by Stella Hart
“Fine.” He took a seat on the end of my bed, a nasty smile playing on his lips again. “Tatum, we’ve been following you for a long time. We always knew about the silly little paper you wanted to write, and we also knew perfectly well that you intended to infiltrate our brotherhood as part of your research. We allowed it to happen. Why do you think it was so easy for you to make it in? Did you honestly think it was that simple? You didn’t suspect anything at all?”
I swallowed thickly. He was right. It did seem far too easy, especially for such a secretive organization.
“We have eyes and ears everywhere, so we knew all about the little plan you concocted with your friend. Every last detail. We just thought it would be amusing to play with you and let you think you had the upper hand. A lot of the men in the society love games, and stupid little girls like you are especially fun.” He paused and let out another chuckle. “They very much enjoyed last night. Those who were aware, that is.”
“What do you mean?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Well, obviously the actors and other staff had no idea what was really going on. Half the brotherhood didn’t even know what was happening. They thought your demise was all part of the show, and that you were a willing participant. But of the ones who were high-level enough to be made aware of the plan… well, they loved it. One of the men said he hadn’t seen such an incredible spectacle in years. The fear, the wild look in your eyes as it dawned on you that you were caught out. Amazing. So much better than the acting.”
I sucked in a deep breath. What he was saying made sense in a macabre way. Most of the actors and society members at the ceremony saw the fake virgin sacrifice, and they also saw that the girl was fine afterwards. So when they saw men rushing at me and someone jabbing me with a needle as I screamed and cried and tried to escape, they would’ve thought it was more of the same. More entertainment.
I finally sat down, my knees turning weak. “So you just let it all happen and tricked me for fun? That’s why I’m here?”
“Yes and no. It was amusing, but you’re here because you belong here.”
“I don’t. This is a mistake.”
“I think you’ll find you do belong here, and there is no mistake. We bought you, and we own you.”
My mouth fell open. I stared at him in shock for a full twenty seconds before responding. “What did you say?”
“I said we own you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I thought you were supposed to be smart,” he said with a contemptuous look. “You were sold to us. Now you are our property. Understand that?”
My lips pulled back, baring my teeth. “You can’t be serious. You can’t own me. And believe me, my friends and parents are going to realize I’m missing soon. They’ll call the police, and—”
Tobias slapped me across the face, hard. I yelped, spittle flying out the side of my mouth as fiery pain raged across my sensitive skin. A metallic flavor filled my mouth, and I realized he’d split my lip open.
“Your friends have already been informed of your decision to drop out of Roden and spend some time backpacking around Europe with no phone or internet. They are upset, of course, especially seeing as you left without saying goodbye, but they’ll get over it. Eventually, they’ll forget all about you.”
I took several deep breaths, my face twisted into a grimace. “You really think my parents are going to believe that? They know how hard I worked to get into Roden. They know I’d never drop out. And even if they did somehow believe that, if I don’t return from this fake backpacking trip at some point, they’ll definitely know something is up.”
A cold smile spread across Tobias’s face. “Your parents, huh? Who do you think sold you to us, little girl?”
All the white noise in my mind immediately shut off as the full weight of his words hit me, smashing into my life broadside and shattering everything I thought I knew.
“No,” I whispered, my body trembling like a leaf.
He was lying.
He had to be lying.
Tobias pulled out a folded sheaf of paperwork from his jacket pocket. “I have the contract right here. You can look at it.”
“My mom and dad wouldn’t do that to me….”
He handed me the papers. “See for yourself.”
Hands trembling, I took the alleged contract and scanned the pages. Shock immediately spiked through my belly, twisting and twirling like a tornado. Tobias was telling the truth. Both my parents’ signatures were on it.
The contract detailed the terms of my bondage to Crown and Dagger, and I could see what my parents had been given in return: their debts paid in full along with three hundred thousand dollars spread out over the months to look like legally-obtained business income.
There was also a stipulation that they would be allowed to live rent-free permanently in one of the King family’s many, many properties in Connecticut. That was their new house… the one I thought they worked so hard for. The one I was so proud to see them living in after spending so many years in a cramped little shoebox of a house in a poor borough of my hometown. All a lie.
As the stark reality hit me, I dropped the documents like they were on fire. My life had been traded by my parents for a few hundred thousand dollars and a free house. That was all I was worth to them in the end. It said it right there in those papers.
“I don’t… I can’t….” I couldn’t form a full sentence. I was too horrified.
With all the shock flooding my system, I felt like my heart might stop and I would collapse right into a coma and never wake up. That might actually be preferable to what was happening right now.
I knew my parents had had a tough time in the last decade or so, but I never thought they would be so willing to give me up in return for some money and a free house. Yet they did exactly that. Why the hell didn’t I see it coming?
My mind drifted back to my childhood. Many times, I’d overheard them arguing about money, arguing about me. Saying they could barely afford to feed me. Sometimes my mom would blame my dad and tell him he should’ve worked harder to get his business going properly. Sometimes he would blame her for not being able to find another job after being laid off from her teaching position. Sometimes I even heard one of them say they shouldn’t have had me.
