Tonight I barely fall asleep to shouts of “card shark” and “cheater,” glasses clinking and slurred words. I should be worried that alcohol and monsters don’t mix, but I have come to trust in my safety at the hands of Jax and Sav. It feels like I haven’t even been asleep for a half an hour when I hear my door creak open. I open my eyes to see a green eyed beauty poke her head in like this is a college dorm, and she’s my roommate. Does she not realize what they would do to her if she were caught?
“Oh my God, you can’t be in here. They will punish me even though you are the one who ventured out. I was beaten when I tried to meet the other women and I have just recently recovered. I won’t survive another beating, please leave, please.”
“It’s okay, all the men are playing cards, and Jax told me that he and Savage would keep them upstairs so we would be safe. I have heard you over the last few weeks and knew there were others like me being held against their will. Do you know how many women are here?”
“There were six, and now only four. I think one girl was shipped out and I heard that another girl died in a car crash. I’m Maria and Tina is across the hall. I didn’t meet the others because their rooms are on the other side of the living room. I only made it to Tina’s room before they caught me, so I never tried it again. I know the guard who trains you is Jax, right? He keeps telling me that things are going to be okay. Do you know what he is talking about? How can anything here ever be okay?”
“I am Victoria and I don’t know anything about their plans either. He tells me the same thing and asks me to trust him, that we will be safe soon. I get mixed signals from him, so I’m not sure what to believe. I will come back if I can, but they are getting loud, and I don’t want to get caught.”
“Thank you for coming in here. Jax saved me, you know. I was ready to give up, and he brought me hope. Savage has been very nice too.” Victoria nods her head and hurries out while I pull my blanket tight around me and try to get some sleep.
“Sweetheart. We gotta move. I only have t-shirts and sweats for you to wear, but we gotta make it work. Hurry up; I’m gonna grab Tina and be back for you.”
My heart is going a hundred miles an hour as I pull on Savage’s clothes. Is really taking me from here? I roll the waistband of the sweats down several times and tie his shirt in a knot like the 80’s. As I roll up the bottoms of the sweatpants legs, he rushes in.
“Let’s move ladies; I only had a handful of roofies to knock them all out.”
Tina is crying and asking if he is going to let us go or if they are taking us to Russia. I say nothing and move a little faster. As we reach the top of the stairs, there are bodies strewn all over the living room and kitchen. He leads us out the front door and down a sprawling lawn toward a dock. It is too dark to see the water, but I can hear the waves and smell the saltiness in the air. I hear Jax curse, and I turn to look back just as he is helping Victoria to her feet. The very young girl that is also with them is staring at them with her mouth hanging open as if in shock. Where have they kept this girl? She looks very young, only about seventeen or eighteen years old. Savage pulls me toward the water and leads us to a big black metal boat then helps us inside. Just as Jax settles the young girl in the boat, I see Victoria backing away and shaking her head no. Jax is trying to reason with her, but she looks like she’s going to have a panic attack. I didn’t even see Savage leave the boat until he reappears behind Victoria and sticks her in the neck with syringe. As she collapses, Jax curses.
“Shit, Sav! What the hell, Mate!
“Jax, she was not going to cooperate, and we still have to go back to the house and finish this job. She wouldn’t have willingly stayed on the boat with the others. I had no choice.”
Troy keeps his cool even in the face of all of that animal aggression, and Jax’s anger subsides a little. He carries an unconscious Victoria to the boat and lays her down on the bench.
“We’ll be right back.”
He looks right at me, and all I can do is nod as they run back towards the house. What if they don’t come back? I don’t know how to drive a military boat. What if Victoria wakes up and freaks out again. Gunshots have both men cursing and running back toward us yelling.
“Get down.”
I have no idea what these men do for a living or where they got their training, but they have to be military. We all drop to the floor and huddle together. The boat is military grade and fast so before I know it we are in open waters bouncing through the waves. Jax has taken Victoria from the bench and has wrapped his protective arms around her. Tina and I huddle on the floor with the young girl under a few blankets and pray our next stop is freedom.
For me, freedom is a relative term. Will I ever be as free as I was before? Do I dare go home? How far reaching are Thomas’s influences and the money he has access to? Will Vrennikov tell him that I have escaped and will he know
