Yours (8 page)

I turned my eyes away to the yellow light. An electric bulb that flickered, a fake torch. I stared at it until the light burned the sickness out of my stomach and I could look down. The man was dragging Jessica down the stairs, then her friend. El Alfa motioned for me to go down the steps. I paused at the top stair, but only for a moment. I could feel his eyes burning into me as we descended down into that maw, swallowed alive by the stony darkness.

We went down the staircase slowly and carefully. It was barely lit with yellow electric torches on the walls, and I found myself putting my hand out to keep my balance as I made my way down the steep stone stairs. Upstairs everything was marble, but down here was only gray, gray rock.

At the bottom of the stairs, two guards stood with AK 47 machine guns cradled in their arms. The stone floor stretched out farther into a narrow hallway. It could have been a scene from a medieval castle, except for the doors. On alternating sides, shiny metal doors staggered like teeth all the way down the hallway. The only sound was the high scream coming from behind Jessica’s gag.

El Alfa came up next to me. I suppressed a shudder as he chuckled.

“You did very well tonight,” he said. I realized dully that he was talking to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I want you to see what we do here. The girls upstairs, they are all very obedient, yes?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t about to contradict him. They didn’t seem obedient, I thought. They seemed scared.

“Yes. That’s all my doing. I have a very good training program for them. My whores are the best submissives. You see?”

“Yes.”

The first henchman was already hauling Jessica’s quiet brunette friend into one of the cells. He handled her roughly, banging one of her legs into the metal door as they went in. I had to bite my tongue, but El Alfa didn’t.

“David!” he yelled. The henchman turned and glared. “Be careful with the merchandise.”

The man nodded, his dark eyes flashing anger. I wondered who this man was, who could get away without answering his boss. All of the other goons working for El Alfa seemed to be terrified of him. But this David… he didn’t seem to care.

“After you,” El Alfa said, again magnanimously gesturing me before him.

We went into the cell. The room was dark, except for a single shaft of light coming down through the window. The window was only a small square cut into the stone, too small to crawl through, too small for a possible escape. But the sun shone through, one small solitary ray of light piercing the darkness.

David was already chaining up the brunette. Jessica’s friend. He slapped black leather cuffs around her wrists, the metal clasps locking them into place. The cuffs were attached to chains, and when David pulled at the chains, her hands stretched outward on each side to the walls. Her head hung forward against her chest. They had taken off her gag, but she wasn’t screaming. Instead, she was crying softly.

“You may go now, David,” El Alfa said, almost gently. David looked up at me, and I thought I saw a glance of something in his eye. Jealousy, maybe. But then El Alfa was moving toward the girl, and I paid attention to him instead.

“The first thing we teach them is how to kneel,” El Alfa said. “They must acknowledge you as a master.”

He gripped the girl’s chin and jerked it upward. Her eyes were clenched shut, the mascara still running down her cheeks. When El Alfa loosened her chains, her arms hung limply at her sides.

“Look at me, stupid girl,” he said. She only sobbed harder.

He slapped her across the face. I suppressed the urge to reach out and give him a taste of violence. Control. I had to keep control.

“Look at me.”

Now she looked up dully, the tears streaming across her cheeks.

“Kneel.”

She shook her head no, and El Alfa punched her in the stomach, then caught her before she could fall. Yanking her up with one hand, he took hold of her dress with the other and tore. She screamed as her dress turned into shreds. Her underwear was pink, I saw. Pink with small white daisies. I felt sick.

“No!” she cried. “I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”

She fell to the ground, kneeling awkwardly. El Alfa kicked her in the side. She curled over.

“Sloppy girl. Next time, obey me right away or I’ll take more than your clothes.”

She whimpered.

“I’ll make her obey,” David said, stepping forward boldly. El Alfa shook his head.

“Don’t feed her. We’ll work on her tomorrow.”

David rubbed at the side of his neck as he stood back dejectedly. He had a sunburn, and where his fingers scratched, white curls of skin flecked off of his neck. When he saw me looking at him, he dropped his hand and looked away.

