The Madison Jennings Series Box Set

by Kiara Ashanti

  Each time he entered a cell today, a woman looked at him with eyes begging him to release her. But the one who had been here the longest did not try to extract sympathy from him. Long ago, she had learned that their imagined commonality was false. The new ones still tried. Today, one even suggested that Ihtisham had an obligation to help her escape.

  Ihtisham beat her and reveled in the way she moved under the clothes she had been given. When he was done, he grabbed another first aid kit to wipe the blood from her swollen lip. Maleek would be angry at the mark, but Ihtisham would say nothing about it. He had promised Rashad he would clean the cells and not say anything to Maleek about being forced to do it. If the room was clean, but Maleek assumed the bruise was from Rashad, that was fine by Ihtisham.

  He looked down at the beaten captive, grabbed her by the chin, and turned it left and right. He was satisfied with the cleaning he had given her, but he was slow to step away. His nerves felt alive in the awareness of how close she was to him. Not even the diminishing, but still present, reek of human waste could keep him from breathing a little heavier.

  He left the cell. He had cleaned all the buckets and mopped and deodorized most of the cells that had had vomit in them. He had one more cell to clean—one that he had saved for last.

  Ihtisham approached the cell holding the girl who had bragged about her father. He had not seen much of her since the incident. Now that she was before him, he could not keep his excitement at bay.

  “Put your hands through the bars,” he commanded.

  She did as told and smiled. “There is no reason for that. I won’t try anything. I don’t want to get you in trouble again.”

  Ihtisham narrowed his eyes but said nothing. He handcuffed her, then moved to the cell door. Her bucket was empty, but she had thrown up. Wrinkling his nose, he got to work mopping then bleaching the area. When all traces of the liquid mess were gone, he sprayed it with a commercial odor killer.

  He left the girl handcuffed while he retreated upstairs to clean himself. Rashad and company had moved on from videos about Zionism and were now watching a fútbol game. They did not bother to look at him.

  He returned to the basement and walked back over to the girl. Again, she smiled.

  “I thought you had forgotten me.”

  Not likely, he thought. As he reached for the cuffs, he caught a whiff of a sour smell. He stepped back and glanced around the pretty captive for the smell’s source.

  “It’s my hair,” said the girl. Seeing Ihtisham’s puzzlement, she continued. “My hair. When I threw up, I think some got in my hair. I can smell it on me. It’s rank. Could you let me wash it? You know how us girls are about our hair.”

  Annoyance flared in Ihtisham. He had no intention of putting his nose in her hair to confirm if it smelled like that. But he could not risk Maleek smelling it either. Ihtisham huffed and cursed Maleek’s OCD obsession with cleanliness. He considered his options.

  They were few. Her hair would have to be washed, that was not in doubt. The only way to do that was to take her over to the shower. That meant he’d have to drug her, carry her to the wheelchair, then roll her over to the shower. Ihtisham was in no mood to go through all of that. He could also hose her down, but that would be too messy and would not guarantee that the girl’s hair would get cleaned.

  He walked away from the cell and turned his eyes to a utility area where they stored equipment, batteries, and other items needed for their electronic supplies. A large sink was in the room. His decision made, Ihtisham came back to the cell and took off the cuffs. “Turn around, and put your hands behind your back.”

  The girl hesitated but did as she was told. Ihtisham reached through the bars and reattached the handcuffs, this time on each of her wrists. He walked to the cell door, then pulled a knife from a pocket. “I’m going to open the cell door, then take you someplace to wash your hair. If you attack me in any way, I’ll cut you. Do. Not. Doubt. Me.” To punctuate his point, Ihtisham brandished the knife so that the edge glittered in the light of the basement.

  One of the other captives could not help herself. “What makes her so special?” she uttered.

  Ihtisham snapped his eyes toward the speaker. “Speak again and it will be because she is alive and you’re bleeding on the floor with your neck cut.”

