Thirty Days of Shame

by Ginger Talbot

  “That’s true. I would never traffic children. And really, we’re not as bad as the other traffickers. All our girls are eighteen or older, and we actually pay them a percentage of the money they earn. They all get to use condoms and they’re tested for disease every week. We don’t bring in men who would torture or harm them. And after three years, we let them go, with enough money that they can start over in life. I mean, by the end of the three years, they don’t look that good anymore anyway, so they’re not worth as much.”

  Every single word is a knife blow. I cannot survive this.

  I can’t be that wrong.

  He can’t be a pimp.

  “Stop lying to me!” I scream. I’m a desperate, panicked animal. “Why are you doing this?”

  He just sits there without a word, and the sad sympathy gleaming from his eyes is worse than a punch to the face.

  I grab a metal globe paperweight and throw it at him with all my strength, and it gashes him so hard that blood sprays from his cheek. Scarlet rivulets run down his face and splash onto his shirt.

  He doesn’t move at all.

  I realize he’ll just stand there and take anything I dish out at him. He won’t stop me. Jasha won’t stop me. I think Sergei would let me kill him. I almost think he’d welcome it.

  But I can’t.

  “I love you. I want you to stay with me,” I plead.

  “You want to stay with a married man who’s a pimp? You want to come to Russia with me and be my mistress?” He looks puzzled. Blood runs down his cheek and drips onto his shirt. “You know, you were right that Lukas is my son. My wife misses her son. My work is done here, and we need to go home.”

  “Fuck you! You lying bastard! If you want to break up with me, you could say so without lying like this.”

  “Exactly.” He spreads his palms. He doesn’t even try to staunch the steady river of blood that continues to flow. “I have no need to lie. Which should make it pretty obvious that I’m telling the truth.”

  “You are a coward! A disgusting, filthy, coward.” Once upon a time, if I insulted him like that, he would have turned into a raging beast. He would have dragged me down the hall to his playroom and beaten me until my flesh burned with agonizing pleasure, and then he would have had sex with me. He would have made me beg for his tongue and his cock.

  That will never happen again.

  Because my world just flipped inside out into a horrible lunatic nightmare. The sun is cold and up is down and words are bullets.

  I’m crying so hard now that I’m dizzy. I fall to my knees and wail. I hug myself, screaming and rocking.

  Jasha kneels down next to me. He pats my back awkwardly.

  “He shouldn’t have done that to you,” he says.

  Shouldn’t have done what? Lied, or told the truth?

  Either one is the end of my world.

  I plant my palms on the floor in a desperate attempt to hold myself steady. The room is spinning.

  “Listen,” Jasha’s voice is saying from the ceiling. “My mission, my work for Sergei, is done. I will stay here with Anastasia and the children, and I will protect them. And you! Of course, you too. That is my new mission.”

  I’ve seen the way he looks at Anastasia. I’ve seen how the kids’ mistrust of him has turned to admiration, how they follow him around pestering him with questions, and how he answers, gruffly but with affection. How protective he is, how he chides them when they do anything that he thinks might possibly put them in danger.

  He will stay with them. They’ll be all right. Thank God for that, because I’m falling into an abyss with no bottom.

  I look up and Sergei is gone.

  I try to stand, and fall back to my knees. My thirty days is up. Sergei was as good as his word. He didn’t just set me free; he expelled me from his world.

  Sergei left, and he took my heart with him.

  I curl up in a tight ball, rocking, my mind splintering.

  “This isn’t over,” I scream at the indifferent heavens, my voice crazed. I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I’m no longer sweet little Willow, the girl who bends for everyone. He doesn’t get to do this to me. I will find out the whole truth of the man, no matter how ugly it is, no matter the consequences.

  And if he’s telling the truth, if he’s married, and a human trafficker – then heaven help him, because I will tear his life to shreds like the monster I’ve become. Like the monster that he made me.

  Day thirty, nighttime…

  SERGEI

  As my plane glides over the twinkling landscape below, I glare out of the window, and I don’t bother to try to hide the tears streaming from my eyes. My men have never seen me like this before, but everything about our life is new and strange now. They pour themselves drinks from the minibar, and Maks shoves a bottle of vodka and a glass at me.

  I open it without looking at it and drink directly from the bottle.

  There are so many things that I want to tell her, need to tell her, and I can’t.

  An hour ago, Jasha gave me a look of utter disgust and fury when I went to say goodbye to him. His arm was looped around Anastasia’s slender waist, and she clung to him and looked like she wanted to murder me. Our little group of survivors is shrinking. Now I’ve just got Maks and Slavik in my inner circle.

  Slavik clears his throat. “It’s not that I like her, or care about her. I mean, she’s Vasily’s daughter. And I’ve never questioned you before. But…you didn’t need to do that.”

  My voice is raspy with sorrow. “I did. I broke her heart, but I saved her life.”

  “Let the stupid bitch cry until she chokes,” Maks growls. “She’s a fucking Toporov.”

  “Watch what you say about her.” I clench my shaking fist.

  “Yes, sir.” His voice is thick with resentment. His gaze is dull. He’s dazed by our success. He paces back and forth and doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself.

  “You don’t need to come with me, you know. Either of you. Because this is a suicide mission we’re on now.”

  “At least it’s a mission.” Maks flings himself back in his chair. He’s reacting as I thought he might. Killing Vilyat and shutting down the last of the traffickers was a high. Now he’s on a low. Without a mission, he’ll fall apart. Earlier today, I offered him ownership of any of my companies, and he just cursed me and threw a cup of coffee at the wall.

  As for Slavik, his face is impassive as usual, and I can’t tell what he’s feeling, but he also refused to take over any of my businesses, and he looked insulted when I suggested he didn’t have to come with me.

  The plane rises higher and higher, taking me away from my love, my life. I wish I could tell her why I’ve done what I’ve done. I wish I could take her with me, but that would be selfish, and if there’s one thing that I’ve finally learned from Willow, it’s that I need to do at least one selfless thing in my life, to be worthy of the love that she gave me.

  The love that I’ll never have again.

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  NOT THE END!

  Look out for “Thirty Days of Hate”, the thrilling conclusion to Willow and Sergei’s story, to be published the first week of January 2018!