Charlie #2
The front door is across the foyer. It looks massive in the dark, the kind of door that belongs in a movie where someone opens it and finds either rescue or a monster.
My hand is shaking when I reach for the handle.
I can do this.
I can get into the hallway. Find the elevator.
Get downstairs. Find the front desk. Scream.
Tell someone. Anyone. Even if Nikolaus owns half the hotel or whatever insane rich people do, there has to be someone.
There has to be a camera. There has to be a normal person somewhere who will take one look at me and understand that something is wrong.
My fingers close around the cold metal handle, and I take a breath.
Then I open the door quickly, quietly, and step out.
A hand clamps around my arm.
I scream.
I don’t even mean to. I don’t even think. The sound tears out of me before I know it is coming, high and raw and animal, and then there is a huge man in front of me and another one moving in from the side, both of them too big, too close, dressed in black, eyes hard, hands on me.
One says something I don’t understand. “Gamóto. Poú pas? Den févgis.” Damn. Where are you going? You’re not leaving.
I don’t even register that they aren’t speaking English.
“No!” I shriek, or try to, but a meaty hand slams over my mouth before the whole word gets out.
“Skatá. Piás’ tou ta pódia, aderfé. íne thiríо,” one of the men grunts. Shit. Grab his legs, brother. He’s a wild one.
My back hits a chest. An arm locks around my middle. My slippers skid uselessly on the hallway floor as I kick, twist, and claw at the hand over my mouth. The door is open behind me, the suite dark and gaping, and all I can think is that they have guns.
I see one on the first man’s hip. And there’s another under the second man’s jacket.
My mind does something awful with that. It turns the next few seconds into flashes.
Metal. Hands. More angry-sounding words.
My own breath trapped hot against a stranger’s palm.
My robe slipping. My hoodie riding up. My feet kicking.
They’re going to kill me.
They’re going to kill me because I tried to leave.
They’re going to shoot me in this hallway, or drag me somewhere else, or hand me back to Nikolaus so he can do it, because maybe this is what happens when you disobey men like him.
Maybe all the softness was just the part before.
The bath. The grapes. The way he said to sleep well.
Maybe that was the nice ending, and I ruined it.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe around the hand.
I try to bite, but the angle is wrong. My teeth scrape skin, and the man curses in that language again, tightening his grip until my jaw aches.
“Kolópaido,” he snarls. “Tóra. Piás’ tou ta pódia, prin spásei típota páno tou.” Little shit. Now. Grab his legs before he breaks something on himself.
My scream turns into a muffled, panicked hum.
The second man catches my legs when I kick too hard, and then I’m off the ground.
No.
No no no no no.
I thrash so violently that the robe comes loose.
The belt slips, the front gaping open and exposing my bare belly and dick, and the shame hits a half-second behind the terror, useless and humiliating and just too much.
I try to curl in on myself, but I can’t.
Their hands are everywhere, not like Nikolaus’s careful hands, not warning me first, not telling me what they’re doing. Just grabbing and hurting.
“Stamáta na kouniésai, Christé mou.” Stop moving around, Christ.
With painful grips on my calves and upper body, they carry me back inside the suite. One of them kicks the door closed.
I don’t know. I can’t focus. The world has narrowed to the hand over my mouth and the arms around my body and the certainty that my chest is going to collapse because I cannot get enough air.
I make another sound.
Small this time.
Horrible.
A broken animal sound.
Then the bedroom door slams open, and Nikolaus storms out looking like he’s about to burn the world down.
He is mostly naked, wearing only those loose sleep pants hanging low on his hips, his chest bare and massive and heaving in the low light.
The bathroom glow catches on all that thick, dark hair across his chest and stomach, on the heavy muscle beneath, on scars I can see more clearly now.
He looks bigger like this than he did in his suit.
Less polished. Like the expensive clothes were only ever a disguise for the brutal thing underneath.
His face is terrifying.
Not sleepy.
Not confused.
Furious.
“What the fuck is this?” he growls. The words are English, but then he shifts into the other language so quickly that I barely understand that he’s stopped using words I know.