  Spoken on the heels of seeing Ihtisham beat someone earlier, the threat had the desired effect. He saw the speaker swallow in fear, then turn her face away. In her cell, she took a couple of steps away from Ihtisham. He chuckled at that. She could go nowhere, but she imagined that shuffling a bit somehow distanced her from danger.

  “Are we clear?” Ihtisham asked as he turned his attention back to the handcuffed girl.

  She nodded her assent. Ihtisham opened the door and motioned her to step forward. As she neared the cell entrance, he backed away then pointed in the direction he wanted her to head. She followed his instruction but walked slowly. Ihtisham thought he detected a sashay, but he was not sure. Walking with arms behind the back altered a person’s gait.

  “Stop right there. No, move a couple of steps farther down.”

  Satisfied with the space between him and the girl, Ihtisham opened the utility room door while keeping his eyes on her. Once the door was fully open, he stepped back. “In there.”

  She stepped over to the door but stopped. She extended her arms out from her back and wiggled her fingers.

  “What is it?” demanded Ihtisham.

  “I can’t wash my hair with my hands behind my back.”

  Ihtisham cursed silently. The girl was right. There was no way he was going to let her loose either. He also could not leave her alone in the utility room while he waited outside it. She would see the equipment and would possibly try to destroy it. Even if he stopped her, and he would, Maleek would kill him. That would keep him from erasing the shame from his family.

  Ihtisham lurched forward, grabbed the girl, and pushed her against the doorframe. He put his knife to her throat and drew a trickle of blood. Her eyes grew wide and white with fear, and a whimper escaped her throat.

  “I will wash it myself. But understand that even if you attack me in some way, there is no place for you to go. You cannot escape. Your little smiles and phony attempts at kindness will not get you out of this place or past the men upstairs. Blink two times if you understand me.”

  The girl blinked immediately. Ihtisham backed away and gestured toward the sink with his head. “Move over to the sink and bend over.”

  The girl did as she was told. For a slight moment, she hesitated before bending her head beneath the faucet. Ihtisham leered at her as he put his knife away. That’s a position she’s no doubt used to I bet.

  Ihtisham came up behind her. The urge to press against her backside was strong, but he ignored it. He moved to her side and turned the water on. He did her a slight kindness in waiting till the water was warm before moving her head under it. Only hand soap was available, but it was scented and lathered quickly.

  As Ihtisham moved his hands through her well-lathered hair, he found the motions soothing. He began imagining what she would look like covered in lather and what she would feel like with his hands roaming all over her. At the thought, his breath began to get heavier and more rapid. When he moved the faucet back over her head and saw he needed to move her a little further up to reach the back, he moved his hand to her backside and pushed.

  He allowed his hand to linger, which made the girl whimper. The sound excited him. He took his time rinsing her hair, allowing his lower body to brush up against her again and again. When he was finished, he turned the water off and stepped back.

  “Stay there,” he said, his voice husky. He reached backward and grabbed a towel.

  This time, Ihtisham did not hold back. He pressed himself against her backside as he draped the towel over her head. Images of holding a different girl in that position flooded his mind. He was so caught up in the vision that he did not notice the girl freeze as he pressed against h
er.

  He pulled her upright and dried her hair from the back. He placed his nose into her strands and took a whiff. It smelled clean, with a hint of apple borrowed from the hand soap. Ihtisham moved his hand from the hair down to the shoulder and over her breasts. They were soft but firm. He squeezed harder as the memory of what they looked like naked in the shower surfaced.

  “Stop,” she whimpered.

  Ihtisham ignored her and whirled her around to face him. He pushed her against the sink, wrapped one arm around her back, and pinned her arms against herself. With his free hand, he pulled out his knife again and pushed its quick-release button to free the blade. “Remember,” he said, the threat clear. When she nodded, he placed the knife behind her, then grabbed her breast again. He reached under her shirt, making skin to skin contact. It drove Ihtisham over the edge. He moved his mouth to the side of her neck and suckled it while grinding their waists together. It was too much.

