by Stella Noir
The thought of walking back onto the yacht filled me with doom. It felt like I was headed to the gas chamber as I walked down the wooden dock and to the slip where it was tied up.
I didn’t want to get back on board without Brooklyn. It would have been fine if I had handed her off to Gina and knew she was safe, but everything on the boat remind me of her. And the fact that she was in some unknown place right now on her way to a Russian mobster’s training compound in the middle of the woods made my stomach turn.
But Lucas was right. I needed to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind that was connected to her or to me.
We climbed aboard and went into the main cabin where I found my tablet and the satellite phone, and took them back to the spare bedroom with me and threw them into a bag with some clothes.
“Is that the only computer on board?” Lucas asked as he gestured to Brooklyn’s desktop.
“Yeah, Brooklyn backed everything up before she left so do whatever you want with it.”
I had to look away when Lucas shot her computer. It just seemed so final. I wanted to believe everything was going to go back to normal and that Brooklyn would be accessing her files again. That she would be designing clothes again and we would be together again. I gave her suitcase to Gina to take back to Italy with her. I wanted to believe she would be wearing the clothes in that suitcase again.
“Holy shit, what the hell happened in here?” Lucas said as he stood in the doorway of the master bedroom.
“Our dad happened.”
“Wow, so he really means business. I mean, I know he does, but I find it so hard to believe that he would do this to you.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “Thanks again, Lucas. I really thought I was all alone out here. I can’t even tell you—”
“Don’t mention it. You’re my brother and I’d do anything for you.”
I looked at him for a moment. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For almost a year now I had believe that he hated me and it felt so good to have him back.
“All right, let’s get out here,” I said as I swung the bag over my shoulder. “I can’t stand to be on this boat for another second.”
BROOKLYN
I had no idea how many days I had been in that dark, dingy, filthy bathroom. The light above the sink flickered occasionally, but stayed on the entire time. There were no windows, so I had no idea when the day would end and the night would begin.
I didn’t feel like I had been drugged with the food like I had feared, but I did sleep a lot. And when I wasn’t sleeping I was thinking about Adrian.
I remembered thinking when his father took me away from him the first time I would be able to handle anything as long as I could picture Adrian and remember our time together. But as much as I wanted to believe I could do that now, things weren’t the same.
I loved Adrian then, but since that time I had fallen deeply in love with him. I couldn’t imagine my life without him, and I felt like when I had been taken away from him part of me had been cut out. That a part of me was lost now and I would never ever find it again.
I counted four times that the bald man brought the trays of food into the room, so I guessed it was possible that I had been in that room for two or three days. It didn’t really seem like I had been getting three meals a day, although everything was distorted, and nothing made sense to me anymore.
For the last two meals I had eaten everything that they gave me, and just as I finished the bowl of soup and hard bread that was placed on the floor in front of me I started to feel a familiar heaviness. My eyelids were starting to close involuntarily and I was having a hard time keeping my head up. When I found my body moving uncontrollably toward the floor, I let the tray slide off my lap and curled up on the musty blanket. It wasn’t until right before I lost consciousness that I realized that I had once again been drugged.
I slowly became aware of my surroundings, but not by sight this time because I was pretty sure I had a bag over my head. I could open my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything and I was having a hard time breathing. And when I was finally able to focus my eyes on something, I could see bits of light through the weave in the fabric.
My arms and legs were tied together behind me and I was lying on my side in what felt like the back seat of a car. I could feel the movement and hear other cars rushing by like we were traveling on a busy highway. I could also hear a voice that sounded somewhat close by, but not right next to me. After I had been listening for a while I realized it was a radio.
It sounded like the person on the radio was speaking Russian. After they talked for a while a song came on. It also sounded Russian, but it also seemed like it had been recorded in the seventies or eighties. The majority of the song was a disco beat with a catchy synthesized tune and intermittently there would be line sung in a woman’s voice. It sounded like the woman’s goal was to sound as sexy as possible since she had so little air time in the song.
I had absolutely no idea how long I had been asleep, but clearly I had been moved from the boat to a car at some point. My mouth and throat were incredibly dry again and my head was pounding.
Every muscle in my entire body ached. I tried to get into a comfortable position, but it was almost impossible with my arms and legs tied behind me. I was so miserable at this point I considered attempting to jump out of the car while it was moving in hopes that I would die and get everything over with.
After what felt like a long time of driving on the highway, it sounded like the car turned off onto a less-traveled road. We drove slower and it didn’t sound like there were any other cars driving near us. After a while we turned off again and this time the road felt bumpy and I heard the crunch of gravel under the tires. We slowed down and then the car came to a stop.
I heard a voice that didn’t sound like it was coming from a radio. I could hear that it was very stilted English, but I couldn’t understand what had been said. I heard two car doors open and close, then I heard the door near my head open and felt myself being pulled halfway out of the car.
