“I can get you money. Please.” At least I hope I can. Cillian would pay for my return . . . for a fee or favor. I need to cling to the idea that I can get cash to hold me over until Spark can find me.
“We don’t need your money. We’re going to get paid enough for you. More than you can get. American-born, educated, pretty. And small.” Searching hands slide up my blouse and squeeze my breasts hard. I cry out, and the tears I’ve been trying hard to contain spill over. “Some buyers love small wives so they can break them slowly over time.”
The use of the word buyer confirms what I know. This is trafficking. I’m going to be sold.
I swallow the wave of sickness.
Then I try to think through ways to escape, ways to make them treat me with care. But I come back to one singular thought.
Stay alive.
Whatever they do to me while I hang here, I need to be alive at the end of it.
My blindfold is ripped off my head, and I squint in the light. A million thoughts assimilate. I’m in a warehouse like I suspected. There are four women. And the man facing me is the one who tried to talk to me that day at breakfast with Kasey. The one Spark tried to warn me about.
“Surprise,” he says, and weirdly does jazz hands like some poor imitation of the Joker.
Then he grips my cheeks, pinching them hard, and kisses me messily. It’s all saliva and tongue and no finesse. It’s an invasion. An assault. And I recoil from every part of it.
“I’m going to enjoy breaking your spirit,” he says, before slapping me hard across my cheek.
The pain is blinding. The force behind it sends me swaying on the rope as my toes brush across the floor. The metallic taste of blood seeps onto my tongue. I bite back a sob as I come back to a standstill.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
The man shrugs. “Because I can. Because there is a demand for compliant wives who know their place.”
I’m not sure why, but I smirk at that. “I’ll never be compliant.”
It’s his turn to laugh. “Do you know how many women I’ve heard say that who are now meek and subservient? You all break. It’s just a matter of finding what breaks you.”
He rips my blouse open, and I hear the buttons as they hit the floor. A knife slices through the front of my bra, and I’m suddenly exposed to him and his men.
I reiterate my one goal. Stay alive.
Alive, I can run. I can fight. I can plot and plan and figure out when to make my move.
He pinches my nipple hard, and I bite back a scream.
Then I take my weight in my arms and kick with my foot, nailing him so hard in the balls that I swing dangerously. I wonder if the momentum might allow me to flip the rope off the hook, but it doesn’t as I’m grabbed from behind. Hairy arms I don’t know squeeze my middle as I try to throw my head back. It hits something hard, and I hear a grunt, but the arms don’t let me go.
The slimeball is on the floor, gripping between his legs. “You bitch.”
My control begins to slip and panic seeps in, filling the gaps in between.
I’m going to be sick. It’s rising. I swallow as my mouth fills with saliva. The arms, so tight around my chest, make it hard to breathe. Lights flicker in my peripheral vision.
The man stands. His slicked-back hair has flopped over his face, and he smooths it back as he inhales deeply. He turns as if to walk away, but then I realize, as his fist speeds toward my face, he was just cocking his punch.
I see spittle spray from his lips, and then I feel nothing as I slip into darkness.
Thoughts flicker back online as I come around. I’m still hanging from the hook. Pain blisters the side of my face. My eye socket. I try to open my eyes.
Only one opens.
I realize I’m naked.
And I’ve got no idea if I’ve been violated beyond squeezing my thighs together and realizing nothing hurts.
I have no idea how long I’ve been missing, but it feels like two lifetimes too long.
No one is coming.
I keep my head down.
For as long as they think I’m unconscious, perhaps they’ll leave me alone.
I hear whispers.
“…shipment at eleven…only four of them. Keep her.”
It was maybe six o’clock, when I was taken. It’s now dark outside. So it’s after seven at least.
Discretely, I glance to where the women were sitting. Now, two of them are missing. One of the remaining two is crying. The other is hugging her knees.
They are both blindfolded, and for some reason, I’m glad. Not because I don’t want them to know what might happen to them. In an act of pure selfishness, I want as few people as possible to see me like this.
“Boss,” I hear someone say.
Then battered brown cowboy boots appear in my vision. Fingers grip my jaw and lift my face until I’m staring at my keeper again.
“See. All quiet now,” he says in a voice like he’s soothing a skittish animal.
I resist the urge to spit in his face.
Perhaps he’s right; perhaps it is all about learning what causes submission. In my case, I don’t want to be hit again.
His fingers run down my neck; they tug on my nipple as he laughs. They run lower until two of them attempt to slip between my legs. I grind my teeth hard as I press my knees so firmly the bones grind against each other.
I’m alive.
I’m alive.
I mentally repeat it as he grips my hip so hard it will bruise. He hurts me with his fingers as he tries to force them between my legs. “I like it best when you fight. And because of the mess you’re in, I can’t send you tonight. So, you’re going to stay here with me until the shipment next week, and I’ll teach you how to be an open and giving wife.”
Desperation blankets me. I hear a scream as the two other women are dragged out of the room.
I won’t survive a week.
Stop.
I’ll survive what I need to.
But I’m not going to give in.
I won’t let myself be violated.
Not without a fight.
And as I take my weight in my arms, ready to kick again, ice trickles through my veins.
If Spark doesn’t find me, I may not make it out of here alive.
36
SPARK
“She leaves my care because she doesn’t want to end up in this life, and then within weeks of meeting you fuckers, she’s been kidnapped.”
Cillian’s tone is frigid in the evening air, but I’ve had enough of the Irishman already.
“Says the man who got one of his men to run her off the road. Because you were pushing us together to get intel, you self-serving motherfucker, and she said no. You fractured her fucking wrist.”
“Steady,” Clutch says. I don’t realize I advanced on Cillian until Clutch’s arm stretches across my chest to stop me from moving closer.
We’re moving in around the warehouse. All roads point to here.
“That man is dead. A soldier who can’t follow orders is a liability,” Cillian says finally. “He wasn’t supposed to hurt her.”
“Yeah. Well, a man who can’t look after his family without threatening them to toe the line is a cunt,” I spit.
He has the audacity to smirk. “You have no clue what’s important to me or why I do what I do. I believe in a cause greater than me or you.”