Little Dove

by Jaden Wilkes

  When they exited, Dimitri leaned in and told the driver, “Wait here. We’ll be back down in ten minutes. We’ll be heading for the airport.”

  They packed in record time, dragged their luggage and abundant shopping bags down behind them and made it to the airport where their private plane was already fueled up and on the runway.

  “Nice night for a flight, Sir,” their captain said to Dimitri and winked at the girls. He looked slightly sleepy, but was probably used to middle of the night flights, given the types of clients he worked for.

  They settled into the buttery soft, white leather seats and were silent. The flight attendant brought them sparkling water and tiny pastries to eat on the flight, but Columbia wasn’t hungry.

  She had just murdered another man in front of her little sister, and it didn’t feel as good as it should have.

  Eden was curled up on the chair, a blanket drawn around her. She wouldn’t look at Columbia, her eyes were hollow and her face drawn. Columbia didn’t think she really understood the full extent of what had almost happened.

  “They were human traffickers, weren’t they?” she asked Dimitri.

  He nodded and glanced at Eden, concern in his eyes. “They would have taken her and had her in some central depot by morning. By tomorrow she’d have a brand new owner and a new home, and we’d never see her again.”

  Eden didn’t move, but Columbia saw her eyes tighten around the edges as she realized what might have been.

  “How barbaric,” Columbia said, “men like that make me fucking sick. They should all be taken, lined up and shot like fucking dogs.”

  She looked at Dimitri who now said nothing. She saw a look flicker over his features. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it was guilt.

  Had her Dimi done things like that when he worked for Sergei? The thought made her blood run cold and she shivered. She didn’t want to ask him in front of Eden, but she needed to know.

  She should have realized it, she thought, he was such a beast when she met him. He brutalized her and she’d believed him when he said he would cut her throat and fuck her while she was dying. She didn’t believe it now that she loved him, and she’d seen this kind and gentle side of him, but what was he like before her?

  She knew too well what it was like to lose a part of yourself while being brutalized. She knew how easily parts of your soul would atrophy when they were not used, compassion, empathy…simple humanity…they all fell to the wayside when survival was paramount.

  But to participate in something as appalling as what she’d seen. Stealing young girls off the street and forcing them into slavery? She knew on some level, that this wasn’t about Cinderella type stuff either. These girls weren’t being purchased to work scrubbing floors and folding laundry. These girls were being traded into the sex industry, whatever form it took. It sickened her to think of her little sister being raped for as long as they wanted her, then killed and disposed of like yesterday’s trash.

  It sickened her more to think of her Dimi being one of those men.

  She mirrored Eden’s posture and curled up on a chair, pulled a blanket over herself and pretended to sleep so she didn’t have to look Dimitri in the face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IOANA

  “What did they do to you this time? Do you need any help?”

  Ioana rolled away from the voice and hugged her pillow.

  She had been returned from Germany, the men had finally tired of her and moved on to new playthings. She had passed a group of young boys on her way out, none of them older than thirteen or fourteen as far as she could tell.

  They all wore the scars and downcast eyes of those well versed in the sex trade.

  She had touched one on the arm as she’d passed, offered a kind word, but was dragged away and cuffed on the head for her attention.

  She was back at the main house, this one in the Czech Republic. It was in the middle of nowhere, miles outside some rural town. It was remote enough that if anyone tried to escape, they’d most likely die of exposure before they made it anywhere safe.

  “I want to help you,” Iryna insisted, “let me do something. You know I hate sitting around like this.”

  “There is nothing you can do for me,” Ioana said, “nothing at all.”

  Iryna rubbed her back, knowing how the baby made it ache these days. She felt bad, being so angry with Iryna, but she couldn’t help it. They’d been almost inseparable since meeting at the auction. Since then, they’d planned to escape but hadn’t had a chance.

  Iryna was definitely special; she was different. She was engaged to the boss.

  She didn’t seem happy about it; her own father had exchanged her to pay off an old debt. But it meant that she didn’t travel to other houses full of men who wanted to fuck, men who wanted to hurt and cause damage.

  It meant that she had this comfortable room with a wide bed covered in soft blankets. It meant she had clothes that fit, baths every day and access to a television and the kitchen whenever she wanted.

  Her fiancé left her here, he was somewhere doing business or destroying lives, it was the same thing in his world.

  It wasn’t Iryna’s fault, none of this was, but she wanted to hate somebody for everything that had happened to her. Iryna was a convenient target, in spite of her kindness. Sometimes Ioana thought Iryna kept her around like a pet, a novelty to pass the time between shopping trips and dinner parties.

  The massage felt nice though, and she was allowed to keep Iryna company while the boss was away. She was allowed to sleep on the plush bed and bathe her weary bones. It was funny how this kind of life added decades to a body. She felt ancient.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Iryna and could sense the girl smile. Ioana was just a few years older than her, but had shed Iryna’s enthusiasm and optimism years and years ago. “I’m just really, really tired.”

