Chapter 5 Thea
CHAPTER FIVE
THEA
“Shh. You’ll wake her.”
“Oh, screw you, Beth. She’ll wake once the drugs wear off anyway, or when her body finally realizes she’s on the damn floor.”
Voices around me, loud and disorienting at first, drag me from oblivion. I come to with an ugly gasp, trying to gulp air in abundance.
“She’s awake!” someone yells, and I wince. My head throbs, like something is drilling my skull, and it radiates throughout my whole face and jaw.
I slowly blink, focusing on several faces hovering over me. My eyes flutter as I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. Four beautiful girls who can’t be much older than I am grimace as they take me in.
The floor beneath me is cold and unyielding—concrete. I grapple with my limbs. They’re heavy and disconnected from my brain as I try to move. Try to sit up.
“Here. Let me help you.” One of the girls with dark brown hair and warm, earthy eyes reaches for me, and I clasp her hand. She pulls me into a sitting position, then crouches down beside me with a water cup in her hand. “This should help.”
Shaking, I take it and bring it to my lips. “W-where am I?” I croak, then take a shallow sip.
“Hell. You’re in hell.”
“Oh my god, Mercy. Seriously, don’t scare her.” A blonde glares at the girl named Mercy, but she flips her long black hair over her shoulder and waves a hand in dismissal.
“It’s the truth. I’m not going to sugarcoat shit here. She’d better get used to it fast.”
My stomach flips, and I swig more water. It soothes my raw throat, and I groan at the sensation of it slipping down.
Where am I? What happened?
Panic from the night crawls up my spine, and I choke on my next words. “My father … he … he sold me.” A sob rips from me.
“Oh, hunny. That’s tough luck, right there. Beth was sold, too. I was snatched off the street.”
I jerk back, the words like a slap. Sold. Snatched. Yet, snatched almost sounds more merciful in comparison. At least no one who was supposed to love you handed you over.
“Mercy was one of the few here taken as opposed to sold,” Beth says.
She adjusts her black tank top, and it’s then that I realize each girl is wearing the same top and black wide-legged linen pants.
I blink, sorting through my thoughts, all of which are an amalgamation of fear, spiraling what-ifs, and what-the-hecks.
When the room stops spinning, I finally wobble to my feet, looking around.
My lips part as I take in the long concrete room.
What must be upward of fifteen metal twin beds sit lined against the walls, half on one side, half on the other.
Two metal doors are at the end, with the only windows in the center of them.
“What is this?” I ask. Without thinking, I gravitate toward the door.
“Don’t bother, hun,” Mercy says. Her piercing green eyes soften as she gestures at the door. “They’re locked.”
Beth speaks up. “We’re in an underground club.”
“A club?”
She nods.
“What kind of club? They can’t take and keep us here!” I stride to the door and slap it three times. It stings instantly. “Hey! Hey! Let us out!” I strike again and again, the impact sending tiny pinpricks through my wrist.
Another girl climbs off her bed and pulls my hand back. “Mercy’s right. It’s no use. They won’t let you out. They never do. I’m Paige, by the way.”
Paige’s hair is braided into two French braids. Her hair is bright red, redder than my copper, but her eyes are a rich amber. She offers me a tight-lipped smile.
I count seven girls, including myself, and I wonder if there are plans for more with of the number of beds.
Beth approaches me with more water in her hand, and I glance past her at a water fountain on the opposite end of the room. There’s also a doorway that another girl walks toward and exits.
“That’s the bathroom,” Beth says, studying where my focus has been pulled. “It’s standard. A few toilets and a couple of basic showers. It’s not fancy, but the day before Market on Fridays, they take us to a nicer spot and … pamper us. If you want to call it that.”
I shake my head. “Market?”
“It’s called EV. We aren’t sure what it stands for. None of us has been privy to that information, but these men are rich. Richer than the men you can concoct in your mind. And each Friday …” Her breath hitches.
“It’s alright, hun.” Mercy rubs her back.
Each Friday what? What? My hands tremble.
“And each Friday they have Market. We’re sold … auctioned to the highest bidder.”
“For what?” I ask.
“For whatever they want.”
I blink, waiting for her to laugh, to take it back. It can’t mean what it sounds like. But the look in her eyes says it does—and worse. My pulse spikes. Whatever they want. The phrase sticks to my skin. Sex? Violence? A mix of both? I can’t breathe. I can’t think past the pounding in my head.
