Gabby sucked in a deep breath of air as she waited for the first punch to hit her. Joseph didn’t want too long before unleashing his anger.
Much to her surprise, he began with a question. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Maybe he wanted her to apologize or grovel, but she was determined to not give him the satisfaction. “I deserve to live my life the way I desire to, and I don’t want to do this anymore.”
This time she earned a sharp, stinging slap. “You ungrateful bitch. How dare you tell me that you don’t want to do this now? I saved you from a worse fate. You were just a child with no place to go, and I took you in. I gave you food and shelter, paid for your clothes, and took care of you. And this is what you give me in return.” Foam formed in the corners of his lips, a sure sign of his mounting temper.
Years of abuse had taught her to keep her mouth shut in such circumstances, but now she wasn’t the same cowering girl who got frightened by everything and anything. She’d learned courage with great difficulty and didn’t want to lose it now. “What you gave me was nothing in exchange for what you took from me. You forced me to clean this place, and you shoved me into years of depraved living by serving the men you chose for me. I gave you twelve years of my life in exchange for the food you put in front of me. Now, the rest of my life is mine.”
He raised his hand. She jerked a little in anticipation. Seeing her reaction, he smiled and lowered his arm. “You may think that you’ve regained your rights but nothing has changed. I will not allow it. Once a girl comes under my protection, she remains here until I no longer have any use for her. You were one of my special girls. Clients came to see you specifically. You could have charged any price that you wanted, but instead, you threw it all away to scrub dishes and serve men in a silly biker’s club.”
“I was free there to do what I wanted.”
He laughed. “You were a fool to defy me. What did you earn in exchange for this stupid act?” He clearly didn’t expect an answer. “Do you think that pansy boy who rides on fancy bikes and lives in that pretty house is going to come looking for you? What’s his name?” He snapped his finger. “Ah, yes. Nick. Do you think he will come here like an avenging angel and rescue you? Do you really think he cares enough?”
“He will come,” she said with a certainly that she felt in the center of her being. Nick wouldn’t leave her at this mercy of this miserable man. “And when he does, you’re going to wish that you weren’t born.”
That threat earned her three sharp slaps one after another. “You useless, spineless bitch. This is just a delusion. No one is going to risk their lives to rescue you. You’re no one. You’re nothing. No one cares about you except me, and you’ve ruined the only good thing you had going. I might have been able to forgive you for trying to run away but what you did with the police is unforgivable. For that, you’ve earned death.”
She gulped. Tears sprang to her eyes but she forced them with a vicious sniff. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d reduced her to this most pathetic state. From the moment he grabbed her, she expected this end. She’d known that he wouldn’t tolerate her presence for long. He’d said as much when he called her while she was with Nick. It was her fault that she didn’t take his threats seriously enough.
Gabby sniffed as she tried to get a grip on her feelings. Blaming herself wasn’t going to solve any problem. The only thing it did was to absolve him of all guilt, and it wasn’t fair to her own self when she did that. He enslaved her and when she ran away, he brought her back. He was the monster. He was the one who needed to be locked up for good. She was only sorry that she didn’t start the proceedings against him sooner. Had she done that, this might not have happened. Nick told her from the beginning to do it, even before they became deeply involved with each other. She should have listened to him. If she’d done as he wanted right from the start, she wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
But the time for regrets was long gone.
It was time to take charge, and she was doing it despite the consequences.
In a defiant gesture, she lifted her chin. “Do your worst. I don’t care.”
His lips peeled back to reveal his yellow teeth. He growled, deep in his throat as his hand twitched. He ached to hurt her. She could see the need for violence coil in his eyes. Gabby prepared for the worst. No matter what she said or did, he was going to hurt her anyway. Instead of saying anything, he stared at her, a speculative gleam in his eyes.
“Death might be too easy for you.”
She licked her bottom lip with her tongue. What the hell was he talking about? Gabby didn’t mind death. If that’s what he wanted, she welcomed it. All she could hope was that it was swift and painless, but of course, he wouldn’t grant her that small mercy. The man was a vicious, brutal monster who would want to hurt her in the worst possible manner. She imagined the various ways in which he could torture her; beatings with a belt, with a chain, perhaps blows to her body with a baseball bat, and maybe a knife plunged in the heart to finish her off. She could deal with it all.
Adversity didn’t make her as strong as freedom did.
If she couldn’t have it, she didn’t want anything else. It was better to die. Perhaps in death lay her salvation.
He surely expected her to ask as to what he planned, but when she didn’t say anything, he walked over to the window that looked out in the backyard. Even from this angle, she could see the large, wooden fence that surrounded the small, unkempt yard. “I’ve made a lot of investment on you, Gabby. Your clothes, your food, and your monthly hair appointments and the makeup you wore. Even your medical bills were paid by me.”
“You paid them with my earnings.”
