Chapter 7 Thea
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEA
My legs barely keep upright as I’m flung into a small, padded room. I spin to ask the escort where I am, but a solid mahogany door slams in my face. Stumbling back, I run into a white marble table with a glass pitcher filled with water and a single glass.
I reach out for it, but pause, hand halfway extended. Is it laced with something? Something to make me more agreeable? I snatch my hand back and scan the room.
It’s no bigger than an oversized closet with a white stone floor. Red pads, almost like soundproofing material, line the walls and ceiling, making me feel like I’ve stepped into an insane asylum. Though I could argue this whole thing is insane. Disgusting.
There’s no seating, so I pace around, cognizant of the cameras in each corner of the room.
They move while I do, so apparently, they aren’t hiding their constant recording.
They ditched the chains before shoving me in here, but I’m still stuck in three-inch heels.
I stretch my legs, roll my ankles, and hate every inch of them.
I shake my head, disappointed in myself.
All week I prepped myself for this with the help of the other girls willing to share what was in store for the Market.
Sick old bastards. They explained it down to each bone-chilling detail.
Women, who are lulled by the money and paid to play dress-up with us like we’re dolls, would take and scrub us.
Pluck, wax, and doctor us in fancy makeup—the foundation alone costing more than my gas for a whole month.
The more I struggled, the rougher they got until eventually I went limp, letting them dress me up and shove me in shoes and chains.
It’s only been a week, but I’ve already lost a bit of what it feels like to be a person. Fed and cared for only for the benefit of the money they decide we’re worth. The escorts, workers, or people that spoke with us this week skimmed over me like I was just a body, a function.
I found myself wanting to hear less and less about what was going to happen and allowed a strange hollowness to take the place of fear. It’s demoralizing. Dehumanizing.
Regardless, I knew I’d be taken to a room after being bid on. The other girls told me I’d have at least an hour in here while the man who won me gloats and celebrates with drinks, cigars, or snorting a line. I know better, but I approach the door and jiggle the locked handle.
Nothing.
I stare down at my shaking hand while fear and fury ravage my body.
I wrap my arms around myself, staring down at the dandelions dusting my arm.
My mother’s words won’t budge from my mind, no matter how many tears I’ve cried or how many times I slammed my fist against the metal door back in our holding cell.
The tickle of a scream burns the back of my throat, and I fight the tight breaths of panic getting hotter. Rage coils low in my gut, and I oscillate between thinking I won’t let them break me and that I’m already broken.
I eye the water again.
Screw it.
I walk over and pour a glass, chugging it quickly before I can second-guess it.
I hope it masks something. Anything so I don’t have to feel, don’t have to imagine what this ghost of a man is going to do to me for the next twelve hours.
I couldn’t see him in the crowd. With the bright lights on us and the distance between us, I could make out only a tall silhouette and the faint outline of frames on the bridge of his nose.
The old man can’t even see, yet he’s willing to spend an outrageous amount on a broke community college student whose father sold to feed his drinking habit.
One hundred thousand. Do you know what I could do with money like that?
Part of me wants to laugh at the idea that Phil may have been ripped off.
Chuckling, I step back, landing in the center of one of the pads on the wall.
It’s soft and squishy, and the press of hard flooring against my feet has me sinking to the floor.
I sort through my bodily functions, trying to find any evidence I’ve been compromised by the water, but find nothing.
I’m still angry, still trembling, and still overly aware.
Water. It was just water.
I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. The floor is cold against my butt and thighs, but I barely feel it.
Another laugh slips out. One hundred thousand. I’m not worth that.
I press the back of my hand to my mouth, as if I can trap the next one trying to bubble out, but it’s no use. Another. Then another.
My shoulders shake. It’s ridiculous. It’s fiction come to life.
I burst out laughing, the sound absorbed by the padded walls rather than echoing off them.
My stomach folds in, empty and gurgling from the week’s worth of green juice, and my throat catches. The laughter doesn’t stop; it warps and splinters until the edge of my voice breaks. I curl in on myself. The chuckles bleeding with ugly tears dripping from my lashes.
