Chapter 19 Yara
YARA
"Wake up!" A sharp pain from my cheek and the vicious voice woke me up, bringing me back to reality. My entire body shook as I started coming back to consciousness, taking in my surroundings.
Rhett’s smug face was right in front of me, kneeling, grinning from ear to ear as he caressed the cheek he just slapped, as if he was doing me a favor. "There she is," he murmured. "For a moment there I thought you were dead."
"Fuck. You," I spat out, not caring anymore what would become of me.
It took my mind a moment to catch up with the reality, but the scenes from earlier started creeping in, building the resentment in my body higher and higher the more I sat here, looking at the face of my captor.
I understood now that it was a drug he had injected me with.
My limbs were still heavy, my head pounding and as I tried moving my arms, I realized I couldn't. One look down my body told me all I needed to know—I was tied to a chair, with my arms behind my back and my legs tightened to the legs of the chair.
"Where am I?" I asked, summoning all the patience I had left. "Why am I here?"
"Woah, woah, princess." He chuckled, straightening up. "One question at the time, not that it will make any difference." No, it probably wouldn't, but I had to figure out how to get out of here. How to get the fuck away from him.
No one was coming to save me. No one would probably even realize I was missing. Violet, maybe, if she tried calling me. She wasn't home tonight and I highly doubted that I was on the list of her priorities. She cared about me, but she wouldn't find it weird if I didn't respond immediately.
By the time anyone realized I was missing I would either be dead, or worse—somewhere in the world with the psychopath in front of me.
"You know," he started talking again, walking from one side of the room to another.
"The first time I saw you I just knew you would be perfect for this.
I knew you were the right fit for our buyer, but I didn't know our golden boy, Xavier," he spat his name, "would take such an interest in you.
It was a problem at first, until I realized that he only wanted to fuck with you and nothing more.
For a moment there I was really worried.
" He stepped closer to me and went down on his hunches, placing his filthy hands on my knees, slowly spreading my legs.
"But once he had tasted your pussy, once he got what he wanted, he let you go.
" The fucker had the audacity to laugh. "I have to admit though—" he lowered his voice, bringing his face closer to mine, "—I did hate him for that.
He took you from me, tasted you when I wanted to be the first. He had an audacity to taste the merchandise before me, and I really, really fucking hated it. "
"You're insane," I whispered, slowly realizing what this was. "Fucking in—"
His hand wrapped around my jaw, pressing harder and harder with each passing second.
Dragging his thumb over my bottom lip, he pulled out a pocketknife and opened it, pressing the blade to my chest, slowly dragging the tip over my breastbone, to my throat and all the way to my bottom lip, replacing his thumb with the knife.
"You shouldn't call people insane, Yara.
" He pouted. "It might hurt our feelings, darling.
Besides," he laughed, "I don't think I'm insane.
" He slowly released some of the pressure from my face, keeping the blade on my lower lip.
"I like to think I'm a businessman, and every good businessman needs to know the product they're selling, that's all.
Just imagine if I were to sell something I didn't really taste or know.
" He started pulling the blade down my lip when the tip sliced through the skin, making me wince.
He frowned. "Now look at what you made me do." Rhett pocketed the knife, pressing his thumb against my bleeding lip. "Although," he murmured, transfixed with my blood on his thumb. "Even damaged you look delicious."
He was sick. So fucking sick and I blamed not just myself but everyone in this town for not seeing this before.
I've heard of the stories of missing girls from the last couple of years.
Girls from surrounding towns, not just from St. Bipal.
Girls that belonged to the lower class, not important enough for this fucked up society to actually look into it.
St. Bipal was just one of many towns around here where the rich enjoyed and the middle and lower class had to almost kill themselves to survive among them.
Their filthiness, their sins, they were etched into every corner of this fucked up town, not because they aided people like Rhett but because they didn't care to look further away from their own front gates.
It wasn't until one of the girls from an influential family went missing that the cops started really looking into it, but that was years ago. When they couldn't find her, when they gave up on her, they also gave up on all other girls that continued disappearing.
Girls like me.
Girls no one would come looking for.
Girls no one really cared for.
Girls that had no one to save them, that had to do everything by themselves.
I should've listened to my coworkers more.
I should've paid more attention, but I was lost in my own world, planning to leave once I had enough money.
I already knew my mom would never give me the money my father had left me, so I've stopped hopping that sum could help me to start a new life.
Since she got married, she cared even less about me and my whereabouts, and I doubted she would care if I disappeared.
"What are you going to do to me?" I mumbled the question, stopping myself from biting his finger off. He pulled back, wearing the self-satisfied grin on his face, and even before he said the words I knew I wouldn't like it.
Not that there were many things I could like that would come out of his mouth.
It was obvious he was insane, a potential trafficker.
Even if I didn't have proof he had something to do with the disappearances of other girls, his actions, his words, they all led me to believe that this wasn't his first rodeo.
I wasn't the first girl he had kidnapped, and I wouldn't be the last.
Unless someone stopped him. Unless someone dared to go against the people in this town.
Rhett’s family was powerful, highly influential and I doubted anyone would want to go against them. But as I watched him talk to himself, mumbling nonsense and then talking to me, I vowed I would stop him and whoever he was working with. I had no idea how, but I would.
I also had no idea how I would get out of here, but I had to try, I had to push through for me, for all those other girls that went missing. Girls that would no doubt never be found.
The sound of the car stopping in front of the building he was keeping me in pulled my attention to the doors right opposite of me, spreading the dread through my body.
Rhett turned from me and walked to the door, opening them almost immediately.
"It took you long enough," he said, but he was blocking whoever it was standing on the other side.
I looked around me, slowly realizing we were in somebody’s house.
I could see the hallway on my right, shrouded in darkness, probably leading toward the rest of the house.
The wallpaper in this room, in this foyer or whatever the fuck it was, had peeled off years ago by the looks of it, leaving behind the marks of the time.
There was no other furniture, apart from the chair I was sitting on, and a lone table in the far corner of the room on my left side.
The windows on both sides of the door were boarded up, making it difficult to see outside.
I had no idea how long I was out or where we were, but I could see it was still dark outside through the space between the boards, which meant that it couldn't have been that long since we came here.
"We had to take a longer path," the person on the other side said and something in the back of my mind started flashing red at the sound of that male voice. There was something familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. "But we're here now, so let's get to it. Did you have any issues?"
"No," Rhett said as he slowly stepped back from the door. "Everything went smoothly."
I thought I had seen the worst of humanity when Rhett kidnapped me. I thought I had felt the biggest heartbreak when he told me how unwanted I was, how insignificant, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight in front of me.
"Mom?"