Chapter 25 Laynie
Alek moved me to another house. I had never been here before, but I had a bad feeling about it. I was sitting a tiny dining room table with needles and bottles all over it.
“You have a buyer,” Alek said, sitting across from me.
I didn’t respond, but felt defeated. I was still healing from the past few days and he wanted to send me out like this.
His hand slammed so hard on the table my glass of water spilled. “Respond!” he screamed at me.
I jumped. My brain took a moment to react. “I don’t want to go.” I knew he wanted to hear this. He wanted me to squirm under his control.
He watched me while he ate a full course of breakfast and only offered me a glass of water.
My stomach was growling, but I still felt okay from the McDonald’s yesterday. I was used to eating once a day. I looked down at my mangled nail beds. They were still red and bloody, but felt better than yesterday. It’s crazy how the body just repairs itself and the pain is only temporary. It doesn’t feel that way in the moment though. I wanted to cut again, but my knife was under my bunk, back at the warehouse. I could take one from the kitchen, not sure if it was worth the risk. If I was caught, he would keep a closer eye on me. I needed him to think I was afraid and submissive.
When he was done, he wiped the bacon grease off his face with the back of his hand and smirked at me. “Let’s go.”
As we stood up, we both heard the front door open, and it was the first time I had ever seen Alek look afraid. I slowly turned to look at what made his face turn ghost white. A tall man stood at the door, holding a gun by his side.
“Alek, I’m glad you could join me.” His calm tone send chills down my spine.
As he inched his way towards us I could hear the squeak of his boots.
“Don, everything is fine,” Alek said through his thick accent. I noticed Don was not Russian, like most of Alek’s employees. Don also didn’t seem like am employee but rather an employer.
I kept my face down, and my eyes shut, hoping to avoid being a target.
“Someone enters your fucking club, kills two of my men and takes one of my girls and everything is fine? You are using my house to hide bitches now?” He pushed his gun into Alek’s temple.
“I’m handling it!” he yelled. “This bitch is the reason for all this shit!” Alek turned and spit on me.
It was silent for a moment and I was bracing myself for a blow to my head, but none came.
“If you’re allowing one cunt to cause this much havoc in my business, you already know what to do.” I felt the cold tip of the gun press against my temple now. “But I’m not here to clean up your own messes for you. Fix it or I will, and if I fix it, you already know what that means.”
I heard the squeaky boots move towards a bedroom door, and he was gone. My legs were shaking, and I thought I might vomit.
Alek turned to me. “You see the fucking problems you caused me you stupid bitch!” He grabbed a handful of hair behind my head and slammed my face into the dining room table. I cried out, and he did it again.
“Let’s go, you piece of shit.”
I followed him out the side door, where his black SUV awaited us. I recoiled when I saw Eddie in the passenger seat. He turned and glared at me with those black beady rat eyes. I remained quiet during the drive as Eddie and Alek discussed business. I tried to tune them out, but my spine stiffened when I heard Linc’s name.
“I haven’t been able to locate him. He hasn’t been in or out of his apartment in days and when I went to his mother’s address, it looks abandoned as well,” Eddie said.
“Keep looking, that mother fucker hasn’t gone far.”
A sense of joy spread over me, thinking about how Linc has outsmarted these two morons. He even moved his mom, thank God. After 20 minutes of driving, we pulled to the back of a hotel. It had white concrete walls and noticed the back entrance door was propped open with a rock. The back entrances were the only way I entered hotels. No trace of me would be found anywhere else. I always felt like complete trash entering these hotels from the back, like I was not worthy to walk with Alek or Eddie in public. I mean who would want to anyway.
The hotel looked dated, and I couldn’t recall if I had been here before. We tread up the stairs to the 3rd floor and I blinked back tears for whatever was waiting for me on the other side of the door.
The room was dark, with a maroon and green flowered comforter on each of the queen beds. The carpet was a forest green, perfect for hiding stains. A man leapt up from the edge of the bed when we entered. He had a button-up shirt on but it was unbuttoned revealing a huge hairy protruding stomach. His stomach covered up the waistband of his pants. He had a fat neck. One of those necks that you look at and immediately know he needs a breathing machine, or he snores like a monster. He was balding on the top of head, but he swooped his wispy thin black hair to one side, trying to cover it. I felt the bile rise in my throat. While I already hated this, it bothered me even more when they acted like disgusting slobs. I saw Eddie out of the corner of my eye smirking. He knew what I was thinking, what anyone would be thinking. Alek spoke to him in Russian while I stared at my bare feet against the disgusting carpet.
