Chapter Eleven #2
I kneel at her side. There are bruises all over her arms. Some more around her neck.
I call her name, but she can’t hear me. A glass of clear liquid sits on the bedside table.
The condensation has left a pooling ring around the outside, the edges of which are murky white where they’ve mixed with something.
I take a sniff. Vodka, weakened by water—ice most likely—but tainted with something else too.
There are traces of a white crystal-like residue where the waterline ends. Was she drugged?
“Sylvie!” I shake her again and again, each shake more forceful than the last, until her eyes snap open and she lunges right for me.
Her nails are in my face before I can pull back to avoid them.
She chants “it’s mine” repeatedly while pushing my head away and clawing her way to the back of the bed.
I raise my hands in defence of us both. She’s feral. Panicked. Understandably so.
Her eyes clear slowly. Sleep becomes wakefulness. Her face blanches. “Celeste?”
She reaches out again, her hands run down my hair, concentrating on the darker colour and not on my face. “No. It’s me, Sylvie; it’s Jules. You’re safe. Aiden’s here. You’re safe.”
“What?” She finally looks at me, and recognition filters through along with an upper lip curl of disgust. “Why are you here?” It comes out sharp, accusatory. It’s understandable that she’s angry. They grabbed her instead of me. She’s here because of me.
“We came to get you. Aiden’s dealing with the creeps who took you. The team is on its way now.”
“What? No! They’ll hurt him!” Sylvie flies off the bed and over to the door.
She shoves the dresser aside with hardly any effort and yanks on the door until realising she has to unlock it first. I grab her wrist and haul her backward, but she’s a woman possessed.
Undeterred, she flings open the door and drags us both into the living room.
Her head moves fast. From left to right, she surveys the scene.
The original male is on the floor in cuffs.
One of Aiden’s men stands on his back; the sole of the boot will leave a print in the man’s flesh.
Another, bigger man with a shaved head and tattoos is on his knees, growling curses under his breath as he glares at the floor.
He’s clearly the muscle in this operation and makes the first guy look like a newbie.
Something about the scene bothers me, but I can’t think what it is.
Sylvie sucks in a breath when she sees the blood covering the younger man’s hands. Her face pales, her hand trembles, but she screams with unfaltering intensity, “Stop!”
All eyes turn to her. The young man’s face pales further. The bigger guy’s eyes widen in surprise, where Aiden’s narrow with suspicion.
Despite demanding everyone’s attention, there’s a flicker of a moment where Sylvie looks like she doesn’t know what to do with it. Her determination dies, and she releases her next sentence in a shaking breath. “Please. Please don’t hurt them.”
“Why?”
“They…” she glances desperately between the two captives, with fear carving deeply into her features. “They’ll hurt Conner.”
The larger of the two men smirks and lowers his head to the floor again.
“We need to get Connor…they have him…and they’ll hurt him…if you…if we…” Her words unravel into a frantic babble as she turns to me as if seeking help.
“Connor’s here,” Aiden says gently.
“What?”
“He’s here. He’s in the back room,” he confirms.
“Is he…is he okay?”
“He’ll be okay. We’re looking after him now. How about you? Are you okay, Sylvie? Are you hurt?”
“What? No…I…I’m okay.” She doesn’t look too sure about that, and her bruises are so much more prominent in the daylight saturating the large living space.
“You look pretty banged up. Are you sure?” I ask more gently.
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” I’d believe her, but her eyes flick to the younger of the two men, the one still wearing only a towel, and then away again.
Either she remembers or she suspects him of giving her those bruises.
Asking her about it in front of them won’t help anything, though.
Speaking your truth in front of the ones who hurt you is a trauma all of its own.
“You’re good, Sylvie. Connor’s safe. Let’s go get you something warmer to wear.”
“Don’t shower!” Aiden warns, and I shoot him a glare of fire. Way to tell the world you think she was raped. “Wait for debrief.”
He means wait for the psych to evaluate her. Wait for confirmation of rape so the rape team can get evidence. Wait for us to confirm she’s a victim. Why can’t they speak to her like she’s a survivor first?
Sylvie must understand what he means, too. As soon as we’re alone, she sinks onto the bed and closes her eyes.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re still standing,” I agree.
“I don’t need…I wasn’t assaulted in that way.”
