“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.
Something I noticed sometime after my arrival was that part of the plaster had
been chipped away, revealing wooden bones beneath. Two planks are exposed, with a large enough gap between them to allow all kinds of bugs to creep in.
It made my skin crawl the moment I noticed it, but it was quickly forgotten
when Rio came in with steaming soup in his hand.
“What do you want?” I call out.
Another flash of lightning, so quick that I barely have time to process what my eyes are seeing.
There—between the two wooden planks—is an eyeball. Wide and staring at
me intently. Just as sudden as it came, the light flickers out, and the room is cloaked in shadows once more.