by Stella Noir
“I’d like to talk to you, Brooklyn. About this situation. It’s a little …”
“A little fucked up? Yeah, I was about to say the same thing myself. You took the words right out of my mouth. So is this food and water that you brought me drugged too? Should I just take my clothes off now to save you the trouble after I pass out?” I asked as I glared at him and gestured to the tray of food.
“No, it’s not drugged. Look, Brooklyn, I know there’s no way that I can explain this to you in a way that you’ll understand or that will make sense to you. What I mean is …”
“You mean in a way where I won’t think you’re a sleazy piece of shit?”
“Yeah … that. Listen, Brooklyn, your father owes my family a lot of money. He’s been borrowing over a hundred thousand dollars every month for almost a year now and he doesn’t seem to be making any effort to pay it back. In this kind of situation we, my family, need some leverage to ensure that we will get the money that is owed us.”
“And I’m that leverage? So you’re holding me hostage until he pays?” I asked as I took a bite of seafood infused rice that made my head swim. I didn’t particularly want to take anything from Adrian right now, but he was right. I was weak because I hadn’t eaten hardly at all while I was down in that horrible cell. I wasn’t going to let my disdain for him keep me from getting my strength back, and besides, this stuff was amazing.
I continued to eat while I listened to him talk and I tried not to think about the feelings I had carried around for him for the last seven years of my life. How I had felt about him for years after the summer we spent together.
“I wouldn’t say we’re holding you hostage, exactly. If your father were to come up with the money in six months time, then yes, we would no longer have a need to hold you here. But, unfortunately, that isn’t exactly how things usually turn out.”
“What do you mean? How long has that other girl been down there? I heard her while I was in that cell and she sounded so sad. She sounded like she would rather be dead than down there. Does her father owe you money too?”
“Yes, her family owes us money. We keep all the girls down there to prepare them for where they will eventually wind up if their families can’t pay.”
“Just spit it out, Adrian. I don’t understand. Where might they wind up?”
“On the black market. We sell them to recoup our losses.”
“So it’s true? You sell human beings on the black market. You sell the girls that you kidnap? I had heard that but I couldn’t even fathom that it could be true,” I said as I stopped eating and stared at him. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me.
“And I guess I’m one of these girls, correct?” I said as I looked at him, waiting for an answer but nothing came. He just looked down at his hands and then back up at me. I threw my fork down and pushed my chair away from the table.
“You’re going to sell me?” I screamed, throwing my plate of food across the table at Adrian so that it covered the front of his shirt and landed in his lap. I got up from the table and picked up my chair and just as I felt like I had a good swing built up Adrian jumped up and wrapped his arms around me and I dropped the chair behind me.
“Get your hands off of me! You fucking monster! Get away from me!” I screamed as I twisted and struggled in his arms. He was easily a full head taller than me and I was hopelessly overpowered.
“Brooklyn, please, just calm down,” he said as his impossibly strong arms held me close to him.
“Calm down? How the hell am I supposed to calm down?” I said as I writhed around futilely in his arms trying desperately to find some way to slip out of them. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want him anywhere near me.
I couldn’t believe this was the same guy. He couldn’t be the same boy that sat on the beach with me and told me about the things that he loved. About his dreams of gathering food off the beaches and creating a whole meal with what he found. That was how we first got on the subject of paella. How he knew it was one of my favorite foods.
I stood there shaking as I thought about the person that I had always dreamed that he was. But I had evidently created the boy in my head out of thin air. There was no way that kind and gentle person would do the things this man had done. The horrible things that the man who was now holding me in his arms had done.
I felt like everything was a lie. Everything that he told me and everything that I believed about him. He told me all about his love of seafood and everything having to do with the ocean. That the two things that he would want to be most in life were an oceanographer or the owner of a restaurant on a small resort island.
But it was all lies. Everything he had told me was a lie. Everything that I had believed that I loved for the last seven years of my life was a lie and I hated him for making me believe him.
“Brooklyn, please …”
I felt his lips on the top of my head and tears flooded my eyes. I stopped twisting back-and-forth but now my body was shaking and heaving with sobs. Adrian stood there and held me with one arm wrapped around my entire body while the other hand stroked my hair.
“How can you do this to me?” I said in between sobs. “How can you do this to anybody?”
“I had no idea this was going to happen, Brooklyn. I’m so sorry. I would do anything if I could get you out of here, but I can’t. You have no idea how powerful my father is.”
“But what about everything you told me that summer? You didn’t seem like the kind of person that would do those horrible things. Was it all a lie? Was everything between us a lie?” I said as I pulled away from him and looked up into his eyes.
“No, it wasn’t. I never lied to you, Brooklyn. It was just a dream. That whole summer, everything that happened between us, it was all just a dream for me.”
He suddenly looked very sad and kept his eyes on the wall behind me. He still had his arms around me and even though I was furious and felt like my world had been crushed it was still oddly comforting to be so close to him.