After a few a minutes of talking, Alek and Eddie left the room, and because Alek was speaking in Russian, I didn’t know how long I would be forced into this misery. I kept staring at my feet even after the hotel door closed. I had done this thousands of times, but each time felt like a new realm of hell. As he moved closer to me, I felt him take in a deep breath behind my hair. I shivered. He worked his way to the front of my body and grabbed my face with his sweaty sausage fingers.
“I have a long night planned for us,” he said while squeezing the sides of my cheeks.
I am not sure what came over me, but before I could think, I leaned forward with all my strength and head butted him so hard his nose immediately gushed red.
“You bitch!” he screamed in a thick accent. “You fucking bitch.” He grabbed his nose and rushed to the bathroom. I bolted to the door and unlatched it as fast as I could and sprinted to the hallway. I knew enough time had not passed for Alek and Eddie to be gone, so I had to hide. It was my only chance of escape. I turned the opposite way of the stairs and fled down the hallway. My hope diminished when I realized the hallway had no other turns and ended with a giant window. Fuck! I had nowhere to go. In order to reach the stairs, I had to run past the room once more. This time, I started running again, but with more caution. I could see he had not stepped into the hallway, but I couldn’t tell if the door was open. I closed my eyes as I rushed by the door unscathed and took a turn to the stairs. If every hallway was just one strip of rooms and a dead end, I was fucked. I hesitated on the 2nd floor but decided the 1st would be more likely the one to be different. I didn’t hear anyone in the stairwell as I opened the 1st floor door. Thank God it was a different layout. I passed by a man at the vending machines who gave me a quizzical look, but his attention was diverted back to the machine when his candy bar fell with a clank.
In the business center there was a printer and a few computer monitors lined against the wall. I kept going until I came up to a gym that had a backdoor leading to the outside parking lot. I entered the gym as casually as I could. If anyone really got a good look at me, they would know something was off. I kept my head down and walked to the backdoor and pushed it open. The chilly breeze hit me in my face like a snowball. I had no shoes on and a small red nightgown with a gray sweater. I either looked homeless or an escaped prisoner. Although the latter was true, I wanted to blend in until I could collect my thoughts and come up with a plan. In order to reach Linc, I needed a plan.
I stopped in my tracks when I noticed Alek’s car sitting outside the building. I couldn’t see anyone behind the wheel, which meant they probably went back inside looking for me. If I was going to get away, now was my chance. I ran as fast as I could, down the back alley behind the hotel that led to a parallel street. As I ventured through various alleys, taking different left and right turns, I eventually reached a place where I could stop and catch my breath. I let out a sob as I leaned my back against a brick building. I had escaped. Despite being completely exhausted, I knew I couldn’t stop at this point. I was too close to the hotel. I kept going, trying to avoid any glass or rocks on the streets. With each step, I could feel the tiny cuts I had already endured. Adrenaline is a crazy thing, though. That pain can be for a later time. If I could find a phone, I could call 911 and that would be it. Everything would be over.
I spotted a small cafe across the street. Several people were sitting in the windows working on computers or chatting with the person across from them. It looked warm and quaint. I could just walk inside and ask if they had a phone. I didn’t want to cause a scene, but I knew my appearance would. When I pushed open the door, a small bell chimed and it felt like everyone in the cafe stopped to look at me. I kept my head down and went straight to the barista at the counter.
He stared at me with puzzled eyes.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Do you have a phone I could use? I need to call the police.”
His eyes widened, and he pulled out a cell phone from his back pocket. At the same time, I heard the door chime again, and I glanced back. My heart stopped when I saw Alek enter the cafe. I bolted out of the shop, using the side entrance this time. I didn’t get very far before one of Alek’s men grabbed the back of my hair yanking me backwards.
At that moment, I became feral. I knew this was life or death. I turned back towards him and bit his hand as hard as I could. He screamed out in agony and shoved me away from him. I took the split second to run again, but a hot bullet to the back of my calf brought everything to a screeching halt. The burning made me scream in agony. For a split second, I saw the barista in the window talking to someone on the phone, looking frantic. I still tried to run, grabbing the back of my leg, but I didn’t get far before Alek kicked me in my back, making me fall face forward on the pavement. Another one of his men whipped the SUV around and Alek dragged me inside.
I laid on the floor board of the car with Alek’s shoes digging into my back.
“Someone is at my front door. Drive me back to the house now.” Alek snarled.