A mixture of cackles and sobs rips from me, and I’m grateful I have some time to collect myself before the man comes to—
The door bursts open, and I startle, slipping as I struggle to push up. What the …
A tall, younger-looking man stands in the door, and he looks all around the room before letting out a sigh and focusing on me now standing.
His shoulders roll back straight, and my back hits the wall before I realize I’m retreating. Something about him sets off every warning in my body.
The charcoal suit that clings to his frame looks custom tailored to follow every long line of lean muscle beneath. A threat dressed in elegance, my mind mutters. Like they all are.
Honey-blond hair is swept back but messed up just enough and with precision.
His face is sharp with sculpted angles along his smooth jaw, while his gold-tinged skin looks like he’s spent too much time on the golf course.
And those eyes, a heated blue that remind me of the way ocean water laps over sun-warmed sand.
They aren’t piercing and cold; they glint from behind sleek black frames and focus directly on me.
The intensity of his gaze makes my throat tighten because it’s like I’m targeted.
My fingers twitch at my sides, but I don’t move. I couldn’t if I tried.
He hasn’t said a word, and already he’s stealing all the air from the room. His presence is ruthless, as if he were built for this.
He probably was. What’s his job this evening? Deliver me to the man who purchased a night with me. I shiver.
“W-where is he? Are you taking me to him?” My voice comes out weak, but I do my best to straighten and lift my chin to meet his stare.
The corner of his mouth twitches at whatever thought just crossed his mind, and my stomach drops.
The glasses. He’s tall.
Wait.
Is this the man who purchased me?
My eyes narrow and then widen.
He’s going to hurt me.
The thought comes fast and uninvited. I’ve known this, braced for it, but part of me assumed it would be some middle-aged man with cigar breath and pockmarks in the hollows of his wrinkled cheeks. Not some handsome paradox in a suit.
My muscles tense, and my shallow breaths skip in time with my hammering heart.
He glances at the water, and suddenly it’s heavy in my belly.
“You’re him, aren’t you? You … you—”
“Congressman DuPont, your car is here. Are you ready, sir?”
DuPont.
The name rolls around in my mind, collecting all the brief mentions of that name from my memory like dust, but I don’t follow politics. All I know is this man won the election after his grandfather finally retired.
Congressman. I glare at him while a guard motions for me to come out. Senators, congressmen—of course it’s one politician after the other. Sick.
I don’t move.
Congressman DuPont smirks and leans against the hallway wall across from the open door. He tucks his hands into his pockets, watching two security men move into the room, a flicker of amusement playing at his mouth.
“Let’s go,” one guard says.
I know I have no choice. I know there’s no way out of this—it’ll be worse if I try to escape—but I freeze, conscious of the scraps of clothing barely covering my body.
The other guard drags his tongue across his lower lip, unhurried, like he’s savoring a taste of something he can only imagine.
His smile curls into cruelty as he snaps out his hand and wraps it around my wrist.
I shriek as he drags me into him, and the other guard hooks an elbow through my other arm. They escort me out, ushering me to stand close to the congressman.
I look up at him, the scent of soap and rain-soaked cotton wafting up my nose. He ignores me, eyes fixed on the security guard who grabbed me. His jaw works back and forth, and his nostrils flare while his whole body remains predatory still.
“Sir?” the man asks. “Are you ready?”
The congressman steps forward, pushing past me down the hall. Both security men tuck me close to them and haul after him.
We pass door after narrow door, each one a mirror of the room I just left, and I can’t stop picturing the other girls locked inside. Have they left yet?
Through a tough metal door, I’m dragged into an underground loading zone. More like a large service garage rather than a parking area. Random fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting a sterile glow across the ground.
A limo idles between the yellow drop-off lines, and for a moment, the quiet shuffle of feet lets me catch the distant hum of traffic above. It’s the closest I’ve been to the outside world in a week, and though it’s pointless, I jerk my head back and let out a scream.
“Help! Help me please!”
One of the security men snickers at my side, while the driver’s side of the limo opens and a short, round man steps out. He jogs around to the back door and opens it.
Congressman DuPont pauses at the open door and sidesteps, allowing the security guards to toss me in. They aren’t gentle.