It seems when my life turns upside down, I always have a diary to offer me escape.
I’m not sure how she managed to get a hold of a journal, but I find comfort in Molly’s angry words. A young girl that was stolen from her life just as I was. And groomed by Francesca, no less.
My mouth dropped when I read that Francesca has been doing this for at least thirteen years now. How many girls has she watched be raped, tortured, and sold off to demented people? How many did she hurt herself?
My stomach rolls, and my throat thickens with disgust as I take in the words of a broken girl. She was full of life in a world that was determined to take it from her, and through each entry, I fall more in love with her. I feel her in every stroke of the pen, so I brush my trembling fingers across them and mold myself into her harsh lines.
She’s everything I want to be.
When I come to the last page, my heart breaks, and millions of questions arise. As quickly as I had found some form of comfort, I’m now left desolate and empty once more.
Tears line the edges of my lids as I tear through pages, frantic and in need of more of her words. But I find nothing but blank pages.
Did she ever make it out? Did she make it back to Layla and take her away to find a new life? A better life?
I exhaust myself with questions that I’ll never get the answers to. At least not while I’m stuck in here.
Defeated, I snap the journal shut, and manage to scrounge up enough energy to roll off the bed and crawl to the open slot. Hot tears spill over as I replace the journal back into its hiding spot. And as I seal the wooden plank back down, everything I tried to not think about rushes back to me.
Nearly falling in my rush back to the bed, I curl up in a ball, clenching my fists, my broken nails screaming. My entire body quakes from the memories slaughtering any semblance of peace I found with Molly. With everything I have, I hold on tightly to the sobs shredding my throat in an attempt to escape.
I won’t let them.
It couldn’t have been more than a half-hour since Francesca stormed out of my room, and went to calm Rocco down, who, from the sound of it, went on a rampage and started destroying the house. I immediately tore off my soiled clothing, and dressed in a fresh pair, but it did nothing to soothe me while chaos ensued below my room. That’s when I remembered the journal in the floorboards and found solace in Molly.
For an indescribable amount of time, I stare at the wall. If my eyes even stray towards the dusty wooden floor, all I can see is an image of myself lying on the ground with Rocco mounted over me. I watch the desecration of my soul, like an out-of-body experience. Standing over the apparitions, unable to stop it from happening.
Desperately, I attempt to train my thoughts on anything else—Zade or Daya—but the train derails every time, leading me back towards the beauty room. They’re merely ghosts haunting the hallways of my brain, and anytime I reach out to them, they only fade away.
I squeeze my eyes shut, frustration mounting.
I should’ve listened. Yeah, that’s what I should’ve done. Allow a girl to be mutilated to save myself.
Shaking my head, I thump the heel of my palm on my forehead. How am I supposed to live with that? If I ever get out of here, how am I supposed to be okay knowing that I stood by while awful things happened to other girls, purely to save myself?
They stood by while you were raped.
They did. Do I hate them for it?
I don’t know. Kind of. There’s a morsel of inky blackness unfurling inside of me, and I kind of want to kill them, too.
“No,” I whisper. I can’t expect everyone to be so sacrificial. I can’t expect a girl who’s being abused just as I am to try and save someone else. Try to.
Because that’s the fucking problem. There is no saving them. Bethany is still going to have that mole cut out of her skin. All of those girls in there—they’re still going to be raped and tortured, no matter how many times I step in.
We’re all just lambs waiting to be slaughtered, and getting myself killed isn’t going to stop the wolves from feasting.
So, what the fuck am I supposed to do?
Zade’s voice whispers in my mind, and my heart clenches painfully.
Pick your battles. Be smart.
Easier said than fucking done.
I startle when my bedroom door slams open about ten minutes later, the doorknob knocking into a perfectly round dent in the wall. There’s obviously a long history of this door being kicked in.
Breathing heavily, I watch Rio enter the room, carrying a first aid kit and appearing calm as ever despite him kicking down the door.
“Already causing trouble, princess?” he asks casually.
I refuse to answer, tightening my lips and glaring at him through swollen eyes. He raises his brows when he catches sight of my face, causing my cheeks to burn hot from anger. For a moment, he looks furious, though I can’t tell who with.
He twirls his finger in the air, indicating that I turn over.
“I have to clean up the mess you made,” he tells me, his face smoothing into an unreadable expression. “You’re getting blood everywhere.”
Huffing, I roll onto my stomach, tensing when I feel his fingers brush my t-shirt up my back.
“It’s not my fau—”
“Everything is your fault here,” he interrupts, his voice deepening with severity. “Don’t ever forget that.”
He rustles through the supplies, sighing like this is a huge inconvenience for him.
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your day of trafficking women,” I mutter, stewing in my fury. His response is to place an alcohol-soaked pad on my ripped stitches. The burn is startling, and I hiss through my teeth, curses building on the tip of my tongue.
