INDIE

Our third day in the cabin and I’d successfully eaten my way through half of the fridge’s contents, and you know you have a problem when a bunch of big bikers stare in amazement at how much spaghetti bolognese you were able to put away in one sitting.

I’m bored and restless, and the more I try and think about what went on in that warehouse, the more I try to remember about the Cop and the Priest, the less I remember. Under any other circumstances, I’d probably appreciate having my memories taken away, but when exacting your revenge is dependent upon those images, smells, sounds and details, it’s frustrating as all hell. One thing I haven’t forgotten is the way the Priest’s face looked as he hovered over me, while he beat and raped me. I see it every time I close my eyes. The Cop’s face is only ever a blur in my dreams. And though the Dentist took a handful of my teeth and played games dependent upon my fear of his drugs, for some reason he doesn’t make an appearance at all.

When I’m awake, I remember every detail of the Cop’s face, but that doesn’t mean I know where to find him. I’ve spent hours upon hours searching different divisions of the New South Wales Police Force and Googling churches and congregations online, but it’s like trying to pick the guy in the red and white shirt from a Where’s Wally? book.

I shut the laptop and throw it down on the couch beside me with an audible groan.

Biker—Kick, though I still can’t get used to calling someone by a “doing” word—shifts the laptop to the table and sits down beside me. He hands me the beer he just opened, but I shake my head and wedge myself further into the corner of the lounge.

“What’s up, little spitfire?”

I glare at him. “You need to quit calling me that.”

“You need to work out some of this frustration.”

“Yeah, let’s do that. And while I’m running laps around the perimeter of the house that I’m not allowed to leave I’ll throw you a wink and a wave. I still don’t know why I’m not allowed to set foot out of this house, by the way. We’ve been here three days, and there hasn’t been so much as a freaking wallaby to breach the perimeter.”

“You don’t need to be on the property to be able to shoot someone. Surprisingly, bullets fly a really long way.”

So biker may be a complete arsehole, but I have to admit I’m kinda in love with his sarcastic side.

“Come on,” he says, holding his hand out for me to take. It’s not the first time he’s done this, and I don’t know why—it’s just a hand, after all—but every time he does it, it’s like he’s testing me. Testing my faith in him. Or maybe I just have cabin fever and am overanalysing everything.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ve been here, what? Three days?”

“Yeah?”

“And you never thought to look around?”

“It’s not my house.”

Biker shakes his head. He flexes his hand in an impatient gesture, and I take it. The smug grin he gives me pisses me off a little, but I let him lead me anyway—out of boredom, of course.

He guides me to a room at the end of the hall. I haven’t even been in this wing yet—the rooms Jett had given us were guest rooms, side by side, and upstairs in the east wing of the house. They overlooked the driveway and the unsealed road half a kilometre away. At night I like to watch that road, when I can’t sleep, or when biker has woken me with his thrashing in the next room. I don’t know who plagues his dreams, I don’t know why he screams and lashes out, but some nights I lie awake hoping to find out. Some nights I just lie awake to avoid my own nightmares. Some nights I creep out of bed and lay on the hardwood floors, then I press myself against the wall and finally drift off. Some nights I’d do anything to feel a connection with another human being that wasn’t born of violence, and other nights I’m so consumed with hurt, and anger and my unfulfilled need for revenge that I want to be the one doling out the pain.

Biker opens the door and tugs me inside. I didn’t know what to expect, but a fully equipped gym wasn’t it. I glance around the room. One wall is lined floor to ceiling with mirrors. A bank of treadmills, an elliptical machine, and different kinds of exercise bikes sit opposite. The wall on the left-hand side of the room is painted a hideous Pepto-Bismol colour, while the right-hand corner is blood red. The paint job isn’t finished. In fact, it looks as though someone lost their shit entirely and just pulled out a roller and a can of whatever paint they could find that didn’t make you begin exuding oestrogen from your pores and start popping daisies out of your vagina. This side of the room also houses a very worn-looking punching bag. I gravitate towards it.

Biker laughs. “So violent, little spitfire.”

I glare at him, and then back at the bag. Imagining his cocky face is plastered to it, I pull back my arm and let fly. It’s denser than I’d thought—or maybe I am—because the bag doesn’t give at all and pain slams into me and radiates all the way up my arm.

“Ow, fuck!” I yelp, shaking out the hurt.

“Jesus Christ,” biker says, and the next thing I know, he’s in front of me, all up in my face and taking my hand in his. “You can’t just go in all gung-ho. You’re gonna break your fuckin’ hand.”

He flattens my palm and pushes my fingers back, assessing the damage.

“Ow, that fucking hurts.”

“Come ’ere.” He pulls me over to the wall and takes a roll of white tape off the shelf. My reaction is swift and automatic. I’m transported back to the warehouse. To the Priest binding my hands and feet with duct tape, dragging me across the concrete floor until my flesh burned and wept blood. I step back and yank my hand from his grasp. I lower my gaze, but he takes my chin in his hands and forces me to look at him.

