by Olivia Ryann
Then I make my way out of the airplane hangar, ripping my face mask off and tossing it to the ground.
4
Katherine
I have a vague memory of being injected with tranquilizer a few times. I remember being awake enough to recognize a plane, and a car. I know that the man that taunted me after he bought me was nearby that whole time.
I see him in my mind. His strange grey eyes and his dark brow, his large frame and black clothing, the dark stubble on his cheeks. His skin isn’t the same tone as mine… it was more olive in complexion. When he spoke, his English was accented…
But I was too far gone from the drugs to determine any more than that.
I wake again, coming fully into consciousness, and I look up at a royal blue ceiling. I groan to myself, leaning up to look down at my body. Gone is the dress that I wore at the auction. In its place is a deep, blood red sleeveless shift dress.
My fingertips accidentally brush a spot on my collarbone and even that slight touch stings. Carefully, I pull my dress away from my skin, peering down at a smoothly bandaged spot about an inch by an inch. It’s then that I remember his expression when he dug his knife into my flesh, the glee I saw in his eyes when he marked me forever.
Even though I am careful not to disturb the spot further, I have to struggle against the tears that prick my eyes. What kind of monster just outright mutilates another human being?
To my utter humiliation, my panties and bra are gone too. I feel naked, knowing that someone looked at my completely nude body while I was unconscious.
My shoulder throbs, reminding me of that moment of back at the auction, when he showed me who he was by carving something into my flesh. I lift my hand to touch the spot that he marred with his knife. A gentle clanking draws my attention to my wrist, where I find a finely wrought handcuff attached to a delicate-looking gold chain.
I tug on the chain, and find that I’m tethered to some place behind the bed. I have enough chain to move around the room, but not enough to go anywhere outside the room..
This is… bizarre. Where exactly am I? I know it’s the daytime, but I have no other clues.
Then I think about where my family is, and it all sort of hits me at once.
Gone, that’s where my family is. They’ve left me, intentionally. I’m not the kid from Home Alone, I’m Liam Neeson’s daughter in the movie Taken.
Worse, I’ve been sold.
Just what am I supposed to do with that information? As tears start to well in my eyes, I can’t help but see the events of the last few days play out in my head.
Tony’s expression when he betrayed me to the cops.
The cop’s face when he hauled me out from underneath the desk.
The horrible misery that I faced when I woke up in my cell at the auction house.
And him. The man who bought me. His eyes… the cruelty and derision I saw there gave me chills.
I roll onto my side, my tears escaping onto the grey fabric under my body. What could I have done to drive my family to sell me? Sobbing, I think of Tony’s warning.
Did Dad really sell me because he was running out of money? Could I really be worth so little to them?
Don’t they love me?
Snot runs from my nose, and I wipe at it with a corner of my shift dress. I let my tears overwhelm me for a little while, crying until I feel completely hollow inside.
No one comes to the dark wood door at the sound of my tears; there isn’t anyone here that is very interested in whether or not I am comfortable, I know that for sure.
I blink a few times, looking at the large bed I am in. There are no sheets or blankets, just a soft grey cover over the entire thing. The room itself is pretty large, with no decoration except a window seat built into a bay window. There is no cushion, and the window has no drapes or dressing.
I scoot myself off the bed, standing on my wobbly legs. The floors are all dark wood, smooth and cool against the pads of my bare feet. I go to the door first, but find it locked.
Unsurprising, I guess. After all, I am chained up. It’s not like I could leave if I found the door open.
Next, I explore the other side of the room, going to the window seat. The window is thick double paned glass, and it doesn’t open. Outside the window is shockingly picturesque; I’m high up, overlooking a small orchard in full bloom. Behind that is a crumbling brick wall, with lush greenery and mountainous terrain. Everywhere that I can see in the distance is just hills upon hills, jungles on top of jungles.
Wherever I am, I am definitely not in New Orleans anymore.
That brings on another crying jag, even though I still feel empty from earlier. This one isn’t quite so energetic, more just weeping quietly while staring out the window.
Though I’m distraught, I realize that I’m hungry. I’m not really sure what to do about that. I try to remember my last real meal, and I can only think of the morning that Tony sold me. We stopped at McDonald’s that morning, went through the drive through.
I had half of an Egg McMuffin, and dumped the rest in the trash. I think about that other half, and my mouth salivates. How wasteful I was, when I knew where my next meal was coming from.
I spend a couple of hours examining my room in the most minute detail. I look at all of the walls, examine all the baseboards. Under my bed, I find a large golden box, maybe five feet by three feet, and a foot and half tall. It is very heavy, and pulling it out and pushing it back are almost too much to ask of my food-starved body.
I look into the bathroom attached to me room, a simple enough affair. A toilet, a clawfoot bathtub. All done in white, down to the floor tiles. I figure out that I have just enough chain to get to the toilet, but not enough to reach the bathtub.
I return to the bed when my curiosity is sated, sitting to think. At length, my jumbled thoughts turn to my captor again. I have so many questions about him.
Who is he? What does he want with me? Where did he bring me?
