, she seemed to be staring ahead, unseeing. My heart clenched. This was my fucking fault, I knew it, but I also knew it was the least productive path of thought at the moment. I forced down the guilt…for now.
She needed a doctor. Aside from the emotional trauma, her body was severely injured, and I didn’t know to what extent. The hospital was the obvious solution, but they pro
vided substandard care at best and would raise a lot of questions. Fortunately, I had a private doctor on call who was good at what he did and didn’t ask questions. Technically he had originally been contracted by Marcos, but since Marcos had never really given a fuck about the medical attention his slaves required, I’d been the one in contact with him for the past several years.
A quick call had him ready at his home-based office, and I pulled into the driveway fifteen minutes later. Fifteen silent minutes. She’d said nothing and she still hadn’t moved at all. It was as if killing Donovan had used up every bit of spark she’d had left. I never would have let her do it. If I’d known she was standing there with my gun pointed at the man who’d been a despicable excuse for a father, I would have fired first. Mystery man could have sent a signal text to warn me about that one! But it wasn’t his fault, it was mine. Just another way I’d failed her.
I pulled into the garage as it opened for me like I knew it would. The man treated bullet holes, broken bones, and torn flesh—not really the kind of patient roster one wanted waltzing up to the front door in an upscale neighborhood.
Once inside, I hurried around to her door, but instead of picking her up, I held out my hand. Would she take it? Reject it? Continue to stare unseeing at the grey cement walls?
She took it, and so I eased my other arm around her and helped her out. Then she just stood there, and since I wanted nothing more than to gather her in my arms and wipe away every vile minute since they’d taken her, I lifted her up and held her close. There wasn’t a fucking thing I could do for her memories though.
In the exam room, I sat her down on the examination table and held her hand while Dr. Vicente Fuentes started to probe gently at the wounds on her face.
“Derek, please tell me you’re not responsible for this.”
How could I tell him that? I was responsible for it. “It’s my fault, but no, I didn’t…do this.”
Scar didn’t resist. Vicente turned her head this way and that lifted her arms and inspected her calves and feet. When he started to remove the shirt I’d draped over her, I had to stop myself from tearing his hands right off. She didn’t move though. She barely even flinched when he pressed his gloved fingers against her flayed back. Her breasts were covered in finger-size bruises, and the bruising on her ribs spanned the width of my entire hand, at least.
“I think she may have cracked her ribs…”
“She didn’t fucking do this,” I shot back as if he’d been implying it was her fault.
“I’m not suggesting she did. I’ll take an x-ray before you leave, but it might be best to bind them up anyways.” His eyes shot to her back, and the problem was clear—a tight binding around her ribcage was not going to play nice with the lacerations on her back. He nodded to himself, seemingly determining it was still the better way to go.
Then he was laying her back on the table and she made no move to resist him. As he took hold of one of her feet though and started moving it toward the stirrup, tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes.
“Stop.”
“But…”
“I fucking said stop.”
He placed her foot back on the table.
It wasn’t a rational decision. She’d been injured, and no doubt those fuckers had injured her there, too. But I couldn’t do this to her. I’d figure out some other way. Some way that didn’t involve another strange man exposing her and putting his hands on her.
I just had to hope my own selfish need to stop her from suffering now didn’t lead to more complications later. Internal bleeding and lacerations…STD’s…pregnancy—the possibilities ran through my mind.
Fine. I’d been the one to do it then. Whatever was necessary to make sure she’d recover physically, I’d do it. And I’d hope that somewhere in the back of her mind she would remember what she’d felt for me and the way she saw me, and know I wasn’t doing it to torment her further.
“Tell me what to do.”
“You’re not serious, Derek. You’re not a doctor,” he explained as if I didn’t already know.
“And you’re not touching her. Understood?” I’d threaten him at gunpoint if I had to, but I didn’t want to have to resort to that.
He nodded his acquiescence after a moment of silent standoff and started laying out the instructions for me. It was one of the benefits of always being the scariest son of a bitch in the room—I won every standoff.
I murmured soothingly as I lifted her feet into the stirrups, but had to stop when I saw her. Raw, split, her delicate flesh mangled. I couldn’t speak. Fuck, I couldn’t breathe. If it weren’t for the silent tears that kept leaking from her eyes, there was no way I would have been able to do it. But she needed this, and she needed me to get it the fuck over with fast. I needed to pull my shit together and get through this. I had to. And then I was free to go insane in a darkened haze of rage and anguish.
