He locked the door.

I blinked, and it felt like my eyelids were a camera, taking a picture of his back, memorizing the moment and cataloging it somewhere in my brain, like a flight recorder.

Remember this picture, Jesse.

I couldn’t swallow the saliva gathering in my mouth.

“I need to leave.” I thought I said it, but I wasn’t really sure. I was frozen with a fear I’d never felt. I couldn’t even explain it. He’d never been anything but nice to me. But everything felt different that night. Like the devil got the pen to write my script till morning.

He looked like hell in a crumpled suit, and for a moment, I pitied him. Pitied that he felt compelled to make so much money in order to be up to par with his deceased father. Pitied that he’d married a woman who actually cared about how much he was making. And that, even at his age, he still thought he had something to prove.

“Jesse,” he croaked. Was he crying? Jesus. He was. I glanced around me. An irrational urge to hurt him washed over me. My survival instincts were making every nerve in my hands and feet burn.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, his voice clear, strong, stable. “You shouldn’t have come here tonight.”

I finally managed to stand up. I watched him drinking for a few minutes, too afraid to make a move.

“You’re really beautiful, you know.” He took a step in my direction. I took a step back. My fear was like blood-sucking ants, rushing up my feet, up, up, up. They itched and burned until they covered my entire body.

“I’m going to go now,” I said, advancing for the door. My suspicion and anxiety materialized into a reality the moment I felt his hand wrapping around my wrist. My hand was planted on the round door handle that I knew was locked, and still, he didn’t let go. He looked down at the same time I looked up, and our eyes met.

He offered the bottle of vodka with the snowflake adorning its label silently. “Drink.”

I didn’t move. He twisted my wrist, my palm facing upward, and placed the vodka inside it. “Drink until you can’t feel it in your throat.”

The best way to go about it was squeeze my nostrils with one hand while holding the bottle in another. It was heavy. I remembered thinking, I might die tonight. And I did, in ways I couldn’t fathom at that age.

I walked back to the couch on order. It was still warm and dented with the shape of my small body. He hovered above me, leaned in, and pressed my wrists to each side of my head. The room swam out of focus, everything blurry and numb.

“You’re drunk,” I said. “My dad was drunk all the time. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

He shook his head. “Just this one time, Jesse. Give me this one time.”

“No. Please. No.”

He crawled on top of me, ignoring my plea. He smelled like a man, not like a boy. Boys smell spicy and sour, with too many hormones and deodorant. Men smell like violence. Bitter, but subtle.

“Oh, God. You’re so beautiful. So beautiful, Jesse…” he said as he moved inside me. It probably hurt like hell. Sad thing was, I couldn’t feel it at all. “Your tight, hot body against mine is just heaven. I want to live inside you, Jesse.” His vodka breath burned against the shell of my ear.

I want to live inside you.

I want to live inside you.

I want to live inside you.

The words bounced inside my seemingly empty head. I kept on asking myself why I wasn’t fighting, but I already knew. I was more scared of the alternative than what was already happening. First, I was scared that if I tried to push him away, he would become violent, and the plush, sincere approval he’d showered me with would evaporate. Second, I was afraid that it wouldn’t matter anyway, and he would still rape me. He was so much bigger and stronger than me. Third, I was scared that if I told my mom, she wouldn’t believe me—or worse, would say something crazy, like I’d tried to seduce him. And fourth—even if I, theoretically, overcame all of the above mentioned obstacles, where would it leave me? My mom didn’t have a job. If she left Darren, we’d be homeless and poor and thrown back onto the streets.

I faintly remembered him tucking me into bed. The next morning, I woke up, slid my PJ’s down, and saw dried blood clustered on my inner thighs. The unnerving feel of wanting to throw up took ahold of my stomach, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I tried to pee, but nothing came out. I turned around, threw up into the toilet, and hugged it for a while, plastering my damp forehead to the edge of the seat and not caring much about the fact that it wasn’t the most sanitary moment of my life. Pam strode past the open bathroom in the hallway, stopped, and looked at me, fixing her diamond earrings as she spoke.

“Not feeling well?”

“I think her thtomach upthets her,” Darren called out from their bedroom, his tone casual. “I had to carry her upthtairs latht night.” Pam’s eyes dropped to the blood on my thighs. Her pupils dilated. I followed her line of vision down to them. Had I finally gotten my first period? That was the first thing that popped into my mind.

