Page 17

Fuck.

She’s crying.

Not the noisy, relieved sobbing of a woman who’s been through something terrible and needs to let it out. I’m used to that kind of crying, and they don’t bother hiding it from me. This crying is quiet and muffled like she’s pressing her face into a pillow, overwhelmed by grief and terror that she doesn’t want to share with me. Sobbing that’s at least partly because of me.

In the past, I’ve handed tissues to my weeping assets, said I’m sorry for the shit that happened to them, and moved on.

I can’t move on from this sound. There’s nothing I can do and nothing she wants from me.

I lie in the dark for hours, my whole body tensed up, watching the sky slowly lighten around the curtain.

4

Viktoriya

Itwist my wrist inside the handcuff, testing for give that isn’t there. The metal bites into my skin. Small movements in the dark aren’t going to wear it thin enough to break.

Tears spill hot and fast across my cheeks and soak into the hotel pillow. I press my face into its softness, trying to smother the sounds I’m making. Small, humiliating gasps keep escaping from my lips no matter how tightly I clench my jaw.

I’m so tired of cruel, greedy men.

My chest heaves, and my throat aches from the effort of keeping quiet.

Is it always going to be like this?

Down in the dark basement, the other women whispered predictions about our fate. We were going to be forced into brothels or to make porn. We would be flown to remote parts of Alaska and hunted for sport. Billionaires would buy us and torture us for amusement. Their frightened tears came easily, but I felt frozen. I squeezed down the terror and locked it away in a box, just like always.

For months, I’d been telling myself to leave Troy and never look back, but there was always a reason not to go. I hadn’t saved enough money yet, or the timing never felt right. Once—and I feel so stupid about this now—my reason was that the weather was bad. I stood at the front door with my bag in hand and my heart hammering against my ribs. I was so close, so close. But then it started raining heavily, drumming on the sidewalk, and I thought, I can’t cope with this on top of everything else. Just one more day. I hid my escape bag and made dinner, and the relief that flooded through me made me hate myself.

Troy came home, and I served him a pasta bake without him ever knowing how close I’d come to escaping.

Without a job of my own, it was almost impossible to save any money for my escape fund, but I’d discovered a way to skim a little off what Troy gave me for groceries each week, and it was working. I would pay for my groceries and then go back and refund one item that cost a few dollars, pocket the money, and keep the original receipt. Troy always checked what I’d spent against the change I handed back, down to the last cent, but he never thought to check if a box of detergent was missing.

It was achingly slow, and I burned with shame every time I went up to the counter with my receipt, but I swallowed my dignity and did it. I was afraid of trying to disappear with almost no money, no plan, and nowhere to go.

But the fear of the unknown? That was the worst. What would be waiting for me out there if I ran?

Not love, a voice sneered in the back of my mind. A voice that sounded very much like my own.

I didn’t know who I was without the life I was trying to leave. It was the only life I knew how to live.

But now I’m out.

I’m out.

And this stranger is trying to drag me along with him, and I hate him for it. I hate him so much, with his expensive suit and his tattoos and his cold, professional manner.

He thinks he’s the hero of this story. He has no idea.

I imagine throwing his heroics in his face. He wouldn’t like that, would he? Being told he’s the villain. I know how quickly his patience runs out. I imagine his large body closing in on mine and pinning me to the bed. I’ve already felt his hands around my throat once. If he does it again, he’ll keep squeezing and squeezing until there’s nothing left of me.

Behind me, the stranger shifts on his bed. I hold my breath, knowing he’ll be angry with me if I wake him with my tears.

My injured left wrist pulses with a dull, constant ache. I’m cold in a way that has nothing to do with the room temperature. The kind of cold that consumes you after a week or more of not enough food or warmth or safety. I pull the thin motel blanket tighter, but it doesn’t help.

I lie in the dark, listening to the stranger breathe and watching the room slowly change from black to gray to the pale, flat white of morning. My eyes feel like sandpaper. My wrist aches where the cuff is clenched around my skin. My throat is tender from his brutal grip.

At some point, I hear the rustle of sheets, the creak of the mattress, and then his footsteps crossing to the bathroom. The door closes. Water runs. I stay completely still.