Most of time, I did feel safe—at least when it came to the black and whites who came to the cottage, and then to the Europeans and Americans who came to Moscow. The two times I was beaten by clients, those men were beaten far worse by my captors. One of the men, they told me, was going to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. The other lost a big handful of teeth.
I was far more scared of our guards and our bosses. Of Inga and Catherine. They were geniuses when it came to torture. They knew just what to give and just what to take, and their moods could change like the sky in December. They knew how to keep us on edge—and, if we ever were disobedient, the things they could do that would hurt us the most.
…
In Moscow, I met two girls from Syria. Refugees of civil war there. Tell me, who’s worse? Someone who sells young girl or someone who buys one?
…
We did not perform for webcams when we were in Moscow. Inga said there was some discussion among the men about what they called the “risks and rewards,” because Daddy thought it was worth exploring. On the one hand, they thought it might be a way to make more money during the day, when most of the time we were killing time in our hotel rooms, smoking and watching TV. She said it was like McDonald’s. They started opening for breakfast years and years ago. They already had the griddles, so it was crazy not to use them to cook eggs instead of hamburgers. Inga said Daddy talked about the time difference between Moscow and Los Angeles. When it is eleven a.m. in Moscow, which is downtime for girls like us, it is eleven p.m. in Los Angeles, which is perfect time for men to sit before their computers with their pants off.
But there were problems.
First of all, it would allow us girls more access to computers. Second, it would allow us to meet customers our bosses didn’t know. Third, it would mean an online money trail. The computers could be traced.
So, Daddy and the men who ran us thought we might find a way to cry out for help. And then it might be possible for the police guys to find us.
Make no mistake: We were not escorts. We were not prostitutes. We were just slaves.
…
But still they would use this word around us: freedom.
They would dangle it before us like rattle before baby. Like piece of yarn before kitten.
It had been so long, I couldn’t imagine. And none of us had been taught to be grown-ups, so freedom was like strange fantasy. We didn’t pay bills or have checking accounts. We didn’t have credit cards. We didn’t know how to do anything but fuck and please people: the people who paid for us and the people who (and Inga and Catherine hated this word, and told us we would feel better about ourselves if we didn’t use it) pimped us.
If we ever were actually free, what were we supposed to do? Suddenly wake up and be bank tellers? Nurses?
They said if I gave them two or three years in New York City without any problems—no attempts to escape, all my men happy—I would be allowed to keep a few of my regulars and the apartment they would find for me, assuming I could pay the rent. I would be what they called an entrepreneur, my own boss. It was my body, they said, and we would reach a point where I could do with it whatever I wanted. I would be twenty-one or twenty-two years old and I would be on my own.
We all would.
Anyway, that was the plan. Freedom. Or, at least, a life a little bit more like free girl than slave.
…
Inga and Yulian were with us 24/7 our first week in New York City. We called Yulian the White Russian, but only behind his back. He had thick hair the color of snow, and the shoulders and chest of a man who, when he was young, I bet could have benched close to three hundred pounds. I guess he was fifty. He always seemed a little bored when he fucked me, as if it was beneath him to relieve his urges on one of the slaves. He had been a young politician when the Soviet Union collapsed. The rumor was that he was married, but we never knew for sure. He may also have been one of Daddy’s cousins, but that may also have been just a rumor. The men kept their lives private. He carried an antique Korovin semiautomatic pistol that he said was a gift from his godfather. Inga told me one time that Yulian’s godfather had been KGB: Soviet secret police. One beautiful sunny day at the cottage, we were forced to watch him shoot birds.
The plan was for Inga to leave us after a week or two in America. Given our value, she was going to spend a little time to make sure our transition was like butter, but her world was Moscow. Not Manhattan. And she did go home after ten or eleven days with us. But Yulian and Konstantin stayed. They were business guys making things happen.
I remember the six of us had flown to the U.S. in two groups—two different airplanes. I was with Crystal and Konstantin. But the planes landed within half an hour, and so all of us were met at the JFK airport by two of the men who were going to help run us, Pavel and Kirill. Each was behind the wheel of an identical black Escalade.
Three weeks later, both of those dudes would be dead.
…