Chapter 16
Helena
That bastard.
That absolute, complete, and utter bastard.
He left me locked up in here like some caged animal. I don’t think so. He has the nerve to leave me in here and think that I’m just going to sit around and wait for him to come back? I think not. I’m a lot of things, but I’m absolutely not a toy that you simply put up on the shelf and take down only when you want to play with it. If he’s going to kill me, then he needs to just get it over with.
I can’t stay here locked up, naked and ready for his use when he feels like coming back. If he thinks that I’m just going to play along like an obedient little thing, he’s got another thing coming.
I can’t take the waiting.
First and foremost. I need to get out of these handcuffs, which shouldn”t be too difficult. I”ve done it a number of times before. All I need now is something to fit between the teeth and the locking mechanism. They appear to be fairly standard. I”ve been in my fair share of handcuffs for various reasons, and as long as these are standard issue police handcuffs, I shouldn”t have any issues with them.
The room isn”t full of useful items, especially with my hands cuffed behind me. Rage and outright indignation propel me forward. As I search for something that will help me get out of here, I don”t feel the ache in my shoulders or the pulse between my legs.
It doesn’t take long before I find something. It takes some doing, but I manage to unscrew one of the light switch covers and break off a piece of plastic long and narrow enough to wedge in there. I have to work carefully to avoid cutting myself, but after some wiggling and angling, the locks on the handcuffs break apart. I liberate the other and practically run to the bathroom.
I take the world”s fastest shower to wash away the memory of Daniel’s hands on me. I scrub until he’s no longer coating the insides of my thighs. Despite my earlier resolve, I can’t stand having the memory of him on my skin right now. I dry myself hastily. I feel like there’s a ticking clock hanging over my head, ready to ring an alarm at any moment. I don’t know if this is his private bedroom or how long he’s going to be gone, so I need to use every moment that I can to the best of my advantage.
Why didn’t he do it?
Why didn’t he just kill me at the overlook? He had the opportunity. He clearly has motive. He could have ended me as soon as we finished. I can’t think why he would go to all of this effort. I don’t know why he would choose to drag all of this out. Chemistry? Surely not. It was good sex—okay, great, amazing sex, but I don’t see that as being something that’s worth saving my life over.
Wearing a towel like a dress, I start to pull open each of the drawers that I come across in the bathroom. Empty, empty, empty. Not so much as a hairpin or travel pack of tissues sitting discarded within. Certainly nothing that I can use. I turn to explore the closet when I catch sight of myself in the mirror.
I turn and examine my reflection in surprise that borders on horror. I hardly recognize myself. I can’t say I hate it, but I certainly look rougher than I anticipated. My lips are swollen and pinker than normal. The bags under my eyes seem to have darkened, and I have a red ring from fighting tears surrounding both eyes. My throat is red and slowly bruising. My wrists and ankles have slowly formed bruises and indentation marks. I have scrapes on both of my knees from kneeling on the ground and various handprints and marks in other places too.
If things were different, I might wear them like badges of pride. Proof of a night well spent, but they just make me angry. I’m pissed at myself more than anything for allowing myself to be fooled so wholly and spectacularly. I walked into all of this with my eyes wide open.
At least I have a window of time, however long, to possibly remedy the situation.
If I can get free and somehow make it back to Abram before I’m caught, then we can run again. I don’t know where we would go or even how far we would make it. If nothing else, I would be able to make it back to Abram in time to say goodbye to him properly. That would be my only regret, now. If I never get to see him again, if I never get to tell him goodbye properly before all of this is over. This morning feels like years ago. I rushed out of the house so quickly I didn’t even take the time to have breakfast with him.
I can recall the smell of sausages. Two plates had been lain out on the table indicating that he had been planning to spend some time with me. I hadn’t realized until now.
My throat threatens to knot. I shake my head and slap at my cheeks to snap myself out of it. No point in feeling sorry for myself now. I have to get out of here and apologize to Abram—if nothing else.
I have to, or I’m going to regret not saying goodbye for however long I have left to live.
I go into the bedroom and look for something to wear, for anything to wear. I will make a toga dress out of the bedsheets if I have to, but I would prefer something that will prevent Daniel from having such easy access. Even if that’s the one benefit to this whole thing. He’s damned good at what he does.
My body starts to respond to the memory of him immediately.
I groan in irritation because I do not have time to handle being horny right now. I’m way too sore anyway.
There’s nothing in the dresser, but in the closet I strike gold.
Well, slutty gold.
Nothing in here looks like it’s long enough to cover my ass despite everything in this closet being exactly my size. I’ll be irritated about that little fact later. Who knows how long he’s been planning all of this out? Way too long, that’s for certain.
My fingers dance over the fabrics available to me. Dresses, skirts, more lingerie sets than I can count. Clearly this isn’t his bedroom, but it’s supposed to be mine. Bedroom and tomb? I wonder. I grab the only pair of shorts in the place knowing full well that they are going to ride up my ass. I yank them on and immediately regret how close they are to my body. They press against my tender core and the thick seam rubs almost painfully against my clit. Still, they are the only thing with a crotch in them. I tug uselessly at their edges to try and get them to fit better, but it’s no use. I yank a bra from one of the lingerie sets and get that on before pulling out one of the cropped shirts and pulling it on. It barely covers my breasts when I raise my arms.
