The weirdest thought comes to me.On the bright side, you’ve been through the worst possible thing. Even someone as grotesque and evil as Santos can’t beat Schmidt, his horrifying hobby of buying women, and his dungeon.This makes me chuckle a little, and the asshole to the right squeezes my wrists hard.
“You think this is funny, cunt?”
“Not anywhere as funny as your taste in suits,” I say without thinking, and the other guy grabs his hand before he hits me.
“Don’t hurt her!” he snaps, “The Don has not decided how to handle this.”
“I hope you guys have a great medical plan,” I said, “because your job sucks.” Now the guy with a modicum of self-control looks like he wants to hit me, too. “Probably no 401k, huh?” I’m not going to be alive much longer, so maybe I can piss them off enough to do the job early. “Yeah, no retirement from a shitty gig like this.”
“Shut the hell up,” says the calm one, looking out the window as we turn onto the road leading to the private airfield.
“What about death benefits?” I persist, laughing a little because let’s face it. I am so fucked. “Like enough for a decent funeral service or does Santos just throw you in a ditch with the other-”
The mean one’s got his hand around my throat and he’s squeezing and the other guy shouts in alarm, trying to make him let me go. As we pull up to a hangar, they both seem to come to their senses and move away from me.
“Definitely…” I croaked, my zip-tied hands massaging my throat, “Definitely no wardrobe allowance? You guys should unionize.”
The door rips open and an older man in a much better suit looks in at me. “What did you fucking assholes do? If you’ve laid a hand on her…”
“See?” I threw over my shoulder as I’m yanked out of the car, “No retirement plan for a reason, huh?”
The older man looks at the marks on my neck and wrists, jaw tight. “I will have to tell the Don that you were not acting like a lady, and so you were not treated like one.”
Why am I laughing? None of this is funny. “Oh? How do people you kidnap usually behave? I didn’t know there was a certain etiquette.”
He looks back at the other men, clustered defensively by the car. “Did you inject her with something?”
I wish they’d just killed me,I thought.I guess I wasn’t irritating enough.
“Bring her.”
Oh, I know that voice. I hear it in my nightmares sometimes, low and guttural, always sounding like there’s a lump of phlegm clogging his throat, trying to get out. Santos steps out from the shelter of the hanger and is backlit by the jet’s lights, he’s even more disgusting than I remembered.
Hands fasten around my arms and I’m jerked forward, right in front of Santos. His wide mouth is wet and he runs his tongue over his lips as he looks at me. Eyeing my bloody wrists, he snaps, “Who cut her?”
The mean guy looks terrified, backing away, “Don Santos, I intended no disrespect, I-”
My disgusting would-be fiancé nods his head, and the other man shoots the guard without even blinking. I’ve seen too many dead bodies. There have been too many bullets. Even though the guy was a sadistic prick to me, I’m sorry he’s dead. I close my eyes tightly, trying to get rid of the dark spots swirling in my vision like drops of ink.
A hand slams across my cheek, making me stumble.
“Open your eyes.” I do, trying to focus on Santos, who has his meaty hand up again. “You disappointed your father. You disappointed me,” he said.
“You know why I’m not really worried right now?” I ask conversationally.
His thick gray brows draw together. Good.
“Because I'm sure with your teeny tiny needle dick, you’re never going to keep it hard long enough to actually rape me, so…”
He hits me again. This time, I welcome the hurt radiating out from my cheekbone. It keeps me alert, it smothers the fog from the terror. I nearly fall over before his lieutenant keeps me upright, holding me by the arm and probably to keep me still so his disgusting boss can hit me again.
“Seriously, Santos. How much do you have to pay women to sleep with you without throwing up?” The agony in my eye socket is blinding, but it doesn’t matter. If I’m lucky, I won’t live long enough to worry about bruising. “Do men charge less? Or, farm animals? You can probably fuck them for free, right? Is that how you got into cattle?”
This time, he punches me in the stomach, so hard that my breath leaves me in a huge huff and I’m soundlessly gasping, like a fish flopping on the riverbank. I drop to my knees, forehead pressed to the tarmac and Santos puts his shiny loafer on my neck.
If everything else fails,Michael told me once, his kind face pained at even saying the words,if you know there’s no way out, try to make them so angry that they lose control and kill you. But only if you have done everything else. Everything possible. Believe me, it will be better than what’s going to happen next.
Dario…