“You need to get this shit outta your system. We’re not leaving this room ’til you and I get straight. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it a thousand times already, in more ways than you can possibly count, and I wouldn’t have needed to bring you to a fancy fuckin’ mansion in the woods. So have a little fuckin’ faith in me, and give me your hand, little spitfire.”  

I take a deep shuddering breath, close my eyes and stretch my hand towards him. His touch is gentle this time, far more gentle than I’d ever thought someone with so much uncontained violence to him could be.

“Spread your fingers,” he commands. I do, and he lifts the roll of tape, presses the edge to my skin and begins winding it over my knuckles. I close my eyes. The strident sound of it stretching out from the roll makes me want to flee. It makes me want to run as far from his touch—from any man’s touch—as I can possibly get.

The feel of the tape against my flesh, binding, holding, is so much worse. I tug on my hand, but he won’t let go. My heart rate skyrockets and sweat beads erupt over my brow and upper lip. I’m in that room again, struggling, screaming, trying to fight them off, and failing.

 Biker knows it, too. His dark eyes challenge, they dare me to run, but they also implore me to stay. It’s ironic that the only thing keeping me here, keeping me grounded, is the man who abducted me.

He holds my gaze. I don’t know exactly what is hidden in his dark blue one, but it suffocates the panic within me, douses it like water flooding flames. He bends his head to my hand. Taking the paper tape in his mouth, he rips it with his teeth.

I still. I soften. His gaze doesn’t leave mine, not even once. Not even when he starts in on my wrist, gently biting through each piece of tape before pressing it down with his rough hands. I’m mesmerised by his mouth, the piercing, and the soft, full lips. The light catches a silver chain around his neck, something I’ve never noticed before—but then I try not to make a habit of staring too closely at him. Not now, though. Now I watch every twitch, every blink, every intake of breath, and every inch that is swallowed up by his mouth moving closer to my flesh.

Before long he’s wrapping the last piece of tape around the back of my hand. This time when he breaks it off, the soft glide of his tongue sweeps over my skin.

I inhale. Slowly … so I don’t hyperventilate. I imagine his tongue all over me, lapping, licking, and laving at every inch of my body and a bolt of white-hot pleasure shoots through my damn traitorous vagina. What the hell is wrong with me?

Biker smirks, one corner of his mouth turning up as though he knows exactly what I was thinking. He sets the tape back on the shelf and then faces me. “I’m going to position you, exactly where I want you.”

I nod because it seems my brain is incapable of doing much else at this point. He stands behind me, pulls my shoulders back and manoeuvres my elbows so that my hands are raised inline with my chin and nose in a guarding position. He bends and slides his hand down the back of my thigh. I gasp. My whole body turns rigid.

“A little faith, spitfire,” he says, as he taps my knee until I step back into position. He straightens again, showing me how to make a proper fist. “I want sharp, even jabs, darlin’. You follow through, you’ll wind up busting your pretty skin all to pieces, and we don’t want that.”

Taking my elbows, he pushes one forward after another and I drive through the movement. I’m not close enough yet to hit the bag, but I can still feel what the force of those blows would do if I were connecting with something more than just air.

“Make the movement hard and fast,” he whispers in my ear.

“I. Am.” Grunting from exertion already, I picture his face meeting my fists and find I work a little harder.

“Alright, Rocky,” he says, resting his hands on my hips and tapping me. “I think you’re ready for the bag.”

I inch forward and take the same stance, and then I jab at the vinyl over and over, hitting hard and fast just the way he told me to, preening with his encouragement and bristling when he tells me I can work harder. I’m sure it’s only been a few minutes, but all at once I completely run out of steam. I stop making my jabs clean the way I’m supposed to, and instead I begin following through after each punch. He’s right; even with the tape, the slide of the bag against my fist pulls at my flesh. I lower my arms, and Kick steps away from the wall he’s been leaning against.

“Again, Indie.”

I shake my head. “I’m done.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I said I’m done.” I straighten and give him a look that says not to push me. He does anyway. He steps in front of me until we’re toe to toe. I have to look up to him, and it infuriates me. I hate the thought of being obedient, and compliant, and allowing anyone to make me feel small after what those men put me through.

“You think the Cop’s done? You think the Priest is done?” he seethes. “You think they’re gonna stop torturing you, they’re gonna stop raping you just because you’re fuckin’ done fighting?”

I gasp at his words, at the wall hitting my back. I hadn’t even known we were moving backward. I hadn’t known we were moving at all. “Shut up.”

“Did cryin’ for help work before?” he whispers, and his vehement tone has the hairs prickling on the back of my neck.

His mouth is too close to mine, and his body pens me in. Fear slides down my spine. It unfurls inside me, paralysing me. “Stop it.”

“Would they have stopped? Just because you cowered and begged for mercy?” He grabs hold of my shoulders and smacks me into the wall. My head spins.

He uses my confusion to yank my ponytail, and then he is dragging me across the room, my feet stumbling and tripping over his in an attempt to keep up. He stops in front of the wall of mirrors, standing behind me. His hand is wrapped around my throat, and he holds my chin up, forcing me to see myself.

Tears burn a trail down my red face. I’m pathetic, crying and snivelling, begging him to let me go.

