CHAPTER FIVE
WINTER
Three years before the present day
Winter creeps beneath the floorboards, slipping through the cracks and winding around my spine, settling into the hollows of my tired body.
A slow, patient ache that threads through the marrow and twists beneath my ribs.
I kneel on the floor, hands pressed to my thighs, clinging to these few hours of solidarity, waiting for them.
While the small, silent part of me has long since surrendered to the certainty of this place.
Each day is the same. I wake, make my bed, listen to the birds flying freely beyond the boards of this cottage, a world I haven’t touched since the summer.
Their wings cutting through the sky I no longer know, carrying the memory of freedom into a room that has none, into a life that no longer belongs to me.
Then, eventually, the chain drags me upright, heavier these days, biting into my waist where the old one once rested, replaced with a much longer link.
A new weight for new tasks. A new reminder that I must earn my keep.
I cook, clean, I bend and polish and scrub, moving through chores knowing that every ache in my hands, every hesitation in my step, will cost me more than a glance or a word.
It will cost me my small measure of safety, my claim to the scraps I am allowed. So I do as I’m told.
To survive.
The sound of the door unlocking from the outside fills the quiet, but I don’t startle or jump like I used to. The door swings open, and I look up at the looming figure standing there, Harry, come to let me out for the day.
“Hey there, Snow,” he says, whistling lazily.
The nickname twists in my stomach, sour and unwelcome.
I keep my gaze low, letting him do his inspection in silence.
He roams around, circling my bed, lifting corners of blankets, checking the neatness of my small, confined world.
Everything is as it should be, at least, according to their standards.
A sewing machine sits in the corner, a gift they were kind enough to give me, an earned luxury for me to mend their clothes and make my own.
From discarded curtains, I’ve stitched clothing for myself, proof that I have earned the right to hide my skin, my dignity, which is not how it used to be.
When Harry finally steps back, I rise and move to walk in front of him, letting the familiar tension in my shoulders settle into its practiced posture. Into the kitchen I go, the chain dragging behind me.
Around the hexagon chipboard table, the six large men talk quietly among themselves, the hum of their conversation filling the space, but it isn’t friendly.
It’s a low, watchful murmur, full of judgment and scrutiny that I’ve learned to read.
In another life, they might have been considered good-looking.
Well built, symmetrical, but here, stripped of the illusion they paint to the outside world, they are terrifying.
I move past them, the chain dragging behind me, its scrape cutting over their voices with each small step I take.
I pass the electric heater humming softly in the corner, its artificial warmth spilling through the room so wonderfully it almost hurts.
A reckless thought crosses my mind, like a tiny devil sitting on my shoulder, whispering to me, telling me to do things.
How easy it would be to tip it over.
To watch the element catch on something flammable and let the flames take hold.
Take them.
Ignoring my idiotic mind, I open the refrigerator, the pale light spilling over my hands as I gather ingredients.
I place them on the kitchen bench and start making their breakfast. I move over to the sink to wash my hands and gaze out the window, watching as winter presses against these cottage walls. Oh, how I miss the snow.
Their eyes follow me as I move, like small flames burning through the calm I’ve created for myself.
My hands work on instinct, cracking, chopping, stirring, while they talk around me.
I used to try to listen. Hoping that one day they’d slip up and carelessly reveal who they are, why I’m here, anything that could help me escape, but they never do.
Only the monotonous drone of their work lives and plans for tomorrow.
Slowly, I’ve pieced together fragments. Steven, Dillon, and Gio labor among the rows of the apple orchard outside, hands red from sun and bark.
Harry, Simon, and Dash all work at a mine about an hour and a half from here.
And Cameron, he’s a doctor. A surgeon. An unlikely group of men living on this apple farm together, but I don’t read into it, and I don’t bother to ask who they are to one another.
I don’t speak.
I’ve learned the hard way what happens.
Talking without being spoken to carries a cost. They tally it somewhere in their silence. My safety, the modicum of autonomy I’ve been granted, depends on my obedience.
The smell of cooking fills the kitchen, and I walk past the table toward the laundry, ready to get it going, but Cameron moves before I can clear the space.
His arm snakes around my waist, dragging my body tight against his, seated at what I assume is the head of the table.
I stumble, barely catching myself, the sudden weight of him pressing into me like a boulder.
His hand is rough, authoritative, pinning me in the place he wants me.
A wave of nausea tangles around my insides, bitter and hot, clawing its way into my throat.
My muscles tighten against him, instinct screaming at me to pull away, but my mouth remains sealed.
Resisting or complaining only gets me into trouble, and I have enough bruising to last a lifetime.
Even if the bruises cannot be seen. I bite the inside of my cheek instead, tasting blood and salt, forcing my body to obey while my mind runs from itself.
From the heat of his hand, away from the smell of his skin, away from the impossibility that I am to live like this for however long they let me.
The others watch, or maybe they do not. They never need to.
They get to have their turn with me whenever they please.
I remind myself to breathe. Slowly. Quietly.
Pretending nothing is wrong even as my throat feels like it’s on fire.
He runs his nose along my neck, and I use every ounce of control not to shake.
His breath presses against me, as if I could be claimed.
A shiver runs up my spine, but it’s not surrender.
My body obeys the motions they expect. Still. Silent. Compliant.
“She’s been such a good girl for us. Haven’t you, Snow?
” he mutters, his tone almost intimate, but I feel nothing.
The heat of his breath brushes my cheek, skimming along my jaw, and I force myself not to react.
His hand slides down my right side, pressing against my hip, moving with methodical slowness toward the hem of the dress I had sewn yesterday.
Don’t think. Don’t move. I am my own.
He flattens his palm against the skin of my leg, before guiding the fabric of my dress up and up, until it bunches around my middle and over the chain in the way of my freedom.
