Chapter 6 #2
Years of enduring punishments as she pretended that her brain just couldn’t comprehend the chemistry and biological lessons her brother wanted to teach her were all to convince him that she was useless for whatever plans he had.
It had worked, she’d told him she was leaving the day of her eighteenth birthday, and because he believed she was of no use to him, he’d let her go.
Editing romance books wasn't her dream job, but she did enjoy it. She was used to her own company, so she rarely got lonely, but she did worry that she’d lost the ability to interact with other people in any sort of meaningful way. Or maybe she’d never developed the ability at all.
Five years of peace and quiet had all come crashing down around her, and it was all because of her brother. Even if she managed to escape, she was going to have to pack up her entire life and disappear, because these men would keep coming after her.
There was no way she was allowing them to lull her into any sort of false sense of security. None.
Patching her up, rehydrating her body, bringing her food, they were just trying to mess with her head, and it wasn't going to work.
Rose had not a single doubt that their little whipping game had done nothing to lure in her brother, which meant next time they would have to up their game, making whatever they did to her that much worse.
While she could endure whatever these men did to her, she didn't want to.
Finally, she knew what she wanted out of her life.
Freedom. True freedom.
For five years, she’d just been surviving, trying to learn to accept the peace she’d created for herself, trying to believe that her life was her own.
It was only now, as she sat on the cold, hard concrete floor of a prison cell, using the pain from the welts the whip had left behind, that she realized all she’d really been doing was hiding.
If she made it out of there, she was done with the hiding.
She was going to figure out what her dream job actually was, then keep editing to pay her bills while she went back to school.
Then she was going to make an effort to make real-world friends, and build herself a community, so that if she ever went missing again, someone would actually notice.
And care.
As it stood right now, nobody truly cared if these men killed her and disposed of her body, and that left her feeling horribly empty inside. She was a human being, and she deserved to have people in her life who cared about her.
Maybe even loved her.
Allowing her fear of someone using love against her to rule her life kept her trapped just as much as Ridge had done the first eighteen years of her life.
No more.
Since there was nothing else to do there but try to think up ways to escape, Rose thought she might have come up with something.
Thankfully, Mr. Bedroom Man—and she really wished she knew his name so she could stop calling him that—had delivered her food, which she guessed was a couple of hours after she woke up back in the cell.
Good food, not broth, or bread and water, but what looked to be the reheated remains of a Christmas dinner.
Knowing that while she had been locked up down there, being tortured by smothering heat and then overwhelming cold, Mr. Bedroom Man and his band of merry followers were right upstairs enjoying a home-cooked Christmas meal had enraged her.
Not that she’d let on.
Instead, she’d merely accepted the food with a thank you. She wasn’t too proud to accept any handouts they were willing to give and had eaten it. There had been no more meals, but that along with the fluids she’d been given, was enough to revitalize her body.
Add in the rage she continued to stoke because she knew she would need its power, and Rose was sure she was ready to make her move.
It was a risky one, especially given that she knew they were likely watching her on the camera feed around the clock.
But staying there and doing nothing was even riskier.
These men weren't suddenly going to decide to be nice and let her go.
Her brother had done something bad enough to them that they were prepared to abduct an innocent woman and torture her just to get to him.
When they realized their plan wouldn't work, she became a liability.
One they wouldn't hesitate to get rid of.
So escape was quite literally her only option.
Growing up, her life consisted almost solely of study and chores, but there was one other thing she’d been allowed to do.
Apparently, part of grooming her included keeping her body as strong as their twisted torture games were supposed to make her mind.
Little Rose had learned early on that she enjoyed tumbling and climbing things, and after seeing a video of someone performing gymnastics, she’d become hooked.
Thankfully, her parents, and then her brother, had agreed that gymnastics was an appropriate way to tone her body, so she’d started studying every video and tutorial she could find.
Hours of practice, any time she had a free moment, she would work on her skills.
Adding to her repertoire and perfecting each trick she learned, strengthening her body, one muscle at a time, until she was good enough that if she’d lived a normal life, she would have tried out for an Olympic team.
Now those skills might save her life.
Getting through the door was out of the question. It was reinforced steel, and there was no access to screws to try to undo them and take the door off its hinges, even if she’d had something that would have worked as a screwdriver.
Waiting until the men were there and trying to get past them was also off the table. There was no way she would get past Mr. Bedroom Man even if he was alone, let alone if he was with one or more of the others.
Which left only one other option.
The vent.
Earlier, it had been her nemesis, blasting her with air hot enough to push her system into heat stroke, then enough cold air to make her hypothermic. Now it had become her lifeline.
Never in her life had Rose been so glad that she was small.
Her brother had often criticized her for her stature as though she’d decided to only grow to five-foot-two to bother him personally.
While strong from hours of working through gymnastics routines, her muscles looked small and insubstantial.
Yet she knew better.
She was small and strong, and hopefully just small enough to fit through the vent.
Where it led, she had no idea, but she would follow it for as long as she could, then find a way out of it, and then out of this house. Failure was not an option.
Getting to the vent, however, was going to be tricky. There was no furniture she could use to get up close to the ceiling, which meant she was going to need every one of her skills.
Her plan was to use the door handle to get her three feet off the ground, then she’d have to launch herself at the vent.
She had no idea how sturdy it was or how hard it would be to rip it off, and once she launched at it, there would be no way for her to perch up there and figure out how to remove it.
Which meant she was betting on her body weight being enough to pull it free.
Then all she’d have to do was land safely, then fling herself right back up to the vent and wriggle her way inside it.
A million things could go wrong, but Rose wasn't going to dwell on them.
What was the point?
If she talked herself out of this, she was accepting her fate, and she’d never once accepted the fate anyone else had tried to determine for her.
Being watched was her biggest problem, because if they thought she was up to something they’d be down there in a heartbeat.
So instead of making any attempt at getting to the vent, Rose merely started a warm-up routine and then began to flip and tumble her way across the floor.
She’d cleared an entire room in her house so she could do her floor routines, and she’d even toyed with the idea of once again building her own equipment, parallel bars, uneven bars, and a balance beam.
This was her happy place because it was the only thing back in her childhood that she’d had any sort of control over.
Now she prayed that if anyone was watching her, they’d quickly get bored, thinking she was just trying to stave off boredom and panic, so that when she made her move, they weren't ready for it.