Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Marie
The fluorescent lights hummed their constant, maddening noise—a sound I'd learned to tune out the same way I'd learned to ignore the ache in my body and the hollow feeling living in my heart.
Five years underground, and the buzz of those lights was the closest thing to music I heard anymore.
I stood outside Room 8, clipboard pressed against my ribs, and counted to ten. I was professional—the version of Marie Rivers who wore her competence like armor, her voice clipped and efficient, and held her spine straight even when everything inside her wanted to collapse.
"Lena, it's Marie. I need you to come out."
Silence stretched between us, then her voice came small and broken. “I can't."
I closed my eyes and let myself have exactly three seconds to feel it—the grief, the rage, the helplessness—before shoving it down where it belonged. Deep, locked, and useless.
Grief didn't get the girls fed. Grief didn't keep them out of solitary.
"You can." I spoke gentler now, the tone I used when someone was close to breaking. “The client’s flight got delayed. You have an extra two hours before your appointment. Come get something to eat with me."
The lock clicked, and I pushed the door open. Lena was curled on the narrow bed, her dark hair tangled around her shoulders. She was only twenty-three and had been here eight months, yet still flinched every time someone raised their voice.
"I don't want to eat." She whispered, her voice muffled against the thin pillow. "I want to disappear."
"I know." I sat on the edge of her bed, careful not to touch her without permission. That was something I'd learned early—down here, your body wasn't yours, so the small choices mattered. "But if you don't eat, they'll notice. And if they notice, you know what happens."
Solitary for three days, locked in a room smaller than a closet with no light or sound except your own breathing. They didn't need to hit us—though some of the guards did anyway, when they thought Castellanos wasn't watching. The threat of solitary was enough to keep most girls compliant.
Most girls. Not all.
Lena sat up slowly, her movements careful, as if something inside her had broken, and she was afraid of shifting the pieces wrong. She was beautiful, they all were, which was why they'd been taken.
"How do you do it, Marie? How do you just... function?"
I didn't have a good answer. The truth was, I functioned because nineteen other women needed me to. Because if I broke, the fragile system I'd built down here would collapse, and the girls would suffer. Or they'd want to die, and down here, that was the same thing.
"I focus on what I can control." I stood and offered her my hand. "Right now, that's getting you food before your appointment. Come on."
She took my hand and let me pull her up. We walked down the hallway, which was a tunnel with no windows or exits, only locked doors and guards who smiled when they touched us without asking
The Sanctuary. That's what Castellanos called it, which was the sickest joke I'd ever heard. This was his private operation tucked beneath The Orion, a luxury resort where wealthy men came to buy time with women who'd been stolen and reshaped into whatever fantasy they were selling that week.
I managed it all. The schedules, conflicts, and the careful negotiation of which girl could handle which client, and who needed a night off before they shattered.
Head Hostess. Another joke, except no one was laughing.
We reached the common area, a space barely larger than my old apartment, furnished with couches and a table.
Women sat scattered around the room in various stages of exhaustion.
Some were eating the bland, protein-heavy meals that passed for breakfast. Others just stared at nothing, their eyes empty in that particular way that meant they'd learned not to hope.
"Marie." Katya looked up from where she was braiding another girl's hair, her accent thick even after three years down here. "We're out of soap again."
Of course we were. Soap was leverage here—do your job, smile at the right people, don't cause problems, and you get your weekly allotment. Refuse, and you learned quickly that dignity was something they could take away one amenity at a time.
"I'll handle it." I made a note on my clipboard, already calculating how much of my own supply I could spare. I'd been cutting my showers shorter for weeks, rationing everything so I'd have extras for moments like this. "I'll bring some to your room tonight."
"You need soap too, Marie." Katya's eyes were too knowing, too sharp. "You can't keep giving everything away."
"I'm fine." None of us were fine, but I was functional, which was the best we could hope for down here. If that meant I went without so others could feel human for five more minutes, then that's what I'd do.
I got Lena settled with a plate of food and moved through the room as I did every day.
Checking in, resolving issues, making sure no one was on the edge of something I couldn't pull them back from.
It was exhausting work, the kind that lived in your bones and made sleep impossible even when they allowed it.
"Marie?" Another woman caught my arm as I passed, her grip urgent. She’d been here for two years. “Last night, Sophia’s client was rough. She's in her room and won't come out."
My jaw tightened, something dark twisting in my stomach.
Her client was a regular who paid obscene amounts of money for his time down here, which meant Castellanos looked the other way when he crossed lines.
But Sophia was nineteen, barely three months into her captivity, and was still fighting the reality of where she was.
"I'll talk to her." I squeezed her hand, the gesture brief. "Thank you for telling me."
I found Sophia exactly where I expected, curled in her bed, a bruise blooming dark and ugly across her collarbone. Anger twisted through me, a feeling I couldn't afford because rage made you reckless.
"Let me see." I sat beside her, professional even as my hands trembled with the effort of staying calm.
"It's nothing." Sophia's voice was flat, empty. The voice of someone who'd stopped fighting. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine." I touched the bruise gently, taking in the damage. "But you will be. I'm going to make sure that client doesn't get access to you again."
"He pays too much." She finally looked at me, and her eyes were decades older than they should have been. Nineteen going on ancient. "They won't care."
"I'll make them care." It was a lie, and we both knew it. I had no real power down here, just the illusion of it, but sometimes illusions were enough to keep people breathing, so I lied with confidence and hoped it would hold.
