Saved: a dark romance Read online

  The fire happened and things changed so maybe something else happening might mean more change. Maybe I can get some answers. Move forward, wherever forward is.

  ***

  It’s dark out. I’ve just finished dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs. I’m tired and full. But I’m also anxious.

  I know he’s still here because Esmerelda was in a strange mood, the sort of mood she’s in when he’s not only here but when something is happening. Being the only person I see on a consistent basis, I think I’ve become good at reading her.

  Twice, it has been someone else who looks after me, when she was away for some reason, maybe illness or perhaps vacation, I don’t know. But she and Dr. Jimena are it. These are my links to the world outside the four walls he’s put me in, unless I can engage him in conversation, find out what’s going to happen to me.

  I can’t stay in this room forever.

  I hope.

  ***

  It’s midnight, or so says the little digital clock on my desk, so I’m putting my book down. I’m in my bed, on top of the blankets, reading, or trying to. My thoughts keep wandering to him.

  The lamp on the round white table beside my bed has given the room a soft glow. I walk to my shiny white armoire, open the doors and remove a nightgown. All my clothing has been replaced and my wardrobe consists now (as before) entirely of dresses and nightgowns as well as a few pairs of pajama shorts and matching t-shirts. I’ve got the prettiest bras and underwear. Lace, silk. Every color of the rainbow and beyond. Much of what I wear is white or pastel colors. I don’t get to select clothing; someone else chooses these things for me. I think of them like princess clothes.

  I select a pale pink silky nightie that falls just above my knee. It’s my new favorite, I got it a few days after the fire, and I wear it every time it gets washed. It’s from Victoria’s Secret and it’s like a long t-shirt but has a deep scoop and I like the way it clings. It’s feminine and feels great. I place it at the bottom of the bed and face the suspected two-way mirror. I undo the buttons on the bodice of my dress, which is a long spaghetti strap maxi dress of a light fabric in mint green. I’m staring at the mirror as I undo the little pearl buttons, which go straight to my belly button. Once they are all undone, I shove the fabric off my shoulders and it falls, pooling at my feet. I’m in a baby blue silky bra and matching panties. They’re bikini cut, silky and small, cut high over my hips. I inspect myself in the mirror. I’m tall and slender, but I’m a little bit busty. I have long legs and small feet. My sister Angie used to tell me I had a ballerina’s body. But I’m really not at all graceful. I’m kind of the opposite of graceful.

  I gather my super long blonde wavy hair over one shoulder and turn my back to the mirror and unfasten my bra. I let it fall. My heart is racing. Maybe he’s not even watching. But it feels like he is. And I hope he is. Gosh, I hope it’s not some security guard.

  It’s only my bare back, me in undies the size of a bikini so it’s not all that bad, is it?

  I slowly bend over at the waist to fetch my nightgown, lift it, and drop it over my head, pushing my arms in. It slides down my body into place. I quickly reach up and hook my panties with my thumbs and pull them down and let them drop. No one, if anyone were watching, could see anything as my gown was shielding my behind.

  I carefully bend at the knee this time and pick up my clothes and carry them to my bathroom and drop them in the lined white wicker laundry basket that’s in there. I catch my reflection in the mirror. My face is nearly as pink as my nightie. I deep breathe. No one can see me in here; the bathroom mirror is on the outside wall. Unless there’s a camera. No. I don’t think there is, otherwise why tell me that I can only be undressed in here?

  I wash my face, brush my teeth, lotion up my arms, hands, legs, and feet, and then I turn out the light. I go back to my room and climb into bed, getting under the covers and then leaning over to turn out the lamp. When I do, I look right at the mirror.

  “Goodnight, Alessandro,” I say.

  And then I turn my back so that I’m no longer looking at the mirror. My heart races for a few minutes and then, when nothing else happens, I finally fall asleep, more than a little bit disappointed.

  ***

  “Don’t you ever do that again. Do you hear me?” My throat is in his grip as I wake with a jolt. He’s hovering over me. The light is on.