“This girl,” he says, tightening his hold around my neck. My eyes meet his in the mirror. “Is she a fighter, or a fuckin’ victim?”

“A ... f …”

“What?”

“A fighter,” I say, gulping in air. “She’s … a fighter.”

“Then fuckin’ show me.” He releases me, and I bend double, coughing as I catch my breath. From out of nowhere, I’m hit with the force of a wrecking ball, and I’m slammed onto the mat. Kick sits astride my hips, pinning me to the ground. My arms are forced above my head.

“Stop!” I cry.

“Show me. Fuckin’ hit me, Kayla. Hit me. Make it hurt!”

The use of my name jars me completely. I still beneath him. “Please, let me go.”

“Not until you show me the fight I saw in you when we first met.”

I squirm beneath him, twisting my wrist against his painful grip.

“Hit me!” he roars.

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck me?” He smiles and lets go of my hands, leaning back to undo his belt buckle. “If you’re offerin’, darlin'.”

Something inside me snaps. I lose all trace of Indie, of Kayla, and I become something alien, something animal. I punch him in the face. It may not be the hard and fast jabs he taught me, but he still feels it. Hitting the bag is nothing like hitting a person, though. There’s no crunch, or flesh giving way beneath your fingers to the force of the punch with a bag. This is so much more primal than striking an inanimate object.

He grunts and grits his teeth. “Again.”

I hit him again in the face. He sucks in a sharp breath through his nose, and my lips twist into a sneer because I know that one hurt. While he’s distracted, I buck in an attempt to get him off me. It doesn’t work, though; my hands are bloody and raw, despite the tape, so I claw at him because he’s still holding me down. I rent his flesh, and four long scratches mar his tattooed neck. There isn’t much else I can do with my hands strapped the way they are.

“I knew you had it in you,” he says. He’s leaning over me now, his face above mine, and he’s panting hard. I am too. “Now you have your attacker’s DNA underneath your nails. If he has a record, the cops will find him.”

I’m only half listening to what he says because the chain around his neck has worked free of his T-shirt and it gently swings back and forth in the space between us. Attached to the chain is a tooth … my tooth. I don’t know how I know that it’s mine. Maybe it’s intrinsic. How does a baby know its mother when it’s only been in the world a day? You know instinctively when you lose something that belongs to you, something that’s of you. And that tooth is mine.

“Where did you get that?” I whisper, my eyes glued to the piece of me that he’s wearing around his neck like a fucking trophy. He follows my gaze and shoves the chain back inside the collar of his T-shirt, pushing up off me and standing to his full height. He holds out his hand, but I knock it away, climbing to my feet. I squeeze my hands into fists, attempting to feel only the rage and to keep the hurt and injustice of what he just did—of everything he’s done to me up until this point—at bay. It doesn’t work, and tears of betrayal and frustration spill over my cheeks.

“You’re sick,” I accuse. He only nods. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you only fight when there’s fear. And you’re too fuckin’ stubborn, and too defiant to see when you should break and when you should fight back. I want you to be able to protect yourself. I want you to be able to fight back no matter who is involved, and who might get hurt in the process. You’re not always going to have four bikers around standing between you and some arsehole that wants inside your pants.”

That’s not what I was asking, and he knows it. I know why he attacked me just now. I want to know why he has my tooth hanging around his neck. I also know he’s not going to give me the answers I want. On this, and this alone, he’s as transparent as glass. I stalk away, but he comes up behind me, yanking me around to face him.

I wrench out of his hold and without a second’s hesitation, I punch him in the face with as much force as I can muster. I do exactly what he taught me—I make it hard, and fast, and lethal. His head snaps to the side, and he covers his mouth with his hand, collecting a drop of blood from his split lip. To be fair, he’d told me that one of his brothers had given that to him the other day, but I took a little delight in knowing I helped open it up again. He stares at the blood and smiles. “Thatta girl.”

“Fuck you,” I snap, and leave the gym.

In the bathroom, I strip the tape from my hands and slowly peel off my clothes. For the first time since he saved me, I don’t cover the mirror. Instead, I look at my body, at the healing bruises and the new ones he just created. I move closer and inspect my face. It’s still a little swollen, there are dark circles under my eyes, and there is a shadow of a bruise high across my cheekbone and temple. I open my mouth, looking at the pink flesh at the back of my mouth where my teeth used to be. Where the most recent extraction came from, the one he wears around his neck.

I’ve endured more pain than most can even conceive. I went through all of that, and I’m still standing. I might be covered in bruises, and I might be just as scared for what the future holds as I was in that warehouse, but they didn’t break my spirit. My lungs still breathe, my head still processes thought, and my heart still beats. No, those men didn’t break me—those men made me strong. They forced me to see the strength that I never would have known I possessed if I hadn’t lived through their torture. The Cop and the Priest brought out the warrior inside me who is going to bring them both to their knees, and who’s going to smile while doing it. And though it was an arsehole move, Kick was showing me that. If he’d told me I was strong, I’d never have believed it. Now I know for certain. Now I know I could kill them both or die trying, but at least I won’t be sitting around waiting for them to find me.