More importantly, will he let me go?
I lie down on the bed again, growing tired. My eyelids are heavy, so I close them.
When I wake again, he is sitting right beside me, his grey eyes piercing me. He looks down on me as if I were a spoiled lover, and he the older beau that liked to indulge me.
I sit up, recoiling from him. As I stare at him distrustfully, his lips curve upward in the hint of a smile.
His expression doesn’t reach the cool grey of his eyes though, and that fact gives me chills. He’s younger than I thought, probably in his mid thirties. And his body is well-muscled, honed. By what, I don’t know.
Yet another mystery surrounding him.
“You’re awake,” he says, as simply as though I was a girlfriend and not a frigging slave.
I can feel his eyes on me, all over my skin. I try to breathe normally, but my heart is racing a million miles an hour. He looks thoughtful.
“You’re prettier than I expected you to be.” He leans closer, and I cringe. He places his hand on my bare thigh, and chuckles at my scramble to get away.
He just grabs the chain that’s connected to my wrist and loops it around his hand in a smooth motion. He gives it a yank, and I am pulled off balance. I tumble back on the bed.
“That’s enough of that,” he says mildly. He cocks his head. “I need a new name for you. Katherine Carolla is dead, so I need something feminine and… something small, like you.”
“I’m not dead,” I say, my voice shaking. I tug at the chain, but he doesn’t even flinch.
“You aren’t, no. But neither are you Katherine. I killed her when I bought her at the slave auction. Or didn’t you notice?”
I make a face at the words slave auction. “So you admit that you’re the kind of man who hangs out at slave auctions, then?”
My words come out saltier than I meant them to, but he doesn’t seem to take offense. He doesn’t seem to hear me at all. He narrows his gaze on my face.
“Fiore,” he says. “It means flower
in Italian. I think that will be your new name, girl.”
“My name is Katherine,” I say, defiant.
“You will soon learn how very wrong you are. You will soon learn a lot.”
His grey gaze is heavy on my face, my breasts, the juncture of my thighs. It makes my skin crawl.
He’s crazy, that much is evident. I need to get as much information from him as is possible, and then I can mull it over when I’m alone again.
“Where are we?” I say, switching topics.
He arches a brow. “Columbia. We are on my compound, alone except for the staff to keep things running smoothly. No one will help you.” He pauses for a moment. “No one will come for you. You know that, right?”
I left my chin, tears pricking my eyes. “You don’t know that.”
He pulls on the chain, bringing my closer. “But I do, Fiore. I do know that. Your father sold you down the river, your brothers too. There is no one else, is there?”
I clamp down on my emotions, though I can’t stop the tears from leaking down my cheeks.
“You’re a monster,” I tell him, tasting those same tears on my lips. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“No?” he says, something glinting in those deadly grey eyes.
He stands up, using the chain to force me over to the edge of the bed, kneeling. I can see the chain is cutting into his hand, but he seems unconcerned. He stands between my knees, holding the chain up high so that I can’t sit on my heels.
He skims with hand up my inner thigh, which makes me jump. His hand goes up, up… until he finds the nestle of curls just at the juncture of my thighs. His fingers probe my lower lips.
“No!” I say. When he slips a finger casually inside me, not the least bit concerned with how I feel, I scream in his face. “No! I said no! Stop!”
His finger inside my body is an absolute, unquestionable violation. I try to move, to close my knees against him, but he just lifts my handcuff painfully high.
The invasion of his rough touch is everything I have spent my entire life being told I should fear. So I do fear it.
I fear him.
He leans in close, almost touching his face to mine. “You belong to me now, Fiore. I own you. I can do whatever I want to you, whenever I want it. And you’ll do what I say, or I will kill you. It’s as simple as that.”
“Monster,” I whisper, closing my eyes. As if that could shut him out. “What do you even want from me?”
He withdraws his finger from me and leans down until he’s right next to my ear.
“Everything,” he says, his breath tickling my ear and making goosebumps break out on my arms and legs. I feel a sudden sense of dread.
And then he releases my chain, walking out of the room like he’s got somewhere better to be. Like I’m not shaking and afraid, like he didn’t make me feel that way.
I am left staring as he slams the door shut, my mouth agape.
What.
The.
Hell.
5
Katherine
I wake to footsteps. I roll over, expecting him. Instead it’s two older men, carrying in a desk. They are dressed in a uniform of sorts, each wearing baggy gray pants and a matching long sleeve shirt. I sit up, alarmed.
My stomach growls with hunger.
“Hello?” I ask, scrambling to the foot of the bed.
One of the men looks at me with something like pity in his wizened brown eyes, but the other speaks to him sternly in Spanish. He drops his eyes, chastised, and they move the desk in the corner by the window.
“You have to speak to me,” I argue, darting out of bed. I step in front of one of them, blocking him from leaving.
Without meeting my eyes, he roughly shoves me aside, continuing on his way out of the room. I follow them as far as I can, until my golden chain is pulled taut.
“Come back!” I call into the hallway. “Please! Hello?”
