Chapter 20
TWENTY
MAYA
“Notch, no!” I exclaimed.
I saw those men beating him up on the ground as the car pulled away from the alleyway.
I reached for the doorknob to try and get to him, but my brother wrapped his arm around my waist. I threw my elbow back into his face.
His nose broke as a massive groan fell from his lips.
I didn’t give a shit what happened to him. He could torch in Hell for all I cared.
All I wanted was to get to Notch.
“Let me g—Harry! Quit it!” I shrieked.
“You stupid little bitch. All of the shit I’ve tried doing for you. Taking care of you. Watching over—stop struggling, Maya!”
“Let me go! Notch!” I roared.
Then, a hood came down over my head.
My brother wrestled me to the back seat and zip-tied my wrists together behind my back.
He pressed my head between his legs, squeezing my neck with his thighs.
I could hear the kicks and punches echoing in my mind.
Notch roared in pain as we drove away. I soaked the fabric of the hood as my brother tied me up like a rabid animal, and every last shred of love I might have had for the asshole went flying out the window.
“There. That’ll hold you,” Harry said breathlessly.
He sat me back up in my seat, and I sniffled. I knew there was no reason to try and rationalize this. I knew it would be fruitless to reason with my brother. I’d crossed a threshold in his mind I wasn’t ever coming back from.
For all I knew, he was selling me off tonight.
Still, I decided to beg. Hoping that I could touch a part of him inside that still had a light that hadn’t been swallowed up by the darkness my father tried getting us away from.
“Harry, please. You don’t have to do this. You don’t even have to let me go. Just don’t kill him. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Whatever interactions we’ve had. Harold!”
A fist came down against my head, and I blacked out.
I slumped forward and didn’t come to until I was tossed into a room.
Large hands were all over my body. Gripping my breasts.
Prying open my thighs. Forcing me down into a chair as the world spun around me.
The darkness from the hood was all-consuming.
And while I fought back as best as I could, my ankles were tied down to something.
A chair.
I was sitting in a chair when they ripped the hood off my head.
My breasts ached from the roughhousing. My thighs felt like they were on fire.
The only thing that gave me solace was the fact that my clothes weren’t completely torn off.
Tears dripped down my face as my eyes attempted to adjust, but they couldn’t before a door slammed in front of me.
I wiggled around in the chair. I tugged at the restraints.
And try as I might to get away, I couldn’t do it.
I was zip-tied down to a chair in a darkened room with nowhere to go.
I didn’t even know if Notch was okay.
“Harry!” I yelled.
I heard the shuffling of feet in the distance, but no one approached my door.
“Harry! I’m your fucking sister. Let me out of here now!” I roared.
And still, there was nothing.
“Harry!” I shrieked.
A loud bang came down onto the door, and I jumped.
“One more word out of you, and I’ll gladly touch your body again,” a man said gruffly.
I gasped for air as I slumped back into the chair.
I needed to pee. It felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I held my bladder like I was hanging on to the last bit of dignity in my life.
It felt like I had been sitting there for hours already.
I sniffled as feet shuffled around outside.
Shadows exchanged with shadows as I counted down the seconds. The minutes. The hours I was in there.
The entire world had gone black, and no one was coming for me.
“Notch,” I whispered.
His groans of pain echoed off the corners of my mind.
The image of that man kicking him in his ribs with his steel-toed boots was forever seared into my memory.
I felt sick to my stomach. Bile crept up the back of my throat.
I turned my aching head off to the side and vomited onto the floor, filling the small room I was in with the stench of fear. Of anger. Of resentment.
“Bitch, if you dirty up that room, you’re cleaning it up with your tongue,” a man grumbled.
“I want to see my brother. Now,” I said, spitting onto the floor.
“Did you just—”
“Harry! I want to see Harry now!” I exclaimed.
“You have no brother here, woman. Learn your place now so it’s easier on you in the future.”
I screamed out all sorts of obscenities at the man.
I lost all control of my body as I urinated myself in frustration.
The door flung open and the man wrinkled his nose in horror.
He took one step toward me and cocked back his hand, bringing it down across my face.
My head fell off to the other side. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.
I turned it back on him and spat at him, covering whatever part of him I could reach in the blood that leaked into my mouth.
He brought his foot down onto my knee, dislocating it as I screamed out in pain.
“Settle the fuck down before you get killed,” the man demanded.
Then, he closed the door in my face.
I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t know which way was up or down.
Images of Notch bombarded my mind before bile worked its way up my throat again.
I felt dizzy. Lightheaded. I was almost certain I had a concussion.
And if that was the case, I wouldn’t make it to the evening where Harry could make good on his threat of selling me off.
“Daddy,” I said, whimpering.
I hung my head and cried silently to myself.
Images of my family bombarded my mind. Running around with Mom in the backyard and visiting the koi ponds in the gardens with my father.
Swinging on the front porch swing with a shared lemonade smoothie fresh from Mom’s kitchen while Dad told me stories of his own childhood.
I was officially alone.
And waiting for my death.
“The cop is ready.”
My head slowly rose at the sound of the voice.
“Harry?” I whispered.
“You sure he’s ready?”
I grimaced at the voice of the man that had slapped me across the face.
“Yes. I just got in contact with him. He’s ready to try this again,” my brother said.
“He didn’t deliver last time,” the man said.
“He most certainly did. The video recordings from the surveillance equipment showed us that. They simply knew we were coming,” Harry said.
“How do you know the detective didn’t tip them off or something? What if we’re being played?”
A gunshot rang out before something massive hit the floor. And it took everything I had in my power not to cry out.
Though I did piss myself again out of sheer fear.
“Anyone else have any issues?” my brother asked.
An eerie silence fell over the entire place, and I finally came to rationalize my death.
I’d kill myself before I let another man put his hands on me.
I’d hang myself from the ceiling with my own hair before I let my brother sell me into whatever disgusting excuse for a trade he had found himself in.
Most likely sexual.
And it made me nauseous to think about.
“Good. Now that I have everyone’s attention, this is how it’s going to go down.
The detective has once agreed to help us get to The Lost Boys.
Once we have everything in place, the detective will pay for his blunders the first time.
And once he’s out of the way, we waste The Lost Boys for good,” Harry said.
“Someone want to clean up the bitch in the closet?” a foreign voice asked.
There was a beat of silence before my brother cleared his throat.
“She’s fine. Let her sit in her in it. She needs to get used to the punishment anyway. Especially with where she’s going,” Harry said.
Then, as if my mind had found the smallest shred of dignity left in my life, I began running down scenarios on how to get a gun in my hands. Not so I could escape, but so I could finish this. By killing my brother before he ruined anyone else’s life.
Including my own.