Fucking asshole.
“Your mouth is going to get you in worse situations than this,” he informs me. “What’s it going to take for you to learn your lesson? Getting a girl killed?”
Swallowing, I choke out, “I’m sorry.”
A loud, booming laugh bursts from his throat. I snap my head to him, enraged as his shoulders shake with mirth. His dark eyes are twinkling with the first real emotion I’ve seen thus far. It’s almost as terrifying as him being angry.
“You’re laughing at me,” I say with disbelief.
“Baby girl, I’m not the one you need to be afraid of. I much prefer that mouth of yours.”
“You just said—”
“You mouth off without thinking it through, and that’s what you need to learn to control,” he cuts in, his smile dimming, but his eyes still alight with amusement. “As sexy as your fire is, princess, that’s the last thing you want in this place.”
I curl my lip in disgust, thumping my head back on the bed while he resumes cleaning up my back.
“Don’t call me sexy,” I snap, only because he’s right, and I have nothing better to say.
“Z gonna kill me for it?” he challenges airily, feigning indifference. Although, that’s not how he sounded when I awoke in that van and overheard Rick and him discussing if the Society will offer them protection from Zade’s wrath.
I shrug. “He’s going to kill you anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
He’s quiet, and just when I’m convinced that he’s not going to say anything at all, I hear him whisper under his breath, “I know.”
As Rio is leaving, Francesca comes barreling down the hallway, her heels resounding on the floor. Her hand wraps around Rio’s arm, stopping him at the door.
“Is her back worse?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, they’re superficial. She’ll be fine,” he answers, though his last words sound like they have a double meaning. When she turns away from him, he casts a wink over his shoulder before walking off, leaving me confused.
He’s so fucking hot and cold.
Francesca storms into the room, appearing frazzled with her wild hair and eyes. Her dress is ripped at the collar, and I wonder just what kind of tantrum Rocco was throwing.
“Get in the beauty room. Now.”
Her abrasive footsteps carry her right back out of the room. I scramble from the bed, rubbing my dry eyes while I hurry after her. Rio clipped my broken nails and cleaned them up for me, but I still feel broken. Every step is a reminder of what happened in that room, and my stomach turns as I draw closer. It takes all my strength to focus on the lineup of girls and not the spot where I lost my mind.
None of them catch my eye. Except for Sydney.
Her bottom lip is fitted snugly beneath her crooked front teeth as she bites back a grin. She finds this funny, and I decide that Sydney—I do hate.
Ignoring the psycho bitch, I search out Bethany, and a lump forms in my throat when I spot a bloody open wound where her mole used to be. My chest tightens, the confirmation feeling like sharp knives grazing my nerve endings.
I was raped for nothing.
Fuck, I knew that. But it still feels like getting fucked all over again.
Clearing my throat, I stand straighter, embarrassment and shame burning my cheeks. I don’t know why. It’s not like being raped is something I should be ashamed of. Maybe because I feel so fucking stupid.
“Today was supposed to be prepping for the Culling, but you had to go and cause a distraction,” Francesca snipes at me.
My heart sinks like a stone in water, too preoccupied with her words to feel embarrassed. Molly mentioned the Culling in her entries, but she didn’t go into detail about what it was—only implied that she was being hunted.
Licking my cracked lips, I ask, “What’s the Culling?”
Francesca smirks. “It means to hunt animals. The men will hunt, and you, my dear, are the prey.”
My chest tightens, but deep down, I knew that answer already. I just didn’t want to believe it. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they actually fucking hunt women like we’re game that will be shot and mounted above a fireplace.
This is purely for sport. To laugh and get their rocks off while a bunch of girls run for their lives and what—try to avoid being hit with a fucking bullet or something?
I have to fight to keep down the urge to vomit. I don’t want to be hunted. And it seems that’s all my life has been for the past several months.
Francesca casts her gaze down the line.
“The event will take place later this week, and I have an important client visiting—Xavier Delano. He is one of the top buyers in the market, and if you’re lucky, you’ll be selected for auction. But you will only be selected if you are deemed worthy after the Culling.”
Her glacial eyes find me, an abhorrent expression twisting her features. “Except you. You look repulsive.”
I swallow the retort sitting on my tongue and nod my head in acceptance, like a good little captive. Not like I fucking want to be selected anyway. Guess I should be glad I’m covered head to toe in bruises.
She clicks her tongue, as if she finds me stupid. “You will still be expected to participate in the Culling.”
Of fucking course I am. What’s another injury?
“Alongside Xavier, we have several other potential buyers coming here as well. You want to make the best impression on these men. I won’t tolerate any insolence, you understand?” Mid-speech, her eyes drift to the other girls, but by the time she ends her sentence, her gaze has locked back onto me.
