Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“Blaire…”
KATIE
Eighteen years old…
Blaire was never found. I scoured every inch of the container I was housed in for three days with barely any food and water and spoke to every person trapped with me. There were a range of women from across the country, both young and old, but not a single Blaire.
For the past few years, I’ve sought comfort in the fact she must have escaped, and although I tried to do the same when the container’s doors were opened with the assumption everyone was asleep, I’m still here, captive for several long months later.
I think I turned eighteen a couple of weeks back, but I can’t be sure. Madame Victoria said I’ll know the age I’m classed as ‘ripe’ as I’ll be sold to my ‘forever king.’
I’ve spent the last several years training to be his ideal wife. I was taught to cook, clean, and maintain a household with robust, energetic children under my feet. Most ‘forever kings’ already have children because they’re usually onto their fourth or fifth wife before they seek Madame Victoria’s services. They’re at the age where they are desperate for order, but they don’t want to be saddled down with the women who birthed their heirs and slaved over their meals for the past forty-plus years. They want fresh, young-blooded women who are too scared to make a move in any direction they haven’t been granted.
Terrified women like me who know how horrible they can be to their own children, so they won’t blink an eye to end a miserable existence with a flick of their wrist.
My first attempt to escape came at a cost. I stumbled onto a scene almost too ghastly to describe. I thought the stench in the shipping container was bad, but it had nothing on the smell that vaped from a room when I dashed into a mansion-looking house to seek help.
A young man was hanging from the rafters by a steel chain. The skin on his back was dripping past his naked backside, yet he was alive.
I don’t know how he survived such a heinous assault, but my endeavor to help him thrust me into the path of a man Madame Victoria knows all too well. I guess I shouldn’t complain. From the stories I’ve heard, half the women trafficked with me didn’t survive their first year in the trade. Most of their deaths were from violence during sexual activities.
I’m still untouched.
Getting slapped over the knuckles with a cane, whipped for not making the corners of the bedsheets tight enough, and being forced to eat scraps instead of full meals seems like a walk in the park compared to what they endured.
My day is coming, but at the moment, I am as safe as I can be in a demented and violent world.
It doesn’t stop me from peering out a rectangular box that was once a window, though, wondering what I would be doing if I hadn’t been walking along that road at that specific time of the day.
I miss my parents and baby sister. I even miss Pebbles’ stinky fur when she dives into the marshlands nose first, uncaring there could be an alligator waiting for her.
And I also really miss Mom’s cooking.
Mashed potatoes just aren’t the same when they’re prepared without butter and milk, and despite my active imagination, potato skins aren’t wedges when they’re not cooked and covered with dirt.
As I squash the boiled potatoes with a plastic masher, my thoughts drift to Blaire.
Is she safe?
Is she alive?
I honestly hope so, but I don’t even know what day of the week it is, so my intuition isn’t trustworthy.
“Pаб, come.” Madame Victoria’s stern snap has me dropping the plastic instrument into the half- mashed potatoes and immediately spinning around. She is a taut, slim woman with killer black eyes and a stern hand. She is kind when you obey her every command, but if you cross her, don’t sleep. She seeks revenge when you least expect it. A broom is her favorite weapon, closely followed by boiling water. “We have an important guest. Hurry.” Her husky timbre is a mix of foreign accents. She is crossbred in all meanings of the word.
When I enter the main living room of the compound I’ve been held captive and brutalized in for the past few years, I take a stumbling step back. The man seated behind the coffee table is as old and arrogant as the many who’ve visited previously, but no number of hazy memories could conceal his sneer.
He is the man from the room, the one who gleamed while watching acid being tossed on the back of his ally’s son.
He is my current owner—Colum Petretti.
“Stand up straight,” Madame Victoria demands when Col rises from his seat.
My knees shake when he takes his time appraising me, the darkness in his eyes growing more evil with every second he stares. “Pure?”