“When we met I felt like I finally had found someone who I could talk to. Someone who didn’t seem to know about my family, and about my reputation. It made me feel free. For a really short period of time, I felt a kind of freedom I had never known my entire life up until that point. Freedom to just be who I was without my father watching me and telling me what to do or say, or even what to believe.
My brother and I had already been in control of some aspects of the business for quite a while and for years I thought that I was lucky. I thought that I was someone special because so many people were afraid of me; afraid of my family’s reputation.
I didn’t realize until I met you how much I had been missing out on. Just sitting on the beach and talking to you was so different. It was very special to me. I felt like you appreciated me for what you saw in me rather than my family name. I’ve always been grateful to you for that, Brooklyn, and I’ve never forgotten how you made me feel.
But when that summer was over I knew I could never go back. I didn’t want to bring you into any of this. I had the business to take care of and I believed it was what I wanted.
But none of this matters now because I have the responsibility of taking over the family legacy and I can’t let my father down. I can’t do what my father is asking me to do; to do to you what I’ve done to all of the other girls, but I can’t just let you go either. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said as he sat down on the bed and ran his hand through his hair.
“I’m so sorry, Brooklyn. I’m sorry that you’re here and that you’ve been exposed to all of this. But more than that I’m sorry that you know the truth about me. I never wanted you to know the kind of person I really am.”
“But I don’t understand. Why can’t you just tell your father that you don’t want to do this anymore? Can’t your brother take over the family business?”
“It’s not that easy, Brooklyn. It’s not like telling my father I don’t want to continue with the family
shoe repair business. I’m in it. I was born into this life, and I have participated in it heavily, and because of how well-known my family is, and the kind of person my father is, I can’t just stop.”
I stood there for a moment and looked into Adrian’s eyes. I didn’t see a horrible person in those eyes but I also didn’t see a person who was willing to stand up and take control of his own life either.
“I don’t buy that, Adrian. You can do anything you want to do. What you’re really telling me is that you want to keep beating the shit out of girls and selling them on the black market. That’s what you can’t stop doing. Because if you really did want to stop, you would.”
Adrian looked down at the floor and ran his hand through his thick, black hair again.
“I have to take you back down there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Back down to that cell? Why?”
“Lucas is here, and he knows that I brought you up into my house. He said he is going to tell my father if I don’t take you back down to the training grounds.”
“Why? Why does he care?”
“He’s jealous.”
“Of what?”
“Of how I feel about you,” he said as he looked back up at me.
“How do you feel about me?”
I didn’t know why I cared. It brought tears to my eyes to think that I would actually want a psychopath to love me. But that wasn’t exactly true because I had just found out he was a psychopath. I’d actually been in love with him for years and that’s why I cared about how he felt about me.
“I won’t leave you down there. I’ll bring you back up as soon as I can,” he said as he stood up and put him hands on my arms. “I promise.”
“You’ll be safe in here. Lucas doesn’t have a copy of the key. I’ll bring some more food and water down for you in a little while.”
“Don’t bother. I couldn’t eat a thing after knowing what you plan to do with me,” I said with my back to Adrian. “Just leave.”
I heard the door click shut behind me and the sound of metal grinding against metal as the key turned in the lock. I was in a completely different room than I had been in before. It didn’t feel like a cell at all, it felt more like the bedroom in a medieval castle.
These walls were also all made out of stone like they had been carved out from the side of a mountain. But this room didn’t have any bars and it didn’t feel like a cage or prison. It felt like a room from a very dark fairytale.
On each of the walls hung a variety of objects that on first glance appeared to be some sort of collection of ancient weapons, but on closer inspection looked like a variety of tools for punishment. There was also a section dedicated to intricate metal devices that resembled everything ranging from a leg brace to a speculum.
I didn’t understand how all of these items were used, but I understood what they were used for. After what Adrian told me, I knew that what he and his brother did down in these cave-like rooms had something to do with preparing the girls for sale on the black market. And for what they were used for after they were sold.
I could only assume that they were sold as sex slaves, so that meant that Adrian trained girls to do whatever he wanted them to do whenever he wanted them to do it.
There was a huge bed in the middle of one wall that was covered in a deep blue velvet brocade spread. It was gorgeous. If I wasn’t so terrified and anxious I would have been intrigued by this room and the surrounding caverns. It was a beautiful room, even with the bizarre devices that lined the walls.
I turned around quickly as I heard the door unlock. I wasn’t expecting Adrian to come back down so soon, but maybe he really did want to make sure that I had food and water. I realized that I wasn’t really afraid of him as much as I was feeling sorry for myself because I had let myself believe a total lie about him.
I had conjured up the perfect man in my head and had believed that silly story for years. And now my fantasy world had been blown away and all I was left with was sadness and regret. But my stomach sank when the door opened and I saw his brother Lucas in the doorway.
“Hello, Brooklyn,” he said with a smile, his eyes traveling down to my feet then slowly making their way back up my body and resting on my eyes. “It’s been a long time, you’re looking well.”
