It's dark when I wake, I hear glass smash. Then hushed tones. Whoever it is, is trying to be quiet. My body freezes up, thinking that it’s them. That they’ve come, and what I will do? I can fight, always been good at it. But against more than one full grown man? I don’t know how I will do it. Footsteps are now in my kitchen, coming closer to my room. I crawl out of bed, taking my bat with me. It lays at the top of my bed, close to me if I need it. I almost want to kiss it for being so close.
I take each step to my ensuite very slowly, knowing that there’s a connecting door. If I can reach that and run for the front, I should miss them. When I’m at the entrance of the door, a shadow comes over me. A man is now standing behind me. I didn’t even hear him, and he reaches down over my hunched body and goes to grab my hand. I don’t think as I swing the bat the opposite way, hitting him. I don’t know where it hits, but the sound he makes suggest it was his abdominal. He wheezes and then screams, letting the other men know I’m awake. Lights flicker on, and I turn to see the man on the floor breathing heavy and is dressed in all black.
I run, bat still in hand, and hope I can make it to the front door without being grabbed again. Just as I’m passing the kitchen, the front door inches away, the bat is seized, and I’m flung into the kitchen bench. My ankle hurts, my head hurts. I must have knocked it hard. I see the Pres, his smile like the devil. He takes a step toward me and I manage to stand just as he reaches me. I don’t think as I kick my leg straight up between his legs, making him drop just as hard as he flung me. He now blocks my path to the door.
I look around and just past the kitchen is the back door, some glass shattered on the floor from where they came in. I run to it and slam into a brick wall of a man. An enormous man, bigger than all these men combined. None of the skills I know would work on this man, I think he has fat even covering his junk. He’s scary as all hell.
He laughs as he holds me. “Took two men down, a little thing like you.” He laughs harder. I reach out to the bench, my knife tray just within reach. So I grab one and cut the arm he holds me with. He drops me straight away, his blood now on my shirt and at my feet.
“You little bitch!” he screams, holding the wound.
I run, and I even make it outside. I go to scream, but I’m knocked down. Then I’m hit again and I black out.
I wake to swearing and my head pounds. My whole body is wracked in some kind of pain. I open one eye, trying to pretend I’m still asleep. I feel someone grab my arm, then strap it. I start to buck, kick, slap, and punch anyone around me. They’re not doing this to me again. I will not go back to that.
“Aww… the bitch is awake,” a voice purrs near me. It’s the man from the bathroom. I recognize his face. It has a large scar across his cheek like someone cut into him deeply. He’s bending down in front of me, watching me.
“Don’t,” I say, trying to pull my arm away from him, but he doesn’t let it go. He holds on to it and squeezes tight, bruising me just by his hold.
“Leave her,” a voice booms from behind him. The man I recognize now is the man who bought me when I wasn’t anyone’s to sell.
The man with the scar backs up, his smile evil as he watches me on the ground. I look down and realize I’ve been stripped of my clothes. I lay on a dirty floor in nothing but underwear. The men’s eyes leer, making me feel dirty.
“Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon, poppet.” Gray is his name. I remember that’s what he liked me to call him.
“Too soon,” I reply dryly. Trying to sit up, my back screams in pain when I do.
“I liked you better when you didn’t backchat.”
“I liked you better when I didn’t see you.”
“Cut her wrist,” he says to the man with the scar. I instantly pull my hands up to my chest. He smiles swinging a switchblade in his hands as he steps toward me. “Not an artery, though,” Gray states taking a seat on a chair and pulling his phone out. He doesn’t care, he’s one cold son of a bitch.
The man with the scar pulls my arm from my body like it was no effort at all. While he does that he drags me across the ground, my back scraping on the floor. He sits on me, pinning my legs and arms down with his body. Then I can do nothing but watch as he brings the blade to my wrist and slowly slices, making me scream out in agony.
“A little louder, poppet, he can’t hear you,” Gray says, pointing the phone at me. I hear Black’s voice. He threatens him, then it goes dead. And a part of me wishes I was too.
“He didn’t sound too happy did he, poppet?” Gray says, walking up behind the man on top of me. He looks down and seems pleased, tapping the man on the shoulder to release me. “Ru, let her go.” Ru stands up from me, and I bring my hand to my chest again trying to stop the bleeding. But the only material I have is covering me, so I place it on my panties to try and stop the blood.
“It could have gone a lot easier,” Gray says, looking now between my legs. “He could have just handed back what’s mine. But no, now I have to start a war with him, with a man who’s deadlier than all sin. Do you know what that’s going to do to my business, poppet? No, I suppose you don’t. It means I’ll have to start getting my hands dirty, start recruiting, because if I know one thing about Black and, believe me, I know him well, he would have killed all the men I’ve sent after him.” He seems pleased with that, like his own men don’t mean a thing to him like no life matters.
“You’re sick. You know that, right?”
“Didn’t you know, poppet, the best of us are. Black especially.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Oh, but I’m right. I take it you met Stella? Right?” A simple nod is all I give him. “Black killed her, shot the bitch right in the head. All because I told him to, and he will do the same with you because I tell him to.”
“He won’t.”
“But, poppet, he will. He isn’t wired normally, haven’t you realized that yet?”