You need to be at full strength, I soothe myself. I’m sure there is plenty I should be doing regardless of my physical state. Learning patterns, listening for anything that could help me, but I’m too fucking tired, and my body is steadily shutting down anyway.
He shrugs, a strange glimmer sparkling in his dark eyes. “Pills. But that’s not what you should be concerned about.”
Rio steps toward me again, his boots echoing on the floor until his knees brush the white sheet. He bends at the waist, his lips scarcely brushing across my cheek while hot breath fans against the shell of my ear.
“Better hope the men here don’t come in for an easy meal,” he whispers, eliciting a cold chill.
My throat dries and clogs with a pool of emotions. Mainly disgust and anger, but also terror. The thought of men taking advantage of my body while I’m out cold is sickening. My stomach twists in response, and it takes all of my self-control to hold back the hot tears in my eyes.
“Francesca would let that happen?” I force out, my voice hoarse and strained. He retreats an inch, watching my expression closely. I stare straight ahead, refusing to meet his soulless gaze.
“She wouldn’t know.” He pauses, a vicious grin tipping up the corners of his lips. “And neither would you.”
I hold tightly onto my composure, body shaking as my control threatens to slip. Another tear slips loose as his thumb brushes my bottom lip, prying it open and placing a white pill on my tongue.
“Swallow,” he orders quietly. I do, only if it means I won’t remember any of this.
“Good girl,” he praises.
Fuck you.
Then, he brushes a finger down my spine lightly, leaving chills in his wake.
“Don’t worry, princess, maybe I’ll be taking good care of these stitches when they come sniffing,” he murmurs, offering a shred of hope I refuse to cling to.
I snarl, and glare at him through blurred vision.
“And you’d be any better?” I hiss, challenging his morals. They’re as obscure as frosted glass.
Slowly, he straightens his spine and shoots me a cryptic grin. “I guess you’ll never really know, will you?”
Turning, he walks out of the room. The second the door clicks shut, several more tears escape. And once those are set loose, a flood follows. I curl into a ball and slap a hand over my mouth right as a sob breaks free.
For an indiscernible amount of time, I crumble, weeping until my eyes swell and I have nothing left to give. And then slowly, I suck in deep breaths until I’ve pieced myself back together again. It’s messy, and some parts of me have been rearranged, but I’m no longer in ruins, and that’s the best I can do for now.
Wiping my eyes, I blow out a shaky breath and take inventory of my new room. The pill is beginning to set in, and coupled with my pity party, it’s hard to stay awake, but I haven’t gotten a second to take it in without someone breathing down my neck.
They assigned me a room at the back of the house, though a decent size. It’s sparse, the cramped space occupied by a mirror, a lumpy bed with a deflated pillow and scratchy blanket, a nightstand, and a dresser.
Just like the rest of the house, the wood creaks with every step, and I have a feeling I’m going to learn the exact spots that don’t make any noise.
On the bright side, there’s a nailed-shut window that provides a perfect view of the driveway, allowing me to see who comes in and out, and I don’t have to share a room with anyone.
Before Francesca showed up, Rio had informed me that five other girls are being groomed for auction. Francesca’s job is to mold us into proper sex slaves. Teach us how to act, how to look, and what not to do.
But what she really does is teach us how to survive.
I don’t see the fucking point in any of it.
The more compliant, obedient, and pleasant we are, the less likely we are to be needlessly abused, Rio claims. But there’s no doubt that the buyers will have a brutal, sadistic side, nor is there any doubt we’ll be on the receiving end of it, regardless of what perfect little pocket pussies we are.
They want us to feel as if there is no escape, so we might as well act right and take the good days with the bad. But that’s not surviving; that’s conforming.
It’s accepting that we will die here one day. Never to see our family or loved ones again. Never to experience freedom, laughter, and independence for the rest of our miserable lives. To never truly love and be loved.
But I won’t fucking accept it.
I’m going home-to Parsons Manor.
And to Zade.
A creak from beside my bed rouses me from a deep slumber I’ve been wading in for what feels like years. I startle awake in a cold sweat, disoriented, and confused when there’s nothing but blackness, and the soft white glow of the moonlight peeking through the window, the strands weak beneath the shadows.
Only a whisper of my escalated breath can be heard over the pounding in my chest.
It takes several seconds to remember where I am. And the moment it registers, the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Someone’s watching me.
Slowly, I sit up, my eyes adjusting to the darkness that’s pressing in around me. I turn my head to look out of the window, light rain pattering against it.
Lightning washes the old room in a flash of bright light, and I take the brief moment to get a good look around.
No one is in here-at least not that I can see.
But I feel the weight of eyes on me, searing the side of my face like a hot iron left on a silk dress.
“Who’s there?” I whisper. The words barely make it out, my throat underused and dry.
When no one answers, I look toward the nightstand and search for the markings on the side of the table. There are six tally marks, but with it being so dark outside, it has to be after midnight. I’m on day seven now.
Before I let the pill take ahold of me on my first day here, I scratched a line into the cheap, soft wood to mark the days, vowing to keep track any moment I awoke from my drugged slumber.
Rio’s always there when I wake up, ready to escort me to the restroom and shove soup and water down my throat before I’m knocked out again. He’s been putting the drugs in my food, and I know that I could refuse, but what’s the point? I’m not getting out of here if I’m starving and dehydrated. And I’ve found I don’t mind drinking the poison.
Too drugged to care, he watched me scratch a line in the wood on the second night, and for some unfathomable reason, he started tallying them for me when I told him the days are blurring.
He doesn’t say much, nor has he mentioned any men attempting to take advantage of me. If they tried, they certainly didn’t succeed considering I’d feel the evidence of it. I doubt any of them would bother with a bottle of lube.
So, whether it’s because he doesn’t care to inform me of his good deed or because no one has attempted it-I don’t know.
There’s another soft creak from my left. My eyes snap in the direction of the disturbance, right in the corner of my room.
“Who are you?” I ask, though the words don’t come out any better than the first time.
I hold my breath, waiting for a response. Several stilted seconds pass, and then just barely, I hear another low creak, as if someone shifted their weight from one foot to the other.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.