I spent the rest of the morning doing what I always did. Managing the impossible, ensuring the schedule ran smoothly, and de-escalating situations before they became crises.
Dennis, the same Dennis who'd smiled at me five years ago while driving me to my own kidnapping, grabbed me when I passed him in the hallway. His laugh was cruel when I flinched.
I couldn’t say anything. The guards did as they pleased down here, and complaining would only make it worse. So I swallowed the humiliation and kept moving, kept functioning, kept being exactly what they needed me to be.
By afternoon, I’d redistributed my vitamin stash to girls who looked too pale and managed to give Sophia three days off the schedule. It cost me, but anything I paid was worth it since I was the one keeping the girls on schedule.
Being useful is what kept me alive and what made me complicit.
It also meant I stood between them and took the verbal abuse from clients who were angry their favorite girl wasn't available.
I hadn't entertained a client myself in four years, since they'd realized I was too valuable as management, but that didn't mean I was safe.
The guards touched me because they could. The clients screamed at me when things didn't go their way. There was the constant, grinding awareness that I was complicit in the system that destroyed us all, even as I tried desperately to minimize the damage.
That night, I lay in my own bed and stared at the ceiling I'd memorized every crevice of. Five years. Five years since I'd seen the ocean, since I'd felt salt spray on my skin, heard waves, or watched animals swim.
I thought about Honey sometimes. She'd be eight now, probably still destroying couch cushions, still loving the beach. Or maybe she'd forgotten me entirely. I was sure my dad had adopted her, given her a life that didn't involve waiting for someone who was never coming back.
God, my dad. He'd probably spent the first year searching, the second year hoping, and the rest learning to live with the fact that his daughter had vanished without a trace.
He'd raised me alone after Mama passed, and taught me everything about the ocean, reading currents, and respecting the water.
He'd been so proud when I got that Best Tour Guide plaque. I wondered if he still had it, if he'd kept my apartment the way I'd left it, or if he'd finally accepted that I was gone.
I wondered if he still went to the marina at sunset, looking for me in every boat that came in. If Honey still waited by the door every evening at nine, expecting me to walk through with sandy feet and stories about dolphins.
I wondered if the ocean missed me the way I missed it—constant, aching, a longing that lived in your soul and never quite faded.
I had a plan to see them again. My dad, Honey, and the ocean that had been mine once and would be mine again.
Or I'd die trying.
The thought of the girls in the rooms around me—Lena, Sophia, Katya, and all the others whose names I'd memorized like prayers, cut through the numbness.
I couldn't save them from in here. I couldn't protect them forever and keep absorbing the damage, expecting to stay standing. Eventually, I'd break. Or worse, I'd become so much a part of this system that I'd forget I was supposed to be fighting it.
I needed to escape. Not just for me, but for them. If I could get out, I could bring help back. I could burn this place to the ground and take Castellanos and every man who'd ever paid to hurt us down with it.
The idea had been forming for months, taking shape in the quiet moments between crises.
I knew the guard rotations, knew which cameras had blind spots, knew the layout of this underground maze better than most. But knowing wasn't enough.
I needed an opportunity, a crack in the system big enough to slip through.
And maybe I'd finally found one.
An annual client was arriving next week who was wealthy, paranoid, and obsessed with “local experiences" that included elaborate props and plants from the island.
He'd requested custom arrangements for his suite and wanted it to look like the jungle had grown through the walls. Real branches, real flowers, real everything. Castellanos had agreed, because he paid top rates and got whatever he wanted.
Which meant I could request very specific supplies.
The Manchineel tree—the little apple of death.
Every local knew to avoid it, knew the milky sap could burn skin on contact, that even standing under its branches in the rain could scar you. Tourists occasionally brushed against it and ended up in hospitals, their skin weeping and raw.
It was toxic, dangerous, and exactly what I needed.
I sat up in the darkness, my heart pounding for the first time in years with something close to hope. If I could get branches of Manchineel, if I could expose myself to the sap just enough to create horrific blisters that looked contagious, they'd have to remove me.
Castellanos wouldn't risk his wealthy clients getting sick or the attention a ‘plague’ would bring to his operation.
The foreign doctors wouldn’t recognize it, so they’d take me out and away from The Sanctuary. Away from the underground tomb I'd lived in for five years, and once I was out, I could run.
The plan was insane and so painful. It could fail spectacularly and get me killed or worse, but it was a plan. After five years of this nightmare, I'd take insane over impossible any day.
I pulled out the notepad I kept hidden under my mattress, another perk of being Head Hostess, and started writing. Lists, details, every step I'd need to take, every risk I'd need to calculate.
The girls would need extra support while I was gone, and the schedule adjustments would keep things running smoothly so no one got hurt in my absence.
Even as I escaped, I focused on protecting them. It was the only way I knew how to exist anymore.
Tomorrow I’d submit the supply request for the client’s suite.
In a few days, the Manchineel would arrive, I’d expose myself to the sap, let it burn through my skin, and let them see the ugliness and panic about contagion.
They'd have no choice but to remove me, to take me somewhere away from the clients they couldn't afford to lose.
And then I'd run. Toward the coast, toward the smell of salt water, toward the ocean that had been mine once. Toward my dad and Honey, and everything I'd lost five years ago.
I was going to see them again. All of them.