Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
Her anger faded as fear took its place.
She was failing herself when it had never been more important to remain strong.
Emma sat huddled on the floor in a tiny room. Once again there were no windows, and since this room was fully enclosed there was no way for her to get her bearings, see where she might be, and come up with a plan.
Not that any plan was getting her out of there.
Reality was certainly seeping in, and she knew she was hours at the most away from being sold.
Sold.
The word was so horrific she wanted to tear it from her mind, forget she’d ever heard it, wipe this whole ordeal from her memory.
But that wasn't happening.
Worse, what she’d been through already was going to be child’s play compared to what was coming next.
And this time, there would be no Nathan to step in and protect her.
If that’s what he’d been doing.
Doubts assaulted her as she sat in the thin light of the single bulb, her palms and knees smarting from the gravel that had cut them up, some of which was still embedded in her skin, her head pounding from the blow that had knocked her unconscious.
As badly as she didn't want to think these thoughts, she had to acknowledge the possibility that Nathan had been playing her all along. At first, she’d wondered if his gentleness compared to the others’ brutality was to mess with her mind, break her when brute force couldn’t.
But she’d allowed herself to fall into the dream that he was going to be her knight in shining armor. That he was going to come riding in on a white horse to save her from a fate so much worse than death.
More than that, she’d wanted to fall into that dream.
It had helped her hold on, stay strong, fight for herself, but now she had to accept that Nathan had probably been lying to her all along. He hadn't brought breakfast like he always did, and he hadn't stopped William and Deacon from bringing her here.
If it had all been a lie, then …
“Get up,” a voice ordered, and her gaze snapped to the door, which had been opened and was now occupied by a large man. And when she said large, she meant huge. He had to be close to seven feet tall and weigh in at nearly three hundred pounds.
Getting past him would be impossible.
Since her cell was only about four feet wide by four feet long, when she didn't immediately comply—partly because she was too scared to move, and partly because her head throbbed with a constant headache—the man merely took a step, grabbed her, and dragged her up.
They walked down a hallway that was both similar to and different from the one where she’d been held before.
There were doors on either side, but they were set into walls, rather than metal bars.
It was darker down there, and Emma wondered how many other women were trapped behind those doors in the physical and metaphorical darkness.
Stopping at the end of the hall, the man opened a door and practically threw her inside. There was a woman waiting for her, although she didn't move to help when Emma stumbled, lost her balance, and hissed as pain flared through her scraped hands and knees.
“Shower her, get her hair and makeup done, and get her dressed,” the man snapped before slamming the door closed behind him.
“Shower is over there,” the woman said, her voice soft, insubstantial, as she nodded toward a corner of the room where a showerhead was embedded in the concrete wall.
As badly as she wanted to get clean, having not showered since the morning of the day she’d been kidnapped, Emma wasn't going to do anything that made what these monsters had planned for her easier for them.
“You should just do it, otherwise, they’ll come in here and do it for you. Trust me, you don’t want that,” the woman whispered.
Snapping her head in the woman’s direction, ready to unleash a load of self-righteous anger, the words died on her tongue when she spotted the chain.
It ran from a hook in the wall to a cuff around the woman’s ankle, and Emma realized their fates might be different, but they were both prisoners of the same people.
Nathan had told her sometimes you had to cede the battle to win the war, but it didn't feel like she was going to be winning anything any time soon, and Nathan was nothing but a big fat liar anyway.
Wearily, Emma nodded and pushed to her feet, swaying as her throbbing head made it feel like the world was spinning around her.
Then she shuffled toward the showerhead.
There were three bottles lined up, shampoo, conditioner, and body wash.
Since she had no idea when she’d be given another chance to clean herself, Emma turned on the shower and then squirted a huge amount of shampoo onto her palm.
Despite the circumstances and the barely warm water, she actually enjoyed soaping up her hair.
So much so that she repeated the process before moving on to conditioner.
There was no comb, but she used her fingers to detangle her hair as best as she could.
After that, she coated her body in a liberal amount of body wash and scrubbed as well as she could with her bare hands.