At the time, I put it down to stress. I knew how badly money—or lack thereof—could affect people’s minds. I figured they didn’t really mean it, and I spent my teens working as many after-school and weekend jobs as I could in order to contribute and lessen their stress.
I guess it wasn’t enough. Not enough to buy their unconditional love, anyway. They sold me down the river the first chance they got. Literally.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked up at Tobias. There was a nasty gleam in his eyes as he watched me. He was enjoying this.
“Is that why you met with my parents in December last year? I saw you with them at Roden,” I said.
The memory had just returned in a flash. When I was invited to do a campus tour after receiving my acceptance, my parents had come with me, and they’d told me they had a business meeting with a potential client in the area. Later that day, I’d seen them talking to Tobias near a marble fountain, looking quite grim and uneasy. At the time, I got a strange vibe from the incident, but I ignored the feeling, figuring it was just an innocent work-related meeting.
I guess I should’ve trusted my gut and realized then and there that something was very wrong.
Tobias chuckled. “No. That was just a quick meeting to discuss some of the payment terms. You first appeared on my radar as far back as March last year, and in the ensuing weeks, I realized you would make the perfect toy for my son, for various reasons. I contacted your parents then.”
My previously shocked frame of mind turned feral and furious as a forest fire, rage blinding me, burning out of control.
“This isn’t legal!” I said, jumping to my feet again. I stamped one foot on the contract.
“You cannot own me, no matter what this ridiculous thing says. I know my rights, and I did not give my permission for any of this!”
“Like I said, the contracts were signed a year and a half ago. You’re nineteen now, so that means you were only seventeen when they were signed. Legally-speaking, you were still a child. Your parents could sign for you, and they did.”
I spat at his feet. “I’m not stupid. It doesn’t matter how young or old someone is. You can’t buy or sell another human being.”
That earned me another hard slap.
“You’re going to have to learn the rules, Tatum,” Tobias said icily. “You are property now. You will do and say as we tell you, or you will face punishment. I won’t go easy on you just because you’re my son’s new toy.”
His son’s toy…
He’d said the same thing earlier. My mind had simply skated over it in my shock and horror.
“Elias?” I said, my upper lip curling. I should’ve known that arrogant prick had something to do with this. Like father, like son.
Tobias nodded. “He will be your new master. You will do his bidding at all times.”
“I won’t.”
Another slap. This time, I was braced and ready for it. “You can try to fight all you want, but we will break you, you stupid little cunt. You’ll accept your new place.”
I winced at the insult and shook my head. “No,” I whispered. “No one will ever own me.”
“You’ll change your mind,” he said coldly, rising to his feet.
“I won’t. I’m going to get out of here, and when the police hear what you’ve done, you’ll be screwed. Doesn’t matter how rich you are. You can’t buy people.”
“So you’ve claimed. And yet, I can buy people. I have before, and I will again. Even if by some chance you managed to escape from here—it’s impossible, by the way—there isn’t a single person in the world who would help you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not.” His lips curled into a thin, savage smile. “The best thing about being as wealthy as I am is the realization that everything and everyone is for sale. If you ever got away and tried to tell anyone what happened to you, I would squash you like the little insect you are.”
I drew back, shaking with rage and indignation. I hated that he was probably right. Hated that men like him could get away with things like this, all because they had more money than everyone else. It was sick.
Tobias reached out and roughly forced my chin up to meet his gaze. His eyes were cold and dark, his features arranged in a sneer. “The only reason I haven’t already crushed you for your insolence is because my son is so looking forward to crushing you himself.”
Every hair rose on my arms and the back of my neck. In all my life, I had never truly felt the presence of evil. It seemed like something that only existed in books and movies or shocking FBI case files that would never be close enough to my life to affect me in any real way. But I felt it now, dark tendrils curling their way up my legs, heading for my throat and choking me with their black, rancid presence.
I didn’t respond. I shrank back, hugging my arms around my body, shivering all over.
Tobias suddenly turned his head, and I followed his gaze to the door. Someone had just appeared at the pane and was looking in at us. I would recognize that tousled brown hair and arrogant, devilishly-striking face anywhere. Elias.
“Ah. Speak of the devil,” Tobias said. “He must’ve heard that you’re finally awake. I don’t think you’re quite ready for his company, though.”
He strode over to the door and swiped a keycard through it.
I followed him, and he shoved me back and stepped out, shutting the door with a slam. I pounded my hands on it, screaming at the men through the pane.
Elias looked right at me and smiled, clearly amused by my distress. I wanted to claw his painfully-handsome face off, wanted to shred him to pieces with my nails. But I couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t even get close to him until they deemed me ‘ready’, whatever that meant.
Tobias whispered something in his ear, and the two men turned and walked away.