He turned to face her. “It’s only fair that you pay me some more.”
Fear coursed through her heart. Whenever she imagined Joseph getting his dirty hands on her, she’d thought that he would want to kill her. She never expected him to keep her alive. Death was much preferred to the fate that he appeared to have in mind for her. “No!” She breathed out the word as if it was a prayer. “I wouldn’t cooperate. Never.”
A bone-chilling smile crept over his lips. “Your cooperation is not necessary. It’s not needed. I’ve got clients who would pay a great price for you, and it wouldn’t matter to them whether you wanted the same or not.”
The tears that swam in her eyes couldn’t be forced back with an act of will. What he planned for her was beyond horrific. “You can’t do this.”
“Oh yes, I can.”
She sprang out of the chair and lunged for the door. She didn’t want to do this because any attempt at escape would earn her nothing more than good beating, but still, she tried because if she didn’t do so, she would be trapped in an endless nightmare. Just as she reached the door, he grabbed her hair and spun her around with enough force to make her knock against the wall. A scream shot out of her lips as blood flew from a cut on her forehead. As she screamed again, he kicked her in the stomach and when she fell down, he kicked her once more to make sure that she stayed down.
“Stupid girl,” he snarled. “Haven’t you realized that there is no escape from this place?”
“Please let me go,” she sobbed out the words. “I will pay you whatever you want. Nick will give you the money.”
He bent down and thrust his face close to hers. His breath stank. “It’s not about the money anymore, silly girl. It’s about my ego, my pride. You’ve stamped on it and now you’re going to pay the price for it.”
Nick, where are you? She screamed in her mind. If only he knew where she was, he would have moved heaven and earth to help her, but she was too far away. No one knew where he kept her. They might suspect that he kept her in the same club from which he operated, but they couldn’t come inside to search for her. In any case, he didn’t intend for her to remain here for long. What he planned for her was horrendous beyond words.
Tears ran down her cheeks. “No, please no.”
<
br /> “Oh yes, baby. You’re going to serve me until your last dying breath and when I am done with you, then I am going to put you out of your misery.”
Gabby wished she was dead already.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Days blended into night as Gabby was shuttled from one client to another. Trussed up, tied with a rope that dug into her arms and legs, she was thrown in the back of a van and shifted from one man to another. She’d thought that all faces of evil were known to her, but she realized that there were other levels of depravity that she hadn’t been exposed to before. There were men who liked to have sex with her when she was tied to the bed, helpless and vulnerable. Some of them liked to hit her when she couldn’t lift her hands to protect herself.
Her life became an endless nightmare from which there was no escape. Gabby prayed for salvation, but knowing that it wasn’t close, she longed for death. It didn’t come. Battered and bruised, she lay spread on one bed and then another as Joseph drove her from one place to another. He wanted her to suffer, and this was the worst that he could do. Her pride, her self-worth, all evaporated as she was forced to do unspeakable acts to men who enjoyed her humiliation as much as they relished her body.
She wanted to die, but death eluded her.
But only for a short time. When he was done, when she couldn’t serve him anymore, he would kill her. She yearned for that moment to come, but he kept her alive by force feeding her in between her time on the bed. One man after another subjugated her to his will. She cried, she pleaded them to stop, but no one cared enough to listen to her. Broken in spirit, devastated and depressed, she finally stopped groveling. Quietly, she lay down while they did what they had to. One man blended into another.
“Gabby?” said a gentle voice she could recognize but Gabby refused to open her eyes. She couldn’t bear to look into the gloating face of the man whom she was brought to. How long had she been shifted from one house to another? She didn’t quite know. Was it days or weeks? Or perhaps hours? Time had lost all meaning. “Gabby,” said the man in a persistent voice. “Look at me.”
What the hell did he want? Wasn’t it enough that she didn’t protest, didn’t scream, or pleaded? What did he desire more than what he was already going to take?
“Gabby, it’s me. Lyle. Open your eyes. I want to talk to you.” In some corner of her mind in which sanity prevailed, she saw figments of her past life. Lyle? The man who helped her escape. Had she been brought to him?
She opened her eyes. His face swam into view. She was tied to the bed by Joseph and stripped of all clothes. She squirmed as she tried to sit. To her surprise, he opened the bonds that held her. He sat on the bed. “Lyle?”
His eyes traveled down her bruised body that was nearly black and blue. “What have they done to you?”
Tears poured down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop. Gabby didn’t want sympathy. He would do what he always did so there was no point asking for mercy. What was the use anyway? If he didn’t rape her, the next man would. “Kill me, please.”
Much to her surprise, he took her in his arms and patted her back. “Gabby? I want to help you.”
“There is nothing you can do,” she said.
“Is there anyone you can call for help? He told me to surrender my phone before I came in, but I have got another phone. He didn’t know.” Her confused mind couldn’t process the request. “Should I call the police?”
