Chapter Eight
In the darkness, Persephone sat tied to that kitchen chair wishing she could curl up in a ball and die. She’d dared to let herself believe that Nick would protect her, but he’d shown her no one could protect her anymore.
Her stomach roiled, the bile rising in her throat as her mind replayed every moment of those men cheering him on like he was doing something worthy of applause. Hate surged through her for those pigs and him because he was no different from them.
She wanted to hide her shame, but she couldn’t. Instead, she had to sit there in that room alone as the memory of what had been done to her refused to go away. Powerless and terrified, she waited for the moment when the next one would come in and take their turn with her.
Persephone closed her eyes and hung her head. How could he have done that to her? How could he have promised to protect her in one breath and then forced himself into her in the next?
She didn’t want to cry anymore. She had no more tears anyway. They’d all been used up with every time she cried out for him to stop.
For the first time in days, she felt utterly hopeless. Everything she’d built up in her mind—all the possibilities Nick offered, all the chances she believed would come because he was on her side—all of that disintegrated the moment he gave in to the cheers from those animals hours before.
Now the reality of what would happen to her couldn’t be denied. They’d keep her alive as long as her father continued to pay them or until they got as much as they needed, and then they’d kill her. In the meantime, they’d use her as a sex slave, torturing her with rape to punish her for whatever crimes they’d convinced themselves she’d committed because of who she was.
A tiny flame of resistance still existed somewhere deep in her mind telling her to keep working to loosen the ropes around her wrists and keep trying to wriggle out of the rope keeping her in that chair. It quietly whispered that she was stronger than anything any of them—even Nick—could do to her.
She wanted to believe that voice. She wanted to remember how it felt to be truly strong again. But after what he’d done, she didn’t know if she had enough strength inside her to continue fighting.
All she knew now was if she did escape from this hell, it would be because of herself and no one else.
Opening her eyes, she looked around in the darkness and couldn’t help feel despondent. She didn’t know how to do this. She wasn’t strong enough or smart enough or brave enough.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. Nothing growing up, not college, not even her job as an ER nurse. She’d seen the ugliest sides of humanity, or at least she thought she had. Bodies shot up by bullets fired in hate between people. Limbs severed by car accidents caused by drunks. Overdoses by children who wanted to playact being adults in a world that didn’t protect them.
And none of it had made her ready to be tied to this chair for days on end and attacked by men who hated her for merely having the name Gilmore and the money that went with it.
The sound of someone twisting the doorknob behind her made her eyes open wide in terror. She sat frozen to the spot as her heartbeat raced in anticipation of who would enter.
Silently, she prayed to God to give her the strength to withstand whatever they forced on her. Please let me get through this. Please stay with me and watch over me as these men do their evil.
The door opened and the person walked in silently, stopping behind her. They bent down next to the side of her head so she could feel their breath on the shell of her ear. It felt hot and forced, like they were panting.
Then the person touched where the rope held her wrists behind her and began moving it around. Were they loosening her restraints? And if they were, why? To rape her again?
She turned her head to look, but the man had disappeared behind her. Was she losing her mind?
“What are you doing? Who are you?” she asked in a muffled voice through the gag still stuffed into her mouth, desperate to hear another voice other than hers to prove she wasn’t going mad.
He tore the gag out and quickly covered her mouth with his hand so she couldn’t speak. In her ear, a familiar voice said, “Don’t talk. When I undo these ropes, I’m going to need you to stand up.”
Nick quickly untied the ropes around her wrists and around her body and ankles holding her to the chair. She tried to stand, but her legs buckled underneath her and she fell to the floor with a thud.
In the darkness, she saw his silhouette standing over her, barely visible because of a tiny glint of light coming from a window at the back of the house. He said nothing but scooped her up into his arms and began walking toward that light.
Persephone didn’t want to have to be carried by him. She didn’t want him to touch her. She wanted nothing from him ever again. But she couldn’t even stand on her own yet, so for the time being, she remained silent, never forgetting how it felt when he betrayed her in favor of those monsters.
He set her on her feet so she could lean against the wall before he slowly lifted the black covering and opened the window to the outside. The first breath of fresh air she inhaled into her lungs nearly made her cry. Freedom smelled every bit as good as she’d always heard it did. She’d just never realized how sweet simple air smelled.
Leaning out the window, she saw a ladder that travelled down the back of the house to the ground. She turned to look at him, worried how she’d get down two floors on her own.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she admitted, hating what that meant.
He nodded. “I’m going to have to carry you. I need to put you over my shoulder, okay?”
She waited for him to lift her up, but he simply stood there staring at her like now he needed her consent to touch her. Confused, she shook her head at his hypocrisy.
“What? So now you’re going to ask me to let you do something to me? This you need permission for?”