No response. Certainly no Monster, which is what I’ve dubbed the man with the grey eyes and the timbre of voice that gives me chills.
Monster is the one who purchased me.
Swallowing, I push the thoughts of Monster away.
I look out into the hallway, which is done in the same dark wood floors, the wall that I can see painted white instead of navy blue. There is a window at the very edge of my vision, but I can’t make out anything else.
Then the men return again, this time carrying a beautiful gold plush fainting couch. They put it against the wall by the door.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I tell the men as they move the couch. “It’s a mistake. Please, do you have a phone? Or… could you call 911 for me? Please, I’m begging you here…”
The men act as though I’m not even present. They come in and out of the room, bringing a rack of blood red clothing, a chair, a pillow for the window seat. At last, the men bring in a silver serving tray of chicken, rice, an apple, and a big glass of water.
No fork, certainly no knife. But I fall upon the tray like the starving wretch that I am, almost not noticing that one of the men grasps my chain and unlocks the golden handcuff from my wrist.
I glare at him, rubbing my wrist, my mouth too full of food to complain. The food is so basic, but it tastes wonderful to me. I see the men leave the room, but I’m unable to leave the tray until I’ve literally licked the plate clean and eaten the apple down to the seeds and stem.
Because who knows when I might see food again? I don’t, that’s for sure. I’ve fallen off the edge of the world, down the rabbit hole, and landed here. Nothing makes sense in this strange place.
Truly, it’s the first time that Alice in Wonderland has ever made complete sense to me.
After I lick my fingers clean, I am stunned to realize that the men left the door to the bedroom wide open. I no longer have the handcuff holding me back, so I move to the door.
Carefully, I poke my head out the doorway. I peer down the long white-walled hallway, taking in the window across from me, the closed doors to other rooms. I don’t see anyone, which raises the question of whether or not I am supposed to have the run of the place.
I don’t know. All I know is that I am barefoot and afraid… and that if my release is some kind of fluke, I don’t care. All the news stories I’ve ever heard about girls that have been abducted and imprisoned ended with the girl taking advantage of a small mistake, and walking away.
Oh god… I’m one of those girls. Will my face be shown on the news? Will anyone even notice that I am missing?
Something tells me that they won’t.
Panic rises in my chest, but I push it down. I don’t have time for that right now… I’m definitely going to try to escape, because this could be my only chance.
I touch the spot on my collarbone where he carved into my skin. It’s healing now, really itchy. Pulling the little bandage off, I peer down to the wound, where it is pink and angry and puckered.
It’s good to have a reminder of just what kind of stakes are involved here, I guess. That’s the only silver lining I can find here.
I leave the bedroom behind, padding quietly down the hall. I go first to the window on the other side of the hall, but when I look out, I just find that the window looks down upon an empty courtyard. I blink for a second at the building itself, done in white wood with elegant high windows carved here and there. It’s very Spanish in its design, soaring and classic.
I look up to see the roof, which is finished in multicolored orange and red clay tiles. The house I’m in is actually breathtaking, if I had the breath to give. As far as I can tell from counting the windows below, I’m on the third floor.
I give myself a shake, to stop from gawping at the view. Turning, my bare feet make me shiver as they tread the dark wood floor. As quickly as I can, I make my way through the maze of hallways, looking for a staircase.
I have to get down to the bottom floor. That’s my best chance of escape.
As I roam the mansion — because there is a
bsolutely no question that this is a mansion — I notice something pretty startling. Despite everything I’ve seen so far being spotless, there are no servants here, no one doing any work.
No one that I can beg for help, but also no one to hide from, either.
I find a staircase at last, a small one made for servants, I presume. I fly down the stairs, ending up in a dark, cramped hall that is lined with brick. To my left I hear the bustling sounds of women talking in Spanish and heavy machinery moving. Down the hall and to my right, there is a short flight of stairs. At the top of those stairs there is a pair of doors thrown open wide, with sunlight pouring in from the outside.
And just like that, my plan of escape comes to life. Less of a plan and more of a mad dash, really. But I will take what I can get.
Looking both ways to make sure no one will see me, I sprint for the stairs. I make it up to the top, bursting outside. I’m surrounded by a little verdant yard, and then the hills immediately begin to rise, green and dramatic and ivy-covered.
I run out to the first hill, eyeing the slope. It has to be at least forty five degrees high… no one can climb that kind of a grade, not without climbing equipment. Frustrated, I bite my lip and decide to follow the bottom of the hill around the side of the house.
There must be another way out, somewhere.
“I wouldn’t do that,” says a deep male voice. I turn around and find several men standing in the doorway I just escaped from. At a glance, the men are probably from South America, and they are dressed like they are in the military. They are all well muscled and scowling, all wearing tactical vests and the same red bandanas. Two of them hold rifles, their ease with the weapons speaking volumes.
While I stand frozen in my tracks, the man who spoke steps forward. “Our master doesn’t want you to be lost. We will track you down, if need be. Come back inside.”
The two men with rifles swing the guns in my direction, and I blanch. “No, you don’t understand…”