“There are rules through,” Paige says. “They have to return us to the club by early the next morning.”
I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.
I oscillate between wanting to cry and pounding on the doors until my knuckles bleed.
They can’t keep women down here to auction off for whatever they want.
Where is the police? How can they have a club like this?
Did Phil know this … that this is what they do here? My body shakes as they continue.
“I wonder who got shipped out?” Mercy asks.
“Shipped out? As in they were able to leave?” Hope sparks to life in my chest.
Beth shakes her head. “It’s not a good thing. We don’t go home. When they bring new girls in, it’s usually to replace someone that hasn’t been bid on in a while.” Her gaze flits toward the bathroom. “If you don’t sell high enough, or if you don’t get bid on, you become dead weight.”
“Like us tonight.” Paige wraps her arms around her front. “We didn’t get bid on tonight.”
“Which would be a good thing. Instead of being used as a billionaire’s plaything to knock around, we get a break.
But that also means we may lose our usefulness.
They don’t risk releasing us to run our mouths about this secret club.
They ship us overseas. Trafficked to worse countries, to people who do worse things. ” Beth clenches her fists.
“And it can get worse,” Mercy adds.
I don’t mean to, but feeling lightheaded, I sit back on the nearest bed. The linens are clean and white, as they all are, but the pillowcases are a deep burgundy, and all I can think about is that stupid cigar.
Senator Graves.
“Senator Graves? He was one of the ones who came to my house?”
Mercy raises her eyebrows, but Beth flinches at his name. “You must be a catch then. Senator Graves is one of their leaders. They’re called the Eight or something, but mostly it’s Graves’s show.”
I slouch, gripping the foot of the bed I’m seated on.
The floor feels like it’s been dropped out from under me.
A wave of heat crawls up my neck, and I press my hands into my thighs, trying to breathe through the twist of nausea churning beneath my ribs.
A tear slides down my cheek, and I slap it away. But then there’s another. And another.
I stare at the wall. It’s chewed up with scarred scuffs and jagged grooves, and I follow the random cracks to keep from releasing any more choked sobs.
Thousands of questions run rampant in my mind, but I’m still sorting through all the information I received in the first five minutes of being here.
I look down at my pajamas. The pink silk shorts twist at my waist with drips of my rolling tears splashing in randomized patterns. The T-shirt from Tristan adds to my pain, and I lower my head, smelling the mix of cigar smoke and luxury cologne I know isn’t his.
How?
How are they so calm?
They talk about this place as if it’s a minor inconvenience. They stand here, in matching sets, collected. Getting water, going to the bathroom, accepting this as normal. It’s not normal! Why aren’t they beating on the door? Why aren’t they bolting when they get a chance?
“Come on, hun. Let me show you around. They left an outfit for you to change into.” Mercy lightly places a hand on my shoulder and motions to a bed across the thin aisle.
On one of the beds, made to perfection, is a stack of black clothing that looks identical to what the other girls are wearing. I glare at it and shake my head.
Beth moves in front of me and helps Mercy. They each grab an arm and pull me up.
“What’s your name?” Beth asks.
For a second, a stretched-out, dizzying second, I can’t remember. It’s trivial. I’ve been snatched out of my life. It feels stolen from me.
I don’t want to say it. If I tell them—say it out loud—it makes everything real. This messed-up situation real.
If I’m going to survive this, if I’m going to make it out alive, I have to remember who I am. The girl my mother raised. The one who gave unlimited second chances and endless hope.
I glance down at my tattoo, at the delicate black-and-white sketch of a dandelion drawn on the inside of my forearm.
The stem is thin and slightly curved. Fine-lined seeds pack into the bloom, with a couple lifting and drifting up and outward.
I got it four months after my mother died, and it’s the one memory I replay in my mind daily.
When I look down at it and remember her words, that mantra she preached to me daily, I cling to it like my lifeline. I’m not gone. Not yet. I won’t let them take the last piece of me.
“Thea,” I rasp. “My name is Thea.”
Sleep evades me, and anything I do manage to squeak out is in twenty-minute spurts.
At first, it’s the red blinking lights in every corner of the room.
Cameras, I realize. Then it’s a few girls talking before Mercy yells at them to shut up, or the tiny sobs and sniffles from some of the girls that crest on and off for most of the night.
When morning comes—or what I assume is morning based on the rustle of bedding and shuffling to the bathroom—I pull the covers over my head and stay there.