Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
I try to focus on thoughts of how I’ll punish her for putting herself in this situation. Thinking of what she could’ve possibly gone through since I saw her last has the power to turn me into a fucking maniac and knowing that makes me feel like I have bugs under my skin. It leaves me itchy and uncomfortable because she somehow has that level of power over me.
I know I shouldn’t care, but there’s no fucking denying it now.
Heading back to the office, I notice the notification I’ve been waiting for.
God have mercy on their souls because I sure as fuck will not.
Chapter 22
Lauren
Time has stopped mattering.
I’m unconcerned of the hours that have ticked by.
One day? A hundred?
I don’t have a clue.
The needle to the neck was only the very first time they drugged me.
I lost count of how many times they repeated it after the fourth.
They don’t like it when I fight back once the drugs start wearing off.
It doesn’t mean that they don’t hurt me. I know they have.
I feel the burn on my skin, the burn between my thighs.
I’m mindful enough to know they’re hurting me, but the drugs prevent me from doing anything about it.
I can’t fight or help others like this.
I can only hope that they sell me, that they hand me over to someone who likes the women they buy to have all their faculties. If they don’t, I could actually be living the last days of my life.
The worst part about this entire thing isn’t the drugs, or the repeated assaults.
It isn’t that I’ve seen Liana more than once, watching from across the room with a frown on her face.
If I close my eyes, I can hear her.
The things I endured for your safety, and this is how you spend your life?
Only that isn’t real. She isn’t real. The ghost of her, the memory I wanted to maintain of her for so long, is shattered by her truth, by the words written in her diary.
A woman’s scream from another room reaches me on the lumpy mattress I was discarded on. I want to help her, but I can’t even lift my arm to reach for her. Once again, I try to speak, but that is fruitless as well, my words coming out so garbled, I don’t even understand myself.
I weigh a million pounds, but the sounds around me are somehow amplified, the begging, the crying, the pain. It’s as if they’re broadcasting their torture through the entire house. It sickens me, but instead of having a solution, all I can do is lie here with tears running from my temples into my ears.
All of it sucks. It always does, but this time is the worst.
This time my head fills with thoughts of him.
The rainbow at the end of the storm doesn’t look as bright this time around.
The thrill of accepting the punishment I’ve always put my body through isn’t there.
It all feels wrong, like I’ve made the biggest mistake of my damned life.
It’s regret, something I rarely feel where work is concerned.
I accepted how I serve my penance a very long time ago. This no longer feels like that.
He did this to me. Somehow, with his rough angry hands, he made me feel worthy of more, worthy of consideration.
I hate him now more than ever for making this harder to endure, for making me feel like I’ve done something wrong.
As a shadow crosses in front of the single light in the room, I pray the drugs help me forget him as well.
Angel Guerra doesn’t matter. He can’t. Things that matter make you weak.
“Ready for more, whore?”
I try to crawl away, but I’m unable to move.
I felt like a complete idiot when I woke up the first time and saw him standing in the room. I knew I failed. Something about my radar was way off.
“Ryder,” I try to mutter but no sound comes out.
His smile is sinister, not even close to the shy, unassuming one he first met me with on the streets in Mission.
For the first time in my life, I feel utterly defeated.
I fucking hate it here.
Chapter 23
Angel
The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow at an undisclosed location, but when I found out she was being held in Tamaulipas, I couldn’t just sit around at home and wait.
If I were working, if this wasn’t personal, if they hadn’t taken what was mine, I would’ve kept that scheduled time, but I need the element of surprise. This isn’t a normal case, one where I no longer give a shit about anything but collecting the thing that gets me paid.
I used to care. Getting paid had always been number one for me, but I always took pleasure in eliminating a few pieces of shit along the way. That changed in El Salvador, but I don’t question why I’m sitting in my truck, waiting for a guy to walk out of an internet café. I know Lauren is to blame for that, but she’s mine to punish.