Eleven
Paisley
W hen I woke up, the first thing I felt was the pain radiating from the side of my neck. My hands flew up to touch the sore spot, but my fingers found metal instead. My heavy eyelids finally opened and I groaned, looking down at my wrists, bloody from the handcuffs that were cruelly digging into my flesh.
I was wearing a metal O-ring collar. My still-wet lace cover-up clung to my goosebumped skin.
A long chain linked the wrist cuffs to my waist, and then down to my ankles, which were cuffed together as well. Across the middle, I wore a locked belt. A man in the aisle seat was holding a stack of keys, a sick reminder I was still worth something to these bastards, even if they had damaged me a little.
I was on a plane.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out I was in a worst case scenario. I didn’t consider myself unprepared, but when it mattered most, I’d been woefully stupid. I couldn’t blame myself though. I needed to scream, get help, and get the fuck out of there.
Where the fuck were they taking me?
I thrashed in my seat, quickly earning a sharp slap from a guard standing in the aisle. The familiar humming of an airplane filled my ears, and they popped as the plane ascended. Horrified, I looked past the two empty seats next to me to the window. Palermo disappeared before my eyes, a distant, barely there memory.
I glanced around in a panic. The plane was taking off, and I was helpless, shackled and belted into the seat. On the other side of the aisle, the man sat with his gun casually cocked at me. He was grinning at me, as if daring me to disobey him again. I wasn’t going to. I already learned he hit hard, and without mercy.
Screaming for help would be no use, either. Whoever these men were, they were controlling the plane. I needed to wait until we were back on land to make my escape, but I knew the longer I waited, the slimmer my chances got. These bastards knew what they were doing. They wouldn’t let the women out in public. My only chance to run would be the airport, once we landed.
Even though I was panicking, I managed to keep my mind clear enough to take a good look at the plane and who was inside it. The seats were mostly filled with women like me. One per three seats, and the plane had two aisles. The middle seats were taken by guards, all armed, all watching us, one per girl. We were ridiculously outnumbered, nevermind the fact that all of us were shackled. Some of the girls were still waking up, others were crying quietly, and the one on the other side of me stared blankly ahead.
The guard shoved me back before I could get a better look, and I writhed in my seat.
“Fuck you,” I snarled at him, which quickly learned me a slap with his gun. My heart pounded. He was so careless. Did it really not matter if they brought us wherever we were going battered and bruised?
My heart sank at the thought. I knew it was bad, but just how bad was it?
Would they kill us or worse?
I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I tried to catch the attention of the girl on the other side while the guards watching us talked to each other. She had long, golden blonde hair, blue eyes, and smatterings of freckles all over her suntanned skin. She looked about my age, and she was wearing a cocktail dress. My eyes scanned her bare feet, and I wondered whether she’d kicked off her heels to make a run for it when they took her.
I forced my eyes shut, memories replaying in my mind like a scratchy record.
Coming to Palermo with Travis was supposed to change everything… but not like this.
If these were my last moments, I wasn’t going to waste them on Travis. There was only one man on my mind, and he was my best friend’s Dad.
Rubi’s father. That night behind the club. A moment of pure pleasure and fear, basic instinct mixing with the scent of lust. I licked my lips.
My own cloying perfume reached my nostrils, nauseating me. If I ever got the chance to, I’d smash the damn bottle. It would forever remind me of this horrifying moment otherwise.
Finally, the blonde looked my way, and I begged her to keep looking.
“Hey!” I called out desperately. “What’s your name? Please, I’m Paisley, please-”
Before I got the chance to finish my sentence, the guard was on his feet again, and the barrel of the gun was pressed against my forehead. He clicked the safety off, staring into my eyes coldly as he turned the gun sideways.
“Are you fucking dumber than you look?” he asked me sweetly, any emotion gone from his cold grey eyes. “No talking. Shut the fuck up, or I’ll give the others something to cry about. Capisce ?”
I nodded, and the gun retreated. My breath hitched in my throat when he grabbed me by the neck.
“You are quite the pretty one,” he said thoughtfully, pocketing his gun with his free hand. “How old is this one, Tox?”
