I turned back to the tables and searched for my sister. It took me a while to find her, but once I settled on her face, her eyes down on her work, I was relieved to see that she didn’t have any bruises, that she looked physically the same. She was measuring the cocaine and putting the contents inside the small plastic bag.

I wanted to walk over there, but I suspected I would be reprimanded for leaving my station. But when would I ever get the chance to talk to her again?

One of the men at the end of the line addressed me. “Get to work.” He moved down the line of tables until he picked up an empty box. He threw it on the ground then walked away, as if he expected me to come pick it up.

Now I understood why they didn’t carry guns. Because when he turned around and walked away, his waist was level to the girls, so it would be easy for one of them to pull the gun from the holster at his waist and shoot him.

At least, that’s what I would do.

I grabbed one of the boxes and hesitated, realizing it was at least forty pounds. I could carry it; I just hadn’t anticipated the weight. I understood why they’d asked me to do this while Melanie measured the cocaine. She couldn’t pick up these boxes once, let alone over and over.

Once I got it steady in my arms, I walked down the table until I found the vacant spot where the new box was supposed to go. I set it down with a thud, breathing hard from the exertion.

The girl across from the box kept her eyes down. “Welcome to the club…”

“Yeah…thanks. I’m Raven.”

She kept her eyes down. “Get going, Raven. They don’t want us to talk.”

I glanced at the man who had just told me off and saw him staring at me again. I took the silent cue and turned away to grab the box left on the ground. I carried it back to the table, putting it in the pile with the other empty boxes.

A woman was there, dirty-blond hair pulled out of her face. She stood and studied her table, waiting for the next forty-pound box of cocaine to be depleted so it could be replaced. With her arms crossed and her gaze straight ahead, she spoke. “Some advice… The better you work, the more they leave you alone.”

I stood at the other side of the table and copied her movements, trying to make it seem like I was waiting for the opportunity to replace the next box.

“If you replace a box before it’s empty and pour the rest of the contents on top, they’ll like you more, because you aren’t disrupting the workflow of the girls.”

I didn’t care about the tip. “I’m Raven.” I needed to make friends, to learn as much about this place as possible, to figure out a way to get Melanie and me out of here…someday. “You?”

She kept her arms crossed over her chest, the vapor rising from her nostrils with every breath. “Bethany.”

I looked at the surrounding cabins, along with the large pine trees that stood tall around us. It was mostly an empty clearing, but nature was spaced throughout, the branches covered with blankets of snow like Christmas trees. The Alps were in the near distance, reflecting the sunlight off their potent whiteness. If I weren’t stuck in a labor camp in the cold, I might actually think it was beautiful. “There’s more of us than them. We can take them down.”

She shook her head slightly. “I know you’re new, and I get it. I used to be that way too. But it’s been done…with no success.”

I hadn’t had much hope to begin with, but I lost a little more at her words. “What happened?”

“They killed a lot of us.” She nodded slightly to the hanging woman at the edge of the clearing. “Like that.”

I couldn’t look. I’d already looked once, and I never wanted to look again.

“After you’ve seen your friends die like that…you don’t want to try again.”

I stared at the women as they all worked with their heads down, packaging the bags of cocaine with different amounts, doing the labor these men were too lazy to do themselves. When I’d moved to Paris, I was embarking on a new adventure, falling into the romantic haze of this beautiful country. But all of that disappeared as I was plunged into a living nightmare. “How long have you been here?” I kept my eyes ahead even though I wanted to look at her, to look into the face of an ally instead of the hooded cloak of an enemy.

“Five years.”

I couldn’t keep the breath in my lungs because it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. “Fuck…”

Tags: Penelope Sky Chateau Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net