I closed my shaking hands into fists, willing myself to breathe properly. I needed to keep my mind as calm and focused as I possibly could in such a harrowing situation, for my own sake.
There had to be some way out of this place. This situation. Had to be.
I could never put up with this. I could never give in. I had to stop these Crown and Dagger assholes from trying to turn me into nothing but a subservient slave, and I had to escape this place. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know when. All I knew was that I would make it happen.
One way or another, I would be freed.
9
Tatum
The days drifted by endlessly. Or maybe it was weeks. I had no way of knowing, and I’d lost track of time what felt like an eternity ago. There were no clocks or calendars in the room I was trapped in, no pens or sharp implements to scratch marks on the walls in an attempt to keep track.
The only certainty in this place was that I would always be confused, always scared, my mind a constant tangle of chaotic, muddy disorder. The air in here felt dense, suffocating, and I could barely sleep, even when I wanted to.
The lights were almost always on. Glaring, bright, a steady reminder that I was still in this hellhole. The only comfort was that every so often they would suddenly turn off for a few hours, plunging me into pitch-black darkness.
I used to be scared of the dark when I was a kid, and in more recent years I still felt the need to cover every inch of myself in bed at night, always afraid to have an arm or leg dangling into the night air beside my bed. Now, contrary to all that, the darkness was my only solace. It was like a place out of time, a place to rest without addressing reality. A sanctuary.
When I couldn’t see anything around me, I could easily pretend I was somewhere else, try to forget where I really was until the lights went back on, cruelly dragging me back to the real world where I was still a prisoner. The real world, where I couldn’t rest. Couldn’t do anything at all other than sit in the bright light and think about my old life and where it all went wrong.
I missed my friends. I missed our late-night trips down to the Buttery for fries and hot lobster rolls. I missed my classes. I even missed the grueling hours of study and exam prep. Would I ever experience any of that again?
No, a sinister, insidious little voice told me. You heard Tobias. You belong here now.
I kept rewinding my actions over the last few months, trying to delve deep into my memories and figure out the exact moment I messed up and caused all this trouble for myself. I previously thought it was my decision to write a paper on Crown and Dagger that got me caught in this dark-woven net, but Tobias had made it very clear the other day that the society was already aware of me a long time before then, and they always intended to take me at some point.
But why? What did I do to make them choose me? Was there something in particular about me that screamed ‘kidnap me’? Was there something about my face, my body, my eyes?
I knew it didn’t actually do me any good to blame myself for the actions of these sadistic men. Kidnapping girls was a fucked up thing to do, and the logical side of my mind—what was left of it, anyway—told me I wasn’t really responsible for what happened to me. And yet, I couldn’t stop the crushing sense of culpability from hitting me over and over again. There must be something I did, some tiny little thing that made them pick me.
I even wondered in a foggy haze if I’d actually done something to make them think I was for sale. I knew how stupid that sounded, but after days and days of endless boredom and fear, my rationality was starting to slip. Things were suddenly fitting into place in my brain with little clicks; things that never fitted before. Yes, maybe I did do something to make these men think I wanted to be sold. Maybe I told my parents to do it. Maybe I thought it would help with their situation, and I owed it to them for taking care of me all my lif
e, even though they could barely afford it. Maybe I somehow forgot it all but was still ultimately responsible.
I pinched my left arm. “No. I didn’t do this,” I whispered to myself, trying to stop the irrational thoughts from plaguing me. I turned on myself again only seconds later. “Or maybe I did….”
The words left me hollow, like my chest was caving in on itself.
I still had no idea what the men of Crown and Dagger actually wanted to do with me now that I was their captive. The contraceptive shot I was given by the nurse and the way Tobias told me I was going to be the perfect toy for Elias made me think I would be raped, turned into some sort of sex slave. The word ‘toy’ made that abundantly clear. I might be a virgin, but I wasn’t that innocent. I’d read dark, sexy books before. I’d watched porn movies. I knew the sorts of things some men liked to do to women. The sorts of things some women liked men to do to them.
But they hadn’t touched me. At least not yet.
The closest thing I had to human contact was the slot opening every so often on the door with seemingly-disembodied hands shoving food and water through for me seconds later. Aside from that, there was nothing. No one visited me, spoke to me, or touched me in any way. No one gave me anything to do. I just sat here in the same clothes every day, bathed in my own sweat, getting dirtier with each hour that passed.
Without my usual routine, and without any word on what was going to happen to me in the future, there was nothing to keep me stable; nothing for me to cling to just to maintain my sanity. My thoughts had turned wild, winding and rambling through unmapped space, tethered to nothing. Anything could happen. Everything. I could be dead tomorrow, or I could be alive yet wishing I was dead.
It was like living in a wild snowstorm. I couldn’t see what was ahead of me, couldn’t hear anything but the howling roar of abject terror in the back of my mind. I had no idea where I was or where I would be going anytime soon, and the fear kept coming and coming and coming from every direction, making my body ache.
