I didn't have much (okay, any) experience with basements myself. Not real basements. The ones that weren't finished and made into dens or exercise rooms. But I'd seen movies. Mostly horror movies. The girls always ended up in the basement. With the thick cinderblock walls and the barred windows that were too high and too small to crawl out of anyway. It was always in the basements that they were brutalized in new and inventive ways. Because no one would hear their screams.
I was in a basement.
But I saved my breath.
Because I knew I wouldn't be heard.
I needed to focus.
I needed to fight through my hangover and get my wits about me.
There was nothing around except the bed and a staircase leading up. I could see that because the sun was shining through the barred windows. So it was morning, at least.
I needed to get my wrists free. I needed to get my wrists free and take a chance at the door. If I was tied up, maybe there wasn't someone standing guard. I could try it. It was my only shot.
I worked on the knots for hours, only accomplishing burns and making the ropes pull tighter.
I fell back on the bed with a cry of desperation.
Because when a woman is taken, there is only one reason.
Ever.
There is only one reason men take women.
And I had seen the news reports. I had watched the documentaries.
Human trafficking.
The skin trade.
I was going to be sold off and raped every day for the rest of my life. Or until I wasn't pretty anymore. And American women made for a pretty penny overseas. I would be popular. If I was too resistant, they would hook me on drugs so I was compliant.
I needed to escape.And I tried. Hour upon hour. Day upon day. No one came. Not to let me go to the bathroom. Not to let me eat. Not to give one second of a break from the agony of not knowing.
Three days.
Three fucking days until I heard the door open. Until I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Three days and my captors had the sick, twisted opportunity to also be my saviors.
“Piss yourself yet?” a man asked, walking up. In another world, in another situation, he might have been attractive. Tall, muscular, a thin well proportioned face with bright blue eyes. But in my world. In my basement with my blood covering the pillow behind me, with my bladder so painful I was sure I had gotten a UTI, and my belly so hungry I felt sick, he was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.
“Come on,” he said when I didn't answer. He stalked over to the bed, untying my hands. “Get up.” But I couldn't. I couldn't trust my legs. “Suit yourself,” he shrugged, reaching for the ropes and dragging me off the bed. A cry escaped my lips as the rope bit into my torn wrists. And I knew immediately that it was a mistake because he looked over his shoulder, smiling wickedly, then tugging me harder. Across the floor. Toward the stairs.
I scrambled up onto my knees, crawling up the steps so I wouldn't be dragged. As soon as we were up the landing, though, I was being pulled again. And we weren't alone. Wherever I was, there were people everywhere. A lot of men. Standing around. Lounging around. Some with women on their laps, some with guns on their hips. Most of them looked over, their eyes blank, like girls getting dragged down the hall by ropes on their wrists was an everyday occurrence.
I got the painful, gut-wrenching realization that it probably was.
I was at the hands of real monsters.
It also didn't escape my notice that wherever I was being held was not some compound or warehouse. It was a home. An actual home. A huge, lavish one, but a home nonetheless.
We rounded a bend and I scrambled up to my knees to climb up the main staircase. Huge. It felt like I climbed forever. At the landing, I was yet again pulled. Down a long hall. All the way to the end. There were two doors, one to each side. I was thrown into the one on the left.
“Five minutes,” the man snarled, shutting me into a, yes... thank god, a bathroom.
Horrified with a time restriction, I counted in my head as I took care of myself. As I washed haphazardly in the sink. As I tried to clean out the cuts on my wrists.
“Time's up, princess,” I was told, my ropes grabbed again. And I was pulled into the hall and pushed into the room to the right.
A bedroom.
Wrought iron head and foot boards, white dressers, a mirror on the wall from the foot of the bed.
A mirror. Glass. I could use that.
Until I couldn't.
Because I was tied to the bed.
“Fucking shame to waste this opportunity,” he said, shaking his head as he straddled my waist to tie me up. His hips shifted onto me and I could feel his hard-on through his jeans, pressing up against the juncture of my thighs. My hips jerked away from the sensation and he laughed. “Yeah, you want it too? Don't you slut? Don't worry. I'll have you,” he said, running his tongue across my neck. “I'll have you in every hole. I'll fuck you until you get hoarse from screaming. And then I'll fuck you some more,” he said, grinding his dick into my pelvis. “Just not yet,” he said, jumping off of me and ambling over to the door, shutting it and I heard a lock from the outside.
I tugged frantically but, ultimately, uselessly at the ropes. Then I turned my head into the pillow and screamed.**“They didn't come to take me out of the room for two more days,” I told Reign, looking away from him, over his shoulder, out the window into the backyard. Because, despite my mind screaming at me that it was stupid to, I felt embarrassed.
“What happened after that? You met V?”
I nodded. “Deke and Martin came for me two days later, dragged me out of bed. Gave me my five minutes. Then we went down to the basement. The bed was gone. There was just a chair and I wasn't even tied to it. Then V came down the stairs. In a suit. He had a gray suit on and a newspaper under his arm. He told me he was going to video call my father, let him see that I was alive and well and then he told me to try to convince my dad to agree to his deal.”