A lot of girls my age got it, and they always reported stomach cramps and other gross stuff I didn’t want to deal with. Realization washed over Pam’s face. She shook her head and turned her back to me. I blinked.

Click.

Remember this picture, Jesse.

“You can stay home today. Hannah will make you breakfast,” she said coldly. “I have a session with my trainer and then lunch at the country club, but I’ll be back to check on you after. Congrats,” she snorted, her voice cracking a little. “You’re a woman now.”

That day, I started taking pictures of people’s backs. Hannah’s. Then Pam’s. Then Mrs. Belfort’s, when she went out to her maze, and I watched her through my bedroom window.

And that night, my first nightmare occurred.

Click.

He plastered his forehead to mine.

I didn’t move.

He stood up.

I didn’t move.

He looked down.

I didn’t move.

He said, “Fuck”—the first and last time I heard him curse.

I started to cry.

I tucked that memory somewhere safe and took a picture of Darren’s office door.

Never remember this picture, Jesse.

I CRAWLED BACK TO GAIL’S apartment later that night. I was covered in sand and tears and snot, and looked less than picture-ready. Somewhere along the river of memories flooding in, I’d fallen to my knees again going up the stairs from the beach to the promenade. I was bleeding. I didn’t even realize that I was until I scraped Gail’s front door like a desperate stray cat, my throat burning with thirst. She swung it open and looked down, her eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets.

“Jesse!”

She dragged me in and threw me into her bathtub while my clothes were still on. I couldn’t stop crying and clawing at my face. I wanted so badly to get back at them. All of them.

Darren.

Pam.

Emery.

Nolan.

Henry.

Even Roman. I wanted to make them suffer and watch as they did, and not spare them the mercy they hadn’t shown me. As I was planning the mass destruction of other people’s lives, Gail was peeling the heavy wet clothes off of me and taking off her sneakers. Between gasps and sniffs, I could hear her talking on the phone. It was pressed between her shoulder and ear.

“…yeah. She won’t be coming to work tomorrow.”

Bane.

Pause.

“No. Don’t come here.”

Pause.

“Why? Because you’re a fucking asshole, Bane. That’s why. I don’t know what you did to her, but she’s a mess. You’re not allowed to come here.”

Pause.

“No. You can’t talk to her, either.”

Pause.

“If you come here, I will call the police, and I don’t care that you’re my boss. You’re not allowed anywhere near her until she says so. I don’t think you understand, Roman. She is not okay.”

Pause.

“I’m not telling her that.”

Pause.

“Because she needs to hear it from you.”

She hung up, tossing her phone into the sink. I clung to her arms, pulling myself up to look at her. I couldn’t see her through the curtain of tears. She was a shadow, much like all the other things I’d loved and lost.

“Thank you,” I croaked.

She sat on the edge of the bathtub, running her hand through my wet hair. I pressed my face into her palm, naked and vulnerable.

“You need to tell me what happened,” Gail said.

I did.

Jesse

I know.

Darren

???

Jesse

About you. About Pam. About everything. I remember.

She knew.

Knew about Artem.

Knew about the deal. The contract. The betrayal. And everything in between.

She knew, and now it was my time to pull every fucking resource and connection I had to make sure that this shit was fixed.

I couldn’t sleep that night, so I settled for driving to El Dorado, climbing that gate and knocking on Darren’s door. I was half-wishing he’d call the police on me, because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that fists would be flying. Pam opened the door, and I stared at her with a mixture of disgust and disdain.

“Out of my way.” I brushed past her, rolling my sleeves up and shutting her door with my foot. Pam was feeling adventurous, because she decided to throw her body at me. I raised my palms to make sure it was known and seen by every camera in the fucking house that I didn’t touch her, but stepped sideways to watch her tumble and fall on her ass.

She jumped up again, zipping after me.

“Wait! Where are you going? What are you doing? He’s in his office! Don’t go there.” As you can see, she wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the pack, because now I didn’t even have to actively look for him. I headed up the stairs straight to Darren, Pam at my heels like an eager puppy. I gave her three warnings before turning around and pushing her against the wall. It wasn’t violent or anything, but the message hit home like a grenade.