The other guard glanced over his shoulder, and so did the blonde, but she quickly looked away again.
“Early twenties?” the guard shrugged.
"Let me go,” I hissed as the one next to me pressed on my jugular. “You’re hurting me, bastard!”
“Do I look like I fucking care?” he spat out, unbuckling my seatbelt.
I gasped as he forced me to my feet, the gun’s barrel on the small of my back as he shoved me forward. I walked down the aisle, feeling the fearful gazes of the girls who were awake. None of them spoke, and I despised them for not standing up for me.
I was forced to the middle of the plane where the emergency exits were. The guard took a seat in front of me, the other seats on each side of him flanked by two other men. On the sides, two girls shifted uncomfortably in their shackles. One was praying, the other openly sobbing. I had a feeling they knew what was going to happen to me already.
“It’s my lucky fucking day,” the guard half-snarled, half-smiled as he pointed the gun barrel to the floor. “On your goddamn knees, slave .”
The word dug into my subconsciousness, ugly, unforgiving. Was that what they were going to turn me into?
I sank to my knees, and he motioned for me to come forward. Fighting the urge to vomit, I crawled closer, and he cradled my chin in his palm, frightfully gentle.
“You a virgin?” he asked me softly.
I froze up at the question.
“She looks too old to be a virgin,” the man to his right remarked, and I looked away, feeling degraded. “Just do it. Who cares? She’s old enough.”
I swallowed thickly as he shrugged. Clearly, he didn’t care one way or the other. It quickly dawned on me how bad the situation was. But I wasn’t going to lose my life as a consequence of resisting. Not before cutting their dicks off for making me suck them.
When it was over, I was dripping with their cum. One raped me while another came in my mouth. They took turns holding a loaded gun to my head, erasing any thoughts I had of resisting.
I felt numb, but not broken. I hid the fact that rage was seething right beneath my surface. Even if they noticed, the guards just laughed at me. I memorized their faces in my mind, then scratched angry x’s over their eyes.
When I was brought back to my seat, I looked at the blonde girl across the aisle again. I busied my breaking mind by memorizing every feature of her face, the landscape of her freckled skin, and the color of her hair and eyes. I didn’t know her name yet, but I vowed to myself I would.
I’d never forget my own, either.
The guard shoved me back into my seat, and I winced with humiliation as he buckled me in again. Laughing at me, he pressed a kiss to my forehead and I turned away in disgust. He grabbed me by the cheeks, forcing me to look at him.
“You know better than to resist me by now,” he hissed in my face. “I like it better when you girls play along. Makes me harder. I’m not a monster , you know.”
His cruel smile toyed with my emotions further, and I forced my eyes shut, biting back the curse on the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of my reaction.
Thankfully, he retreated, and once I centered my breathing enough, I dared another look at my aisle neighbor.
She looked familiar now. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d stared at her so long, or because I actually recognized her. But weirder things had happened. Maybe I’d seen her before. Fuck knew how this organization worked, and where they picked up their victims. Maybe I’d seen her at the airport when we arrived.There was no more we now. Travis would wake up alone and report me missing to the police. Something told me they weren’t going to be successful in their search for me. I’d end up just like life had always intended, another foster kid that slipped through the cracks, despite society’s best efforts.
Just like Rubi.
I swallowed, looking back at the blonde. Did she look familiar because she looked similar to my best friend? No, it was something else… The dress, maybe? I’d seen it before, on another blonde.
My blood felt frozen in my veins. I remembered it then, a photo I’d committed to the darkest archives of my brain. The nude pictures on Travis’ phone, saved, disturbingly, under his mother’s name. The longer I looked at the blonde, the more familiar she looked.
Was she the girl in the photos?
I badly wanted to risk calling out to her again, but I knew I’d already be bruised to hell from everything the guard had done to me. Still, I managed to busy my brain, overwhelming it with information. I felt like I’d personally pushed my breaking point away. Pure desperation fueled me, and I sat back quietly in my seat.
Once we got to the airport, I’d make a run for it.
Then, I’d find Travis, and find out if he had something to do with all this.
And I’d make him pay.