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Warning: Sensitive content ahead:
Sickening.
Two dozen girls, tied at the wrists and ankles, stare back at the guys and I in absolute fucking horror.
Dressed nothing like the fuckers that did this to them, whom we just captured, the girls are still wary of us. Their trust has been completely broken, as well as themselves.
Blood-dried, bruised, and naked, the girls sit clustered together against a paint-chipped wall, as far away from us they can get.
"They're gone," Fisher kneels as he speaks in a calm, steady tone. "There is nobody left to hurt you, you are safe now. We've got you."
They shrink further away.
Some were fucking shipped from other countries, meaning not all of them understand our language. Shipped makes me sick to my fucking stomach, I can't even begin to imagine the shit these girls have gone through.
Nicolas, fluent in Dutch, assures the girls, "We gaan je geen pijn doen, we zijn niet zoals zij." (We are not going to hurt you, we are not like them).
In Italian, I add, "Siamo qui per riportarvi dalle vostre famiglie e al sicuro." (We are here to bring you back to your families and to safety).
My lame ass excuse of a father, the damn 'master' of the house I lived in at the time, spoke Italian to me frequently. He'd said my birth parents were born and raised in Italy, then moved to the States when pregnant with me.
His shitty way of apologizing for fuckin' beating me to a pulp the night before was to bring me closer to my Italian ancestry.
Apparently, my evident ethnicity wasn't fucking enough.
"Damn," Fisher mumbles. "Could really use a translator right now."
"Not the fucking time," I snap at him.
We cautiously approach the girls with blankets and clothing options, noting how some attempt to crawl away, while others reach for our offers. Some refuse to believe us when we say we aren't here to hurt them, which is understandable, for a sad fuckin' reason.
But the ones who are stand on weak legs, following Maxen to the trucks outside where food and water are supplied, along with more blankets and medics. From here, right outside of New Hampshire, they will be brought to a clinic that offers therapy treatments while getting ahold of family.
It's a long fucking process, but it's infinitely better than remaining in the sex-trafficking warehouse.
Maxen speaks Russian to the few girls who understand the language while leading them out of the warehouse.
River attempts to make them feel safe by comforting the ones who cry, either from the joy of being found or the trauma of what happened to them.
Fisher lifts the mood by doing some weird shit with his hands and playing with his damn blanket, in which a couple girls giggle at.