  I gasp and grab his wrist with both of my hands. I can breathe, he’s not crushing my windpipe, but he’s making a point. I’m immobile.

  He’s angry. So very angry. And beautiful. God, he’s beautiful.

  “I’m fucking warning you!” he clips.

  I nod a bit but it’s only a bit because I can’t move much within his grip.

  His grip loosens. His anger doesn’t. He leans forward so that his face is no more than three inches from my face.

  He smells like alcohol. And outside. And like the smell I’ve been dreaming about since the night I slept in his bed.

  He backs up, storms into my bathroom, and comes out with something blue in his hand. He slams the door without looking back at me and I hear it lock.

  I am so frightened that I don’t even move. I lie there for hours, statue still, before sleep finally claims me.

  ***

  In the morning, I wake up, intentionally avoiding looking at the mirror, and go to the bathroom and look in my basket, which only had yesterday’s clothing in it when I went to bed. Upon closer inspection, I find that my blue panties are gone. I suspected that’s what he took. In a squat, my hand covers my mouth as I blanch at the truth of it.

  Not long later, I’m back in my room. Esmerelda knocks her signature knock and then she’s inside with my breakfast, but her face is like stone.

  “Good morning,” I greet, but I say it carefully, seeing the look on her face.

  “Holly.”

  “Will I have my walk this morning or this evening?”

  “No walk today.”

  “A swim?” I ask, sitting at my desk, which is also used for my meals. She puts the tray down.

  “No swim, Holly. He says you’re to stay in your room today.” She’s not making eye contact.

  My stomach dips. I’m being punished. I used to spend all my time in my room, but once I moved to his house, that changed. And I love it. Walking the property, through the pretty gardens, swimming in the pool, sitting under a tree with my sketchbook while Esmerelda does some task for the kitchen outdoors by the kitchen entrance. Shucking corn, snapping peas, peeling potatoes, something…

  “Oh,” I’m crestfallen. I love my room. It’s lovely. It’s big. I have a big window. But I love going outside.

  “Lunch is salad and chicken. Dinner can be fish and rice or vegetable stir fry. Or, there’s spaghetti left from last night?”

  “More spaghetti, please.”

  “Okay, Holly.”

  She squeezes my shoulder and leaves. That’s the first time she’s done that. She must know I’m in trouble.

  I look at the mirror.

  I don’t know if he’s there right now. I only know that I’m being punished.

  I blink at my reflection a few times, wondering what he sees when he looks at me, wondering if what I did last night will have far-reaching implications.

  I dress for the day in my bathroom.

  All day, I avoid looking at that mirror. I spend time at my art easel, at my desk, in my big comfy reading chair by the window. But it feels like he’s watching and it feels like his anger is penetrating that mirror.

  ***

  It’s the next day. Esmerelda told me at breakfast that we can go outside after dinner for a swim and my mood lifts but the day drags as I anxiously await time out of my room.

  We pass him in the hallway; he’s leaving his bedroom. I’m wearing a black bikini but I have a white cover-up on over it. He glares at me with anger for a nanosecond and then says something to her in Spanish and she grabs my hand and leads me back into my bedroom.

  “What’s going
on?” I ask.

  “We have to wait thirty minutes.”

  We sit down on my bed.

  “He’s angry with me,” I say.

  She gives me a sharp look, which surprises me a little.

  “And me.”

  “You?”

  “When the beast is woken up, things change.”

  I stare at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fire woke the beast up. And I think you’ve done something to wake him further. Don’t poke a monster that is …” she searches for a word, “docile.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  “It doesn’t have nothing to do with me. But I chose that bathing suit for you. He was busy so I couldn’t get his approval before the last order to replace some of your lost things.”

  “Why am I here?” I cry out, knowing my eyes are pleading. “Why?”

  She shakes her head and takes my face in both of her hands and looks at me with sadness. “I’m sorry, chickadee, but please don’t ask questions. You know I can’t say nothing. You’re a smart girl. I think you know deep down all the answers to your questions.”

