18. Mona
MONA
I t’s dark. I’m freezing. Why am I freezing? My head hurts. My stomach throbs and stings a little—it’s not unbearable, just uncomfortable.
My fingers brush my abdomen, brushing a bandage covering what feels like a shallow wound. I shift in the bed, but before I can move, two hands grab onto my biceps.
“Take it easy.”
The man is tall, and a black balaclava shrouds his face.
I can’t help but think how ironic it is to find ski masks both alluring and terrifying.
The air of mystery adds sexual tension, but the men who haunt my nightmares also wore those masks.
Men who abducted, beat, and harassed women.
The same mask worn by the men who killed my father and beat my sister.
I stare into a pair of familiar steel-gray eyes.
“I know you,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I saved you from being robbed last night.”
“No. I know you from somewhere else. Your eyes are so familiar, but I can’t place them.”
He chuckles dismissively. “You hit your head harder than I thought. Why don’t you get some rest?”
Get some rest? I’m in a strange space with a man my body recognizes on a visceral level peering at me. Sure, he seems familiar, but that means nothing. I could’ve bumped into him at the mall. I dismiss the thought immediately. The sensations bombarding me are far from vague.
“I think I should go home.” I try to stand, but dizziness forces me back onto the bed.
The man grabs my shoulder, his fingers warm against my bare skin. “You can’t go anywhere right now. Lie back in bed.”
“Listen, buddy, I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you if you don’t let me go, you’ll be dealing with my family—and trust me, they put the fun in dysfunctional.”
His laugh is warm and sinister. “Kitten, no one you know is more fucked up than me. But I promise you’re safe with me. I won’t do anything to harm you as long as you’re a good girl and do as you’re told.”
“So no harm will come to me as long as I let you rape me? You’ll violate me in exchange for not slitting my throat? What kind of fucking statement is that?”
He waves his hands up and down his body—his extremely chiseled, muscular body. “Do I look like a man who needs to force a woman to have sex with him? If I wanted to fuck, darling, I’d go to the nearest bar and flash some girl my smile and my baby blues.”
“Your baby grays.”
“What?”
“You can’t flash baby blues 'cause your eyes aren’t blue. They're gray.”
His smile deepens before he bends toward me and whispers seductively, “You noticed my eyes, didn’t you, baby?”
“You know, you could’ve just asked me on a date if you wanted to flirt with me? There was no reason to kidnap me.”
Maybe my sister’s right. I’m so used to lovable psychos that I think any madman who kidnaps me is a broken boy I can fix.
“This isn’t a kidnapping, pretty girl. Trust me.”
I turn my head and glance around the room, trying not to blush at the endearment from my very attractive captor.
It’s not normal to think your captor is good-looking, but I’ve learned not to panic in situations like this.
“I know what a kidnapping looks like. This isn’t my first rodeo.
But you seem much more agreeable compared to the last guy who took me.
Oh, wait. The first guy who took me wasn’t that bad.
It was his boss who was certifiable.” I gaze up at the ceiling before turning to meet his gaze.
“Is your unhinged boss going to join us now?”
Those steel orbs shrouded by black lashes tug at a locked box in my mind. A memory teases the outer edge of my mind before vanishing like a wisp of smoke. I know this man. Intimately. My body recognizes him on a fundamental level, even while my mind rebels against the truth.
He doesn’t respond, and the silence thickens until I feel like I’ll suffocate.
Finally, he clears his throat. “I no longer take orders from unscrupulous men.”
A small sound escapes my lips, but before it can become a roar, my throat locks up, and the past my brain has compartmentalized unleashes in a tidal wave of memories.
I’ve been here before. I used my body to persuade two men to protect me. Under duress, I would admit that the sex was spectacular. But sex doesn’t make bad men good. And I suddenly know who this man is.
Callum.
An agonizing scream pierced my ears. The woman was in pain; her wails twisted with horrific edges of unbearable agony.
“This is for the greater good, Serena. You want to be enshrined in his divine light, don’t you?”
The shrill, pain-laced scream was one of the most tortuous sounds I’d ever heard, and I’d heard many calls of suffering and dread. I was born into it.
“He’ll do that to you.” a deep voice murmured.
I turned to stare into the slate eyes. A shiver ran through my body.
He tucked my hair behind my ear and whispered, “Tell him what he wants to hear so I don’t have to hurt you. Claim him as the Messiah.”
Callum’s voice was hushed, almost pleading, a broken element in every word he uttered.
I hated that a part of me wanted to do what he asked because this was the man who’d had no issues holding a gun to my head.