Thirty minutes later, it was over. Stitched, bandaged, and sent on our way with enough prescription narcotics to start a small-time drug ring. He’d given her an injection of morphine and I’d watched the pain drain from her features within minutes. By the time I sat her down in the passenger seat, her eyes had grown heavy. She was fast asleep by the time I pulled out of the driveway.
I needed a destination. I couldn’t take her back to my home, though it was the place I longed to bring her. A hotel was the most reasonable choice but after the motel…
No, it was still the best option, and back on familiar ground, I knew where to go. I steered the car in the direction of the Sonora Oaks. The staff was the epitome of discretion, and calling ahead meant I could take Scar in through the service entrance and avoid a spectacle.
She didn’t stir, even when I lifted her and carried her into the hotel and up to the top floor. She moaned softly when I laid her down on the king-size bed, but then she seemed to settle back into her drug-induced sleep. I wanted to climb into the bed next to her, pull her close and never let her go again, but I didn’t. How could I touch her without hurting her? How would she react if she woke up with my arms encompassing her?
I pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down.
And then it hit. The floodgate let loose and the tidal wave that crashed over me left me gasping for breath. The lump in the back of my throat dislodged with a wretched sob that ripped clear out of my chest. It wasn’t a common occurrence. I hadn’t cried since I was a teenage boy. I’d thought I had lost the ability to cry at some point after Marcos had rescued me. It was apparently in fine working order now though. Hot tears stung my eyes. I looked at her through the watery blur as they escaped.
I’d let this happen. I had ripped her away from her safe life and fed her to the wolves. Wolves that had ripped her apart. The horrifying images that filled my head for the past sixteen days were nothing in comparison to seeing her now, in the flesh, with the proof of my colossal failure written on every marred inch of her body.
“Fuck Scar, I’m so fucking sorry,” I choked out. She couldn’t hear me, but it wouldn’t matter if she could. I could say it over and over again for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t do a god damned thing to make this right. There was no making this right. They’d taken everything from her. How the hell could anything fix that?
No. No fucking way was I going to think that way. She was strong. Intermingled with the torment in my head, that one thought kept coming back to me. She’d surprised me at every turn. She would do it again because she was stronger than me; stronger than anyone.
I took hold of her steel-like strength and made it my own as I brushed a fallen lock of hair off her forehead. She would recover. No matter what it took, I wouldn’t give up until every part of her had been restored.
It was completely foreign territory—helping a broken slave recover her former self—but I’d find a way to navigate it. I would. I wouldn’t fail her this time.
I sat back in the chair, feeling the first real flicker of hope since I’d stepped into that wretched baseme
nt. The fucking tears hadn’t ebbed. Having found their way out, it seemed there was no stopping them. Grief, guilt, gut-wrenching sorrow—they were all still there. Maybe they always would be. I’d never been able to forget the image of her now. It would haunt me for the rest of my life.
But there was hope too, that maybe one day, sometime in the future, she would be able to forget. Or at least be able to make it through the day without the nightmare she’d lived controlling her every movement, her every thought.
Two hours passed, and then three. She’d need her pain medication before much longer, but I was reluctant to wake her. I could hope that in her morphine-addled sleep, her head was quiet, devoid of memories. Once I woke her up, it would all be there. I couldn’t protect her from it.
Just one more hour. One more hour, and then I’d wake her.
Every minute, I watched her features for any sign her discomfort was increasing, but her brow remained smooth and her lips were relaxed, slightly parted the way they usually were when she slept, like an invitation to sample their softness and warmth. I couldn’t kiss her now though. But one day. I could hope that one day I’d be able to kiss her beautiful lips, and not conjure up memories in her head of the monsters that had tortured her. One day.
9
Scarlett
I awoke from the deepest sleep I’d ever experienced. I had drifted down so low, I had to will my consciousness upward, away from the dark nothingness that had clung to my mind and held me down in the deepest recesses of slumber. Up, and then up a little more. It was exhausting, so much so that I almost gave up and let it pull me back all the distance I’d come.
Just as I was about to surrender, the world around me brightened at the edges. The feel of something firm but smooth beneath me. The quiet inhale and exhale of someone else’s breath. And then pain. It went off like a camera’s flash and shot me above the surface.