  “Oh my God!” she screamed, then moved her face to the side and snapped it back at the side of Ihtisham’s face, headbutting him. He staggered backward, giving her time to move away into the hall. “I thought you were . . . you’re a—”

  She never finished the words. Ihtisham lunged forward and struck her with a fist. “Don’t you say it,” he screamed. “You shut your mouth!” He hit her again and again, knocking her to the ground. Noise from the cells arose as the other women heard Ihtisham screaming and the girl yelling in pain.

  “I’ll tell you what I am. I’m just what a Western whore like you needs.”

  Ihtisham forced her onto her stomach, then ripped down her pants. Dazed from the multiple blows to her face, the girl could only mount a token resistance as she felt Ihtisham sit on her back while he tried to lower his own pants. The most she could manage was a desperate wiggle back and forth.

  He grabbed her hair, pulled her head back, and slammed it into the floor. Then he grabbed her neck and squeezed it hard. His pants were a quarter way off now, and he tried to force the girl’s legs apart with his own.

  All the girl could muster were choked out words. “Get away from me, you freak.”

  Anger flooded Ihtisham. How dare she talk to me like that. He stopped trying to force her legs open and turned her back over instead. He punched her again. Then he gripped her neck, pulled her forward, and slammed her head back once, twice, three times. The sound of a crack echoed out, but Ihtisham did not recognize it. He just felt the body go limp and scrambled backward to grab her legs, knowing that he now had no resistance.

  “Ihtisham, what are you doing!”

  Ihtisham whirled around to see Maleek and Rashad. The sight was like a wave of Arctic water rushing over him. He turned back to the girl. A battered face and a pool of blood under her head greeted him. The blond hair he had washed clean mere moments ago was now strawberry blond from blood. “I, I . . .” He turned back to Maleek, no words coming from his mouth. He bowed his head in shame, then scrambled to stand. He need not have bothered. Maleek knocked him back to the ground.

  It was now his turn to receive the same anger-fueled beating he had just given the girl.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Friday Night Lights—the three-word anthem of high-school football enthusiasts throughout America. The phrase may have been coined first by a high school coach in Texas, where football is equal to God, country, and family, but no one state had a monopoly on love for the pigskin—especially when you lived in a district that had a team with multiple state championships. Galvin High was such a school, and Friday night football under the lights is where you would find a quarter of the small city at the end of a normal week.

  Playing Edgewater High did not constitute normal, however. Edgewater was Galvin’s hated rival. It was as good as Galvin and often won the championship in years that Galvin did not. Each school was the other’s preeminent obstacle to another championship. These games were standing room only.

  Galvin was the traveling team tonight, but neither school’s home stadium could accommodate the crowd, so today they would be playing in the stadium of a mid-sized Division II college. Maddie marveled at the crowded parking lot as the team bus pulled up to the facility. Per usual, she had kept to herself on the trip over, but she heard teammates who were dialed into social media say there was overflow seating in the college’s gym and auditorium.

  It seemed too serious for a high school game, but Maddie knew to keep that thought to herself. Coach Samson was activating her for the game and had done a decent impression of a drill sergeant in team practices. As for Aden, he was so focused, he had even dropped pestering her about the Rhee phone call. Dorete had even dropped her pettiness. She was still a bitch, but Maddie could tell that now it was because she wanted to outshine the rival team’s cheerleaders. She would never admit it, but Maddie admired the attitude. She had joined the squad for her own reasons, but Maddie loved to win. She had no quibbles with dominating a competitor.

  Coach Samson stood as the bus came to a halt. “Alright, we’re gonna have this talk now before we hit the field. We are not playing this game. The boys of the Galvin Sabres are. They’re the ones taking the hits. They’re the ones dishing out the pain. They’re the ones who need to score.” She paused and looked every girl in the eye. “That doesn’t make us any less a part of this team. We don’t cheer. We motivate. We motivate our crowd to scream louder than their crowd. We motivate our boys to hit a little harder than the other team. We don’t dance. We perform. And we do it better than anyone. Cheer nationals start here! Right here, do you understand me?”

  “YES!”

