“Where are you from?” I ask her.
“Croatia. Those two are from Croatia too. The others I don’t know.”
“How did they take you?”
“I was walking home from school. It was the middle of the afternoon. Bad things don’t happen in the light.” Her voice breaks and she starts to sob again.
“What’s your name?”
“Sonia,” she manages.
“Sonia. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
Neither of us believes this lie but I can’t not tell it.
A door slams against the wall of the room, metal clanging against metal. Startled, I gasp, my head snapping to the man standing in the doorway. It’s the one from the dock. The fat one who cut the restraints at my ankles.
The women cower away as if one entity.
The man enters and from behind him follow another three, all with leering eyes, reeking of alcohol and days-old sweat.
But the one who frightens me the most is the last one to appear at the door. The one who looks clean. The handsome one.
I know he’s the cruelest of the lot.
Marcus sneers as he looks in my direction and I remember how he shot my uncle. I wish I could wipe my face because I know I didn’t imagine the blood that splattered it, but I’m not sure if I really feel it or if it’s my mind playing tricks on me.
The men fan out, moving swiftly as they scan the room. They look at something on the wrist of each of the girls before taking their pick.
The screams start then but all it takes to shut that down is the big one backhanding a girl so hard that her whole body spins and she slams face-first into the wall. I hear a crack and she drops to the floor of the boat. She’s unconscious or dead. I can’t tell. Broken for sure.
The screams become whimpers then as the men get back to what they came in here for.
I open my mouth to speak, to make them somehow stop, but one of the men grips my arm then and hauls me to my knees. I’m flipped over so I’m lying face down on the filthy mattress.
The girl beside me screams as I feel his hands on me, but then there’s a sound, someone grunting, and I’m hauled to sit upright again.
“Not that one,” Marcus says. “No one touches that one.” He runs a hand gently over my cheek then grips my jaw so hard he’s about to shatter it.
“No one but you?” I manage through gritted teeth.
“Not yet,” he says, eyes darkening. “But it’s coming.”
He lets go of my jaw. In my periphery, I see the others moving behind the women, hear them grunting as the women whimper and sob. I don’t want to look, but I know I have to. I have to catalog each of their faces for later. For when I can kill these men. For when I can free the women.
“You like the show?” Marcus asks me. “Is that what turns you on?”
I turn my gaze to him and spit the biggest spitball I can manage onto his face. It hits his right eye and smears down to his cheek. “Only monsters are turned on by this.”
He wipes off my spit and looks like he’s about a second away from murdering me, but I know he’s following orders. I know he’s not going to hurt me. He can’t.
But I don’t realize the most important thing until it’s too late.
And he knows the moment I understand this. Sees his victory the instant he grabs the girl who shared her water with me. He forces her onto her hands and knees and unzips his pants.
“No!” I try to lunge at him with my arms bound behind me.
“Lou!” he calls to one of the men who appears instantly. “Make her watch.”
The man, Lou, is on me in an instant, kneeling behind me. He’s clutching my face in a vise-like grip and forcing me to look at Marcus, at the poor girl.
Marcus wipes the spit off his face, looks down at the girl on her knees. He splays her open and smears my spit onto her back hole.
“No, Marcus, please don’t,” I try. “She didn’t do anything to you.”
“That’ll be all the lube she gets,” he says as he takes his dick out. “All thanks to you.”
I’ve seen Marcus fuck women before. I know what he’s capable of. He liked me to watch. Any time my brothers wouldn’t let him fuck me, he made me watch him fuck someone else. It wasn’t to make me jealous. It was to torment me. Because he made sure to punish each and every one of them in my place.
“Please Marcus. I’m sorry. I—”
The girl cries out as he thrusts into her without any restraint. “Tight little asshole. She isn’t going to enjoy this even a little bit,” he says. Looking down to spread her wider, he thrusts the rest of himself into her.
The girl screams.
I can’t look at her. “I’m sorry! God. No. Marcus, please stop! I’m so sorry!”
“Lou. Do you have a fucking concussion?”
The man behind me hardens his grip on my face. I close my eyes.
“No. Eyes open, Cartel whore. You close your eyes and I’ll slit her fucking throat.”
I open them. Marcus always knew exactly how to hurt me.
“Yeah, like that. Watch. And know when it’s your turn, I will tear you in fucking two. You may be valuable now but that’ll change. The minute it does, you’re mine.”
Behind me I feel Lou’s erection. He’s rubbing it against me through his pants and I’m going to be sick.
But I’m lucky compared to the others.
As the boat rocks, lifted high by the waves and dropped back down hard, the men stagger away, sated, for now. All but Marcus who takes his time. Who, by the time he’s finished, has the girl pinned flat to the mattress, her eyes gone glassy, blood on her bottom and thighs.
“I’m going to kill you,” I tell him when he finally pulls out and stands, zipping his jeans up.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “Stand her up,” he tells Lou.
Lou hauls me to my feet and Marcus looks me over. I don’t want to show him that I’m afraid, but I am.
He looks at my belly, at the dark bruise forming there.
“Can’t touch your face,” he says to me. “And someone’s already got at you. Was it Jacob? He always did have a hard-on for you.”
“Fuck you, Marcus.”
“No, Scarlett. Fuck you.” He pulls his belt through its loops, doubles it over, and begins.
3
Cristiano
Soldiers have already sealed off the dock. Dante got here and took care of it before we arrived. He went to Milan on business after the wedding, which is less than a two-hour drive from here.
He’s on the docks talking to an old man. When he sees me, he gives a nod of greeting.
“Christ,” my uncle mutters.
“You don’t have to be here,” I tell him, surveying the scene.
“I’m staying.”
I walk over the gravel road, to the two bodies lying on the ground. I get to the girl first. Crouching down, I touch two fingers to the pulse at her neck, although I don’t need to. She’s dead. I can see it in her still open, vacant eyes.
Her arms are drenched in dried blood. She was hugging herself. Beneath my shoes, it’s seeped into the ground.
A single gunshot to the belly. It’s a terrible way to die.