58. Zara
ZARA
“Zawa!” Peony’s gut-wrenching wail breaks through the brain fog, and I slowly blink open my eyes.
Sunlight pours onto the bed from the window, the thick prisonlike bars painting ominous shadows on my body.
The steady beat of Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” plays from what sounds like several rooms away. The title, my new mantra.
I groan at the intense pain holding my body hostage and push up to sit a little too fast. I wince at the pain and frantically scan the nondescript room with two twin beds. “Peony?” Her name tumbles past my lips in an anguished cry.
My gaze settles on the playpen next to the window. The top of Peony’s tear-streaked face peers at me from above the rim.
“I’m here, Princess Peony.” I shuffle over to her, my muscles stiff and uncooperative, and I pick her up. My body responds unkindly to the movement, screaming vicious, silent curses.
I cuddle her, trying to reassure her without words that everything will be okay. I’ll protect her. I’ll keep her safe.
Peony clutches to me. I’m Poppy’s replacement, a role I take seriously.
“It’ll be okay.” I close my eyes against the lie and press a soft kiss to her tear-salted cheek. I rock her, and her crying slows to a light sob .
Blurry-eyed memories trickle in of arriving at a house, the New Orleans heat and humidity embracing me like a long-lost friend distraught at the turn of events.
Memories of being escorted to this room, being told a list of rules I can’t remember.
Of a girl who couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old bringing food for Peony and me.
Of her telling me to rest up, she would be back later.
The bedroom door opens, and the girl from earlier walks into the room.
Tilly’s long golden-blond hair is twisted up in a messy top knot. She’s wearing extremely short shorts and a crop top that reveals more than it hides, and she has the same odd mark I’ve seen on Athena’s body, just below her collarbone. The mark that resembles the letters T and B turned sideways.
Tilly smiles at Peony, whose sobs have lulled to gentle hiccupping. “Hi, Peony. Do you remember me? You’ve gotten so big since I last saw you.” She tickles Peony’s side, drawing a sweet, tear-dampened giggle from her.
I frown, unable to take my gaze from the mark under her collarbone. What are the chances it’s just a coincidence they have the same scar?
Scar—or brand?
Because that’s what it looks like. Like Tilly and Athena have been branded.
I tighten my hold on Peony. What kind of fucked-up place is this?
“I brought you clothes.” Tilly lifts the small, folded stack of clothes in her hands and some diapers.
Track marks scar her arms. She doesn’t seem high or strung out, but I could be wrong. I haven’t had any experience with people addicted to heroin or whatever it is she shoots herself up with.
“What is this place?” My sleep-deprived voice comes out rough. An echo to how my body and my brain feel.
“Peony’s home. Yours too.” She sets the clothes on the bed I woke up on.
“I have a home. Thanks. In Oregon.” I glance around the room again, searching for any clues as to what this messed-up building could be. There are no pictures on the walls, nor are there any religious symbols, like a cross, decorating the space. “Is this…is this a cult?”
I don’t know much about cults—other than what Kenda told me. She wrote a paper on cult culture for one of her sociology classes.
Tilly shakes her head slowly but doesn’t look too certain of her answer.
Kenda was smart. She wouldn’t have fallen for the mind tricks cult leaders use to recruit new members. But I could see her becoming involved with a cult, with the goal of pitching an exposé to a newspaper or magazine. Or to do research for a book.
I roll my shoulders, working out the stiffness and pain from holding Peony. “Thanks, but I’m not interested in being part of a cult.” Or whatever is going on in this house.
“You’ll like it here,” Tilly says sweetly, but the ghost of a plea ripples through her tone. “You’ll get to have fake lashes and pretty nail extensions.” She wiggles her fingers at me, showing off her long red nails with flowers painted on them. “And pretty clothes.”
“I like the clothes I have at home, thanks.” I kiss Peony’s temple, branding her with the message that she’s with me. “So that’s where we’re going. Home.” I stumble-walk past Tilly, Peony held securely in my arms. Every muscle and every joint and every ounce of dignity protest the movement.
