Unbound; The Dominator III Page 9

  He flipped me over onto my stomach again and I felt pressure at my ankles as he stabbed through the tape at my ankles with his knife to separate my legs. They were tingling and my ankles felt bruised. I pointlessly tried to struggle. My jeans and panties were torn downwards.

  I screamed, deep in my throat behind the duct tape, as he forcefully rammed into me from behind.

  ***

  I was inside of a large plastic shipping container with light filtering through the airholes in it.

  My knees were against my chest, ankles and knees taped together.

  My left arm was burning under the duct tape where he’d cut me. My eyes were sticky from all the dried tears and old eye make-up. My already fractured heart was smashed to bits.

  I heard multiple voices, heard them talking about an auction, and surmised that I was being put up for bid. Kind of like Lisa and Angel must’ve been, I guessed. I didn’t really know the details of what’d happened to the two of them but how the hell did this happen to me? How was it that I lost my father, my husband, and now my freedom within a matter of just a few months?

  My children were in the arms of people who loved them, at least. At least there was that. My family would get them from daycare. They’d love them and hold them and that was the one consolation.

  Also, they’d look for me. I didn’t know if they’d find me but my brothers were badasses. They had guns. They had ties to some very very bad people. Some people considered my brothers to be very very bad people.

  And those ties, or more likely my Pop’s ties, were undoubtedly what’d bought me to my current predicament. But maybe they’d be able to rescue me. They couldn’t undo what that horrible slime ball had done to my body and my dignity but maybe they’d get me back home to Lucas and Antonio.

  ***

  I was no longer in the plastic container. I’d seen bright light as the lid got removed and made out a needle coming at me. I’d been injected with something else and then my clothes stripped off. I was put in a shower with two women in bathing suits who un-taped me and washed me as well as shaved me. Everywhere. Talk about humiliating.

  I was too weak to fight. They were older, in their upper fifties, I’d guess, and when they saw my forearm. They were speaking, rapid-fire --- Spanish, I think. I could barely hold my head up. I was like a ragdoll.

  I was taken out, dried off, and then something else was injected into my arm. They were bandaging my other arm. I blacked out again.

  ***

  I woke up in a bed, my arm bandaged, an IV connected to me. I was wearing a blue hospital gown and no panties. Everything hurt. I felt bruised everywhere.

  Everywhere.

  I couldn’t conjure up anything. Not the faces of my boys, not my husband. My dead husband, a Ferrano family enforcer who was a lethal weapon, and who would have died to protect me. But he couldn’t because he was already dead. Rotting in the ground. My beautiful Jim.

  James Michaelson treated me like a princess. He loved me. He was one of Dare’s friends and he’d sniffed around me for a year before working up the nerve to ask me out. The way it’d happened was funny. He actually won the right to date me in a card game against Dare and a bunch of their friends. It was the only way he could do it, by calling Dare out in a card game.

  “I got no more money but I lose, I give you the pinks to my ‘vette. I win, you let me date your sister.”

  He lost. A week without his Corvette until he won it back and a week of buzz among our friend group that he’d bet his ‘vette again in order to try to take me out. He also won the right to take me out that same evening.

  Dare busted his chops and joked about it but it was all good, a natural progression because Jim was always around. Pop loved him. Dare and Tommy liked him. He showed respect to Pop and Pop recruited him as an enforcer. Jim saved Pop’s life twice. And then he died for Pop.

  He was a great husband. He bought me flowers a lot. He was beyond gentle when he took my virginity. He told me I was pretty every day. He was handsome and thoughtful and I felt lucky to be his wife. And he would be rolling in his grave right now.

  I looked around without moving and saw the two women who had been in the shower with me. One was fiddling at a tray with syringes. One was sitting in a chair, a cigarette dangling from her lips as she fiddled with her smartphone. There were two men standing sentry at the door. They had machine guns slung over their shoulders. Machine guns. I’d seen guns around before. Jim had one. I’d seen Pop and his cronies with gun harnesses on around the house. But machine guns? I had never seen one other than in the movies.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed or how far I’d traveled but I definitely knew I wasn’t anywhere near home. I was most likely in Mexico. They were speaking Spanish and that’s where they’d taken Tia when someone had a beef with our Pop.

  I didn’t know the details, no one ever spoke of it, but my brother came back days later and both Pop and Dare had been stressed to the max while he was gone. Me and Luc had talked about that and how Tommy’d probably fucked up whoever had taken her. Big time. Rumors about how brutal our oldest brother was were always circulating and we didn’t doubt that.

  I knew better than to throw a fit. I’d read enough books, seen enough movies, and saw the haunted look in the eyes of my best friend and my new sister-in-law to know that no amount of Italian princess tantruming would get me out of this. I had to bide my time and figure things out so that I could help myself. Or, hope Tommy and Dare were already on this.

  The nurse with the syringes was at my bedside, injecting something into my arm yet again. I gave in to the dark and dreamt of my honeymoon in Jamaica with Jim, where we made love under the stars when he took my virginity. He waited until the honeymoon because I was so nervous on the wedding night. My first time, my every time having sex thereafter, was sweet and gentle like he was.

