I kept my head bowed, my heart continuing to thump in my chest.
“Look at me, girl.” His voice was sharp and I obeyed. I didn’t realize then he would want to see my eyes, see what I looked like before he stole everything from me.
What he didn’t know was what I had looked like before. Before any of this. He didn’t realize there was nothing there anymore. Nothing left to steal.
He could torture me, but it was irrelevant. An irritation. Like the sharp bite of a mosquito on the skin.
“You are to be given free reign here, provided you please me,” he said, taking my hand in his thin one. He guided me through the great room, toward the rest of the house. As we walked, I looked around at the vast expanse of my kingdom.
I would be a caged bird.
He coughed, the sound jolting me out of my thoughts. He brought a handkerchief to his mouth. “You are not a prisoner,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts.
“No, sir,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. I would learn to call him Master.
He stopped, turned toward me again, and I felt his eyes on me, but I looked straight ahead. “You are a rare beauty, Meia.”
I nodded. It wasn’t a good thing. It was a curse.
Later, when he showed me the room, the feeling of terror intensified again. I stood there, staring at the instruments, the implements I would come to know well, my child brain unable to wrap my mind around what could be done with them.
That night, I would begin a new set of lessons. He would subject me to small pains at first, stimulating my body at the same time. Those were the pains I was used to from the finishing school in Bangkok...the sharp sting of the whip, the flat hand across my body. It was gentle compared to what I had suffered before.
That first night was the easiest. It wasn’t until he had lulled me into a sense of security, treated me kindly over the course of the first week, that he began the torture.
~
It was an irony that the thing that saved me from the old man - my pregnancy - was the very thing that would become my undoing, the very thing that would keep me bound to Aston. The old man was no longer interested in me after I became pregnant. He left my child and I money in the will, an apology of sorts, or at least I liked to think it was. It was the money that made me bold, made me think I could simply walk away from everything with my son. But I hadn't been so lucky. Aston had found us.
"Fights?" I asked, looking around the old building behind the clubhouse. It was a small building, decrepit the last time I saw it and just about the same now, with a concrete floor and metal walls like any other warehouse. Except this looked like a fucking training facility, nothing fancy, but the type of thing you'd find in one of those old school boxing gyms - a makeshift ring in the center, some heavy bags hanging in the corners, and weights over in the side. Two of the brothers were inside, their hands wrapped, punching at the bags.
"What the hell is this?" I asked, turning toward Blaze. "You guys starting a boxing gym or something?"
Blaze smiled. "Benicio's doing some underground stuff." He shrugged. "Don't knock it. We get paid good for providing the muscle during the fights, running the books, and keeping the bullshit to a minimum."
"What's with the set up here then?"
Blaze shrugged. "A couple of the brothers have gotten in on the action. They're legit pretty good, unlike Big Mike and his shit talking."
I remembered Big Mike, and couldn't help but laugh. Big Mike could barely walk a hundred yards without breaking a sweat, his gut hanging over his jeans. He was a walking fucking heart attack. He wasn't going to be doing any underground fighting any time soon, and we all knew it. But I had no doubt he would be talking himself up big time as the next big thing. Dumbass would get himself killed one of these days when someone called him out on his bullshit.
I watched one of the brothers go at the heavy bag, throwing jab after jab, his fist making contact with the bag over and over. It brought back memories of high school, of all the fighting I had done while I was growing up. That's what happened when you were white trash like I was. I'd been smart though, good with computers and figures-it's how I got away from all that shit.
But now, surrounded by the sounds of fists making contact with a heavy bag, the stale smell of sweat in the air...I clenched my fists at my sides, unfurled my hands and then closed them again. I could feel myself getting the itch to fight, and I told myself to shut it down.
But shit, on the other hand, all the working out I was doing now, the weight lifting, wasn't doing me any fucking good. Letting my fist connect with something might be what I needed.
It might even be goddamned therapeutic, I thought, smiling wryly at the thought of what MacKenzie's therapist might think. Somehow I thought beating the ever living shit out of someone else wouldn't exactly fit the bill.