What if she reached someone who was on Joseph’s take? She couldn’t afford that risk. If he knew that she had called the police, he would kill her this instance and throw her body in the river. Joseph was bent on exacting his revenge but he wouldn’t keep her alive if it meant being caught. For him, self-preservation was everything. “No,” she said. “I need to…call someone else.”
Would Lyle actually help her? Was he joking? Perhaps this was part of Joseph’s plan? Maybe he told Lyle to ask her to see if she still had any courage left? But he put the phone in her hand. “You can use this.”
She stared at the phone as if it was a foreign object. “I can call someone. No! Wait!” What the hell would she tell Nick? She couldn’t speak of the horrors that were inflicted on her. “Where are we?”
He gave her the address. “Whom do you want to call?”
With fingers that trembled, she typed out the message and sent Nick a text. She gave him the address of Joseph’s club and this place. Joseph wasn’t too discreet when he called her old clients to see if anyone was interested. She’d heard him talking to a few more of them in half daze while he drove the car. She could take a guess as to where he intended to take her next. Of course, she could be wrong, but she sent Nick the addresses of two other places where he could possibly take her.
Would he come? How long would it take him if he set off now? By the time he arrived in town, she would be elsewhere. He wouldn’t be able to track her. But at least he would know that she tried. At least, that was enough for now.
“Thank you.” She returned the phone to Lyle.
He glanced at her as if he was trying to memories her features. “I am sorry for what he has done.”
Her lips lifted in a wry smile. “It would be better if I was dead. I am as good as. He is not going to let me live.”
“When he called and said that you were available, I couldn’t believe it. You’d left. So I told him yes, that I was interested. My wife has gone out of town, otherwise I would have had to say no. He insisted that you weren’t available in his club. I wondered what that was all about,” he explained.
“He doesn’t want a police raid. I think he is keeping all the girls somewhere else right now because there is an investigation going on against him,” she said. Even from this much talk, her throat began to hurt. Slowly but surely, her body was giving up.
Lyle ran a hand over her cheek. If he’d touched her in a sexual manner, she would have cringed, but the way he rubbed his hand over her clearly showed his affection. She could tell that he was genuinely sorry about her state. “I just wanted to make sure that you were doing this out of your own will, but it’s obvious that he is forcing you into this. How did you get caught?”
She told him the whole sordid tale. Once more, guilt hit her. If only she hadn’t left that day with Tasha to go to the damned store. “He is very angry. I don’t even remember how many days it has been since…he kidnapped me. What day is it?”
“It’s Sunday, October 25.”
Only two days had elapsed since she was snatched off the street and brought into this filth again, but for Gabby it felt as if she had been doing this for a lifetime. Her body had already been battered beyond recognition in forty-eight hours. What would happen if he continued this treatment for a week or months? She wouldn’t survive. She didn’t want to live like this anyway. If this was the way she was going to spend the rest of her existence, she preferred to embrace a quick end rather than prolonged agony.
Lyle tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. Emotions coiled in his eyes. She could see pity and sympathy. “I could ask him to keep you here for the day. My wife won’t come back before a week has passed. Let me tell him that I would be willing to pay double price. You could just rest and recuperate.”
She couldn’t believe that he was so helpful. What did he want? Or perhaps she was being so paranoid that she couldn’t accept anyone’s help without being suspicious. “He wouldn’t agree to it.”
“Let me just talk to him. He wants money so he will get it from me.”
Lyle walked out of the door. Gabby took that moment to pull the sheet forward. She could perhaps rest for a few minutes. All she’d done in the past days – surely, it was days, and not weeks – was to either travel in the van or service men. Whatever sleep she’d snatched was in the back of the van while she was tied up tightly. Her mind was exhausted, and her body was almost near-death. She could feel her energy draining with each passing moment. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to move at all, and then the end would come. But would it be quick, or would Joseph drag it out for
as long as he could?
Nick would never be able to reach in time to save her. The distance from this town to his was a ten hour journey by bus. She’d thought it was enough to keep her save, but apparently it wasn’t, and now the same distance would get her killed. But she hoped that he would be able to make Joseph suffer for what the way he tortured her. Even though she wouldn’t live to see it, it gladdened her heart to know that Nick would do his best to get Joseph sent to jail. Perhaps she would, in death, be able to protect the other girls he enslaved. It would be an accomplishment, perhaps a minor one, but still she would be able to leave her mark on this earth in some positive manner.
The door opened with a bang. She jumped up, knowing that her brief respite was over. Lyle was trying to pull Joseph back from the door, but the pimp swiped his hand and threw the younger man on the floor. “Stay away,” he yelled as he strode forward to yank the sheet off Gabby. “You bitch! You managed to turn him over, didn’t you?”
Outlaw's Wrath - An MC Brotherhood Romance Boxed Set Page 22