  “Is it the baby?” Iryna asked and Ioana rolled over onto her back. Iryna loved rubbing her stomach, she squealed every time Ioana’s baby kicked or rumbled under the skin. “Poor thing, I hope we can get out of here before it comes.”

  “We will make our break in Berlin, when they’re moving the lot of us. It will be confusing, you’ll be with your man, and I’ll be with the rest. We have to plan to meet up at some point and try to get away.” Ioana move back to her side to alleviate the pressure on her bladder. Iryna kept up her massage. It seemed funny to Ioana that the other girl would want to even talk about escape, she didn’t seem like a prisoner. She worried sometimes that Iryna was just fucking with her, and was going to rat her out the moment she grew bored of the game. She had no other choice though, so she plotted with Iryna in spite of her concerns.

  “Sounds good to me,” Iryna replied. She pressed harder along Ioana’s spine, bumping her hand along the protruding vertebrae. Ioana didn’t know how she could be so underfed and yet so huge at the same time. Of course Boian’s baby would demand what was his, leaving her with little else. Boian was much the same way, but she loved him fiercely.

  “Can we go raid the kitchen?” Ioana asked and sat up without warning. Her stomach growled and she allowed herself to feel hunger.

  She also allowed herself to not think about the tens of people, men, women, and children, who were locked up downstairs.

  She couldn’t help them at the moment, so she would help herself, and her child.

  “Oh my god, yes,” Iryna replied, “I’m so sorry I didn’t think of it.”

  Ioana pushed herself and took Iryna’s hand. She couldn’t move that well these days, between the physical abuse and the shifting weight of her baby, her body wasn’t functioning normally.

  She couldn’t wait until she was free and her baby was tucked away somewhere, safe. She was going to work and learn, strengthen herself and develop the skills to fight.

  Never again would she be caught off guard like she’d been that night when the car had taken her from the pull out on her way back to her village.

  Next time sh
e would fight. She would bite and scream and kick and stab. She would never be helpless again.

  But for the moment, she moved her bulk down the stairs and planned on eating her weight in whatever leftovers the cooks had packed away from dinner.

  She cursed her body for the millionth time, for not being one of those lithe pregnant women with the adorable little bump. Of course she still had a couple months to go and had ended up with a gigantic stomach that made her feel as though she were balancing on a tightrope wearing high heeled boots.

  The beatings, of course, hadn’t help with her condition, but it was easy to forget about the physical abuse when she was removed from it. Romanian practicality, her family had never been one to dwell in the horrors of the past…and things became the past the moment they were over with.

  The yearning she had for Boian was never in the past. She carried it with her and tried not to let it drag her down. She bitterly cursed her mistake every minute of every day, and dreamt of going back to him.

  “Are you allowed in here?” a cook asked her, a startled look on her face. Ioana looked around for Iryna, but the girl wasn’t in sight.

  “Yes,” she replied, “of course I am.”

  “I’m calling the guard,” the cook said. She was a short, plump woman who seemed to take her job way too seriously.

  “I’m allowed in here,” Ioana insisted, “why else would I be gorging myself on leftover lasagna from your fucking fridge if I hadn’t been invited?”

  “Who invited you?”

  “Iryna.”

  The cook looked from one side of the kitchen to the other, “But she’s not here right now.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Ioana replied. She was getting angry, if she hadn’t been so heavily pregnant, she would have kicked the bitchy little woman’s ass right there.

  “What’s going on in here?” Iryna broke into their stand off.

  “I am being questioned on whether or not I am allowed to eat your leftovers,” Ioana said, not breaking her gaze from the cook.

  “I didn’t know she was with you,” the cook sputtered. “I’m sorry, miss.”

  “Don’t harass my friends again, do you understand?” Iryna stated.

  “Yes,” the cook said, bowed and left the room, red cheeked and humiliated.

  Up until that point Ioana hadn’t realized how much power Iryna had in her fiancé’s home. It hadn’t sunk in that she wasn’t like Ioana, she could live like this in luxury indefinitely, never being hungry, beaten, cold.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Iryna said. Her blonde hair was damp, had she had just been outside in the rain? “You think I have a nice life here, how could I want to escape?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  “It’s not a life I want. This isn’t a life I’ve chosen. Think back to when we met, he sent me into an auction. Had me stripped and beaten, and made me think he was selling me. Do you know how I ended up there?”

  “No,” Ioana replied. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know; it was easier to think of her beautiful friend as some kind of spoiled rich girl instead of a prisoner. She didn’t know why, but it made everything feel normal somehow.

  “He let his friends fuck me. I fought back. He got mad and made me suffer for it. He’s a fucking monster, Ioana, I know you might look at all this and think I’m nuts for wanting to leave. But those things he does to you…to those girls…all those people…he does them to me too.”

  Iryna’s eyes closed and she looked as though she were composing her thoughts, settling herself before she started to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” Ioana said, “I really did want to think of you as lucky and spoiled. I had no idea you were going through this shit too. I feel like a terrible person, going on about my own sad life and never thinking of yours.”

