Yet, Yusef didn’t come.
Erik didn’t appear.
Those facts remained constant, in the forefront of my mind as I tried not to feel so lost and scrambled from what I’d known for so long.
I had to understand what was coming before I could trust these people. Before I could want my cousin Raisa near me, because she, too, had fallen to the same fate I wanted to escape.
She’d been bred. I refused to be controlled like that.
With every passing day that I remained conscious and avoided sedation, I focused on regaining my strength. And eating real food. Actual, substantial meals. Not stale or moldy junk. Not bland or processed crap.
Real food.
Because thisisthe real world. Isn’t it?
I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t anymore. That was how deeply my trauma had ruined me. I stood here, staring out the window, and sighed as I wondered how I could feel like I was always trapped and looking from within.
Without any answers to anything, I rested and tolerated the distance they gave me.
In the back of my mind, I was convinced that this was all just another step of preparing me for my marriage that would happen in seven weeks.
Yet, as my bruises faded and my body stayed warm and fed, I wanted to hope that I could be strong again to escape once more. I had only tasted a sample of freedom. That one run outside into the cold. When the open sky stretched so wide and large over my head. When I had no orders to follow. Ihadto get back to that experience of being free.
Because no matter how long Erik and Yusef tried to damage my brain and wreck my soul, a tiny sliver of me wasn’t broken. Buried under the ugly memories, I was still me. And I knew I deserved freedom. Maybe sometime, I could believe I deserved happiness, too.
On the evening of the sixth night, the maid didn’t close the door all the way. A little more light fell into the room, but that slip of freedom didn’t tempt me. Not now. Since I had resumed my habit of pacing, I had walked across the room to stare out the window. Catching the sun setting over the distant cityscape was the closest to freedom that I could enjoy.
Besides, I wasn’t stupid enough to escape yet.
I could’ve opened that door before now. I checked on the second day whether it was locked. It wasn’t, but with the consistent show of guards, I knew I’d be stopped outside this room, too. And I wasn’t strong enough to fight with a gun.
The door remained ajar.
Staying still in the shadows near the window, I sighed again and stared outside.
And I listened.
“Did she eat much of her dinner?” a woman asked.
It wasn’t Raisa speaking. I catalogued what her mature, adult voice was like. Sounds were one of the tools I’d honed to pay attention to in my captivity.
It was the one who claimed to be a cop. Sadie.
“Yes, ma’am,” the maid replied. “She has been eating all of her meals.”
“No wonder,” Alexsei said, clearly joining them. They had to have very thick carpet out there because it was frustratingly impossible to hear people walking out there, to determine who was walking where.
His voice was one I’d catalogued as well.
Alexsei.The one Raisa tried to convince me to view as a friend. Family. As if those concepts meant anything to me anymore.
He was aman. For that reason alone, I couldn’t trust him.
I couldn’t trust anyone.
“She was skin and bones when I found her on that bench in Central Park.”
I furrowed my brow and considered that.That’s right.