If he’d been ordered to pull the trigger, he would’ve worn my brain matter on his shirt like a badge of honor.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“It’s only words. Just fuckin’ do it. Say them.”
A lump formed in my throat, choking back my words and leaving me hollow and speechless. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t utter the words. I hated being so weak, so unsure of who I was, that I faltered when it really mattered.
I shut my eyes and contemplated that death might not be so bad. At least then, nothing would matter. I would no longer need to conform to belong, something I’d strived for from the moment my family moved to America.
The loudspeakers blared to life just as I thought I was experiencing my final fleeting moments before my demise.
“We have a traitor in our midst. We have captured the person who has harmed our community, and they will be punished. Now, we must pray.”
Bile rose in my stomach as a chorus of chants echoed above me.
“Eternal rest grant unto them, oh, Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”
A large hand clamped around my mouth as a tortuous scream bounced off the walls, followed by a loud snap.
“I’m gonna need you to say calm,” Callum whispered. “Nod, so I know you understand.”
I nodded, though I didn’t comprehend his words. All I knew was that I was lying on the cold cement floor, listening to God’s words before a human life was extinguished. It was a torture Marcus hadn’t used on me. It was the one abuse that would’ve made me crumble and abandon my will to fight.
The steel-eyed man removed his hand from my mouth as silent tears cascaded down my cheeks, blurring my vision.
He tilted his head, examining me in earnest. “Why are you crying?”
I remained silent, unsure if I could speak past the intrusive knot in my throat. I swallowed, gasping for breath until the words fell from my lips. “Why did he pray before he killed her?”
He shrugged. “They do that for heretics who disturb the system. She went against the norm, and they cannot tolerate dissenters. Anything to stop a domino effect.”
I tried to collect myself, but I couldn’t stop crying. Memories I’d desperately tried to forget over the last fifteen years crashed over me, forcing me to admit truths I’d tried to bury. “That’s how they killed him.”
Two brawny arms wrapped around me, pulling me against a warm body. A large hand rubbed my back as I continued to cry. The man who’d held a gun to my temple not too long ago was silent, simply offering the comfort of his embrace as I remembered watching the first man I ever loved executed.
“I don’t believe in it, you know.”
I looked up as he spoke. His voice was hoarse, but his words flew with the precision of the bullet of an expert marksman.
“All the bullshit about God. I heard this madness from the moment I was born.” He chuckled softly.
“I still can’t figure out why so many people believe in it.
I don’t know what they get from it. It’s always seemed fucked up to believe in something that induces fear.
It’s all I’ve ever seen. I know exactly what kind of vengeful notion God is. ”
I buried my face in the cotton of his button-down shirt. “I stopped believing the day they told me that God wanted my father dead.”
Warm hands framed my face, pulling me away from his chest. I gazed into the steel-gray eyes, and for a moment, I wanted to believe that we were someplace else. That I was someone else.
“What do you mean, God wanted your father dead?”
“I wasn’t born in America. I came here just before I turned ten.
I was born in Iran. My father was politically active.
He was a good man who was tired of seeing his friends and neighbors persecuted for everything they did.
I remember him telling my mother that it felt like even breathing was haram .
That’s what it means. When you’re doing something that goes against God.
Impermissible, whatever the fuck that means.
It’s a joke, you know, calling things Haram , especially when the ayatollah does it.
They sanction prostitution to make it Halal .
Permissible. Then they marry the prostitute to the clergy or whoever comes along and give money to the ayatollahs.
They marry her for a short period, whatever timeframe the man wants: a week, a day, an hour, or minutes.
She’s forced into whatever sexually deviant act the man deems fit, and she can’t object.
It’s fucked up when you think about it. That’s the thing with the ayatollah and the clergy, isn’t it?
Those men are supposed to be holier than thou, but they’re devoted to a god none of them believe in.
They walk around claiming to be good Muslims, but they’re not. Not a single fucking one of them.”
“That still doesn’t tell me what happened to your father.”
Could I tell him what happened to my dad? I wasn’t sure I could talk about it. I could speak of the ayatollah and the regime and everything it did to innocent people, but could I talk about how I watched my father’s neck snap?
Somehow, the words came despite my doubts.
“The Islamic call of prayer. A holy sound. It was the last thing I heard before they snapped my father’s neck and showed me his lifeless body.
So you see, I’m not a fan of prayer or holy chimes as a harbinger of death to slay innocent people.
I thought we escaped the barbaric holds of religious manipulation and subjugation, but I guess I was wrong. ”
Emerging from the memories, I lift my gaze to the man before me. “You said you’d never see me again, Callum.”
“Correction, pretty girl. I said you’d never see me again.”