“Come,” El Alfa said. He was talking to me. “I will show you a girl who already knows how to obey her master.”

He opened the door across the hall. Inside, an Asian girl was curled up on the floor. I could see that she wasn’t chained at the wrists but at the throat. A thick black collar wrapped around her neck, attached again to two chains hanging off the walls.

El Alfa snapped his fingers. Immediately the girl scrambled up, her eyes bleary with sleep. There was a dark bruise on her stomach.

“You know how to kneel, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes, master.” Fear flashed in her eyes.

“Kneel for me.”

She bent down slowly, her back rigidly straight. When her knees touched the ground, her body folded forward. Her forehead bent down, almost touching the ground. Her hands stretched out in front of her, palms upward as though begging for something. If I had seen her anywhere else, I would have thought it was a yoga pose.

She held the position, her hands trembling only slightly, as El Alfa walked around her. He nudged at one foot that was angled slightly outward and she immediately straightened out.

“There. That’s how they should do it. Not perfect, of course. You can ask any of the girls upstairs if you want a proper demonstration.”

“They all have the—uh, the training?”

I had to act interested. I had to act like I wanted this job. Jesus, it was hard. I realized why two of Ten’s men had already died in this place. If I didn’t keep myself completely in line, I would be next.

“That’s right. Once they’re ready, we let them upstairs.”

I nodded, trying not to look as sick as I felt.

“You did well tonight,” El Alfa continued, “but there are many things harder to do than to kill a man. To get a woman to obey you, for instance.”

He chuckled at his own joke and I put on an acid smile, feigning amusement.

“So,” he said. “We will see if you picked out the right girl tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

He led me back out into the hallway and opened yet another door.

My heart fell as I saw Jessica already in chains. She was pulling hard at her cuffs, and her gag was still in.

“I think you may be in for some trouble,” El Alfa said. He tore off the gag and Jessica began to scream.

“Help!”

He slapped her, then shoved the gag back into her mouth.

“Take the gag off before you leave her tonight,” he said, winking conspiratorially at me. “That way she’ll scream herself hoarse. It’ll be easier to work with her then.”

“What do you mean, work with her?”

“You have control over this one,” he said. His grin was sickening. “Good luck getting her to kneel. I think it will take more than a few hours for this one. You’ll want to get her out of her clothes. Most girls listen better when they’re naked.”

“Wait,” I said, my mind spinning from all of the orders. “You mean, she’s—”

“Yours.”

“Mine?”

Jessica met my gaze from behind her gag. Hatred burned in her eyes.

“Yours to control. Yours to train. This is a test, eh? To see if you are good at this job. You are good with a gun, but I have many guns already. I need trainers.”

The air in the room was cool down here, but I was still struggling to breathe.

This
was it? This was the job I was sent here to do? I’d expected drug trafficking. I’d expected violence. But I hadn’t expected… this.

“Keep her pretty,” El Alfa was saying. “No guns down here, no knives, yes? Only hands. My clients pay for top quality. They do not want a broken product. Make her listen to you in whatever way you need to, but keep that in mind.”

“Sure,” I said. Another set of vague orders from a boss who wasn’t telling me the whole truth. I looked down at Jessica. Even with a dirty gag stuffed in her mouth, her hands tied up, her eyes rimmed with tears, she looked beautiful.

I was disgusted with myself for the stirring attraction inside of me when I looked at her. I wanted to scream to her that I wasn’t like this, that this wasn’t
me.
I was just here to do a job. I was just following orders.

Orders. Right. I had a mission to finish. I turned to El Alfa, who was standing in the doorway. Behind him, David looked at me suspiciously.

“The doors are only for containment. They don’t lock,” he said, “so make sure you keep her in chains. There are guards always in the hallway, of course, if you need any assistance.”

“Thanks,” I said, storing the information away in my mind. No locks—it made sense, if they had to empty the place out quickly for raids.

“Have fun,” El Alfa said. He seemed hesitant to leave me.

“Oh, I will.” I forced myself to plaster on a smile, and it seemed to do the trick. El Alfa smiled back and closed the metal door behind him.

