He didn’t tell me anything more. Earl got to his feet, turned on his heel, and walked away.
I came to realize the reason I was allowed to be alone. I couldn’t get the fuck off this island. His men were there. And there was no way out other than with his express permission.
I was trapped here until he was ready to get rid of me.
****
Earl
A young teenager.
“What?”
“You heard me, boy. You get in that room and you fuck her. If you don’t, I’m going to make one of my men, and believe me, they’re going to leave her broken and bloody.”
I looked into the room.
It was a dirty place where my grandfather kept the girls. It was all designed to make them feel like animals. Their human rights were gone. They were property. They were marked. A single brand burned into their skin at their hip. Each one letting his customers know who she belonged to.
Staring into the room, I saw the property was young. Couldn’t be any more than sixteen. I’d seen her arrive. The men had already tasted her virgin state. Blood covered the pants at the apex of her thighs. They’d raped her virginity and made her keep the evidence on her for their own sick games.
My grandfather had been pissed.
A virgin was worth so much more. He’d played along, found out who’d done the deed, and right there, in front of all the women, he’d put a bullet in the man’s head.
Now, the girl who’d been torn, she was here, for me.
I hated this.
He commanded his men.
They all did as he told them.
My grandfather had a sick, twisted way of keeping himself entertained.
I didn’t know what to say.
My dick wasn’t hard.
It was never hard.
Not around the women.
I’d seen what the men do. This was what my father did. I heard them beg. Sometimes at night, I woke up to their screams, begging to go home. Some didn’t. Some accepted their fates and they stayed still. They were the good ones, my grandfather said, but they were also the cheapest.
Men didn’t always want the ones who weren’t broken.
The ones with spirit took the highest price. They went up for auction. Their screams, their promises of retribution, each word, each fight, it all brought in more money. The broken went to the brothels, where night after night, they were taken.
The blow to the head pulled me out of my thoughts, and I realized I’d been staring into the room for a long time. My grandfather’s patience had faded.
Hands wrapped around my neck, cutting off my air supply.
“Listen to me, you piece of shit, you go in there, and you fuck her, every single hole, or I will have my men use you.”
The door was opened, and I was thrust into the room.
Past experience told me to keep my balance, and not to show that I was taking deep breaths.
My heart raced.
The girl sat on the bed, the dirty clothes still on her body.
She didn’t look up. Tears fell onto her hand, but she still doesn’t make a sound.
I didn’t say a word.
The thought of touching her made me feel sick. My grandfather and all of his men were watching.
It wasn’t that I’d never been mean or hurt a woman before, this was different. This woman should have been special. The more I got involved with his business, the more I hated it. My mom was part of this world. I never got to see her for who she truly was. I’d only ever known her for a whore.
This girl, and that was exactly what she was, a girl, was already broken. The silent tears, the blood, the drooped shoulders. Taking her would just be shattering another wall of whatever sanity she had left, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I hesitated too long.
Within seconds, my grandfather was there, drawing the cane he carried with him down across the back of my head. The blow sent me to the floor. Three men followed in.
My grandfather placed his cane across my throat. The more I struggled, the less oxygen I could get inside. Panic started to cease, but he held me still.
There were times he still shocked me with the strength he possessed for an old man. He played on his age, allowing people to think he was weak. He wasn’t. He was one of the strongest and sickest men I knew.
I thought my father was bad. Compared to this man, my father was a saint.
“You’re going to watch. She could have enjoyed the experience. I gave you the chance to have a sweet, newly broken-in cunt. Now you get to see how a real man takes her.”
He made me watch as they tore the clothes from her body. The three men, two held her down while the other defiled her. One by one, they took turns, using every single hole of her body, and when they were done, she was dead. The last man had strangled the life out of her.
Rage coursed through my veins. A desire to kill filled my core.
It should have been over.
It wasn’t.
My grandfather, to prove how big and powerful he was, threw me to the ground, and one by one, the men finished what they had started with her.
Pulling out of the memory, my hands clenched into fists. It was a long time ago. Almost as if it had happened to someone else. My grandfather had watched, bored as they raped me. Later that night, I had no choice but to clean myself up, and my grandfather had warned me. He had no time for pussies. I followed orders, or I was going to be nothing more than a toy for his men to amuse themselves with.
I learned.
I stayed alert.
I followed instructions, even the ones I couldn’t stand. Each day, my rage and thirst for revenge had grown until the day had come when I finally killed my grandfather and all the men who had been in that room that day.
Ashley didn’t need to know any of that.
My burden. My baggage. No one knew.
Not a soul.
I didn’t think of that time. There was no point. It was a waste of time and energy.
I wasn’t going to apologize for what I did or why. I left Ashley on the ground without saying another word.
There was no use in talking.
She had her judgments, and to be honest, I didn’t give a crap. She could hate me all she wanted. The life I intended to give her was full of luxury. If she needed something to help ease her guilt, she could donate everything she earned to some kind of a woman’s shelter.
I walked into the house, and I was surprised when she joined me in my office a few seconds later. I was already pouring myself a large glass of brandy.
“I know the world isn’t black and white.” She opened, closed her mouth. “This is useless.”
“Ashley, you’re not going to change who I am. You’re going to have to get used to it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it.” I wasn’t changing. This world I’d created was all mine. I didn’t care how she saw it.
“You really don’t care, do you?”
“You’re a young woman, Ashley. You have ideals about the world, and most of the time, I appreciate it. Doesn’t mean it fits with what everyone wants. It doesn’t. You can hate me all you want, but you know I’m right. Are we going to keep going around in circles about this?”
“Tell me about your grandfather,” she said after a few seconds had passed.
“No.” That was one topic I would never discuss.
“Why not?”
“There are stories you don’t need to hear. You think I’m bad, he was worse. The stuff he did. It would turn your stomach, and I don’t want to wake up from you screaming because he gave you nightmares.”