couldn’t imagine being pregnant, worried about the state of my unborn child, and not knowing what our fate was going to be from one moment to the next. So far, the only bit of abuse she’d endured at their hands was when she fought back against being taken from her SUV. The man she struggled against hit her in the temple with his gun, knocking her out right before the man on my side shoved the smelly rag over my face.
Bits and pieces came back to me, but the one recollection I held on to was the sound of Brick’s voice on the other end of the phone. He warned me not to leave the house. My dad called Braylen, telling her the same, but neither of us chose to listen. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, of course, and if I could go back, I would’ve convinced Braylen to wait for them to come and get us. But that’s the thing about not being able to predict the future. You only have your instincts to go on sometimes, and the weird pains Braylen was having kicked her momma bear intuition into high gear. I only hoped everything was all right with the little one. Every now and again I’d see a grimace flash over her features, but thankfully there were no outward signs of distress.
Shifting my position until I rested my back against the wall, I reached for her hand, clasping it tightly. Her touch was cold, as was mine. The room we were in was damp, the slight chill in the air burrowing into our bones. Braylen’s shorts and tank top didn’t offer much more coverage than my dress, although her bottoms weren’t the easy access the hem of my skirt was. Odd, what sorts of thoughts plagued a person when shoved into a terrifying situation.
I couldn’t help but chastise myself for being stubborn, pushing back at Brick’s comment, which was the reason I changed into this damn thing in the first place. I could beat myself up for the decision, but the truth of the matter was there wasn’t a piece of clothing I could’ve worn that would’ve deterred these bastards from getting their hands on me.
As I sat there in the dark, my mind racing, my heart spiking with every small sound, my body defeated, all I could hope for was a reprieve from their attentions.
I thought my life before was sometimes complicated, from the pressures of my job, to navigating a friendship after Andy and I broke up, to becoming consumed by a man I’d met at my little brother’s tenth birthday party.
But I was a different person now. I’d been irrevocably changed, and everything that weighed heavy on me before didn’t matter anymore. Everything except for the numbness curling its ugly fingers around every cell inside me had paled to nothingness.
I was now a woman scarred—in every possibly way a person could be. Tracing the raised welts on my inner thighs with my free hand, I shivered, remembering the look in his eyes when he ran the blade over my flesh. My fingers drifted upward to my cheek, the mark he left there thicker, his words repeated over and over inside my head. “He’s not gonna want you now.” The man with the jagged Z-shaped mark tormented me, his emotional abuse almost as bad as the physical.
The last time I was dragged from this room, it had been dark outside, but I had no concept of time. Had we been here a single day, or had it been longer? Were we fated to remain with these men for the foreseeable future or would we be rescued? Not knowing was one of the worst parts, because lack of knowledge gave way to all sorts of possibilities, and any trace of hope that remained locked tightly away inside was chipped at every time that door opened and one of those despicable men stepped inside.
The creak of the hinge pricked my ears. Braylen clutched my hand tighter and her soft cries echoed all around me. I didn’t know how many times they invaded my body, but any remnant of fight I had left was gone.
Until the person who walked in headed straight for Braylen. Then I kicked and clawed at him like a feral animal. I’d managed to surprise him, but all I received in exchange was the air knocked from my lungs when he punched me in the stomach. I fell back to the ground, but instead of