musty smell of a cold, damp room. Reality sets in and my eyes bulge, my body twists and I belt out a scream. My arms protest the movement as they hang above me. Hair flings across my face as I yank hard on them again.
God, where the hell am I.
Flashbacks of yesterday return full force. Lucio catching me leave, bag in hand. Him calling his father. Them dragging me into a car, kicking and screaming.
“I wouldn’t bother screaming, Ali. You’ll be wasting your energy. No one will hear you.”
A sob full of dread escapes me as Lucio comes into view from a dark corner of the empty room. He rolls up the tight sleeves of his button up shirt and stops them around his forearms.
“Tell me, Ali. Were you leaving me yesterday to go to him?” Jealousy seeps through his tone and I’m pulled back by confusion.
I shake my head with what little energy I have left after hanging for who the hell knows how long by thick chains from the exposed beam roof. “What are you talking about, Lucio?”
He stomps forward. Fast. Angry. I pull on the chains again as he noses up to me. His breath hot on my cheek as I turn my face away.
“I saw you the other night, Ali. You were sitting on a bench on the Brooklyn Bridge with a man. I saw the way you looked at him. Did you want his cock, Ali? Did you let him fuck that pretty littlesweet cunt of yours?”
I squint to push away his accusations but it’s impossible. Lucio gets to me every single time.
He squeezes my chin and yanks my face back to him, pushing my cheeks together painfully and it’s then I realize where the blood I was tasting came from. My lip’s split.
“Answer me!” he yells.
I can’t answer through the clenching of my face between his hands. I shake my head instead.
He pulls away and runs a hand through the longer patch of thick dark hair on top of his head. Hair I used to find attractive. His black eyebrows crease together as he stares at me. He begins pacing, hands resting on his narrow hips.
Footsteps come from the right side of the room, where stepping through a steel door, is Giuseppe.
I freeze. A new kind of fear holding me in place. Lucio scares me. But Giuseppe brings on the type of horror that only comes from being in the same room as a sociopath.
With every agonizingly slow step my way, I tremble.
“You know, I’ve given you and your sister a lot over the years, Alison. And now you get to earn a living, live in my house, eat my food, and be a part of my family. Yet, you’ve taken it all for granted and tried to leave us. And that just won’t do. I’m going to teach you a lesson about what happens to ungrateful bitches, Alison. And after this, you won’t ever want to leave us again. You know how I know that?” he asks, smiling with amusement. “Go on. Ask me, sweet girl.”
I open my mouth to speak, unsure if anything will come out. “How do you know?”
He takes a serious tone. “Because there won’t be any of you left to save.”
My eyes widen and I gasp. “No.”
I barely make out the word before everything goes black.
Blonde hair catches my eye along the bridge and I stick my neck out from the bench seat to see if it’s her.
“Please be her.” I pray.
My breath bottles in my chest as her shadow becomes apparent. She’s the right height, around the same size. My heart rate speeds up as I stand from the seat, but hope deflates in seconds when she steps closer because it isn’t her. Those aren’t her eyes. I had them stamped in my brain for the past two weeks since I met her on the bridge. I’d remember them anywhere. They’d been the first thing I’d see when I close mine at night, and they’d been haunting me ever since. I run a hand through my hair and my knees bounce as I wait. I’d searched every government database and turned up nothing.
How did I ever think I’d find her with only a first name and a few features?
Half the population is blonde with blue eyes. I had to guess at her age and it didn’t help the search. I had nothing to go on because I’d been too caught up in the feelings that had rocked me