Chapter 2 Amberly
AMBERLY
I glanced around the darkened motel room, drawing in the musty smell through my nose.
The place was rundown. A shack, really, with construction equipment outside and rudimentary electricity hooked up with generators.
I gazed at the door, tracing my eyes along the holes where the locks used to be.
They’d flipped the locks on the outside, trapping me in here with no way out.
They’d boarded up my only window after smashing it with my fist and trying to get out. Trying to get free.
Trying to get to my son.
After beating some sense into me and leaving me discarded on the bed without my pants on, I lost my will to try again.
The board became nailed into the outside of the motel room, and I heard yet another lock being placed on the door.
Just in case I tried to kick it down again, like I’d tried a few days back.
It was no use anymore.
They weren’t letting me go anywhere.
I knew enough about this group to know they owned this rundown motel.
And probably the construction equipment around it.
Over the years, I’d tried to get away from them.
To slip out of doors they didn’t lock well or open windows they didn’t seal shut.
I’d gotten good—much too good—at picking locks with nothing but the broken end of a thin screwdriver and the bobby pin I always kept on me.
I hid them in places no one should ever have to hide anything.
Hell, I’d fucking swallowed my bobby pin more than once when I knew a very thorough pat-down was coming.
One that I knew would end with things I didn’t want to happen.
“Mason,” I whispered as tears rushed my eyes.
I curled up on the molded mattress and tried to get some rest. I didn’t know much, but I knew from the clock on the bedside table that it was ten o’clock at night.
Sometimes, it got hard to count the passing days.
It got hard to keep track. And even though part of me wanted to stop counting, part of me knew if I stopped, it would be the first step to giving up.
To giving in. To accepting my life like this instead of a life I wanted to lead of my own volition.
With my son.
Whom they’d taken once I started acting out.
“Give me my son!” I roared.
I loud bang came down onto the door and I jumped.
I buried my face into the pillow, secretly hoping some deadly mold was laced with the cover.
And yet, I hoped I made it out of this alive.
Long enough to take my son back with me and raise him in an environment he deserved.
Ever since I’d been taken by the mafia, I’d been moved to several different places.
Different motels in different states, just like this one.
But here lately, we’d moved around a lot.
Never traveling far, but always being locked away in these fucking rooms.
Rundown, molded rooms with no exits or escapes.
At least, none I knew how to capitalize well.
I closed my eyes as tears leaked silently down my cheeks.
I’d become good at that. Crying without people hearing me.
My son’s face appeared in my mind, and I smiled at his innocence.
His giggle. I could still remember the way his hair smelled when he was first born.
The first time he ever said “MaMa.” The first time he wanted to snuggle up against me and sleep instead of sleeping in his own crib.
I hadn’t seen my sweet boy in three years.
Three years, fourteen days, nine and a half hours.
My lip quivered as I shook with a chill unbecoming of summer in—where were we, again?
—California. I think, at least. I gripped the sheets of the bed, knowing if they heard me crying, I’d go without food again.
I’d lost so much weight in their care. Not that I had much of it to lose in the beginning.
I’d always been small. Petite, was what my parents called me.
Until they kicked me out onto the damn street.
Did Mason think I’d abandoned him? Was that what Vlad told him?
For all I knew, they were brainwashing my son to think like them.
Walk like them. Talk like them. And it made me infuriated.
My tears dried up and a renewed sense of vigor filled me.
No matter what happened to me, I had to free my son from the confines of this Hell he’d been born into.
A Hell only befitting of the Devil himself.
But I simply called him Vlad.
My mind darted away from my son and crashed right into another memory. The only memory that kept my fear of sex abated. Saint. That moment we spent together after school.
I smiled against the pillow as a soft giggle fell from my lips.
“I hope you’re doing well,” I croaked out.
I thought about that moment we shared together.
A one-off moment after we’d been exchanging glances all throughout mathematics class.
I was running on the treadmill in our high school gym.
He’d come in and weight train with the football team and eyeball me every time we were together in that place.
I’d walk off the treadmill, swaying my hips a little deeper.
Smiling whenever I caught him staring at me.
Then, one afternoon, he followed me into the girl’s locker room.
I gasped as he gripped my shoulder. I squealed as he whipped me around.
My toes tingled with delight when he crashed his sweaty lips against mine, tasting like the smell of the ocean that surrounded me.
Every time I breathed it, I was reminded of him.
Reminded of the salted taste of his skin as he hoisted me against that wall.
As he dropped his workout shorts. As he took what he wanted—with me freely giving it—as a token of the childlike lust we had for one another back in high school.
How I wished I would have covered up those hickies better on my neck.
Saint had been kind to me. Courteous. After our moment—where I gave him my everything—he carried me into the shower.
Held my limp, spent body against his as he sat down, allowing the cool water to pour over us.
Cool us down before he cranked up the steaming water.
And as that steam enveloped us, we made love again.
Two strangers who had wanted one another for months, finally getting their chance.
Why the fuck didn’t I cover up those hickies well enough from my parents?
After they saw them on my neck, they freaked the hell out.
Called me a whore. Told me I’d disobeyed God’s commandments for my life.
They took me to mass, where I had to sit in confession and tell the priest every little thing I’d done with him.
