Students filed out of the room from my last class of the day and I couldn’t have been more relieved. For the past few days, I hadn’t been able to focus. Sleep eluded me at night and my thoughts during the day had been drifting from Victor, to Donicko, to Sophia, and then to Emma.
I sat down at my desk and rested my head in my hands. I couldn’t keep living this way. John may have ruined my life, but I was the only one who could make it right again. If anything, I needed to do it for Sophia. She no longer had a life, wherever she was.
There wasn’t a day that went by where she didn’t come into my mind at least once and lately, she’d been plaguing my dreams, more so than usual. Maybe it was because, for the first time in a long time, I was starting to open up.
Lifting my head, I turned and looked out the windows on the side of the room. The previous night’s dream had me waking that morning in a sweat. It was a memory of one of those rare occasions I tried to make Sophia feel normal in a fucked-up world.
*
Seventeen years old
It was a Saturday, and John was away for some lawyer conference he attended every year. The perfect opportunity to try and get Sophia out, but there was no way that was possible.
John was smart. As much as I wished that weren’t true, he was always a step ahead of me. He’d told me before he left that he’d put in extra security on the place and to not get any ideas while he was gone. He also told me Donicko would be swinging by sometime during the weekend to get some papers from his office.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he had someone watching the house, too, so any thoughts I had quickly went out the window.
With him being gone, I wanted to do something for Sophia that I normally wouldn’t be able to do. She was locked in that damn basement with nothing, so my plan was to bring down the little TV and DVD player I had in my room so we could watch movies all night.
I knew the room was under surveillance, so I figured I’d probably receive a phone call from John. Maybe even a little visit from Donicko, but I didn’t care. They could both go fuck themselves. This was for Sophia.
Stashing the DVD player in a bag, I pulled the straps over my shoulder then grabbed the TV before heading downstairs. When I visited with Sophia the night before, I’d told her I had a surprise for her. I couldn’t wait to see her face.
I knew it wasn’t anything to get overly excited about, but I felt like I had to do something. She was the good in my life of fucked-up-ness. When I was with her, I was normal. I was the Mason of the past when life was different. A life where I wasn’t trafficking girls. A life when I wasn’t cutting myself to drown the pain and rid myself of the evil that had taken over.
I needed to be something for her. A part of me felt responsible for her even being there. Why else would John have brought her to the house? He’d undressed her like a fucking present and presented her to me. To me!! He brought her there for me. I was the reason she was there. Her life weighed on my shoulders. I just didn’t know what to do about it.
Making my way down to the basement, I approached the door and lightly knocked before I opened it and walked in.
Sophia was sitting on the bed with a book in her hand, her hair in a messy bun. She still wore the baggy sweats she’d been in for a week already.
I kicked the door closed and met her gaze. She put her book down and slipped off the bed.
“What are you doing?” she asked, pointing to the TV.
I smiled at her. “We’re having movie night.”
She looked at me, confused. “Movie night?”
“Yeah.”
“What about John? He’s allowing you to bring down electronics?”
“He’s out of town,” I said, glancing at her with a smirk before placing the TV down on the floor. There wasn’t a desk or table to place it on, so the floor would have to do.
She walked up beside me, resting her small hand on my shoulder, and I turned to look at her.
“Get me out of here, Mason. If he’s not here, you can get me out. Just let me run. You don’t even have to help me. Just pretend you don’t even realize I’m gone.”
I frowned at her words. If she only knew how badly I wanted to let her go. There was just so much going on that she didn’t understand. So much I didn’t even understand.
I lifted my arms and placed my hands on her shoulders to bring her body closer to mine. Then I wrapped her in a hug.
“Soph, I want to, but you know I can’t.” I pulled her back to look into her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want to. If I were to just let you walk out, you could get killed. I don’t know what they have in play.”
She pushed herself away from me with a scowl on her face.