“No. Absolutely not. I don’t want a trade. I want you without reservation because you want the same things I want. I am not taking you as some unwilling payment to spare your friends.”
Julie’s anger came all at once to match his. The ferocity of it felt like a train surging through an endless dark tunnel. She’d been so scared for so long that anger felt like a barely real emotion, so wispy that when it would flow through her, it just as quickly flowed out again, and she could never grab hold of it before it moved outside her reach. But this time it felt unstoppable. It felt like it might light her on fire and burn her away.
“So you think if you kill or enslave women who became my friends... or have them killed or enslaved... that I will ever give myself to you willingly? Are you that out of touch?”
Gabe sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “You think I’m that big of a monster?”
“I don’t know what you are. I’m willing to offer you what you want for what I want. It seems mutually beneficial to me.”
“I don’t want your martyrdom. I can’t believe you think, after my discussion with Anton last night... I can’t believe you think that I would either have them killed or bring them here.”
“You brought me here.”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“I’m going to work.”
Work. Right. Fucking and being serviced by obedient captive women was work. What a fucking asshole.
“Wait,” she said.
“I said no, and I meant it.”
“No, I mean... what’s going to happen to them… my friends?”
“They’ll get to safety. If the mission is successful, Dmitri and his guys won’t be a threat to them anymore, and they won’t be a threat to the operation here because they don’t know about it. Don’t worry.” Gabe left the room and shut the door quietly behind him.
As soon as he was gone, she nearly started crying. For the first time the tears would have been relief—for the fate of her friends.
But once she moved past this sense of relief, she found herself agitated again. What was that? What was any of that? He acted like he didn’t want her. Was he regretting the decision to bring her here? What if he decided he wanted to sell her? That was their business model after all. She tried to keep reminding herself of the conversation she’d witnessed the previous night. It wasn’t in Gabe’s nature to do that to someone. Right? But why was he acting so weird and distant? And why wouldn’t he take her offer? It was what he wanted. Why the hell did he care how he got it?
If he expected her to roll over and become his slave for no other reason than some desperate desire to please and obey him... holy shit did he have a long wait. Like the rest of his natural lifetime. To save her friends? Yes. She’d do whatever she had to in order to free them from Dmitri’s hold and spare their lives, but just throwing herself at Gabe’s feet because she had some weird desperate urge to call him master and be his property? Never.
It was one thing to act out of fear for her survival or out of sacrifice for people she cared about. It was a whole other thing to expect her to do this just because she wanted to. Gabe couldn’t coerce her internal desires to play to his script.
Suddenly remembering what he’d said about breakfast, Julie hurried through a shower, and put on some clothes.
Finding the cafeteria wasn’t that difficult. She was, however, surprised to find an older lady serving food behind the counter. The woman glanced up at the wall where a giant clock hung. The clock read 10:55.
“You’re cutting it awfully close, my dear. Five minutes left for breakfast, unless you want to wait another hour for lunch.”
“No, breakfast is good.”
“Everything?”
Julie could barely believe the food options: pancakes with maple syrup, eggs, sausages. And everything looked freshly cooked, not like it had come out of a deep freezer. The woman behind the counter loaded up her tray.
“You could do with a bit of extra meat on your bones,” the woman said. “Beverages are at the end of the line. We have several juices today, milk, or water. We ran out of coffee half an hour ago. You’ve gotta get here early for the coffee.”
Julie took her tray. “Thanks, juice is fine.”
The tables were mostly empty, but there were a few women still having breakfast. They seemed to be sizing her up from a distance, and she wondered if they had seen her with Gabe the night before. Julie flinched when she noticed a few men posted at various points. Guards? But they didn’t have any guns.
“Hey Lola!” one woman shouted across a few tables. “I thought we were going to the pool at eleven.”
“I’ve got my suit on under this,” she said.
“You can’t swim after you ate that many pancakes. Girl, they are going to kick your ass in the gym and put you on a restricted diet.”
Lola didn’t look at all fat to Julie. Though, arguably, a daily diet of pancakes and no exercise might reverse that.
“I’ll sit by the pool until I digest, Mommy,” Lola said sarcastically. She got up and put her tray away and then the two of them went outside.
Outside! Julie could go outside here! Nobody was stopping them. And judging by their glowing tans, these girls spent a lot of time in the sun lounging beside pools.
Julie found an empty table out of the way of foot traffic and sat with her breakfast. She was halfway through the best breakfast she’d had in probably a year—even before Dmitri, mornings had mostly featured toaster pastries—when someone else joined her table. It was the woman from the night before, the one who belonged to Anton.
“Julie, is it?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’m Annette. Glad to have another lifer in here.”
Julie was about to be horrified and appalled, but Annette winked.
“I-I thought Anton called you Kiska last night?”
She laughed. “Oh, that’s his pet name for me. It means little cat.”
“Oh. How long have you been here?” Julie asked. How long did it take to become a Stepford Slave?
Annette seemed to be mentally counting in her head. “Hmmmm... about... eight years? Nine? I don’t know, a while.”
“That’s a long time to never get to go anywhere,” Julie said. Sure, it was a really nice house, mansion really. Lots of food. Lots of people. And apparently a pool and a gym. But it was still a fancy prison.
Annette laughed. “You’re adorable. I get to leave the house, for God’s sake. Anton takes me out somewhere nice at least once a week. And we occasionally get away to travel. Everybody needs vacation. Am I right?”
“But I thought you were his prisoner.”
If possible, Annette laughed harder. “I chose him. I wanted Anton, and this house and this life. And I’m not his prisoner. He’s my master.”
It seemed like a mere semantic difference to Julie. That word, master, still skeeved her out.
“So, if you wanted him to set you free, he would? You could go back to the real world?”
“Good God, why would I want that? I live like a pampered house cat here. Which is why he calls me Kiska.”
“Okay, but if you did want that? What then?” Julie pressed.