  The roaring response startled Maddie. She looked at the faces of the girls surrounding her on the bus. Intensity glowed in each eye. It was as if they were the ones playing the game, not chanting and dancing. It astonished Maddie.

  In that moment, a veil lifted from her mind. For the first time, she could see how serious every girl on the squad took cheering and this game. There was more to it than popularity or high school social norms. None of the practices, endless yelling, or obsessed talk about cheering had conveyed the seriousness of the matter to Maddie like the fevered looks she saw in the eyes of the bedazzled girls around her.

  Something clicked inside. A mental readjustment took place. If they were this committed, then Maddie decided she should be as well—perhaps not like Dorete, but like someone who did not want to let people depending on them down. Until this moment, she had masked her fear of messing up with the indifference of someone who did not care about cheering at all. That notion evaporated and with it her concern. She would nail her moves, and her team would win the competition, both on the field and the sideline.

  Maddie waited till everyone walked past before standing up to leave the bus. She stopped at the front and gave Coach Samson her own direct look. “I’m ready. I got this.”

  Coach Samson nodded in acknowledgment of Maddie’s deeper, unspoken message. “Never had a doubt you would get there.”

  Maddie disembarked and headed in the direction of their assigned locker room. She stopped when she spotted Tiffani at a van parked behind the bus. Once again, she was struggling with a large black bag. Maddie ran over to help.

  “Is there a reason you’re hauling in drinks to an away game?” she asked when she reached Tiffani.

  Tiffani turned and puffed out a breath, blowing her strawberry-blond bangs in the air. “See, what happened was a couple of years ago someone at Edgewater put something in the team coolers. Got the whole team sick, played like crap . . . literally. Now, we bring our own and in original bottles.”

  “That’s insane,” said Maddie. “I take it you could use a hand.”

  Tiffani hesitated before answering, “Nah, I got it. You need to be with the team, not looking like you’re ignoring them to help me.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I got time. Which bag do I grab?”

  Tiffani’s eyebrows inverted slightly but then smoothed out in a nanosecond. “Grab the red bag. It’s got the sports drinks for
the cheerleaders.”

  Maddie grabbed the bag and hauled it to the team’s sideline area. She helped Tiffani with two more loads, then turned to head back to the van for a fourth. There were two bags left in the van. Tiffani grabbed one, then shot out her hand to grab Maddie’s when she reached for the remaining bag. “Leave that one!”

  Maddie froze. The sharpness of the request startled her.

  “Mr. Y Leiro made me promise on my life not to touch that one. He loaded it into the van himself.”

  “That doesn’t seem weird to you?”

  Tiffani quickly closed the door and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. He said the last one is something special for the team for the trip back when we win. Maybe it’s beer or something. I wouldn’t put it past Coach Branford to let the boys chug a few.”

  “You didn’t look?” asked Maddie, incredulous.

  Tiffani shot Maddie a side-eye steeper than a pyramid. “Not all of us are directionally challenged like you, missy, especially when it involves a teacher who gives us grades.”

  “Point taken. I’m surprised he even cares about something like this.”

  “Are you kidding? He organized the biggest booster event last year. I hear he’s the reason you were able to get those awesome new cheer uniforms.” Tiffani pointed to Maddie’s outfit.

  Maddie grimaced. “Yet another reason to hate the man.”

  Tiffani laughed then gave Maddie a strong, lingering hug. “Good luck. Break a leg, not like a real one this time. Like you, well, you know—”

  “Thanks . . . I think.”

  Maddie headed to the sideline where the team was stretching and warming up. She looked into the stands as she started her own warm-up and stretching routine. The crowd was packed like sardines. She turned and looked across the field at the stands behind the rival team. They were also jam-packed.

  Maddie could feel the electricity in the air. She could almost touch the anticipation. Local papers had crowned Edgewater the favorite as soon as Andre had gotten injured. But that was before Aden had emerged into a force that required a reckoning. Now, local sportswriters were not so sure about the outcome of the game. Edgewater had beaten Galvin in the playoffs last year, and the team wanted payback. That payback had been in question, now it was not.