I flatten my lips into a hard line and nod once. The other girls also acknowledge her order with a dip of their chins.
“The less interest they have in you, the less likely you are to leave my house. And you know what that means? That means that I don’t produce the best girls, and I will get very fucking angry if that ever becomes the case.”
How aren’t her teeth rotten from the vile things she spews all day?
It takes tremendous effort to keep my face blank with the turmoil rolling through me.
She approaches me slowly. “Let’s run some scenarios. What do you do when a man asks you to get on your knees for him?”
“Get on my knees,” I answer, my voice hoarse.
“And when he tells you to unfasten his pants and take out his cock?”
“Do as he says.”
She nods, studying me closely.
“And then what?”
Bite his dick off.
I know what the obvious answer is. Nevertheless, I also know what controlling men truly get off on.
Power.
“Wait for him to give me permission.”
Surprise flickers across her irises, and I hate the reaction that look pulls out of me. The last thing I want to do is make a sex trafficker proud, but in all honesty, it’s precisely what I need to do. I just don’t want to feel it.
During our training lessons, Zade had taught me a lot about human trafficking and how I could escape it, should the Society ever come for me.
Get them to trust you. Make them see you as a human being, not an object to be sold.
Would it even matter if they did see me as a person? People like this—they don’t have any compassion for humanity. Not when they’re hardly human themselves.
She sniffs. “Good.”
And then she moves on to the next girl, the one with hazel eyes and who had kept warning me to keep my mouth shut.
“Jillian, how do you address them?”
“Yes, sir,” she replies instantly, her eyes unfocused as Francesca stares her down. Our captor nods once and moves on to the girl with fiery orange hair.
“Phoebe? When they address you, do you look them in the eye?”
“No,” she responds confidently.
“Why?” Francesca tests.
“Because it’s disrespectful.”
Fuckers. They want us meek and cowering. Sad, little girls who should have no other thoughts, apart from how to please their master.
Fucking disgusting, is what it is.
Bethany is next, but she’s not as composed as the other two girls—Jillian and Phoebe. She was obviously mutilated after I was dragged out of the room, but who’s to say more wasn’t done to her?
Maybe in the midst of his tantrum, Rocco raped her, too.
I clench my fists but keep my feet glued to the floor and my spine locked and unbending.
“When the men don’t like something on your body, like say, a hairy mole, what do you do, Bethany?”
Her lip trembles and I can see the battle in her body language not to break down. It takes her a moment to compose herself before she answers, “Make sure there’s no hair.”
Francesca nods slowly. “Good.” She glances at the wound where her mole used to be. “I hope to God you don’t have any more of those in places I can’t see. Because if you do, and I find out they’re unkempt, those will be cut out as well.”
Then she turns her eyes to the last girl in line. She’s meeker than the others, mousier. Short brown, curly hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and pretty doe eyes.
She keeps her eyes down, even as Francesca addresses her.
“And when you go into the Culling, Gloria, what is the one and only rule?”
She licks her lips, glancing up at Francesca before quickly dropping them again.
“D-don’t get hit,” she whispers, her voice high-pitched and small.
My brow furrows.
“And what happens if you do?”
She swallows audibly as she begins to shake violently. “W-we will—” She stops, gathers her wits, and forces out the rest of her sentence. The words are spoken so quickly, they nearly merge together. ‘We will be punished.’
“Good,” she clips, and then she heads for the door, stepping out to grab something just outside of the entrance. My heart drops when she walks back in with a crossbow.
“I want you out of my house, Sydney, so you will participate, but if you try to escape one more time, I will personally kill you myself. You’re no longer worth the hassle.”
Sydney gasps, as if this is the first time that she’s hearing this, but I have a feeling this has been a conversation for however long she’s been in this house.
She crows, “I only run because I want to stay with you.”
“Well, you can’t,” she snaps back. “This isn’t a fucking Holiday Inn. Now that I have the diamond in my possession, I can no longer allow you to embarrass me. You will be sold.”
‘What does she have to do with me?’ Sydney argues.
‘Because she is my most valued girl, and if it is noticed that I have a goddamn leech attached to me that is incapable of being sold, they could deem me unworthy and remove her from my household!’
Rage flashes across the unhinged girl’s eyes, and it looks like she’s rapidly descending into a pit of hysteria. When she catches my stare, she snarls at me, as if it’s my fault Francesca isn’t allowing her to stay.
Francesca gathers herself, her eyes tight with lingering anger.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to practice,” she orders, pulling my attention away from the seething girl. Her eyes flicker to me accusingly. “And I don’t care how special you are, I won’t tolerate failure.”
How do volcano eruptions begin? Pressure. And it’s brewing inside of me. The fiery magma is rising, thickening with hatred, growing denser with bloodlust.
Eventually, I’m going to fucking explode, and I promise I will burn this entire goddamn house down with me.