My body is exposed to the room, to the others.
My legs are shifted, spread, repositioned until I am on full display, an object of their amusement, and their ownership.
My mind recoils, while my body is trapped. I feel the weight of their gazes, but I do not flinch. Inside, I scream. I yell. I fight. On the outside, I comply.
I am not theirs.
I am my own.
I am no one’s.
“She keeps herself nice and tidy for me,” Dash says, gliding his fingers across my bare pubic bone, then lower, trailing a path before sliding his fingers in between my exposed, sensitive flesh.
Their eyes rake over my body, settling in the spot between my legs where Dash touches me.
His heavy breaths feel like acid against my skin as I run further and further away from my mind.
The corners of their mouths tip up, their eyes, blazing and hungry, but not for the breakfast burning on the stove.
I want to tell him to stop. The eggs are burning.
Yet, I cannot talk. They’ll punish me if breakfast is burned. They’ll punish me if it isn’t.
My vision blurs, but no tears fall as I stare at the scratches on the walls from my nails, the day they dragged me here. I stare, and stare, focusing on anything but the fingers being pushed inside me.
I should paint over them. The scratches. Maybe if I ask, they’d buy me some paint, and I can clean this place up a little. I think they’d like that. Wouldn’t they?
“Her cunt feels so fucking tight. She’s lucky we’re not allowed to fuck her here.
Not yet, anyway.” A small mercy I haven’t dared question.
“I’ve been thinking, Snow. Since you are obedient, perhaps we can remove your chain.
Just a trial, of course.” My ears prick up, excitement curling into my lungs as my mind races with possibilities, imagining the cold metal sliding free, the weight that binds me lifting.
He adds another finger, and bile rises in my throat, my mind no longer on the idea of escape. I feel like I’m going to be sick.
His hardness presses into my bottom, but I pay it no mind as he continues to touch me.
“But, let’s make one thing very clear, slut!
” Dash growls, teeth clenched, yanking me back by my hair until my scalp screams, and I cry out, a sound raw and unwanted, even by me.
Pain blossoms along my neck, my legs dig into the floor, but it’s useless.
Steven stands, and the sound of his chair sliding across the hardwood causes me to jump.
He kicks my legs apart even wider, and I didn’t realize I had tried to close them.
“You belong to me. You are ours to do with as we please. Feed you. Fuck you. Fight you. Kill you. So if you ever try to escape, I’ll force you to choke on my dick while they fuck the life right out of your pathetic, little cunt.
Stuff you like one of your dry as fuck roast chickens, and feed you to the dogs, you got that?
” My head is on fire as he tightens his grip.
Dash glides his tongue across the skin of my cheekbone, tasting the tears that I didn’t even know were falling.
He starts to move his hand, his fingers rougher now, and I hate myself for showing any sort of reaction. I know better.
I hate him.
I hate all of them.
How can he get away with this? How is it that no one comes for me, that no one has found me after being gone for months?
Surely they know I never boarded my flight.
Surely my father is somewhere out there, tearing through the streets in a frantic search for his only child.
Why are they doing this to me? Why have I been forgotten?
My body is stiff with terror, frozen in a cold, gut-wrenching compliance.
The stove is sizzling louder, flames licking at the edges of the pan, and the kitchen is starting to fill with steam and smoke, curling around the room.
The smell of scorched bread fills my nostrils, bitter and acrid, making my stomach clench.
Their breakfast is ruined. I’ll have to make it all over again.
“Do you understand, Snow?” Steven says, and my gaze snaps to him, his face devoid of emotion, and I nod in response, my hair pulling against Dash’s tight hold on me. “Say it, slut!”
“I-I…understand.” My voice comes out in a choke, thin and fractured, as though it has to claw its way up my throat.
Instinct begs me to clear it, to steady myself, to gather the scattered pieces of whatever I have left of my dignity.
I slipped. For just a moment, I let them see exactly what they wanted to see.
That they still have power to touch the parts of me I vowed to myself I’d try to bury.
They want me defenseless.
At their mercy.
A broken thing without claws.
Something small enough to hold between their dirty, disgusting fingers.
So that is what I will be. To save myself, that’s exactly what I will be to them.
Something inside me loosens. Not my chains, not Dash’s grip on me, but the final thread tying me to the woman in this kitchen.
I feel it slipping through my fingers, that fragile tether to anger, to fear, to the hope that has carried me this far.
The hope of being rescued. Found. The hope of escaping.
I let it go.
Not because they’ve taken it. But because they will never have it.
Have me.
Deep inside my mind, somewhere beyond the reach of their hands, there is a place they cannot follow. A quiet forest with no doors, no windows, no sound but the wind. I step into it carefully, like someone retreating from the rain, and close the world behind me.
The woman in the kitchen is still there. She breathes. She moves. She obeys. But she is not me. I feel the distance between us clearly, as if I’ve stepped outside my own skin and left her sitting here beneath the weight of their eyes.
She will do what they want. She will bow her head and keep quiet. She will cook their food, answer when spoken to, and never let the fear in her heart reach her face.
She will endure. And she will survive.
Because that is what she is for now. A vessel of endurance. A body that bends so the mind does not have to break.
And I will remain where they cannot touch me, folded safely in the marsh, where the air is cool and heavy with the scent of damp earth, wildflowers, and meadow.
Where trees stand tall and silent, their branches closing overhead like strong, protective hands.
In that quiet place, the world is distant and muffled, as though listening from underwater.
Their voices cannot follow me there.
Their hands cannot reach me.
The woman in the kitchen, she belongs to them. But the rest of me is hidden, waiting.
Waiting for the day the path opens up.
Waiting for the day I find my way home.