No sign-off. No name. No hint of the traffickers who did the unthinkable.

I re-read the email, seeing the truth behind the lies and the honesty of what I was.

 

A girl fitting your request has been found and abducted. She has been held for the required time to ensure no police or embassy searches will be a problem. She will be yours by dawn in two days.

Chapter Three

I KEPT THE FLAMES of my hatred hidden as the man forced me into the dentist chair, wrapped the rope around my neck tight to hold me down, and kept my breathing as even as I could as they lashed leather cuffs around my wrists and ankles.

My towel loosened around my body, threatening to reveal things I didn’t want to expose, yet I didn’t fight as the buckles clinked into place. I didn’t let them see the crawling claustrophobia that I struggled to battle from showing.

I’d lasted this long with silence as my weapon; I could last a little more.

The men muttered to each other in Spanish, looking me up and down as the one with surgical gloves sat on a stool and scooted between my legs.

My head fell back onto the sticky leather of my prison. My wet hair chilled me until goosebumps prickled all over. My teeth chattered, but I clenched my jaw, refusing to give them one hint of my rapidly growing fear.

I clamped down on my bottom lip as grotesque fingers entered me. I stared at the mouldy ceiling while he touched places he wasn’t welcome. The violation reminded me of the bonfire night. Of the boy who’d tried to feel me up. The night I’d given as an example of bad things to my teacher.

That was nothing, nothing compared to this.

Breathe.

Just breathe.

Every molecule that made me me crawled.

Every inch of my personality was tested.

My hands wanted to curl into fists, but I prevented them.

My heart wanted to gallop, but I hushed it to stay slow.

The man between my legs looked up the length of my body, his finger driving in and out deliberately, his head cocked as if wary of my reaction. Wary because I wasn’t screaming or struggling. Wary because I was totally untouchable.

With a grunt of displeasure, he ripped his touch away, tossed his gloves onto the floor, and scribbled something onto a clipboard. With another grunt to his colleague, he snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and waited until the other man angled my wrist to face upward in its binds.

I kept my eyes on the ceiling.

I stayed unreachable from what they were doing.

I latched onto the knowledge that they weren’t worthy of my fear. A chant formed in time with my skipping, hitching pulse.

This is temporary.

Temporary.

Wait until you meet the permanent problem.

The monster who buys you.

Then fight.

Explode.

Never give up.

Until then…temporary,

temporary,

temporary.

I let the word keep my resentment and desire for revenge dormant while the whirr of a tattoo gun sounded, followed by the prick of multiple needles feeding ink into my skin.

I didn’t wince.

I didn’t object.

I just kept staring at the ceiling, my humanity unbroken and above them.

Temporary.

Temporary.

The tattoo gun finished.

I risked a look as he threw the gun onto the table, then wrapped my newly graffitied wrist with cling-film.

A barcode.

A symbol of sale and merchandise.

My heart skipped.

My breath caught.

It’s fine.

Temporary, remember?

Even permanent ink wasn’t so permanent.

When I was free, it would be removed by laser.

I would take great pleasure in deleting their marks of arrogant possession.

The men argued in Spanish. One pinched me hard on the thigh. The other jerked at my towel, exposing my breasts. They loomed over me, trying to catch my eye, but I just stared right through them. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of acknowledging them.

They were nothing.

Nothing.

They are nothing.

Fire and fury escaped my antifreeze. It whooshed through my blood, heating it to a boil, scalding me from the inside out.

You. Are. NOTHING!

My nostrils flared with repugnance. My throat filled with revulsion. I wanted to shove the tattoo gun down their gullets and scribe curses upon their souls.

I was so close, precariously close, to snapping.

And if I snapped, I would lose it.

I would become wild like that girl Tess.

I would fight and battle and not care if they killed me in my war for freedom.

They smirked and waited for my final break.

They tasted it. They longed for it.

My eyes met theirs, and I released the snarl that’d tainted my tongue for days. “You’re worthless scum. No, you’re worse than scum. You’re the insignificant spore on scum. Do whatever you’ve been told to do and fuck the hell off. You don’t deserve my attention.”

I trembled with the vicious desire to bite off their noses and slash at their jugulars. I struggled to swallow back the righteous, murderous urges.

In this situation, violence was better than food or water. It was fuel that would sustain me for the trials ahead. And I flatly refused to waste it on them.

With a deep inhale, I forced my muscles to relax, my hands to splay, my lips to drink in oxygen.

Temporary.

Temporary.

They are nothing.

A sharp slap stung my cheek as the gynaecologist turned tattooist let go of his frustration. “You are not better than us. You are a girl about to be sold. You are a fuck toy. A punching bag. A dead woman.” He fisted my breast and squeezed painfully, digging his nails into my nipple.

Tears sprang to my eyes, but I endured the pain.

I did not flinch.

I did not cry.

I just kept staring at the ceiling, commanding my blood to calm, my heart to behave, and my will to survive to stay stronger than my call to be feral.

When his abuse earned no reaction, the man let loose a stream of Spanish slurs and grabbed a sterile packet with a syringe.

The packaging crinkled and crackled as he tore through it.

The light glinted off a thick needle.

Nausea clawed through my tight control. I almost broke. I almost thrashed and begged not to be drugged or knocked out, but…I stayed as silent as a tiny mouse. A mouse that could slip through cat’s claws because it was wily and quick and nimble.

That was me.

I would be that mouse.

I would slip free…eventually.

One man jerked my neck to the side, while the other happily caused me pain by shoving the needle into my flesh and shooting something inside me.

It burned.

It bruised.

I bit my lip to silence my internal and external reaction.

With faces blackened with hate for me, they scanned my throat with a technological device. Pain blazed as a small beep sounded, and they nodded. “Works. She is tagged.” The man tossed the syringe onto his tiny table of horrors, ripped off the gloves, and added them to the pile on the floor, then snapped his fingers. “Take her. Vamoose.”

The buckles were unlatched from my wrists and ankles, and the rope around my neck tugged until I collapsed off the chair. The towel slithered off my body. The twine cut off my air supply. I battled with the urge to be above what they’d done to me versus the need to breathe.

Standing, I ignored my nakedness and reached, as regally as I could, to loosen the knot around my throat.