  I pull my lips tight, feeling exasperated.

  “You been such a good girl. I know you grow tired of here,” she gestures around the room “Please, please Holly, continue to be a good girl.” She pats my hand.

  I don’t get it. Or I do. But I don’t want to. I’m sure my eyes must express that.

  She brushes my hair behind my ear with her hand and whispers, “Be good. It keeps him good. We can go swim soon. Just wait. And put on your bathrobe. We can see through that cover-up.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” I say, but that’s not totally true.

  She gives her head a shake and looks at the floor and squeezes my hand again.

  Here’s what I know:

  I was walking home from the store. Mom had me take a pocketful of pennies and nickels and dimes and sent me for a can of concentrated orange juice. She always drank orange juice after a big bender and she’d had a big one the night before.

  I’d hidden in my room with a chair propped under the doorknob during that party because there were at least four men partying with my mom, and some of them had been at my door making lewd remarks, trying to coax me out after she passed out. Two of them were bikers with rabid-looking dogs on their biker vests.

  I’d only been home two days from my Gran’s. Gran was still in the hospital and family services had sent me back to Mom. I’d been thinking that I should try to get word to my sister, Angie, that our plan backfired. I was walking home with that can of orange juice thinking maybe I should buy a ferry ticket and get out of Juneau, try to catch a train somewhere so I could try to get to South Carolina, to the farm that her dad’s friends were looking after for her. She’d left me a credit card she left me for emergencies and I didn’t want to ring up a hefty charge for a flight. Plus, I didn’t know if I’d have a hard time getting on a plane without an adult what with my age.

  This was only a few months after Angie had gone away to Asia to teach, so I knew it’d take ages for her to figure out I was gone. We’d been Skyping semi-regularly but just before Gran got sick she’d gone a few days without answering. And I hadn’t been back online since getting sent back to Juneau from Anchorage, because my mom hadn’t paid the internet bill.

  Four men, two of which had been the bikers at my Mom’s the night before, rushed out of a van two blocks from home and pulled me in, slapped tape on my mouth and a hood over my head and then tied my hands and feet as we’d zoomed off.

  I was in that hood, my mouth taped, a long time. At one point, I was in a massive building, an airplane hangar, I guess, and the hood was off. For a split second, I saw a man who looked Spanish or Italian, maybe, and he blindfolded me. I heard a lot of laughing but stayed frozen still. My hands and feet were tied so it wasn’t as if I could even go anywhere. I felt something poke me in the arm and then I was sleepy.

  I was transported somewhere else and then I was showered by two women, in bathing suits. I felt weak, maybe I was drugged. I knew I’d peed my pants. I’d been holding it so long and must have wet my pants when I was unconscious. I was limp. After being washed, I was fed a bowl of soup and some clean but very slutty clothing was put on me while someone primped and put makeup on my face. I was put into a room with a bunch of other girls who were all dressed just as slutty.

  I had bright red lipstick on and lots of eyeshadow, fake eyelashes that were driving my eyes a bit crazy, my hair teased and hair sprayed to maximum volume. I was in a shiny short silver spandex dress and red spiked heels higher than I’d ever worn. Higher than even my sister had worn and she used to dress to the nines when she went clubbing.

  I still felt woozy. I was also petrified out of my mind. And I knew I had to cooperate. I knew I was in danger and my best bet was to just behave so I wouldn’t get in more trouble.

  I wore a name tag with a number 19 on it and was referred to as that number as a man who walked around the room talking with a camera in our faces held my face to the camera and said, “Pucker your lips, nineteen. Completely fuckable young little white bitch, gentlemen!” And then he said a bunch of stuff in Spanish and then said it again in what sounded like Chinese or something like that.