I glance down at just how much skin is showing and my anger surfaces anew. He really thought that I was going to wear these things. For what purpose? Might as well just keep me naked all of the damned time for how useless these scraps are. But they are the only real options, so I can’t complain. He clearly intended on only keeping me in this house, as nothing in that closet could ever be seen in the light of day respectfully.
I wish I could wear something other than my heels. I can”t wear them because I can”t move fast enough. Besides, the ankle straps will aggravate my swollen skin. I walk barefoot to the door and attempt to open it. It doesn”t budge. It doesn”t even wiggle. I try again, this time slamming my entire weight into it. That only makes my teeth rattle inside my head. I didn”t think it would open, but I wanted to give it a shot. There are no vents or fireplaces to climb out of. That leaves the windows or some miraculous hidden door, but I doubt a house this old has room for something like that.
There are two windows. Both are bolted shut with heavy locks. Luckily for me, this is hardly my first time being locked somewhere against my will. Given the type of men that are my kryptonite, I needed to learn how to pick locks at a very young age. Never mind that my mother’s favorite punishment for me was to simply lock me in my room and forget that I existed. I inspect the lock as closely as I can. There are likely security guards all over the property, wherever we are right now. I didn’t see any coming in, but that was also likely by design. Getting into the garage and stealing his car feels next to impossible, so again the window is my only option.
I start a new search of the room for something to pick the lock and remember, far too late, the single pin that I had in my hair. Cold dread fills me as I remember how quickly I showered. I run into the shower and nearly bruise my knees falling to the tiled floor of the shower so fast, too fast, as I search the gray stone floor for the small brown clip I had in my bangs earlier.
I move painfully slow, panic building with each slow sweep of my hands. With my luck, I will knock it clear into the drain if it’s not gone already. Why didn’t I think of this earlier? “Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter to myself… and then I nearly collapse with joy when I finally find it half stuck on the grate of the drain.
Slowly, I extricate it and then run back to the window. During everything with Daniel, it had gotten so buried in my hair it’s a wonder it even stayed on my person in the first place. I kneel down in front of the window and start fiddling with the lock, pushing against the pins until they click and slowly, painfully rotating the thing until the lock finally springs free.
It doesn’t feel real.
I stare at the open lock in shock and disbelief for what feels like forever.
My hands shake as I pull the lock free from the grate and let it fall to the carpet with a heavy thunk. I keep waiting for alarms to go off as I begin to lift the grate away from the window. I keep expecting large men with even larger guns to storm into the room demanding answers for where I think I”m going, but no one shows up. Nothing happens. Daniel seemed to be testing me to see if I could even get out of the room in the first place.
I slide the window open next, slowly.
I lean forward to peer out of it, and my stomach drops out of my ass.
I fall backward into the room and curl into a tight ball where I stay until I can breathe again. I shouldn’t have looked. I knew what I was going to have to do but I shouldn’t have looked. It’s a second-story drop… it’s unlikely to kill me. Unless I fall and hit my head again.
My face is wet with tears, and they pool beneath my head on the carpet. I flash right back to that balcony with Nikolai storming toward me, his mouth practically frothing as he hurled one accusation after the other at me. Over and over again until I fell. The metal of the balcony scraped so deeply against the backs of my hips and ass on the way down that it was sheer luck that I hadn’t been permanently scarred.
My head throbs in pain at the memory as I recall the exact sound it made when I heard my skull crack from the fall.
“No choice….” I sob to myself. “No choice…” I repeat it over and over again until it gives me the strength to stand. At least if this kills me, it will be my choice.
My hands are trembling so badly that I don”t think I”ll be able to hold myself up on the window at all. I frantically wipe them against the sides of my shorts, hoping to stop the panic from rising within me so that I can get out of here mostly unscathed. It”s either this or Daniel. That leaves me with only two options. Sexual slavery and death, or escape and death?
It’s pathetic that I actually debate the first option for a moment.
I scrunch my eyes shut and look out the window once more, but there’s nothing helpful. Nothing to put my foot on. No leverage at all… just the window and the ground.
My panic almost wins. It almost makes me stay where I am despite having a clear escape route right in front of me. Tears fall freely down my face as I hop from one foot to the other trying to talk myself into crawling out of that window.
“You can do this… you can do it. What’s a broken leg after everything that you’ve lived through? You can do this, Helena… Just fucking do it!”
Before I can even inhale again, I exhale a slow, shaky breath and swing a leg out. I hold my breath, as if it”s going to help, and slowly lower myself over the edge. Playing the cello again has significantly improved my upper body strength because I don”t fall right away... but once I”ve lowered myself as far as I can go... I can”t bring myself to just drop.
Between the building and my forehead, I can see how far down I have left to drop, and it feels immense. I can’t physically pull myself back up. My fingers are already burning from holding onto the ledge like this… There’s not an option, here. I have no choice but to drop and hope for the best.
I close my eyes as tightly as I can and clamp down on my tongue to keep from screaming in raw terror as I let go… and fall.