I stared at him as I slowly took a step backward. He took one toward me and with every step I took to try to distance myself he immediately made it up with one of his. And the whole time he inched closer he smiled at me like he had found a new toy to play with. I walked backward away from him until the backs of my legs hit the massive bed that sat in the middle of the room and when I did he took one final step so that he was practically on top of me.
“What do you want, Lucas?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“Is that any way to greet an old friend? I came here to see you.”
“We’re not friends, Lucas. I’ve only spoken with you a few times,” I said as I nervously looked around the room. There were plenty of things that I could grab and hit him with but he was way ahead of me. Before I knew it he had flipped me around and had my hands tied behind my back.
“This isn’t my first time with a new trainee, so you can forget about trying to outsmart me. It won’t happen,” he said as he pushed me forward onto the bed and ripped my shirt in half as he pulled it off of me. I screamed and struggled, trying to pull my wrists free, then felt my head twist to the side as Lucas grabbed a handful of my hair and pushed my head into the velvet bedspread.
“Go ahead and struggle. Scream if you want to. There’s nothing you can do, Brooklyn. And there’s nothing your boyfriend can do for you either. If he’s not going to train you then it’s up to me, and before you know it, you’ll be begging for my cock down your throat,” he said as he bent over me and grabbed both of my breasts with his hands. He pawed at them and twisted the nipples until I yelled out, then pressed his face into mine, laughing in my ear. He let go of my breasts and stood up then grabbed me by my hair again while he continued to laugh.
“Now just relax,” he said into my ear as he pulled my body backward by my hair. “I’m going to make sure you enjoy this first time. It’s not how I usually do things with a trainee, but I have a feeling I know how to make both you and my brother squirm.”
Lucas threw me back onto the bed and I felt his hands underneath me, unbuttoning my jeans and then yanking them off. Then I felt my panties being ripped off of my body as well.
“Nice ass. I can see why you’re such a hot commodity around here,” Lucas said is he grabbed my ass cheeks and pulled them apart, exposing me to the air. I felt his fingers run up and down my sensitive lips, then his hot breath move across my skin. Then I felt his tongue lick one long trail from my clit to my asshole.
“Mmmm … tastes like someone just took a bath. Is that a hint of lavender mixed in with your own personal flavor, or is that rosewater I taste?”
I twisted back-and-forth still hoping that I could loosen the ties on my wrists but as I did, I felt one of my legs being pulled to the side and then attached to a cuff at the foot of the bed. My other leg was pulled in the other direction so that my stomach was laying on the bed but my legs were spread completely open right on the edge.
“Please, Lucas. Please stop,” I begged. I was terrified and humiliated. I didn’t know what he was going to do to me but I was also terrified of the thought of this being my life. They couldn’t do this to me. They couldn’t just use me however they pleased. I didn’t deserve to be treated this way. No one deserved this.
I heard him walking around the room behind me then I felt his hands on my ass again. He was spreading me apart and poking his fingers inside me and then I heard the hum of a vibrator start. His fingers started moving inside me as he pressed the vibrator up against my clit.
A rhythmic whimpering noise engulfed me and suddenly I realized that the sound was coming from me. I had started crying when his fingers first penetrated me and now that I realized I was close to coming I s
tarted to sob. I was horrified that my body was betraying me and that I was about to have an orgasm at the hands of this fucking savage.
“That’s right, Brooklyn. Just let go,” he said in a creepily calm voice as he fucked me with his fingers. I felt an enormous amount of tension mounting inside me and a warm rush that spread out to my legs and up through my stomach and my body started convulsing. My entire body started bucking and grinding into the bed as I felt the immensely pleasurable sensation of fluid shooting out of me.
“Looks like we’ve got a gusher here,” he said as he laughed. “I’ve never seen that much liquid shoot out of any of the girls here, not that we usually let them come. Mario’s going to need a mop to clean it all up,” he said as he continued to hold the vibrator to my convulsing body. I was moaning and sobbing and shaking and the only thing that calmed me was the thought of Adrian.
It’s Adrian back there, not his horrible brother. It’s okay if it’s Adrian, I thought as tears continued to stream down my face.
“If you’re that wet you must really be ready for me,” he said as the clammer of his belt hitting the ground rang out behind me.
“Oh God, no. Lucas, please, no!”
It’s Adrian. Just pretend it’s Adrian. That’s the only way to get through this.
I cried out as I felt his hands grab my thighs and the head of his cock move up and down over my slick pussy.
“You have no idea how much I’m going to enjoy this, Brooklyn,” he said as he started to force his cock into my asshole.
Adrian
I walked back to my office and flopped down on the couch. I couldn’t fathom how everything had gotten so fucked up; not just this whole situation with Brooklyn, but my whole goddamn life. This way of life, everything my family did, the killing, the torture, the training, all of it was part of me. It was all I knew from the time I was born.