His voice cracks through the room like a whip.
“Ti diáolo kánete, ilíthioi, tésseris i óra to gamiméno proí?” What the hell are you idiots doing at four in the fucking morning?
“Afendikó, o kalesménos sas píge na fígei. Emís aplós ton férname píso mésa,” the man holding my legs answers, sharp and defensive, and Nikolaus’s expression changes. Boss, your guest went to leave. We were just bringing him back inside,
I have never seen someone become more furious that fast.
His eyes drop to me.
To the hand over my mouth.
To my bare legs kicking weakly under the robe.
To the way the most awful parts of me are exposed.
Something in his face goes blank.
Not calm. Something far worse.
Empty in a way that makes the whole room feel colder.
He speaks again, deathly low this time, “Tha sas skotóso. Tha sas kópso éna-éna ta vrómika dáchtyla pou ton ángixan kai tha sas ta káno na ta katapiíte prin sas tináxo ta myalá ston aéra.” I’ll kill you.
I’ll cut off each of your filthy fingers that touched him and make you swallow them before I blow your brains out.
The man holding me releases my mouth so suddenly I suck in a broken breath that turns immediately into a sob. He does not let me go, though. His arm is still around me, and the other guard still has my legs, and I am hanging between them.
“Afendikó, ti káname? Tis entolés sas akolouthoúsame.” Boss, what did we do? We were following your orders.
Nikolaus takes one step forward.
The guard says something. “Sygnómi, afendikó. Sygnómi. Den to ennooúsame étsi. Synchoréste mas, sas parakaloúme.” Sorry, boss. Sorry. We didn’t mean it like that. Forgive us, please.
Nikolaus explodes, “Den to ennooúsate étsi? étsi pós, re malákes? San na sas vlépo na kakopoieíte kápoion pou mou aníkei? Tha apoláfso na sas skotóso.” You didn’t mean it like that? Like what, motherfuckers? Like I’m watching you assault someone who belongs to me? I’ll enjoy killing you.
I don’t know the words, but I understand the meaning.
Anyone would. His voice is thunderous, vicious, every syllable sharpened until it sounds like he is cutting pieces off the air.
The guards go rigid. The one at my legs lowers my feet to the floor so quickly that I begin to fall to the floor, but the other keeps a hand on my arm.
“óchi, den káname káti tétio. óchi—” No, we didn’t do anything like that. No—
Nikolaus lunges forward, and the man lets go like he has been burned, practically throwing me away from himself.
I fall forward and hit the floor, lungs still not working right. My vision spots at the edges. I think I might pass out. I think maybe that would be better. Maybe if I pass out, this stops being my problem for a few minutes.
Nikolaus grabs me, but not the way they did.
He falls to his knees in front of me, then gathers me to his chest. After a second, he pulls me away, eyes flicking over me again, fast and assessing, taking in my face, my mouth, my chest, the open robe, my bare body, and my shaking hands.
His jaw grinds, and he pulls the robe closed himself, not gently exactly, because I don’t think he is capable of gentle in this moment, but carefully.
Then he turns back to the guards.
And I realize with a terrible, dizzy kind of disbelief that he is not angry at me.
He is angry at them.
He steps between the two men and me, putting his own body in front of mine like a wall. The room feels too small for him. Too small for his voice. Too small for the rage rolling off his skin.
More foreign words pour out of him again, faster now, colder, and the guards answer less and less. One of them looks down. The other keeps his eyes forward, but his face has gone pale.
Nikolaus aggressively gestures to my crumpled, trembling form.
The guard says something.
Nikolaus reaches for something on the side table.
Oh god, no.
It’s a gun.
I make a sound so small I barely hear it myself.
His hand closes around the weapon, and the whole world tilts.
“N-no,” I choke. I don’t even know who I’m talking to because Nikolaus certainly doesn’t look back at me.
He raises the gun at the men, and I stop breathing entirely, bracing for a gunshot to ring out.
Then the suite door flies open again.