They can protest all they want. Peony and I are getting out of here, spondyloarthritis be damned.
I just need to find a phone and call my cousin Serena. She’ll come get us. And I’ll call the authorities and Garrett. And find out how Emily is doing.
My body trembles at the memory of her on the ground, bleeding. I switch the picture in my head to her sitting in her hospital bed, working on the final details for the upcoming weddings she’s coordinating. Nothing will keep her down from doing what she loves.
Peony still on my hip, I walk along the stretched-out hallway, my heart beating in my throat. We pass a series of closed doors.
A white man with shaved-short dark hair, wearing a crisp white shirt and gray trousers, steps into the hallway from a room just ahead of me. My heart stops, and a gasp tumbles past my lips. Then my heart restarts, the pounding in my chest faster and louder than the rap beat playing nearby.
The man smiles. He’s tall and bulky, maybe in his midfifties, his body a mix of muscle and overindulgence.
I take a step back, putting distance between us.
His smile is charming, but there’s a hardness in the gleam of his eyes, the set of his jaw, that sends a galloping shiver through me. “How are you settling in? Zara, isn’t it?” His thick Southern accent wraps around an unspoken threat in his tone.
I take another step back, shifting Peony onto my other hip, and angle my body to put distance between her and him. My gaze flicks to the stairs a few feet away and back to him.
“I hear we have a mutual acquaintance. A mutual friend.”
I have a feeling friend isn’t the word Athena would use to describe this man.
A barrage of questions circles through the fog in my brain. Questions I want answers to, but I don’t know where to begin, or if I can trust anything he says. I just want to get out of here, with Peony. I just want something for the pain.
“The men who kidnapped us said you wanted Peony. Why? She’s not your daughter.” I’m making a huge leap here, assuming he’s the one responsible for what happened.
“What makes you think she isn’t my daughter? Rosaline and I had an…arrangement.” His words are polished, a steel blade, his underlying meaning ready to draw, quarter, and eviscerate me.
I stare at him, muddling through what he’s saying. Who the hell is Rosaline? Does he mean Kenda?
No, it can’t be. Kenda wouldn’t have had sex with him. Not willingly, anyway. “I don’t care what kind of arrangement you had; she’s not your daughter. And you can’t hold us against our will.”
The man chuckles, a serpent planning to hypnotize its victim into complacency. “I’m not holding you here against your will. You’re free to leave. But you leave, and Peony dies. Your choice. ”
He’s bluffing. Murder is as illegal in New Orleans as it is in Oregon. He won’t risk jail time just to keep me here.
“You don’t look like enough of an idiot to believe you’ll get away with it.” I take a step toward the stairs, angling my body so it’s still between Peony and him, the wall a shadow to my back.
What do I do now? The fog in my brain mixed with terror is making it harder to figure out my next step.
Each thought takes tremendous effort.
Each thought is draining my dwindling energy.
Each thought is drowning in an ocean of hopelessness.
Stay strong. For Peony.
“Should we test your theory? See if I can get away with it?” The smile returns to his face, and a chill forms low in my stomach.
He shifts the recipient of his smile to Peony. She tightens her fists on my T-shirt, her body trembling against mine. And a high-pitched wail, so frightened, so shattered, erupts from her.
I rock her, straining to keep the pain from my face, to prevent the truth of my body’s betrayal from being broadcast. Especially to this man.
I press my lips to her temple and hum the opening melody of “Spirit” to try to soothe her. It doesn’t do much. The only way she’ll feel safe is if we’re millions of miles from this place. And in her father’s arms.
The man shoves his hands into his trouser pockets, the move deceptively casual. “So I guess you haven’t figured it out yet? About Rosaline? About who killed her?”
I stare at him, my arms visibly shaking from the effort of holding Peony. There’s no way I can hide that truth.
His mouth slants to one side, and I shudder once more at the cruelness reflected in the gesture. “A random mall shooting. Isn’t that what they called it? Nothing random about it though.”
Mall shooting? He really does mean Kenda?
“So pretty. You’ll be a nice addition to my stable.” He tenderly wipes calloused fingertips along my cheek.
