She scrambled to get to my side and practically dug her head into the crook of my neck. Her sobs mounted, her tears drenching my shoulder as I sat there with my arm huddled around her waist. I could not trust her and comfort her at the same time. That was a thing, right?
I could keep an eye on her without feeling like I absolutely had to, right?
“Fourteen,” she said after a particularly large sniffle.
I took a bite of my sandwich. “What?”
She sighed as her voice weakened. “I’ve been here exactly fourteen nights. After tonight, it will be fifteen, actually.”
Those damn heavy footfalls raked against the floor again and Julia tensed up. She buried her face into the crook of my neck before pressing one of her hands to her exposed ear. She curled up into my lap, climbing closer and pressing her comforting warmth against me. And as I swallowed down a growl working its way up the back of my throat, I wrapped my arms around her.
We laid down together on the lone mattress beneath us, and Julia trembled as her sister’s cries kicked up.
“Julia! Where are you!? Please, tell me you’re still alive!”
“Make it stop,” she whispered.
“No, no, no, no. You said we wouldn’t do that again. You said we were done with that!”
Julia curled even tighter into me. “Just make it stop, please.”
“Noooooo! No! That hurts! Please! Stop it! Pleeeeease!”
Julia sobbed. “Just fucking make it stop!”
Between her sister’s screams and her audible sobbing, I couldn’t hear myself think. Not that I had anything to think about. The horror unfolding around me was unlike anything I ever dared to experience when I placed myself in between my men and Bullet’s men. But fucking hell, this was too much. Even for Satan himself.
And as the men upstairs laughed, the sound of a cracking whip stood the hairs up on the nape of my neck.
“No! Ah! Plea-he-he-heeeeease. Juliaaaaaaa!”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Julia whispered over and over again.
I wrapped my arms around the young woman and held onto her as tightly as possible. Her body shook so violently that had we been anywhere else, I would’ve called a damn doctor. But the more those whip cracks rang out, the harder she pushed against me.
Until she had scrambled out of my grasp and fallen back into the bleak darkness of the basement.
“Don’t touch me. No one touch me,” she hissed.
“Okay, okay,” I said as I held my hands up in mock surrender. “That’s fine. No more touching.”
She let out another sob. “I’ve had enough touching for one lifetime.”
Her comment made me wonder if they had done more than just toss her into a basement, and the thought made me fucking sick. As I swallowed the bile creeping up the back of my throat, I did my best to block out her sister’s shrieking pleas as those men continued to laugh and torture the poor girl. I knew what I had to do, though. I knew what I had to do in order to find peace in my life once more.
I had to bust us out of that motherfucking basement, we had to find her sister, and we had to get the hell out of dodge.
No matter what it took of me in the process.
4
JULIA
I felt the pounding in my skull before I ever opened my eyes. When I did finally manage to roll over, I regretted every single second of the experience. I hurt in places I didn’t even know to exist and the headache that slammed against my forehead made me nauseous. And as I peeked an eye open, for the smallest of moments the darkness of the basement reminded me of the blackout curtains in my bedroom. At home. Where it was safe, warm, and filled with all sorts of food I found myself craving as the days passed by. I knew I wasn’t at home, though. And when I finally managed to open both of my eyes, I found a cobweb staring me straight in the face.
Along with a spider that seemed to be staring back.
“Holy motherfuck—nyaaaaah.”