Nick hung his head and quietly answered, “I just have to put you on my shoulder, Persephone.”
The way he said that made it seem like he was the injured party. Like her question made him feel bad. She wanted to pound her fists into his chest and scream at the top of her lungs how much she hated him for what he did, but that moment wasn’t the time.
“Fine. Do whatever you need to do,” she said in a clipped tone that barely disguised her hate for him.
He looked up and for a second she thought she saw a look of hurt in his eyes. No. He didn’t get to feel hurt by the way she treated him. He didn’t have the right to feel anything but shame.
The same shame she felt from what he’d done.
“I’m going to carry you down the ladder, but I need you to make sure you don’t hit the side of the house and make noise. I’ll try to be careful, but I just wanted you to know ahead of time.”
The kindness in his voice sounded very much like how he’d always sounded when he spoke to her, but now she hated it as much as she hated him. She hated how it revealed a gentleness in him she’d believed in.
How it reminded her that she’d put all her faith in him.
Nick gently lifted her over his left shoulder and eased himself out, lowering his body so she wouldn’t hit her head on the bottom of the window. The warm night air covered her, all at once making her feel refreshed and excited. They just needed to get down this ladder and away from this house and she’d be free again.
She clung to him for her very life, even though his very touch reminded her of what he’d done just a few hours before. It created a sense of confusion inside her she didn’t know what to do with.
For his part, whatever he thought about what he’d done to her that night seemed to be something he could push aside whenever he needed to. He took each step slowly, methodically descending to the ground as he held her tightly to him.
When he finally took that last step into the grass, she held her breath, terrified one of the men would be waiting for them. Looking around, she frantically searched the backyard for anyone who would try to stop them but saw no one.
Nick walked toward the gate at the end of the backyard, careful to stay in the shadows the trees on the side of the property offered. He said nothing as he carried her through the night toward the freedom he’d promised to give her again.
As much as she wished she could focus on that, all Persephone could think about was how she’d stared up into his eyes as he thrust into her and saw nothing in them that said what he was doing bothered him in the least. She suspected he’d claim he had to do that to her so no one else would, but that didn’t make it better for her.
And the fact that he’d rescued her and now carried her to freedom in the dark of night away from those monsters didn’t either.
He pushed the metal gate in the chain link fence open, but it squeaked so loud he stopped before walking through. Turning around to look at the house, he waited a moment before turning back and hurrying out of the yard.
They were just a few yards from the house, but they were free.
“Put me down. I think I can walk,” Persephone said as he walked into the woods near the house.
Nick stopped and set her gently on the ground. Her legs wobbled a little, but she wanted to be free of having to depend on him to get away.
“Come on. We need to get further into the woods before they realize we’re gone,” he said pointing into the darkness of the forest.
But she didn’t want to be trapped in there with him.
“I’m fine on my own now. I’ll be sure to tell my father you did your job so you can get your money,” she said angrily as she looked around for which way to go now that she was free.
He grabbed her arm and held it tightly as he shook his head. “No, you’re not. You barely can walk after being in that chair all those days. I promised your father I’d get you home, and that’s what I’m going to do, even if I have to carry you all the way there myself.”
Persephone tried to yank her arm from his hold, but he was too strong. Her emotions on edge after all that had happened, she lashed out at him and pounded her fist into his chest.
“After what you did, I never want to be anywhere near you again! Let me go!”
Clamping his hand over her mouth, he scolded her. “They’re going to hear you if you keep yelling like that. You don’t have much choice in the matter, so you’re going to have to trust me and let me pick you up.”
He lifted his hand, and she said, “Like I trusted you before and you…”
The words got trapped in her throat, and she stood there as her emotions began to unravel inside her. Nick winced, like her words bothered him, but he said nothing before simply picking her up in his arms and walking off with her into the woods.
The last thing Persephone saw of that house they’d escaped from was a light turning on in the upstairs room where she’d been held. Tapping Nick on the shoulder, she pointed toward the house.
“They know I’m gone.”
He stopped and looked back, and she felt his entire body stiffen. But if he was as afraid as she was, he didn’t show it as he began walking faster into the darkness, saying nothing to her.
Persephone didn’t know how long they traveled into the woods, but even being carried began to make her legs ache like they had for every minute she’d been tied up to a chair. She knew he had the harder job carrying her and had to believe he needed to rest.
“Can we stop for a minute? You have to be tired, right?”
He shook his head and continued walking. “Not yet.”
“My legs hurt. I just want to stretch them for a minute.”
Turning to look at her, his face no more than a few inches from hers, he narrowed his eyes in anger. “I said not yet. There’s a cabin up here about a mile away.”
He trudged up a hill, bouncing her up and down with every step and making her back ache. “I just want to stretch. I’ve been stuck in that seat for two weeks.”
