Nina pushed opened the door to the hotel room that was slightly ajar. It was a large two-room luxury suite built on top of the hotel that was booked by honeymoon couples or VIPs.

Her heart began to thud. Where was everyone? It was supposed to be a party. Did everyone leave already?

She couldn’t hear anyone. Maybe they left.

She was about to leave as well, but stopped when she heard something. It sounded like a grunt.

Cautiously, she threaded softly through the large living area and went towards the bedroom. The bedroom door was closed.

“Move, you bitch. Don’t just lie there,” a man’s drunken voice said. “Move!” There were more grunts and noises of flesh hitting against flesh.

Goosebumps broke on her skin and every self-preservation instinct told her to run away from there. With heart thudding loudly in her ears, she turned the knob of the bedroom door.

It was open.

When she pushed the door open, the sight that met her eyes shocked her.

 

 

Nina jerked awake.

She was breathing fast once again, and shivers racked her body. But unlike most times when he had this dream, there were no tears in her eyes. At least no tears of grief.

Because instead of seeing Devi’s face, Nina had seen herself in the dream.

The woman lying naked on the bed with dead eyes was her and the man violating her was her captor.

Being alive is better. Being alive is better. Being alive is better.

Nina repeated those words as she got up from the bed and went towards the bathroom window to stare out at the trees in the forest.

A week had passed since Nina’s last escape attempt, and she had been confined to the room since then. Her meals continued to be brought in by the old man.

Nina had tried to engage in conversation with him several times, but each time she spoke to him, the old man simply bent his head down and murmured an apology to her.

She was frustrated by the lack of any communication.

After her first bath, each day she was allowed into her captor’s room for ten minutes where she continued to take unsatisfactory showers with the small bucket filled with the metallic smelling water. The only thing that had changed was that she was given three additional sets of clothes.

So, after her shower and when she went back to her room, she washed the used pair in the small sink of her bathroom.

Meals. Shower. Washing. Sleep.

Those activities were on repeat mode each day.

Nina should have been relieved that she was left alone, but she wasn’t. She hated being kept in the dark, not knowing what was coming next. Each time she went to sleep, she was always in an alert mode, bracing herself for an attack from the captor.

However, she hadn’t seen or heard her captor for the the week. She knew he had left the cabin the very next day of recording a video to be sent to Suraj.

And once she had realized that it was just the old man guarding her, she had considered attacking him to try and escape once again, but the holster with the gun which the old man deliberately displayed held her back. Somehow, she knew her captor must have ordered the old man to wear it each time he visited her room.

The gun did give her a pause, because she knew if she failed, she would not only sign her own death warrant, but possibly even Suraj’s.

She had seen the hate shining in her captor’s eyes. She somehow knew that her captor was not the kind to give up on his revenge just because his captive managed to get herself killed.

He thought Suraj was responsible for the death of someone he loved. Nina kept wondering who that person was. Was she a wife? A sister? Or a girlfriend?

And how was Suraj responsible for that person’s death?

She kept racking her brain, going through every possible way Suraj could have inadvertently hurt a woman. And what really shook Nina was the fact that she didn’t know whether or not Suraj was really responsible for a woman’s death.

Nina loved Suraj. She trusted him with her life, but did she think he was capable of murder? If not with his own hands but allowing someone to take another’s life?

Yes.

Suraj had seen and covered up a murder before. For her.

That fact made Nina love him even more, and made her want to protect him with everything she had.

Over the week, she had a lot of time to think. Obviously, her captor was going to be extra alert around her. She could no longer use a surprise attack as a tactic to escape. She had to think of a different way.

She came to a conclusion that in order to be set free and also save Suraj from whatever her captor had planned, she had to get to a point where her captor would listen to her.

Although she didn’t know him well or spend much time around him, she knew he would be a tough nut to crack. There were two other men involved as well—the old man and the other man named Vikram. Between the three men, her captor seemed to be the one who made the decisions, and also the ultimate one to decide what her fate was to be.

She needed to find a way to get into his good graces.

Her captor had threatened Suraj with videos of her being forced by him. He probably thought that Suraj’s honor existed in her body.

But he was wrong. The bond and love Suraj and she built and shared over the last decade was unshakeable.

She knew Suraj would love her no matter what happened to her or what she did for her survival.

And it was truly amazing how the human mind worked when it was in a survival mode.

Morals, ethics, or shame—they no longer applied in the same way as they did when one was safe and secure.

It was clear what she had to do.

She wasn’t going to allow her captor to violate her body and soul. Before that happened, she was going to offer him her body.

In fact, she would make the first move. She would initiate the act. She would be the one who would allow things to proceed according to her plan and pace.

He will not be able to steal from her what was being given willingly.

Her captor could try and break her, but she wouldn’t break. At most, she might bend. But before that, she’d do everything in her power to break him first.