I jerk my head away from his hand. An unreleased growl coils up deep in my throat .
He snatches my chin and roughly yanks it to face forward again, forcing me to look at him.
“Take her to her room. We’ll give her two days to recover from the trip, then she can join us for the next party.
I have a few men in mind who’ll appreciate her.
” His hand moves down to the V of my T-shirt, and he yanks the fabric aside.
I jerk away once more, but this time with my entire body. The startled movement is so violent, my back bangs into the wall.
Undeterred by my reaction, or maybe encouraged by it, he traces the skin below my collarbone on the same spot where Athena’s and Tilly’s matching scars are located.
My skin crawls and prickles at his touch, but I’m too frozen with fear, with anger, with disgust, to move—my fight-or-flight instinct bailing on me.
“Perfect. We’ll also need to brand her.”
“You sure about this one?” The high-pitched Texan drawl from behind me belongs to a female, and I turn to it. A tall, dark-haired woman approaches us from the top step of the staircase. “Wolf said she has trouble walking.”
“As long as she can spread her legs—that’s all I care ’bout.”
Spread her legs.
The meaning of the words doesn’t hit me like a cement truck failing to stop at a red light. It hits me with the force of the meteor that rendered dinosaurs extinct.
My already rapidly beating heart starts beating that much more, louder, harder—powerful aftershocks rattling my rib cage.
The woman is maybe two or three years younger than me. A curtain of silky hair swings against the lower curve of her spine. Her pencil skirt and sleeveless blouse aren’t as revealing as Tilly’s clothes, but they still show off acres of smooth tanned skin.
She flashes Peony a look of disgust, her frosty eyes two soulless dark orbs.
Peony presses her face into my chest, muffling her cries. Her tears soak through my T-shirt.
“What about Nina?” The woman’s gaze takes me in from head to toe, but she keeps what she’s thinking off her face. “Wasn’t the goal supposed to be to bring her back here? It wasn’t to get another girl. ”
“Let me worry about Nina. We’ve got something she wants. Nina will cooperate just to keep the little girl safe.” The stiffness in his voice speaks of a man who requires complete respect from those addressing him.
She gives an answering nod and grabs my arm. Her fingers press painfully into my muscles.
Or it would be painful if every inch of my body wasn’t already aching.
Peony’s sobs grow louder, the sudden jerking of my arm possibly frightening her.
“Maybe give her something”—he nods at me—“to make her more compliant.” He doesn’t spell out what that is. He doesn’t need to. The fog in my brain from spondyloarthritis is bad enough. I don’t need to add drugs to my system too…even if they will temporarily help dull the pain.
“I’ll do whatever you want.” My tone isn’t defeated. It’s earnest. Hopefully earnest enough to convince them I’m telling the truth. Earnest enough to buy myself time, while I figure out how to get away from this hell.
The woman escorts me back to the bedroom, her spine stiff, hand still hooked on my arm. She glares at Tilly, who’s sitting on her bed, painting her toenails. “Tell her the rules, then get downstairs. You’re working tonight.”
She huffs as if the two of us are an inconvenience and leaves.
“She’s pleasant,” I mutter and sit next to the stack of clothes Tilly had put on my bed.
I blow a raspberry on Peony’s cheek, hoping it will distract her enough to get her to stop crying. Not that I blame her. I’d be crying too if I could get away with it. But crying won’t get us out of this situation.
The smirk Tilly flashes me isn’t so much a look of amusement—it’s more of a shudder. “That’s Lola. She’s a bottom bitch. You don’t want to get on her bad side. She’s meaner than Satan on his worst day.”
“Bottom bitch?”
“She’s like The Bear’s right hand. She used to be like the rest of us but worked her way up to where she is now.”
I pick up the crop top from the pile of clothes. “Lovely. So much for feminism and protecting your fellow sisters. ”
Tilly’s gaze darts nervously to the open door. “Never trust her, no matter what she says. She’s not on your side—even when she pretends to be.”
Tilly needn’t worry. There’s no way I’d trust that woman. The only person I can trust to get Peony and me out of this place…is me.