Chapter 4
One of the men went deeper into the penthouse, but Grace had stopped tracking their movements. She was too amazed by the view and grandeur. She heard yelling and turned around, wondering what was going on. The other man stopped her from going anywhere. Grace suddenly felt scared. Were they going to hurt her?
Suddenly, two women barely dressed appeared in the doorway where one of the men had just been. She could smell the alcohol from 10 feet away. Grace watched them in shock as they walked around the penthouse picking up pieces of clothing and dressing themselves again. What was going on in there?
The women were stoned, and Grace could tell they didn’t really know what was going on or else she would have asked them. The man who had been standing by Grace’s side, almost guarding her, she felt like, suddenly began helping the women leave. They seemed unsure as to where the door was or unmotivated to go through it, but the man sent them on their way. He suddenly seemed a lot less relaxed and a lot more serious. Grace watched the women disappear as a sense of foreboding took over.
Grace looked from the man to the doorway where the other man had disappeared into. The man nodded toward the doorway. Grace felt like he wanted her to enter, but she was unsure if she wanted to do so.
“Gaan!” he said in a harsh tone. Quaking inside, Grace took one cautious step after another. As she reached the doorway, she saw that it was dark inside. She felt like she was entering the mouth of a lion. She stepped in, and the room suddenly lit up. One of the men who had ridden with her had turned on a lamp, but that wasn’t what Grace was looking at. She couldn’t take her eyes off the man who was sprawled across the bed. He was obviously naked, but the sheets were covering him in just a way that Grace couldn’t see anything. She could only imagine what had been happening between this man and whoever those women were. What did these people want from her? Good Lord.
Grace looked at the man more closely, and the smell of alcohol was so strong that she knew he must have drunken himself into a stupor. He had passed out, and now she had been brought here. Did these men kidnap women for this man to play with? What a sick practice!
Grace jumped away from the bed and began backing toward the door, but she ran into one of the men who was blocking it. He spoke in a harsh tone and pointed to the bed. What did he expect her to do? She was not going to touch that man! And she couldn’t believe they would expect her to do something with them watching anyway. She just looked up at the man. He had seemed friendly enough before. “I don’t understand,” she said, blinking her eyes as innocently as possible. She certainly hoped she didn’t understand.
The man turned her around so that her back was to him then pushed her toward the bed until the fell unceremoniously onto the end. She turned around and looked up at the men, scared. This was it. They were going to rape her. She knew it! Why had she even considered for a moment to stop fighting them in the parking lot? Why hadn’t she made a run for it? Why hadn’t she asked the lady at the fast food joint for help?
One of the men began reading from a piece of paper in a foreign language. The other man stood respectfully to the side, watching Grace. Grace looked back and forth. Now, she was just plain confused. She really couldn’t understand what was happening.
Finally, the man stopped reading, and he shoved the paper toward her. He pointed to a line at the bottom of the paper and gave her a pen. Grace studied the paper and had the feeling he wanted her to sign. But what was she signing? Was she selling herself?
Grace shook her head and tried to hand the pen back to the man, but he wouldn’t take it. He pointed at the paper again fiercely. “I don’t understand,” Grace said. But the man knew she was not a stupid girl. She simply did not want to cooperate. The man shook his head and pointed at the paper again. Grace threw the pen on the floor and shook her head. She was not going to sign something she did not understand.
The man gathered the pen up, and now, he seemed really angry. He motioned to the other man who pulled out a knife and pointed it at Grace. He stepped closer, and she shrank away. The man holding the paper made motions that Grace understood all too well. If she didn’t sign, she would be killed. Grace bit her lip and tried to stop the tears from coming down, but she couldn’t stop them. Grace slowly scribbled her name across the line in her shakiest handwriting ever. Once her name was on the paper, the man put the knife away, and the men seemed to calm down. One reached for her hand, and Grace reluctantly lifted it. He slipped a ring onto her finger. The man then went over to the man who was passed out and placed a ring on the bedside table. He looked at Grace, pointed at the ring then at the man.
The horror of what had just happened hit Grace. Was she married to this fool?! That couldn’t be legal. She had been forced into the marriage. She would get out of here as soon as possible and contact the authorities. She couldn’t be held to a marriage when she hadn’t even known what she was agreeing to let alone held at knife point for.
The men nodded to her and left the room. Grace sat on the bed for a few minutes, looking out the doorway. Her instincts suddenly kicked in, and she chased after the men. Where were they going? As she reached the bedroom’s doorway, she saw that the living room had been vacated. Grace hurried to the front door that led to the little hallway with the elevator. The door was locked. Could hotel doors even lock from the outside? Apparently, these men had found a way to do it.
Grace pulled and pushed on the door and turned and twisted the knob. It was useless. Grace hit the door with frustration. Where had they gone? What were they doing? Worse, what was she supposed to do? Stay locked in this penthouse the rest of her life?
Grace started going over the penthouse inch by inch. She was no longer impressed by its grandness. She would only be impressed by a way of escape. Obviously, the windows were not an option. Just looking at the ground from this height made Grace dizzy. That left her with either finding another door or finding a tool she could use to knock down the front door. After searching through the three living rooms, two dining rooms, a kitchen, a bar, and seven bedrooms, Grace hadn’t found anything useful. Including a friggin’ phone! Grace must have been the only person in all of Chicago with no cell phone.
There were no metal poles or hammers. She shouldn’t be surprised, but Grace couldn’t help feeling disappointed. They had to let her out eventually, right? They couldn’t keep her trapped in here for the rest of her life. Suddenly, while the size of the penthouse had seemed enormous at the beginning, it now seemed to be shrinking. She would just have to wait it out… and eat. Her enormous search and perhaps the fear at her future prospects had made her hungry. She searched through the kitchen and found some food to assuage her appetite.
Sleepiness slowly started coming over Grace. As she nodded forward and barely avoided hitting her head on the counter, she realized she needed to go to sleep. She slowly crawled into a bed she found in a room the farthest from that drunk man’s. The silk sheets were enough to put her asleep immediately.