  When he moved to the girl beside me, a Spanish girl so beautiful she could’ve been a supermodel, he grabbed her by the boob and she started shouting and slapping him. That girl was shot in the back of the head. Right beside me. I felt something wet splat onto the top of my foot as she collapsed. Her blood. I had her blood on my foot and it was on my foot until I found myself in Alessandro’s basement many hours later.

  It was a nightmare come true. Worse. I couldn’t have even dreamed this up.

  Myself and three other girls were first taken to an office after the auction while the man with the camera took an envelope from a man in a suit. We’d been on our knees during that time.

  We were walking down a hallway, right by the opened door to the outside, as per the directions of the man who’d paid for us, when I tripped and my shoe fell off. The girl behind me grabbed my shoe and hit the man in the suit in the head with the pointy part of it, about to run out the opened door.

  Guys with machine guns strapped on their shoulders caught her and dragged her back. One punched her in the face. The man in the suit then made all three of us leave our shoes behind.

  We were then led into a dark and foul-smelling alleyway and put into a passenger van. We had on ankle cuffs that were attached to our seats. The journey was several hours until we arrived at the place I’m at now.

  Only, I wasn’t in the house to start with. I wasn’t in the servants’ quarters, either. I started out in the underground place. We were led into a stone building the size of a big barn. Inside there was a door that hid a staircase that led to an open empty room with just an elevator. We went in and it took us two levels down, underground to an open space barracks-style area with dozens of bunk beds and a locker room-like shower.

  I was told by a girl in that van beside me, in a broken English whisper, that we were being trained to be sold as pleasure slaves to wealthy men, that we could be sent anywhere on the planet.

  The suited man with the driver was all business. Serious man in, I’d guess his mid to late 40’s, a serious suit, looking at us as if to warn us not to give him any further trouble. The girl who’d hit him in the head with my shoe? Her eye was swollen shut from the punch she took. I was just glad that they hadn’t shot her, too.

  For the several hour-long journey, I’d tried hard to keep my cool and not think about the blood on my foot. I was failing at both.

  When we were taken into a building and down an elevator, we were then lined up against a dark brick wall. An older lady in light blue scrubs said something in Spanish and the other three girls started to take their clothes off. The one who spoke English told me, in her heavily accented English, “Undress or they would beat you.”

 
I did. I was standing there, trying to cover my chest with one arm, my crotch with another, feeling like my heart was going to leap out of my chest. I still had blood on the top of my foot from that dead girl and I was petrified.

  “How old are you?” The English-speaking girl asked after the older lady who wore a stethoscope barked a question at her in Spanish.

  “Fifteen,” I said.

  The girl translated.

  I heard collective gasps from the other girls but a chuckle from one of the guards who eyed me in a way that I knew, even in my limited knowledge of sex, was with lust.

  “Sixteen in a few weeks,” I’d added.

  Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.

  I was painfully shy. I was sheltered. Mom never took me far and other than school, the only time I went anywhere else was with my half-sister. She took her job as big sister seriously.

  Angie and I had a lot in common. We shared an addict mom and both of us had our dads die on us and leave us with Mom. She’s a redhead and I’m a blonde, but we both have Mom’s sapphire blue eyes. We both regularly got complimented on those eyes. My sister’s bestie called them Gilmore Girl eyes.

  The lady threw a towel at me and I covered up with it. She pulled me by the arm out of that bathroom, down a hall, and I was put into a small medical exam room.

  I sat there a while until I met, and was questioned by, Dr. Jimena. About early thirties, I’d guess. Pretty. Excellent English but with a thick accent. Dark long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Dark eyes. Kind eyes.

  “Your full name?” She had a clipboard.

  “Holly Noelle Mooney.”

  “From?”

  “Juneau. Alaska.”

  “Age?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “When sixteen?”

  “December 26.”

  “Virgin?”

  “Errr… yes.”

  “Any sexual activity?”

  I shook my head.

  “Anyone put anything in your vagina?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Your ass?”

  I gasped, horrified, and shook it again.

  “You ever touch or suck a man’s penis?” She was impatient.