When she was done, she didn't want to turn off the water. Once she did, she took the next step toward sealing her fate, and she wasn't ready to do that.
In the end, the choice was made for her.
The woman shut off the water, giving her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, but I have to get your hair dried and styled, makeup on, and we have a time limit.”
Since she knew it wasn't the woman’s fault, Emma nodded, snatched up the towel offered, and wrapped it around herself as she hobbled toward the chair sitting in front of a vanity that took up all of one wall.
“How did you wind up here?” she asked as she sat down gingerly due to the lingering pain in her bottom from the spanking a few days ago.
Sighing, the woman picked up a pair of tweezers and shifted the angle of the chair slightly so that she could get to Emma’s knees, where she began removing the small pieces of gravel. “Long story, I'm afraid.”
“I've got nothing but time.”
“My mom got pregnant with me young, got kicked out, lived on the streets for a while before she met a man.”
Wincing as the tweezers removed the tiny stones, Emma glanced at the woman’s teary eyes. “A man?”
Drawing in a long, shuddering breath, she nodded.
“Yeah, we lived with him for a while. My mom was addicted to drugs by then, and I was mostly raising myself even though we lived in his house. She eventually got clean, realized he was into some bad stuff, stole some of his money, and tried to run with me. I was thirteen by then, old enough to realize what he was into. I wanted out just as badly as she did. But he caught us. Said I would have to pay off her debt,” the woman explained as she moved onto cleaning Emma’s hands.
“Did he sell you? That’s what he does, right? He sells women to sick perverts.”
“Yeah, that’s what he does. But my mom begged and pleaded for my life before he killed her. I guess part of him really had cared about her because instead of selling me, he makes me work for him. Trust me, if I could, I'd get you out of here, but I can't even save myself.”
“It’s not your fault,” Emma assured her as the woman set down the tweezers and picked up a hair dryer.
“Most of them blame me.”
“Because they’re scared, but it is not your fault,” she repeated. “Can you … tell me what's going to happen to me? Part of me doesn’t want to know, but the other part … I think I need to be prepared for how bad it’s going to be.”
Under the noise of the hair dryer, the woman whispered to her about the stage, the lights, the obscenely rich men calling out numbers. She told her how most of the buyers lived overseas, primarily in countries where blue-eyed women were virtually non-existent, hence the name Azure.
By the time the woman—who wouldn't give her name—was finished, Emma stood in four-inch heels, wearing lingerie that was barely a quarter step up from being naked, with heavy makeup and her hair styled in soft waves.
Another time, another place, she might think she looked sexy and alluring, but here she just felt dirty, a piece of meat about to be paraded across a stage and sold to a man who would make her worst nightmares look like nothing.
“I’m sorry,” the woman whispered before knocking on the door.
A moment later, it was flung open, and the mountain of a man stood there, ready to drag her into a fate worse than death.
Despite the fear clawing at her insides, Emma held her head high as she was guided down the hallway.
Maybe she couldn’t change her fate, but she’d fight for as long as she could, until it was beaten out of her … or worse.
When she was led into a large open space where other women were already lined up, waiting for the same fate that awaited her, she cursed Nathan, wishing she’d never met him. He’d dangled hope in her face only to snatch it away, and she hated him for it.
August 5th
6:32 P.M.
He was spiraling.
Nathan felt like there was this giant pressure on his chest, slowly crushing him to the point where he couldn’t draw breath.
One thing he knew for certain was that he had to get out of there.
From the moment Van had so casually mentioned to him that Emma had been removed from the warehouse and was being sent off to auction, he’d known that for him this was over.
There was no way he could stay there and hope to maintain his cover.
The spiraling was only going to get worse, he couldn’t pretend that he wasn't gutted over Emma being gone, over failing her. Sooner or later, he would slip up and make a mistake. While he would trade his life in a heartbeat to save Emma’s, his dying because he tripped up and let his cover slip wouldn't help her in any way. But with his racing heart and the guilt threatening to drown him, it was an inevitability that a mistake was coming. He couldn’t concentrate well enough to ensure it didn’t.