Irina had taken me.
And now, I was in some kind of ship or container housed with dozens of other women she planned to sell into sexual slavery.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the horror of it hit me like a thousand cuts. It would have been so easy to lie there in the muck and cry, wishing for a different end, thinking about the fact that I didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone I loved.
That the last thing I’d told Nova was that he was a pretty boy with an ugly heart.
A sob exploded from my throat, punctuating the mostly silent space.
I tried to breathe through the pain, to wiggle against the bonds that tied my hands behind my back and my feet tight together, but it took forever to dull my panic enough to really think.
And the first thought I had was Honey.
If Irina had taken the girls from Wet Works, it stood to reason the estranged half-sister of the Garro family would be there.
“Honey,” I croaked, the word like a knife down my sore, dry throat. “Honey?”
There was a little whimper and then, “Lila?”
Oh, my God.
“Honey, are you okay? Are you hurt?” I called out.
“No…but I think the girl I’m laying beside is dead,” she whispered brokenly. “They gave her something, some drug, and she was already so high on crank…I felt her overdose beside me. I-I can smell her.”
“Fuck,” I breathed, unable to imagine laying beside I dying woman, submerged in her filth. “Okay, okay. Do we know how many of us are in here?”
There was a loud sniff then a meek voice said, “I think twenty?”
I recognized her voice. “Talia?”
“Yeah,” she replied on a little sob. “They must have dosed me wrong because I remember how they took me. Irina had about six of us on set in the wet room for an orgy scene. Instead of filming, someone threw something in the room that made us pass out and then some men came in to collect us.”
The wet room. We used it for shower scenes and watersport play. I hadn’t ever had to assist Irina with a film in there, and I’d been grateful.
I was sickened by her use of it and wondered just how many times she’d done that.
“The rest were already here when we arrived,” Talia continued. “They, they’ve been here a while I think.”
If the smell was anything to go by, she was correct.
“Lila?” Honey called, sounding even younger than her sixteen years, so vulnerable I wanted to weep for her. “Are we going to get out of this?”
I dragged in a deep, rancid breath and struggled to tap into the hope I could always find in my chest. Hope that Nova would come, that he would arrive on his stead of chrome with his knights in leather and vanquish every single obstacle in his path to get to me.
To save me.
As he’d done throughout my entire life.
But laying in that filth, feeling the cracks in that hope from the hammer-like blow of Nova’s decision to our end our relationship, I couldn’t believe we would ever be found.
“I don’t know,” I said softly instead. “Let’s hope someone finds us, but if they don’t, we need to think of a plan for ourselves.”
“It’s useless,” another voice pitched in. “I’ve read the stats before, once we’ve been taken it’s like a one in one hundred chance of us being found.”
“I’ve always liked impossible odds,” I joked half-heartedly, because we were mired in a pit of despair and we didn’t need any more.
And so, even though there was no hope in the dank blackness, a dozen girls and I dreamed of our escape.
An indeterminable amount of time later, when my eyes were closed and the bodies were all completely still, light flared across the room after a soft shush of air was released. The glow hurt my eyes even from behind their closed lids, but I wasn’t willing to forsake an opportunity to figure out where I was.
I cracked open a lid, finding a dark silhouette in the doorframe and another peering in from outside.
“Smells like shit in here.” The man’s voice was rough and muffled in my water-soaked ears, but I yearned for the sound of it.
If we wanted to escape, we needed someone first to come down here.
“Just grab her, asshole.” The other grunted from the doorway. “He hates it when we keep ’em waiting.”
The first man splashed into the water as he took a step down from the door ledge, a flashlight in his hand so he could check the faces of the women as he quickly trudged his way over to my corner. I wasn’t always in the same spot, somehow the women and their undulating bodies had moved enough to transplant me from beside the door to the farthest reaches of the room. I had been grateful when they first opened the door, but my distance didn’t seem to deter the man. He ignored the gasps and sobs as he stepped on the limbs and organs in his way, and when he reached me, he wrenched my arms from my sockets as he hauled me to my feet. I headbutted him in the chin, drawing a curse from him before he backhanded me so hard, stars burst through my vision. He caught my body as it swayed then threw my boneless mass over his shoulder, laughing at my tiny scream.