Holly
We’re in this gorgeous hotel room and he’s so mad that he’s like a raging bull. Nostrils flaring, smoke might as well be coming out of his ears. He’s hurt my hand by gripping it too tight and my rear end is still on fire from when he smacked it.
My heart is racing and yet… I feel alive. I feel alive for the first time in weeks.
I take off my mittens.
He slams the door and then he pushes me and I land on my back on the big bed.
It took me a week after he left last time to peel myself off the proverbial floor. I had to move forward. I was pining to death. And now that I’ve seen him, I’ve started to get angry. I can see that my anger is no match for his.
His hand goes to his belt. My jaw drops. But I dig deep for some bravery.
“What’s it gonna be?” I ask. “Another spanking? Belt this time? Gonna gag me with your dick while you fuck my throat? Gonna rip my butt open again?” I hiss at him. I jump up and tear my coat off and throw it.
“That’s a dirty mouth, baby,” he snickers and his eyes sparkle like he finds it a turn-on or something.
“Wonder why? You think I’m pure as the virgin snow, but I grew up with a cracked junkie drunk for a mother,” I challenge, “Go for it. Punish me,” I invite, wiggling my fingers at him.
He glares and his hands stop moving at his fly.
“No? No de-flowering today? Guess you’re waiting until the happiest day of my life, right? My wedding night?”
“You want a gentle lover? Some sweet and romantic gesture from a man who takes his time to open up those flower petals? Well, that's not me. You said you love me? If you want that from me, then you don’t love me. You love who you want me to be.”
“Actually, no. I’d rather you be real with me."
"Right," he rolls his eyes.
"I would," I insist. "I want to feel everything you have been saving to give me. I’ve ached for you since I knew it was you who saved me, Alessandro, and when you saved me from the fire and I was in your arms, that ache turned to a burn for me. It’s burning a hole in me.”
"You've got an unrealistic view of who I am, Holly. Didn’t you figure that out on your birthday? Didn’t you figure it out when you flipped this fuckin’ switch? When I saw you last month?"
“No,” I say. "Who you showed me last time? That wasn’t you. That was who you’re trying to make me think you are."
He stares at me. He’s seething. But, so am I.
“And I didn’t flip it,” I tell him.
He looks at me like I’m insane, so I explain.
“Your dead girlfriend Andrea flipped it when she tried to kill me, when I jumped out that window, and you caught me, saving me. She flipped it. And I don't think I have an unrealistic view. I didn’t imagine you being a knight in shining armor, gallantly taking me off into the sunset on a white horse, Alessandro. I imagined you devouring me like a hungry wolf. Because that’s how you look at me; like it’s taking every ounce of your self-control to not rip into my throat."
“That’s exactly what it is,” he says.
We stare at one another for a long moment.
He swallows and looks away, like I’ve affected him, maybe.
He speaks without looking at me, “You talk a big game. You think you're ready for me? You don’t know, little flower, what you’re asking for. You have no idea how bad the big bad wolf truly is.”
"Well, why don't you show me then? Who are you, Alessandro? Show me who you are. "
“You don’t know what you ask for.” He’s still not looking at me.
“Take me to Mexico, then. Put me in the basement. It wouldn’t hurt any more than this.” I shrug.
“Who told you about that cunt, Andrea? Mena, right?”
I don’t say anything. He rolls his eyes, “Fucking Jimena. And you are so fucking naïve, Holly. You think being with your sister and her family is a punishment? You don’t know punishment. Yet.”
I sniffle. Right. Having my ass ripped open on my birthday, almost choking to death on his dick last time I saw him. Being locked in a room for two years in almost solitary confinement and now being sent away, not knowing my fate, if that’s not real punishment, I don’t know what is.
“Yet,” he repeats, his eyes meeting mine. And I shiver at the implication.
He moves toward me and I stand there, strong, brave. Stupid. He grabs me by the beltloops and works my fly undone, his face an inch from mine, his hair in his eyes, his jaw ticking with anger. He pushes my pants and panties down my hips and that whole time, I’m staring into his eyes, my heart racing, my throat dry.
He backs up, sits on the bed, pulling me by the elbow. I trip on my pants and wind up over his knee with a gasp.
A long moment passes.
“You forget what it’s like down there, don’t you?” His voice is dark, sinister. His fingers dance along the skin of my butt and I get goosebumps.
“I remember,” I say and now I’m looking off into space, my mind filled with images of that underground hellhole. “How could I forget? And this hurts so much. At least if I’m there, I’m near you. Maybe I’ll see you.”
His hand cracks across my bare ass and I jump. He holds me still and then his hand moves slowly up and down my ass.
“What in the fuck is the matter with you?” he asks in a sinister whisper. “What the fuck makes you tick?”
I shake my head. “I could ask you the same thing. That you even have those women in the basement.”
He laughs. Laughs! And I can’t say more about that. I won’t. Because I don’t want him to minimize how awful it is. I’ll just be an ostrich about it. I don’t pretend to understand it and I couldn’t.
I don’t want to think about sex slaves in his basement, being broken so that he can sell them. That he’s probably touched some of them the way he touched me. That he’s maybe been touching them now that I’ve been gone two months.
God. My heart…
“Andrea helped us along on this inevitable journey because she forced you to acknowledge that I was in that room. That I’m real, not just an idea.”