Still, her pleas fell on deaf ears. Nick shook his head and continued walking toward the cabin he claimed existed somewhere out in these woods. The man had a lot of nerve refusing her even this tiny request after everything that had happened.
“I’m not going to run away, if that’s what you think.”
Nick turned to look at her and smiled. “That’s exactly what I think since you told me you wanted to go off on your own back there. I can’t let you do that.”
Frustrated, she said, “You know, you’re no better than those animals back there. No better.”
He didn’t respond to her taunt, but she knew it bothered him because he grimaced briefly after the words left her mouth. She didn’t regret them, though, and not because he wouldn’t stop to let her stretch her legs.
They continued in silence until he made a sound like a grunt of relief and she turned her head to see that cabin he promised they’d stop at. But even then, he didn’t speak to her. He simply kept walking.
“How long are we staying here?” Persephone asked.
“Just long enough to get rested and then we’ll leave. I want to have you home by tomorrow night.”
The way he said that sounded like he didn’t want to have to deal with her or the job of rescuing her anymore. She didn’t know why that bothered her, but it did. She was the aggrieved person, not him, Goddamnit.
“Good. I want to get home and see my family again,” she said, not even trying to mask the hurt his dismissiveness made her feel.
Nick pushed open the back door to the cabin and walked into the darkness inside. Persephone could make out basic shapes and saw a couch on the far wall of the room.
“Put me down over there.”
He did as she ordered and set her down as gently as he had picked her up back at the house. It felt so good to stretch her body, especially her legs. As he searched for some light, she closed her eyes and let herself truly relax for the first time since those two men grabbed her in the hospital parking garage. The couch may have been old with a spring that poked into her lower back, but it felt like heaven to her after the past couple weeks.
She breathed in the musty odor of the cabin that smelled nothing as sweet as that first breath of air she inhaled hours before but she didn’t care how dirty or dilapidated this place was. She was free.
How she’d escaped from her kidnappers weighed heavily on her mind as she lay there in the darkness. If it hadn’t been for Nick, she would still be back at that horrible house tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth. That she had him to thank for the gift of her freedom made hating him confusing and difficult. She wanted to hate him. She had every right to hate him.
But at the same time she owed her life to him.
From the other room she heard a noise and turned to see him walk toward her holding a lantern that lit his way. His expression showed how tired he was from carrying her all the way there, and a tiny lick of guilt pricked at Persephone for every time she silently swore to hate him that day.
“I found this in the kitchen. It’s not a lot of light, but it’s better that we don’t have lights on all over the place just in case they come looking for us here.”
She noted how he said us and not you. It wasn’t just her in this but them together. As much as she wanted to believe he was no better than those monsters who’d held her hostage, she knew that wasn’t the truth.
But that didn’t make what he’d done any easier to forgive.
“Okay.”
He gave her a half-hearted smile and pointed toward the kitchen. “There’s not much in there to eat, but I did find some crackers and some canned food. I can get you something, if you want.”
She shook her head. Eating was the last thing she wanted to do, even though she would have thought that she’d want to gorge on food once she was free. In fact, just the thought of food made her feel queasy.
“No, thanks. I just want to rest here and stretch my legs.”
His frown made her think her answer disappointed him, but she couldn’t imagine why. Taking a seat in a chair across from her, he sat down with a groan.
“That sounds like a good idea. We’ll get going again in a little while.”
She waited for him to say something else—what she wanted him to say she didn’t know—but he simply set the lantern down on the table between them and leaned back in the chair to close his eyes. Persephone watched him as he sat perfectly still and wondered if he fell asleep after a few minutes of not moving at all.
As she looked at him, she also couldn’t help but wonder what he felt about what he’d done. She knew no matter how much she wanted to say he was a monster like those men who kidnapped her that wasn’t true. He had rescued her like he promised, and she believed his actions proved he wasn’t an animal like them.
But how did he feel about what had happened? Did it bother him that for those few minutes he had been as cruel to her as each of those horrible men had been?
She watched him from across the room as his chest rose and lowered over and over and wondered what thoughts ran through his mind at that moment. Was what he did replaying on a loop in his head at it had with her while she sat tied to that chair and left alone in the dark?
Or was it all just part of the job he agreed to do for her father to find her and bring her home?
Could he rationalize what happened back in that house that easily, or would he have to talk about what he did at some point?
Closing her eyes, she tried to push away the memory of him thrusting into her while all those monsters cheered for him to fuck her harder, but she couldn’t. Over and over, her mind replayed the scene until all she felt was rage.
As tears rolled down her cheeks, she turned away from him so he wouldn’t see her crying. She didn’t want to cry anymore. She didn’t want to hate anymore.
She just wanted to go home.