The rope that tied my hands and feet together behind my back was cut, and I was pulled farther out so that I almost fell off the seat. I swung my legs out of the car and onto the ground, then tried to put some weight on my feet, but it felt like all of the strength in my legs was gone. I wanted to try to stand again, but I quickly lost all my motivation since I didn’t know where I was and couldn’t even walk, let alone run away from these men. So I sat on the on the edge of the car seat and slumped against the side of the doorframe.
Suddenly the hood over my head was yanked off and I covered my eyes to shield them from the bright daylight.
“Get up.”
I was too dazed to know what was going on, but as I opened my eyes I saw two sets of men’s shoes standing directly in front of me.
“I said get up, Brooklyn.”
I tried to place the voice that was speaking to me but everything was still so surreal and distorted and I thought maybe I was imagining that the voice sounded familiar. I figured it had to be one of the men that worked for Adrian’s father, and that was probably how he knew my name.
As I slowly regained my strength I lifted my head up and scanned the pants and jackets the men in front of me wore. My eyes kept moving up, and when they reached the faces of the men I saw the bald guy who brought me the food in the bathroom on the boat, but it took me a minute to register who was standing next to him.
“Daddy?”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I sank my head back down and hoped the ground would open up and swallow me whole. My own father had been the one to take me away from Adrian. He had been the one who kept me in that horrible little room with just a damp, musty blanket for days and had drugged me and brought me here. And I was pretty sure I knew where I was.
“You brought me back to him, didn’t you? You brought me back to the man who bought off your loan.”
He didn’t say anything; he just grabbed my arm and pulled me up. I
stumbled and fell against him, but he held me up by my upper arm and kept walking up to an enormous mansion.
I looked back at the car that had brought me here and the man who was with my father got in. I felt my arm being jerked again as I stared at the thick, dark forest that surrounded the house, and I knew Adrian would never find me here.
He pulled me up a flight of stairs and onto a landing and the door to the house opened as we approached, as if whoever was inside had been waiting for us. A man dressed in a suit ushered us in and closed the door behind us then left us both in a grand entry room that was garishly decorated in lots of gold and mauve. Between the music on the radio and the way this strange entryway was decorated I felt like I was in some kind of time warp. Like that grimy boat had somehow taken me back to 1988.
The man in the suit went off to find someone, I was guessing the owner of the mansion, and the new owner of me.
I was beyond humiliated and horrified by what was going on. And I didn’t think any amount of questions would ever satisfy me as to why my father had brought me here. So I remained silent, slumping over and staring at the ground. I didn’t look up when I heard two sets of shoes clicking toward me on the marble floor that covered this room and another just beyond it.
“Come with me, Mr. Pierce. Bring your daughter with you.”
My father still had a firm grip on my arm as he pulled me with him behind the set of shoes that clicked down a long hall and led us deep into the enormous house. We were taken into an even more ornately decorated room with an enormous bed in the very center. The man who invited us into the room grabbed me by the other arm as soon as we entered and pushed me ahead of him across the room and over to the bed.
“Please, sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said with a hint of a Russian accent. His words were polite but his actions weren’t, and the smirk on his face made my skin crawl.
The cold, yet excited look in his eyes terrified me, and I looked away as quickly as I could. I sat on the edge of the bed with my shoulders slumped forward and my gaze on the floor and made a plan, the only plan that seemed viable.
The first chance I got I would break a piece of glass and slit my wrists. There is no way Adrian was going to find me here in the middle of nowhere in what I guessed was a Russian mobster’s mansion. I hoped wherever he was Adrian would forgive me for giving up, but I just couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t live as someone’s slave. I was terrified of what he was going to do to me and what conditions he was going to keep me in. I didn’t want to be anywhere near that man. I could see in his eyes what he wanted to do to me as soon as we were alone.
“Thank you for finding my property and bringing it to me, Mr. Pierce. I do appreciate your efforts in locating what rightfully belongs to me.”
“Yes, well, what about your end of the bargain? One million, right? After all, it did take quite a bit of effort to get her here. The matter took much longer than I originally thought it would.”
“As I said, I appreciate your efforts, but as far as compensation, I’m afraid I’ve changed my mind. I do not plan to pay for something I already own.”
“But Mr. Syrnyk, we had an agreement. I’ve put a lot of money and effort into this … venture. You promised me that if I brought her here you would pay me!”
I couldn’t believe my own father was referring to me as a matter and a venture and I wished I could stop being surprised by his repulsive actions. I couldn’t believe that this man, this pathetic weasel, was the one whose approval I had spent my entire life seeking.
“Enough. No more of this. I have spoken. There will be no payment.”
My body jumped when I heard a gunshot and I didn’t have to turn my head and look to see what had happened. I heard my father’s body collapse to the floor and after that I heard the soft sound of the Russian man’s shoes crossing the carpet.
He stood in front of me with the gun still in his hand, then put it away and took out his phone. He barked some order in Russian then put the phone away.