  “It’s okay,” she replied, “I know I’m better off than most of the girls in this house. But I could be one of them any day, at any whim. Any time he wants to offer me to his friends, or sell me off to the highest bidder…it’s all his decision. I can’t live like that, my entire life has been ruled by men and their decisions, from my father to my fiancé.”

  Ioana had lived some of her life like this, controlled and viewed as property. But she had also lived most of it in freedom, with her family or with Boian. She smiled when she thought of those wild, carefree nights spent with Boian. Moving under the city, emerging to eat or shop, then heading back down to make love and roll around like dark beings, ruling the underworld. “I know how you feel,” she replied, “freedom is better than a jeweled cage. I get it.”

  “It’s funny, I never thought of myself as a captive until my fiancé sold me off. Even when he forced me to service his men, I thought maybe I had a choice. I had this uncle when I was young, one of my father’s hired killers. He was huge, muscled and covered in tattoos, but he was gentle with me. One of the only ones, really. He told me all the time, every time he saw me, to make my own destiny. He would look around at all the luxury, the dripping diamonds, the gold encrusted everything, the seemingly endless parties and food, and he would say, ‘Iryna, all of this is worth shit in the end if you haven’t learned to blow your own nose.’”

  “A wise man, he wanted you to be independent from a young age.”

  “Yes, I see that now. I would laugh at him at the time, and think he was too old and came from a poor family, so he didn’t understand how things were done in my world. I realized much too late that he understood exactly how things were done, and he’d wanted to help me avoid that.”

  “What happened to him? Where is he now?”

  Iryna’s voice grew quiet and she said, “He died years ago. In a fire.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ioana replied.

  After a moment she added, “Why is your hair damp?”

  “I was outside, testing the perimeter. I do it all the time; I’m always looking for an escape. One of these days we’ll find one, one of these days we’ll get out.”

  Ioana took her hand and rubbed it, finding out this spoiled rich girl was as sincere about escaping as she was. She smiled and said, “We will…one of these days.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  COLUMBIA

  “Columbia, are you okay?” Dimitri asked her again. She was lying in their bed still processing the night’s events. They’d slept until late afternoon and he was already up, showered and dressed.

  “We need to talk, Dimi,” she said. She initially wanted to curl into herself and avoid the issue, but she owed it to him to bring it into the light of day.

  “Yes,” he said and sat on the bed next to her, “apparently we do.”

  “Those men, they were…what…pimps?”

  “No, they weren’t working women, they aren’t hustlers. They’re much more dangerous, they procure women for sex work.”

  “Did you…when you were working for Sergei…did you do that?”

  He was silent, he ran his hand over his head and she wanted him to say no, she silently begged him to say no.

  “Not exactly that, but I was involved.” His voice almost broke as he confessed it to her. She started to tremble; unable to process that her love had been such a vile creature. Somehow she could handle him being a stone cold killer, but to be involved in something like this, it sickened her.

  “Love?” he said and reached out for her leg. He ran his hand up her thigh, a gesture that would normally excite her now made her flinch. “I’m sorry,” he continued, “I was a much different man then. I allowed myself to go very low, lower than I thought possible. Looking back on it now, I am disgusted that I ever fell into such a lifestyle, but I also know I had no other choice. I was doing what I could to survive.”

  He fell silent as she contemplated his words. Logically, she knew he was right. He was no longer the beast she’d found in the Vancouver penthouse, but in her gut she felt sick. She couldn’t imagine the same as those men last night; she couldn’t fathom her Dimi being that cruel or heartless.

  “Did you fuck them?” she asked.
“Were there kids?”

  She braced herself for his answer, not knowing what she would do if he said yes to either one of her questions.

  “No,” he said quietly, “and no.”

  “How could you not? And why no kids? I’ve seen documentaries, kids are where it’s at.”

  “I had some standards I guess,” he said and laughed sardonically. “I don’t know what else I can tell you, it was a different time and I was a different person.”

  “You told me before that you fucked whores before you met me, what, did you vet them based on some fair practices code? Is there a fair trade hooker club? Some union you joined to make sure they weren’t kidnapped into slavery?”

  Dimitri drew in his breath and exhaled slowly. He sounded pained. After a long pause, he said, “I don’t think there’s any way I can convince you they were different. I don’t know what I can do or say to make this right, little dove. I would change the past for you, to make this right, but I can’t. You simply have to trust me that I was a different man back then, and you’ve changed me. You’ve made me a better person, and I love you for it.”

  Columbia knew he was speaking the truth, and thought about what he was saying. She supposed she had done unspeakable things in her life, killing her stepfather being one of them.

  Not pushing him off of her would be another.

  “I never told him to stop,” she said at last.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She rolled over onto her back and pulled him down to lie next to her. She needed his comfort; she needed to comfort him.

  “I never fought back,” she said, “I’ve carried that with me for years now. I let him do it, even though I was terrified. I understand what you mean, I think. I was so different then, and now I could never imagine letting that kind of thing happen. You’ve changed me, for the better.”

  “That was different,” he said and wrapped his arms around her, “you were a child, you had no choice.”