“Would you admit it if you were?”
She eyes me angrily. “Would you?”
“No,” I answer honestly. “You’re in a hotel room with strangers—guys who took you—and you’ve not even had a moment to think, let alone come to terms with whatever happened here. I’d not be able to get my thoughts straight, no matter talk to anyone about what I went through.”
A long moment stretches between us. Sylvie seems to disconnect. She stares at the floor while I stare at her. I hear more people coming and going outside. Orders given, furniture moved, shouting, cursing; and yet in here there’s nothing but an expectant silence.
Sylvie breaks it first. “I’ll have to talk to them.” It’s a statement of fact. Not a question. She knows what will come.
“If you want to punish those who did it, yes. If you want to prevent something like this happening again, yes. If you want to move on without this dogging your thoughts…”
“Yes.” She cracks a lustreless smile, and it fades too fast.
“They told me they’d kill Connor,” she says. “I had to treat them nicely. I had to behave.” She tries to look at me, but she can’t bring herself to meet my eyes.
My stomach knots. “Then you did whatever you had to do. You kept you both safe.”
She nods.
“You’ll need to talk about it. Go through the…procedures.”
“They didn’t…I wasn’t raped,” she says again, pushing the point so hard I have to wonder if it is the truth or if she’s scared of revealing the truth.
“Did they force you to consent? Threatened you to let them touch you?”
“No…nothing sexual. They wanted me to answer questions about you, and Dax, and the business, but I didn’t know anything. I thought they were going to kill Connor, and I had nothing to tell them to make them stop.”
“Sylvie, talk to Aiden’s team. Please? Don’t carry this. Let them deconstruct it with you safely.”
She nods. It’s enough for me. I glance up to find Aiden lingering at the doorway. He nods his head for me to join him outside.
I turn to Sylvie. “I’m going to go check how things are going. Stay here. Will you be alright for a minute or two?”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” she responds automatically, staring at the floor as if it holds all the answers to the questions in her head.
“Okay. If you need me, I’m right outside.”
“Okay,” she repeats, not really listening.
I slip away and close her door behind me. Aiden lounges against the wall, watching his team take the two men away in cuffs.
“Will they be going to the compound?”
“No, they’ll be taken to a facility outside of Harrison for questioning.”
“And Connor?”
“He’s on his way to the hospital.”
“Was it bad?”
Aiden nods. “Bad enough. The doctor suspects a few broken ribs and a concussion. I should have got here sooner. I should have realised…”
“How? None of us even knew she wasn’t at the hospital.”
“Exactly. I fucking dropped the ball. Dax asked one thing of me. Made me promise to keep her safe from all of this and look what happens. God knows what they did to her. God knows what she went through. My head was so far up my arse just dealing with…”
I interrupt, knowing where this is leading. “With me. With my bullshit.”
“No…” Aiden flashes me a panicked glance. “No, Jules, that’s not what I meant.”
“But it is the truth, right? If we weren’t all so wrapped up in me, someone would have figured Sylvie was gone sooner.”
“None of this is on you.”
“Perhaps not, but things would settle sooner if I weren’t around acting like a bunny flaunting its tail in the wolves’ den.
” I rub my forehead then look up to the ceiling and sigh.
Arguing about this was pointless. “Forget it. We’re all just playing the blame game.
” Silence reigns between us until Aiden clears his throat.
“How is she? What has she said?”
“Not much. She swears they didn’t…” I can’t bring myself to say the words. Funny, I shouted them at Mr Trainor this morning. I guess there’s an entire world of emotion between the threat of something and seeing the possible aftermath of it.
Thankfully, Aiden understands. “That’s something, but I’ll let the team conduct their tests if they feel it is necessary.”
“I agree. I can’t tell whether she is telling the truth or trying to hide it.”
“I’ll warn them. Are you okay?”
“Fine.” It’s an automatic response, and we both know it.
“There’s no such thing.”
Typical Aiden, pushing for the truth. I give it to him. “I’m angry, guilty, tired, sick to my stomach.”
“I hear you. Better to say it out loud than to carry it.” I appreciate that he’s not trying to deny my feelings or brush them off. He feels them too, and regardless of whether it was our fault, we also share in the blame. Aiden reaches out and captures my hand. Squeezing it once before letting go.