With my parents standing right outside, despite the priest’s insistence that confession was private.
They went on a rampage, trying to cleanse me of my sins.
But my father told me I was damaged. That not even God could love me after something like that.
The tears returned as my thoughts of Saint faded away.
“I should’ve come and found you,” I whispered through my tears.
I wished with all my might I would’ve contacted him after my parents kicked me to the curb.
Had I just gone to school and told someone—told him—things might’ve turned out differently.
But my parents had me petrified that if I reached out for help, they’d bury me.
Make my life a living Hell, like they figured I deserved.
It was easier to sleep in dumpsters and live on the street than it was to go to school and admit to all this.
Admit to any of it. Admit that I was a whore, and that my parents couldn't stand to look at me anymore because of it.
I let my pride get in the way. My fear.
And now? I was property of someone else. Another, more sinister, family.
“And they have my son,” I whispered.
I only had two dreams since the day I came under contract with the mafia.
I dreamt of seeing my son again, and I dreamt of seeing Saint again.
I dreamt of contacting him. Of showing up at his doorstep with Mason in my arms and watching him freely offer us shelter.
Food. Kindness, in the face of the Hell I’d lived through.
Then, I’d wake up.
It wasn’t like Saint would accept me anyway.
Not with the secrets I held. Not with the life I’d led.
There was no way in Hell a sane, grown man like him would now get wrapped up in all this.
And I didn’t even know where he was now.
Was he still living in Kansas? Had he branched out and found his own life?
Was he married? With kids that adored him?
I bet he’d be a wonderful father.
The locks were thrown on the door, interrupting my thoughts.
I quickly turned over, gasping and wiping at my face.
I sat up, curling my legs underneath me before fluffing my hair over my shoulders.
I had to look presentable. And if I looked like I’d been crying again, I’d get a damn good beating after this customer came for what they paid for.
Because that was what I did for the mafia now. I’d been sold into sexual slavery. Men got to sleep with me in any way they chose—no matter the pain inflicted upon me—for a price. They’d turned me into a prostitute. They held my son’s life over my head in order to garner my obedience.
And every fucking tactic they’d used up until this point worked.
Because you’re weak in spirit, my child. Because you won’t turn to God and seek strength, my child. Now, look at you. A slave to sex. I never thought I’d see the day.
How ironic my father’s last words were to me.
Maybe I did deserve all this after what happened between me and Saint.
I watched the door open and I sniffled one last time.
Then, I put on my best seductive face. I tried to gird myself for whatever was about to happen.
Would he pin me to the bed? Slap me around?
Beat me unconscious before taking what he wanted?
Would he tie me up and torture me to the ends of the earth before coming all over my face?
Or would he want to make slow, sweet love while calling me someone else’s name?
The door finally swung open and there were two people standing there.
One, I recognized. The guard that always stood just outside my door.
And in his grasp, a woman. She cursed and kicked about.
I watched him toss her into the room before she scrambled to her feet.
She got up and charged the door. She yelled and screamed, crying out for her “father” and wanting to talk to “Cage.”
At least, I think that was what she said. Tears took a hold of her voice as she dropped to her knees.
“One more outburst from you and I’ll show you what you can do to put that mouth to good use,” the man growled.
“I’d listen to him. Because he’s serious,” I said coolly.
The woman whipped her head around to face me, and in the very small light we were afforded, I saw the fear in her eyes.
The look of terror as she sat down in front of the door.
She curled her knees up to her chest, hugging them with arms I wish I had.
She still looked healthy. Not starved and frail, like me over time.
She was new to all this. New to what they were doing.
And if there was anything I could do, it was show her the ropes to keep her from being tortured. Like I had been.
“I’m Amberly,” I said.
The woman looked at me but didn’t say anything.
“They like me using the name ‘Destiny.’ But, it’s really Amberly,” I said.
“How do we get out of here? Is there an exit?” she asked.
I sighed before I shook my head, feeling my heart drop to my stomach.
“No. There isn’t,” I said.
“There has to be something. He doesn’t just—”
I furrowed my brow at her words before she cut them off. Keeping the rest of it to herself.
“My eye hurts,” she said softly.
“I’m actually surprised that’s all that hurts,” I said.
She snickered. “I’ve gotten used to everything else. The eye is simply recent.”
I nodded slowly as I slipped off the bed.
I walked over to her and dipped down, getting onto my knees in front of her.
It was a position that had been ingrained into me from the start.
Beaten into me, really. It was my natural state, on my knees in front of someone.
Anyone. No matter who it was. And as the light softly shone on her face, I saw she was pretty beaten up.
I took her chin softly in between my fingers, clocking all her bruises and scrapes and cuts before I got up.
“Let me clean you up,” I said.
“You don’t have to do anything,” she murmured.
“Well, I’m all you’ve got. Take it or leave it.”
And when she didn’t fight, I ran cool and warm water over some washcloths.
She had a split lip that needed cleaning.
A swollen eye that needed some ice against it.
Ligature marks that could do with a nice wipe down just to soothe the burning.
She also had a gash on her forehead, though it looked almost as if it had been ripped open several times.
I didn’t know who this girl was, but I was selfishly glad to have some company.
Even if it wasn’t the kind of company I dreamt of every night.