Blindly searching for the light switch, I finally find it and turn it on, only to gasp in shock.
The walls are filled with an endless display of black-and-white photos. Girls of various ages in hideous conditions. Their clothes are torn, dirt smeared all over them, bruises marring their bodies. As bad as it looks, that’s not the worst thing about these pictures. It's the desperation and agony glazing over their eyes as they stare into the camera lens, through the cage’s bars, at the photographer.
A string of red lines on the wall connects them all to different men, their photos crossed off with thickX’s. The space also hasseveral desks filled with dusty files, tape stacks, and two desktop computers. A small couch and minibar occupying the right corner are the only indication that someone has ever lived here.
There are also thick journals and photo albums all over the floor.
“My God. What is this?” Silence meets my hollow question, of course, my criminal psychology elective class playing in my mind. Images pop in my head, one after the other, trying to shine light on the truth I’m trying to avoid, but what else could explain this? “No, it can’t be.”
It physically hurts me to look at these women and their pain, so I lean down, picking up one of the journals, dust flying up in the air, and making me sneeze.
I flip it open, hoping it will give me some clarity on what all of this means. I swallow hard at the perfect handwriting accompanied by a picture of a blond girl below it. It’s dated more than twenty years ago.
Suzanne
I found her on the streets begging for food, her beauty shining even through her ugly clothes that couldn’t hide a body perfect to bear my offspring.
Fifteen years old and loved to struggle, making her even more alluring to me.
Killing her hurt me, but she couldn’t give me what I wanted, so I had no use for her after breaking her.
Barely controlling my gagging reflex, I swallow past the bile in my throat and flip over the page. This time, a dark-haired girl is holding a stuffed bear, and my heart breaks into tiny pieces.
Ava
After my last experience, I decided that genetics might play a factor in my plan, and I should pick them well next time.
She was a little princess on the playground, adored by her parents, who, unfortunately for her, were so easy to distract.
Snatching her up wasn’t a hardship: A twelve-year-old who was supposed to give me what I so wished, yet she failed me too.
Died at birth.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, riffling through several more pages and finding similar passages. Each makes it harder and harder to control my nausea.
Through the years, I searched for perfect girls who could fulfill my needs in ways my stupid wife and all the social butterflies could never do.
And each time they failed me, for perfection requires effort and dedication.
I realized then I needed my own dungeon to keep all my girls, and using one at the time reduced my chances.
That’s how I found friends in human trafficking. It allowed me to create my own little kingdom where no one questioned my authority.
Where no one dared to say my name, wealth, and status belonged to my wife, or reminded me that what I got in my life wasn’t earned.
I’m the absolute king here
My friends…they helped me a lot, but I do keep tabs on their activities. Because you never know, thesepeople could turn on you, and it’s always good to have something to blackmail them with, isn’t it?
I glance again at the men on the wall, realizing that their names correlate with the others he mentions in his journal. DoesXmean they are dead or in prison?
By reading the dates and journal entries, it’s clear it was Orion’s father, Conrad, who did all these hideous things, but why does my husband keep all of this? Shouldn’t it belong to the police?
Scratch that…
Why was it never made public? These women deserved justice, their families deserved the truth, yet none of it was ever leaked to the press?
Was there a classified investigation?