  Until that guy with the boxcutter.

  ***

  It was the next day or maybe the day after, I had no idea, and I was hauled up by the nasty nurses or whatever they were and put into a shower again. I was then dressed in short slutty dress and super high heeled red-bottomed shoes. They pinned my hair up into an up-do and put makeup on me and made me eat a bowl of chicken soup.

  I still had a big wide bandage around my arm. I could see bruising at my uncut wrist and my ankles were black and blue.

  After I finished the soup, I was led down a dim and narrow concrete hallway with the two nurses and one of the machine gun toting guys behind us, his eyes narrow, on me, and filled with warning.

  I was pushed in a doorway, a name sticker was slapped on my chest, and the door was shut, closing me in a room with a bunch of other girls that were similarly dressed and they had expressions which likely mirrored mine. Fear. Desolation?

  I looked down at the name sticker. It said Hello My Name Is and in red ink was the number 13.

  I was in a lounge of some sort, black leather sofas bordering the walls. A large coffee table filled with bottles of water and juice in the middle. There were three other men with machine guns in the room.

  The girls ranged in age from younger than me (looking barely legal or underage) to a few years older than my 24 years. Some of these girls looked beaten up, like me, some with too much concealer attempting to hide the bruising on their faces.

  Most of them were Spanish-looking. One black, two Asian. And me. The rest were Latinas, including one set of identical twins who didn’t look any older than eighteen and had long glossy hair, huge breasts, and big eyes. They were strikingly beautiful.

  I don’t know what people would say I look like. I’m short and curvy at the hips and boobs but with a tiny waist. I’m ¾ Italian and I’m naturally dark blonde with lots of slightly wavy long hair. I recently had the dark bleached out from the ombre I’d been sporting for a few months so it was all dark blonde right now. I have light brown eyes, like Pop’s, like Tommy’s. I guess I look Italian. I’m not unattractive. None of the girls in this room are unattractive.
Some of them are exceptionally beautiful.

  A light went on and it got very bright. Everyone winced or squinted. One of the nurses grabbed my sore arm and pointed for me to sit. Somebody was talking in Spanish over a speaker. And then there was a man walking around with a camcorder, stopping at each girl and speaking in Spanish. A bottle of water was put in my hand by an older Spanish lady, older than the nurses.

  Each girl reminded me of a deer in the headlights. The third girl he stopped at backed away in fear and he grabbed her by her hair and held her there while he kept talking, holding the small video camera in front while he palmed her breast and started laughing.

  Her face went red and her eyes went downcast. No one else misbehaved after that. He got to me last and talked for a really long time, holding my chin up, taking the camera from me to him and back to me again as he spoke about me. I heard him say “Ferrano”. They weren’t keeping my identity secret. How many people who were attending this auction knew my Pop? Would that work to my advantage or disadvantage?

  And then the guy with the camcorder left the room, the lights dimmed, and the nurses encouraged me to drink. I drank a bottle of water and looked to the girl who I’d sat beside. She glanced my way with big eyes. I could feel her trembling beside me.

  I grabbed her hand and squeezed. She leaned into me. We didn’t know one another but we were in the same hell right now.

  Over the next few hours, we were slowly picked off one by one, removed one at a time, except that at one point, the set of identical twins were taken out at once. I was third last to be ushered out by one of the nurses who took me down that long hallway and put me into a small office with the announcer guy with the camcorder and an older but distinguished man in a suit, who was seated on a big leather chair in front of the desk where the camcorder guy sat. He looked Italian to me. Maybe Spanish. Or maybe mixed. He gave me a once over.

  “Knees,” the camcorder guy said to me. “She has had no training yet, senor, we only got her in last minute. I know your facility can handle the training. This is a very important person you got sold to, slave thirteen. You better not fuck up.”

  The older man looked at me and spoke in clear English, “Down on your knees, thirteen, then sit back on your calves and place both hands on your thighs.

  I shakily obliged.

  The man in the suit then slapped an envelope down on the table and I saw the camcorder guy with a large wad of cash.

  They spoke in Spanish for a few minutes and then the older man in the suit said,

  “Shoes off. Leave them here. Walk beside me, eyes to the floor, until we go. My car is outside. If you misbehave, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

  He said this so simply, so calmly, that I believed him without a shadow of a doubt. I could see something sinister in the man’s eyes; I knew plenty of sinister men from growing up where I did. He meant business.

  I nodded a little. It was enough to satisfy him.

  The camcorder operator shook that man’s hand, spoke a few more words in Spanish, and then said, “Adios” and left.

  The man held his hand out and looked at me. I took his hand and rose to my feet and followed his directions. What else could I do?

  ***

  It took a long time to get out of the maze of hallways in the warehouse we had been in. When two guards with machine guns opened a steel door and we were outside, I took in that we were in an alleyway with reddish dirt, the sun beating down on us. My eyes burned, so I shielded them with my hand. It’d been days since I’d seen the sun.

