FORTY-SEVEN
STEPHANIE
I have survived worse men than you. The difference is that this time I know how to bite back.
The slowing of the car pulls me toward consciousness, a sliver of awareness appearing even though I still can’t move beyond lifting my head an inch or two.
Christopher glances over at me after he parks, and all I can do is glare.
I will not break for this man. Black spots edge my vision, and I hold on to that belief even as my body fades back into that laxity.
He grabs my chin in a bruising grip, and I stare back at him in defiance.
It only serves to excite him, but that’s the aim.
The more he wants to play with me, the longer James has to find me.
I will happily go on record to nail this fucker.
I will be the last woman he ever touches, not as his victim, but as his retribution.
“Hope you enjoyed your little taste of freedom, Stephanie, because what you experienced for that one night is a drop in the ocean compared to what I have in store for you.”
With a final burst of energy, I spit in his face, earning myself a slap. But the resulting sting reminds me of the most important thing—pain means you’re alive.
The thumping in my skull feels like my head has been used as a soccer ball during a game that went into overtime. I don’t move right away, choosing to lie still and absorb every detail before I make my consciousness known.
My stomach gurgles. Is it empty because it’s been hours since I’ve eaten, or did I vomit from the drugs?
I sweep my tongue over my lips, which taste horrible.
Shit, I hope I didn’t throw up the tracker.
I didn’t think that through. Maybe I should have shoved it up my butt instead.
But knowing Christopher, he’d probably find that one too.
There aren’t any bindings around my limbs, but I’m curled on my side against a cold metal floor.
There’s a hum, like air conditioning, and beneath it the faint copper tang of spilled blood.
I still have the dress on, but my shoes are missing.
A small sob breaks the otherwise silent space I’m in.
It’s not mine. I stopped crying a long time ago. It doesn’t help.
But it’s a fucking relief to know I must be the other girls. If Christopher had taken me somewhere else… No, it’s good. At least one thing is going according to my last-minute plan.
Now it’s time to face the consequences of my actions and figure out how much shit I’ve gotten myself into. Blinking my eyes open slowly, I look around.
Whatever horrors I had imagined were severely lacking.
I don’t know why I assumed this place would be low rent, considering who’s behind this.
The prison-like environment isn’t cushy, but it’s fortified and terrifyingly impressive.
There are six glass cells, glorified boxes, three on each side of a central walkway.
In the cells across from me are three other women.
Looking at them breaks my heart. I can tell Christopher has had his fun with them. One looks a tiny bit better than the others, and I assume she’s the most recent one to arrive, after me, that is.
The one farthest from me in my corner cell is doing the worst. Her face is so swollen and bruised that she’s barely recognizable as human, and I’m pretty sure some of her bones are broken.
Her wrist dangles from her arm at an unnatural angle.
But she’s not the one sobbing—that’s the girl in the cell directly across from mine, the newest-looking one.
The other two have learned I did—crying doesn’t help, and it gets him off.
“Hey,” I whisper across the distance, trying to get her attention. “What’s your name?”
She looks up at me with wide eyes. “Abby. God, he took you too? I don’t know how long I’ve been here. The others…”
We both turn to them, the two other girls in the next cells. The one in the middle looks like she’s sleeping, or more likely unconscious. But the one on the end is alert, the eye that isn’t swollen shut glaring across the distance at me.
“What’s your name?”
“What’s it matter? You gonna pretend we’re buddies?”
“I have people coming after me. We’ll all get out of here.”
The woman scoffs. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
“I’m trying to help.” I do my best to scoot across the floor toward the glass, laying my hand on it. “How long have you been here?”
“Last I remember, it was summer. So…”
God, that means it’s been months. Fuck. “I have people coming, the FBI. Don’t quit on me yet.”
The mention of the Feds seems to grab her attention, the flicker of hope inside her finding something new to cling to. Hope is dangerous when you’re in a place like this, but it’s also necessary.
“I… alright.” She glances away, curling into herself again. “It’s Nancy.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Nancy.” I try to offer a smile, but it drops quickly.
The next thing I know, the door to the room slides open, and I jump to my feet and lift my chin as I face the demon featured in so many nightmares.
He’s removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as if he’s getting ready to do the dirty work. My stomach twists, and I clench my jaw against the need to gag.
“I see you’ve met your new family,” Christopher says with a tilt of his head.
Nancy shuffles to the back of the box on her butt and casts her eyes down.
I hate him and what he’s done all the more, and that familiar deadly urge rises.
I thought it was a onetime thing, but maybe it’s a permanent part of me, forever etched in my soul, and now I need to embrace it.