His fingers dig into the flesh of my ass punishingly and I pull my lips tight and stay still.
We’re both still for a long moment.
“When will you take me home?”
“I’m taking you home tonight. Putting you in the fucking basement. That’s your home until I sell you, you disobedient bitch.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I won’t? What the fuck do you know?”
“I know you’re not gonna do that.”
“The brat is gonna get beat and fucked right out of you,” he sneers. “Then you’ll know. Maybe I’ll let someone else do it. Maybe I’m already fuckin’ done with you.”
I shudder.
He flips me and then we’re both on the bed, me on my back, him hovering over me, my legs still covered with my half-down jeans and panties, and my boots still on.
Why haven’t I just moved on with life here with my sister and the family she’s given me? These people are amazing. I’m crazy to not embrace that. But, I know it’s temporary. And I don’t know why. And I don’t know what’s next for us. I can’t stand all the unknown.
If I told them about the things he did, they’d go to war with him. And someone would lose. No. We’d both lose, me and my sister. Either way, we’d both lose in some way.
“Pull those up,” he orders, gesturing at my clothes. “Stupid fucking games you’re playing.”
I get up on my knees. He’s glaring into my eyes, not looking at my nakedness as I pull my undies and jeans up. I scramble backwards against the headboard.
“You gotta keep fuckin’ provoking me, don’t you?” He gets out of the bed.
I thrust my hands into my hair and close my eyes. I curl into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest and planting my face into my knees.
I actually like my hair like this. It’s just to my shoulders and has all these little flippy layers. It feels so light and healthy. And I didn’t do it totally just to get his attention. That was just a nice side effect. Or maybe not so nice. This isn’t turning out very well.
I look up at him. He’s standing there drinking booze. I lift the length of my hair and inspect it and then I look at him. He’s watching me.
“It’s getting made into a wig for a six-year-old girl who lost her hair to chemotherapy.”
His expression drops.
I put my face back to my knees and let my emotions go. I’m not loud but the tears are flowing into the knees of my jeans. I’m not holding back. I’m feeling things about my situation, about his, whatever it might be, and for little Cara who is six years old and who used to be blonde before she lost her hair.
She fell in love with my hair when I volunteered, doing a little art class and story time in her ward and she kept telling me how much it was like her hair used to be and so after I left, I went to Bianca’s hair salon and got her to cut my hair. She knows a wig maker who is making a wig for Cara.
“Clothes off,” he barks and I look up from my knees at him. His eyes are cold, his jaw is hard, and his lip is slightly curled, like I disgust him or something.
My eyes widen in shock and surprise.
“Now,” he snaps.
I stare at him. “How many times do my pants have to go up and down today?”
He moves to me and puts a knee to the bed beside me.
“Take them off or I rip them off.”
I’m taken aback, so much so that I continue to just stare, like a deer in the headlights. He just made me pull my pants back up and now that I’m making him feel things, he’s gonna punish me again.
“Last warning.”
I’m so shocked at his anger, at his demeanor, his complete disregard for the things I just said, that I don’t even move.
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m a cold heartless bastard.”
Suddenly, he’s on me, I’m on my back. And he rips open my blouse and then it’s off me. He tosses it in the direction of my coat, which is half hanging off the chair beside the bed. He yanks my boots off my feet and I’m just open-mouthed and frozen.
His phone rings.
“Fuck,” he barks and freezes, his hands are at the fly of my jeans.
I’m staring, tears drying on my face, probably mixed with mascara. My eyes feel sticky and they’re burning.
His phone stops and immediately starts again. He reaches into the inside breast pocket of his blazer and looks at it. His lip curls.
He answers.
“What?”
And then he points at me in some sort of warning and waves his finger as he gives a curt shake of his head. I take it as ‘don’t move’, ‘don’t talk’. He disappears out of the hotel room and into the hallway.
I’m there in my bra with unbuttoned jeans. I don’t move. I stare at the ceiling.
He doesn’t want me to make him feel things. That’s why he keeps trying to reduce me to a sexual thing only. But yet he can’t bring himself to take my virginity and he’s got me stashed away somewhere safe. He needs therapy. But bad guy criminal leaders of sex slavery rings won’t get therapy, will they?
***
Either time is dragging or he’s been gone a long time. It feels like it has been more than an hour. I finally get up, needing to pee. As I’m coming out of the bathroom, buttoning my blouse up (if he wants it off, he can take it off again) I come face to face with Tino, my bodyguard. He’s Bianca the hairdresser’s brother-in-law, a tall and wide Italian guy in a perpetual bad mood who looks like he could be in the NFL. He’s huge. He’s Bianca’s husband’s twin but I think of Nino as the good twin and Tino as the evil twin. He’s grouchy.
“Oh,” I stumble a little. He catches me, preventing me from falling on my face.
“Get ready to go.”
“Where’s---” I start.
“Unexpected emergency. He had to fly out fast. He’ll call you later.”
“What emergency?” I ask.
“No clue. C’mon.”
I get myself together and grab my bag and follow him out, thinking that I was saved by that bell.
Or maybe Alessandro was.
I know I’m seriously messed up in the head for it but God, I hope everything, whatever he’s dealing with right now, whatever it is that is making him keep me away, that he’s okay.