  The alley was dirty, dumpsters overflowing, a horrible dank rotting meat smell in the air. There were a couple of kids kicking around a soccer ball. They stopped and looked at me. One whispered something into another kid’s ear, eyes aimed at me. The limo driver honked the horn and the kids scattered. The back passenger door was opened by a man in a dark suit who looked like a secret service agent. The man who’d bought me put his hand to my back and led me into the vehicle.

  I sat.

  He got in and sat. Not close, not far. The car surged forward and puke came up in my throat but I swallowed it back down.

  Before long, we were on a dirt road with no buildings in sight. The suited man reached into his pocket. My heart started to race and the fear I felt was a living and breathing beast, putting weight on my chest. I tried to focus on my breathing as he lifted out a phone from his inside pocket. He fiddled with his phone a moment, one-handed, while reaching into a small fridge in the sumptuous limo and passing me a bottle of lemon Perrier.

  I accepted it, opened it, and downed half of it. Then, when we were on a four-lane road with plenty of traffic, he dialed and put the phone to his ear.

  “Hola. I have the parcel.”

  He held the phone a moment and then said something softly in Spanish and then passed the phone to me.

  I fumbled and then got it to my ear, more than a little unnerved.

  “Hello?” I croaked out, not having any clue who was on the other end or what might happen next.

  “Mrs. Michaelson. I’m not an enemy. I am going to get you back to your family. Please believe that and cooperate with Rocco. Consider Rocco to be your protector. Understand?”

  “Uh… all right,” I croaked out, stupefied.

  He continued, “You’ll be driven to my property and I am reaching out to your brothers through a mutual acquaintance. You’ll be made comfortable until they can arrive.”

  Oh, thank God. Thank the good sweet Lord above. Relief washed over me, through me. Tears pricked my eyes.

  Wait. What if he was lying? I fought to find words but stupidly just held the phone.

  Please don’t let this be a lie.

  “I’m being completely honest,” he assured. “If you want to increase the chances of being able to get to your home and your two sons, you’ll cooperate.”

  “I will,” I replied, worried that he knew I had two sons. Was this a threat? Was I being ransomed? Or was this guy a friend to my family?

  “I’m glad to hear that. Pass the phone to Rocco, please.”

  “Okay.”

  I handed it back to the suited guy.

  What must have been many hours later, many hours of driving in silence, we were entering the gates of what looked like a very large residence, an estate, really. I’d nodded off over and over, fighting sleep most of the way there.

  At one point, Rocco said, “Nothing is going to happen to you if you allow yourself to sleep.” As kind as he’d seemed when he said it, nothing would make me trust that, even if I wanted to. My body just kept jolting every time I’d drift off.

  Finally, we had arrived. I sat up straighter as the gates swung closed behind us.

  I silently prayed that things weren’t about to get worse.

  ***

  I was ushered, by Rocco, to a comfortable guest room in a very lavish mansion, where I sat on a bed. A handsome man in a suit came in with a woman in blue scrubs.

  He had thick dark hair, lots of it, and a stubbled jaw. He was very handsome. He belonged on an Armani billboard in Times Square in that tailored suit, his hair all messy-perfect. His dark eyes assessed me, “I’m Alessandro. First, your brothers are being contacted today to arrange for you to be returned to them. Can you tell me what happened to you?”

  I stared blankly for a second.

  “Let me see that arm?” The lady in scrubs cut in with a heavy accent.

  “Will you allow Jimena to check your arm? She’s a doctor,” he asked.

  I lifted my arm, offering it to her and she moved closer. I looked at Alessandro as she unwound the bandage. He had the angriest eyes I think I’d ever seen. When he saw my arm, they went even angrier.

  I glanced down at my arm and saw the horrible lettering I’d seen each time the bandage had been changed in the past few days, which had at least been often. Those nasty nurses were doing their best. I guess. This time I saw what the lettering actually said.

  “Am I in Mexico?” I asked.


  “Yes.”

  “I was taken from my car, put in some kind of video auction.”

  “Did anyone touch you sexually? There or before that?” he asked me. His English wasn’t broken, nor was it heavily accented.

  I stiffened and looked down at my hands on my lap.

  “Yes.” I said in a small voice without making eye contact.

  The doctor was applying ointment to my arm.

  “On a one to ten scale, how badly did they touch you? One: groped you, ten, had sex with you against your will.”

  “Ten,” I didn’t look up.

  “One person or more than one persons? How many time?”

  “One. Once.”

  “I’ll leave Jimena to care for you. I’ll return soon with an update. You have nothing to fear here. You will be well taken care of until someone arrives to bring you home. This door will be locked but there’s an intercom on the wall by the bathroom door that will summon someone up if you push it.”

  Thank God.

  “Thanks, um, did my brothers hire you?” I asked.

  He shook his head, “No. We have some common ground so I’ve just stepped in to help.” He turned on his heel and left the room.

  I looked at the lady in scrubs. She was rifling through a first aid bag she’d set on the bed beside me and then she began to gently put a new bandage around my forearm.

  I spent 48 hours there before Zack picked me up and during that time, I had been seen by the doctor and a housekeeper who brought food and drinks and towels. Alessandro had come in just once more, the day after I’d arrived to ask if I needed anything and to tell me that I’d be leaving the following day.