“You need to be cleaned up. Take off your clothes.”
I looked up at him in disbelief. Not because I couldn’t believe what he had asked me to do. I had known for days it was coming. That I was eventually going to be naked in front of a man I didn’t know and didn’t want to even look at. I was suddenly having a very hard time accepting everything that had gone on since I had been kidnapped.
It was all so unreal. Being drugged in the nasty, dingy room with rotten fish soup, finding out my father had kidnapped me for more money, the bizarre Russian time warp, and the fact that this man had just shot my father right in front of me.
It was almost like I was watching my life happen on a movie screen. I stared up at him because I had absolutely no idea what to do next. I felt blank, like my soul had been sucked out somewhere between the Russian disco music and the gunshot that ended my father’s life. Before I realized what had happened, my face was smashed up against the carpet and there was an intense pain on one side of my head.
“If you hesitate you will be punished. Now stand up and remove your clothes.”
I slowly got on my hands and knees and used the bed to pull myself up, then removed everything I had on and left it in a pile at my feet.
“Come with me,” he said as pushed me ahead of him and we walked across the room. As I passed my father’s body I looked down to see if he was actually dead. It was really curiosity more than anything, because when I looked down and saw his eyes staring up at the ceiling I felt nothing for him.
Everything I had ever felt coming from him had been true. I used to lie awake at night and try to convince myself he really did care, that there had been something I had done at some point in my life to make him proud. I told myself he just didn’t express it like other fathers. That he took care of me financially and that’s the way he showed his love. But now I finally knew the truth. He didn’t love me because I wasn’t really his daughter.
I followed the man through a door, the entire time keeping my head down but looking around to see if there was anything I could use to either stab him or myself. I wasn’t actually sure which one I would do first, because both were equally appealing to me. I kept picturing different places on the body, both his and mine, that would be best to stab. I figured any place that would facilitate fast blood loss would be best, so probably the neck would have to be my target.
At the doorway I felt the cold on my feet as the floor changed from plush carpet to marble tile. I was still looking down at the ground, but I was barely registering anything I saw until the cold on my feet jarred me out of my thoughts and I looked around the bright, white room. The room was just as gaudy as the other and had a sunken bathtub in the center with multiple plush, ground-level couches surrounding it. It looked as if the bath were set up like a stage and the couches were intended to hold an audience.
“Get in,” he said as he closed the door. I did as I was told and sat down in the hot water, keeping my eyes down, then closing them as my body became immersed. The warmth felt incredible on my sore muscles, and after a moment I found when my eyes were closed I could pretend I was in the Jacuzzi on the yacht and Adrian was sitting nearby.
If it were Adrian’s eyes on me right now this would all be okay, I thought, trying to feel it inside me. I pictured Adrian and tried to make myself feel the way I felt when he was near me. The way his presence seemed to fill me and move through me whether he was touching me or not. The way I felt safe just knowing he was near me, even if he was a room away.
The knowledge of him, of his existence, even when he wasn’t lying next to me with his arms wrapped around me, had always made me feel safe, and I tried to conjure up that feeling even though I knew he was hundreds or maybe even thousands of miles away.
I pictured him, but not the way he looked the last few days when keeping me safe had started to give him the eyes of a man possessed. But the way he appeared when he was looking down at me. When I coul
d see the love in his eyes and I could feel his love inside me, moving through me and becoming part of me.
I could have this all to myself and no one would ever be able to take it away from me. I could remember what Adrian felt like, and I could be with him in my mind. No matter what this man did to me I knew I could do it. I could shut him out and become lost in the thoughts of Adrian inside me.
I wanted so badly to believe that he really would come for me, but how would he even know where to start looking? And how long could I keep Adrian in my mind while this man was looking at me and touching me and hitting me? Or torturing me. I knew what I had to do. After I got out of this bath I would find something and I would do it. I would kill myself, because I knew I wouldn’t want to live if I had to look into those horrible eyes again.
ADRIAN
“I ‘m sorry, but there are no more rooms. You go back forty kilometers to Vologda. Plenty of hotels there.”
There was no way I was driving back to Vologda. It was late and I was exhausted and I just wanted to get to where we were going. I wanted to get to Brooklyn.
But we had to wait in this little podunk town overnight until the rest of our men showed up in the morning. We still didn’t know how many men the Russian had on this compound, but if he trained slaves on a scale where he had them in an underground cavern, like back on my father’s villa, he would most definitely have some men down there and maybe even around the perimeter of the property.
“No, we’ll take the rooms. You guys don’t mind doubling up, right?” I said to the group of men that had met us at the airport. “And you and I can share,” I said as I glanced over at my brother. “It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before.”
“Yeah, but you were a lot smaller then, and I have a feeling you still kick in your sleep.”
“You better believe it,” I said, glancing back up at him and seeing a playful look in his eyes that hadn’t been there in years.