I’ll do whatever it takes to survive and free these women, and keep it from happening ever again.
If I need to get blood on my hands, so be it.
“Get on your knees,” he demands.
Not fucking likely. I stare, unblinking, shoulders squared.
He grins and retrieves a small black box. There’s a collective hiss in the room that signals I’m not going to enjoy whatever he’s about to do. That much I already knew, but the creativity of his punishment throws me.
He presses a button, and pain arcs through my legs. My spine snaps straight, and a scream reverberates around the glass box and bounces back at me in an endless echo. When it stops, I collapse to my knees, hot tears dripping down my cheeks.
The sick fuck electrocuted me?
I hang my head and draw myself together with steady breaths. He must have had it installed in the floor or something. It’s pain. Just pain. A simple communication to my brain about the danger I’m in. But I got the memo, so I need to shut it off.
“Better,” Christopher says, like I willingly put myself in this position.
The door to my cell swishes open, and he steps inside. I stay focused, still, coiled. He’s going to have to work harder than that to get me to submit. His shoes appear in my eyeline as he stops in front of me. “You’re all the same. Pathetic, weak.”
My hand snaps out and wraps around his calf, and I sink my teeth into the flesh. He howls and kicks me hard in the face. My nose crunches, and my vision dances with black dots. It’s just pain, and I know how to dole it out, too.
But I can’t help but fly backward, and I hit the wall behind me.
It leaves my vision fuzzy, my reactions slow as the aches demand my attention.
Christopher snags me by the hair, using it to drag me across the floor and presses me against the wall.
I realize too late that there are cuffs embedded in the thick, unbreakable glass.
“Remember, you did this. I’m only reacting to your behavior.”
My brain isn’t working at top speed right now, so all I can do is watch as Christopher leaves my cell. It’s surprising. I expect him to beat me some more. Hell, I know rape is in the cards. Why isn’t he doing that?
But the question is answered when he enters Nancy’s cell. Christopher doesn’t even look at her. He looks at me as he yanks her up off the floor by the hair, holding her up like a doll.
“No!” My scream echoes in the tight chamber.
I know he isn’t going to listen to me. Christopher said I did this, and now I understand.
He saw us talking. He heard the conversation, at least some of it, and he could tell how much it meant to me to keep these women from further harm.
So he’s going to use that against me. He’s going to make me suffer by hurting them because they won’t trust me, they’ll blame me, and there will be nothing I can do about it.
“Stop!” I’m not sure why I’m bothering to yell. Instinct maybe. The need to do something, anything.
Christopher shoves Nancy against the wall, pushing her battered eye into the glass. He lifts her left arm out as she struggles, the wrist that looks broken, and he punches it. He punches it over and over, while Nancy screams until her throat gives out.
I fight against my binds, but it’s useless. I can’t break free. All I can do is watch until Nancy falls unconscious, until Christopher spits on the back of her hair and walks out. Until he passes by my cell, grinning from ear to ear.
It’s been about two days by my count, which I’ve tried to maintain track of even though my head gets mushy and floats off my body, looking to distance itself from the pain. But I don’t want to forget, don’t want to let myself slip into that void where I know the other girls are.
I’m getting out of here. We all are.
Still, I haven’t had anything to eat in a long fucking time, and it’s adding to the agony thrumming through my bruised—and potentially very broken—bones. I’ve been given water, which is questionably discolored, but I know if I don’t drink something, the end will come all the quicker.
I’m not giving up. I’m not there yet, and I pray I’ll never reach that place.
Worse though is that the water means I have to pee, and there’s nowhere in this glass cell to do so. I know Christopher has done it on purpose, and he’s probably loving it from wherever he’s watching. Because I know he’s watching us.
I hold out for as long as I can, but the pain that comes from holding it for god knows how long eventually wins out. I shuffle over to the corner, facing away from the other cells. I’m not going to get pee on this dress and have to have it on me, so I force myself up, and it aches.
Christopher hasn’t broken me yet, though.
I’ll do what I need to get myself up off the floor, holding up the dress and getting my underwear out of the way as I relieve myself.
If anything, I let myself take a tiny bit of joy in peeing on something Christopher clearly spent a lot of money on. Take that, asshole.
Decently clean afterward, I leave the corner and move as far away from it as I can, curling back into myself. The cold and hunger drift back in, the relief of peeing fleeting. The hours stretch on and on and on. He hasn’t come in for a while, which is oddly irritating.
Waiting seems to be as torturous as getting beaten.
I hate him, hate all of this around me, and I rest my head against the glass wall, closing my eyes. I hum that stupid song the bird from The Lion King sings when Scar has him imprisoned. It makes me chuckle, and I need that right now.