I’ve never known real fear, never doubted that I could get out of any situation I found myself in, until now. The not knowing was scarier than anything else. I knew nothing, not where I was, not how long I’d be here, and not even why I was here. Who was behind this? I had a feeling I knew. This seemed like a bit much, though, as payback for anything I’d done to Gia in the past.
It seemed unfair when coupled with everything else that had happened in the last few days. She’d cost me my home, my friends, even my school, and now this. How does Gabe Russo know this place, and why the hell did he have me sent here? I have no doubt that this was all his sick twisted doing, but I failed to see how I warranted this.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was anywhere else but here, but the stillness of the room wouldn’t let me concentrate. When I screamed, the sound echoed around the room until I thought my ears would bleed. I laid there exhausted and miserable, lying in my own waste for what felt like an eternity.
Sometime later, another one of those things entered the room, and I endured the humiliation of having my soiled clothes removed and my body wiped down before I was put in another nondescript hospital gown that had been made to go around the chains on my wrists. When the thing got up to leave, I started yelling again, sure that if I stayed in here a minute longer, I’d really lose my shit.
I felt trapped when I realized that I never saw a door. I know one is there; how else could they come and go? But there were no visible knobs or seams in the whiter than white walls that surrounded the room. I had no way of telling what time it was because my watch was gone. I tried tugging on the chains around my wrists again, but they were too heavy and didn’t have any give in them. Fear and trepidation choked me as I fought not to give in.
One minute my mind was filled with all the ways I was going to get back at the ones responsible for putting me here, and the next, it was filled with fear of being stuck here forever.
BECKY
I wish I were dead. Or at the very least that I could go to sleep and wake up when this nightmare is over. I ache all over, especially my heart, which now feels like a block of ice. I thought for sure my life was coming to an end when the monster who brought me here took me out of the car. I would’ve done anything then to survive, but now, just a few hours later, I’m wishing for death.
What kind of hospital discharges someone in this much pain, and without medication at that? As horrible as it sounds, I’d felt safer there; at least I had a bed to sleep on away from prying eyes. Those first few days at the motel had been hell, with everyone I knew seeming to just happen by the place out of the blue. I’m pretty sure Gia and that boy had something to do with it.
The whispers I could deal with, but the laughter and the snubs were like darts to my chest. So I’d decided to stay hidden, only coming out at night when I was sure no one I knew would be about, not in that part of town anyway. I knew I was on borrowed time, sure that Felix would get around to cutting me off at some point since the boy seemed hellbent on destroying my life, I knew it was only a matter of time, but I thought I had a few more days at least.
I’d had the foresight to pay for a couple of weeks at least, but now it looks like that money would be going to waste because I have no idea where I am right now or how to get back. Each movement sent shooting pain throughout my entire body and the cold; it’s so cold here with no way to warm myself in the thin hospital gown, which is all I’d been left with.
I’d been so hopeful when I was told I was being released into someone’s care. I thought Felix had come to his senses and was ready to listen to reason as he’d always done before. But by the time I realized that it was a complete stranger waiting to pick me up, the nurse had already gone back inside, and there was no way for me to escape. I didn’t have to think hard to figure out who sent the silent man who never spoke a word. Not that I could’ve said much with my mouth wired shut the way it is.
I didn’t even have paper and pen to communicate, and my phone was missing. Panic set in when we left the city limits, and I didn’t recognize my surroundings. I knew we were still in the state, at least, but had no way of knowing where. There were no recognizable landmarks, and it was too dark to make out much of anything beyond the car window.
He, whoever he was, had dumped me here in some sort of wooded area with no sign of life around and just driven off. I don’t even know how long I’d been here, and worst of all, I’d left my bag somewhere, either at the motel or the hospital, so I had no way of contacting anyone for help. At the very least, I could’ve texted Victoria to ask for help if no one else was willing.
Not even at my worst were things this bad; there was always an out, always a way to get back on my feet. Now that it’s too late, I wish I’d done things a little different. I have no money, no friends, and no one I could count on. My mind went to Jimmy but only for the briefest of moments. That’s the worst thing that could happen now, for him to show up in our lives.
I sifted through the lies in my mind to see if there was a way to salvage things, but I’m afraid there isn’t. More than the cat’s out of the bag this time. Even if I could make Felix doubt that lying bitch of a maid’s words, Victoria had put the final nail in my coffin by repeating what she saw. What else has she been saying now that I was not there to defend myself?
No doubt she was covering her own ass while throwing me to the wolves, my own daughter. Still, as long as one of us hangs in there, there’s always a way back. Felix would never dig up his precious Adrienne, of that much, I’m sure, so whatever he thinks or believes will always just be conjecture. I can work with that.
As to the other charges, I can beat those as well. I’m sure that Russo brat had left a trail or something somewhere that could be found, and I could turn this thing around. Right now, though, I needed to get the hell out of here wherever here was. I could barely move because of the pain and the thought of spending the night in this dark, cold place was all I could focus on at the moment.
Something rustled the brush a few feet away from me, and I screamed in my throat as I tried to make myself smaller. I’d dragged myself up against a tree trunk for support, but if something was really out there, I have no way to protect myself. I needed the bathroom in the worst way, but fear held me hostage, as each sound seemed to get closer while the cold wind rushed through the thin fabric of the hospital gown, biting into my bruised flesh.
That bitch had got her piece of flesh, I guess, which I was still finding hard to believe. The Gia I knew would never have had the nerve to lift a hand to me. This was all the Russos doing, and that, more than anything, put fear in me—that and the fact that Felix had changed so much.
How had I not seen it in the last few weeks? I’d been so busy trying to keep myself out of one scrape or another that I didn’t pay close enough attention to what was going on with him until it was too late. I couldn’t have known that a decade’s worth of my hard work would go up in flames in less than a month; has it only been that long?
The small part of me that’s fighting to hold out hope is dwindling by the second to the point that even if I had a contingency plan, it would be of no use right now because my mind is too fractured and all over the place to think straight. Just thinking about the fix I’m in makes my head ache something awful, and that’s nothing to do with the physical pain I’m in.