Jessica looked up at me in horror as I turned to her, the smile dropping off of my face.

Chapter Sixteen

Jessica

I’d heard April sobbing next door, and I’d heard them hitting her.

I was trying hard not to go crazy with fright. I couldn’t
do
anything. Yanking at the chains was useless—I’d almost dislocated my wrist the first time I’d tried to wrench free, and a deep bruise was creeping up my forearm.

And now the man from the club was alone with me. He stood in front of me, but I didn’t cringe back. I wasn’t going to let him bully me.

“My name’s Vale,” the man with the blue eyes said. “I’m going to take off your gag. You heard the guy. Screaming won’t do anything. You understand?”

I nodded.

Vale. The Ice God. The man who’d kissed me. The man who killed James. I hated him so much.

He took the gag out of my mouth. I scrounged up as much saliva as I could with my tongue, and spit in his face.

His reaction was quick—he turned his cheek but didn’t flinch. Instead, he calmly wiped the spittle away with the back of his hand. I expected that he would hit me. Or slap me. Or even a flash of anger. But there was nothing in his eyes, only a blankness.

“Jessica—”

“How’s your hand?” I asked. His palm still bore my bite marks.

Instead of answering, though, he looked down at his hand and rubbed the red mark absently. I thought I saw the glimmer of a smile begin to curve his lips, but then it disappeared.

“I’ll never kneel for you,” I hissed.

“You will,” he said, matter of factly. He paused, as though thinking of something else. “You’ll have to.”

“
Fuck you. FUCK YOU!”
I screamed.

I screamed it over and over, right into his face, and he stood there, taking it. I’d never hated anyone the way I hated him. I wanted him to hit me. I wanted him to do something—anything. But he just stood there.

Finally, I stopped. My throat was burning, and I felt like I had no more tears left. My whole body had burned through with hatred, and there was nothing left of me but a black shell.

He looked around the cell, and for the first time I realized my surroundings. For some reason, it made me think of a book from one of my intro literature courses. Dante’s
Inferno
. The main character had described his descent down through the nine circles of hell. He’d passed through each circle, and the deeper he went, the worse it got.

That was me now. I was in hell. I had let my friends drag me into it, and now I had to pay for it. If only I had listened to my mom…

My mom. I hadn’t even talked to her the last time she’d called me. She would find out that I’d lied to her. My heart sank even further. Here I was, and I was paying for my sins, all of them.

“No,” I croaked.

Vale looked at me. He looked so calm, so focused. I couldn’t stand it.

“No,” I repeated. “I will. Not. Kneel.”

“Jessica—”

“I’d rather die than listen to you,” I whispered hoarsely.

“Did you hear what they did to your friend next door?”

I turned my head away. I’d heard April’s screams, but I wasn’t going to let that affect me.

“I won’t do it. I won’t.”

“He’ll do it to you. Unless you obey me.”

I shook my head helplessly.

“I don’t want to.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” he said, more firmly now. “You’re one of El Alfa’s girls now, and you’ll have to obey. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

El Alfa
. I rolled the words in my mouth.

Vale went over to the wall and unhooked the chains, loosening them. My arms dropped as the chains gave some slack. I backed up away from the door until I was almost touching the wall. If he was going to touch me, I was going to give him a fight.

When he turned and saw me crouching back against the wall, there was a strange look in his face. Disappointment, maybe, or sadness. He clasped his hands loosely in front of him and stood in front of me, a mountain of muscle in a business suit. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“El Alfa wants me to teach you how to kneel,” he said, slowly, like he was testing the waters.

“Who’s El Alfa?”

“He’s the man who kidnapped you. He’s the one who owns you.”

“You’re the one who kidnapped me!”

He shrugged, but I could see a flash of anger in his eyes. It made me even madder. How dare he be angry, when he was the one responsible for all this? He stood there so calmly, so controlled. I wanted to push him off the edge.

“I didn’t—”

“
You
were the one who lured me out into the alley,” I hissed. I set my foot against the wall, coiling up my energy to strike. “
You’re
the one who gagged me! You killed James!”