Fallen For My Kidnapper (COMPLETED)

Chapter 36 - Freedom Is Comfort

I didn't even make contact before I felt the blunt end of a gun make contact with my face. The other girls shrieked, and I could see them cower away into the back of the van as I glanced from underneath my hair. My lip was bleeding, a cut inside pouring blood from my cheek. Suddenly, a hand gripped me by the roots of my hair and yanked me to my feet. 

"Little girl, you keep pulling shit like this and you are going to be buying your own bus fair to the afterlife," I could recognized Zach's voice next to my ear as he yanked tighter on my hair, causing me to grimace before regaining control of my emotions. 

"I am not going to be another one of your pets," I spit at him. I felt him lower his head to next to my ear, causing chills to go all the way down my spine. 

"You'll be anything that I want you to be." I squirmed in his hold, but it was never enough to break it before he threw me at the van. I caught myself before face planting, turning around to be met with more men with more guns. I backed up to the van.

"Okay, let's go," Zach said. Girls started piling out of the van, Rylee placing herself next to me. I went to go look at her, but she wouldn't meet my eyes. 

"Shut up and just do as they say," she told me. There was a warning in her voice, and for once, I was going to listen. I didn't want to. I wanted to fight until I either made it out of here or I was taken out. I didn't want a life of pleasing men. 

They brought us into a new house that looking just as nice as the last, but with all the moving and cramped space, I didn't get to see much of it as I would have liked. Soon, we were being pushed down stairs that lead into an empty basement. I fought to get to the back of the girls, trying to get to the stairs again. I finally got there when Zach smiled, shutting the door in my face and closing out all the light. 

I sighed, the other girls standing there and looking at me with hate. I looked at them before looking at my shoes, tucking my hair behind my ear as I looked at the ground. If it wasn't bad enough, I had tried to make these girls fight back with me which wouldn't have ended too well for them. They probably thought that I was just going to cause more pain to them than anything. 

"Don't take it too personally," I heard Rylee walk up next to me. "We all hate one another."

"Why?" I asked, my eyes adjusting to the darkness as I looked at her. She seemed worn and tired, but all the same she was still standing up right. 

"We are all toys in their game, and if any one of us walks out of line, it can mean punishment for everyone. And girls go missing all the time. Some of the shit that men are into, well, sometimes you don't survive it."

"That's awful," I said.

"It's our life." She said it with a shrug, but I could tell that Rylee wasn't as nonchalant as she wanted me to believe. She had feelings, just like everyone else. 

"How long have you been here?" I asked her. 

"Three years, I think. It isn't like they give us a calendar."

I kept quiet, chastising myself for being so rude to her in the van. She was just trying to survive in the world that she was in, and I was stupid to think that we could take on men like Zach. I started to think about what I had done, what was going to happen to me. Less than 24 hours in the custody of Newman before and I had broken ribs, bruises to cover my body, and I had almost been raped. Now I was sure that the almost was going to disappear. 

I hardened my heart. I had done this for them, for my father, for Marcus. They didn't deserve to die the way they were going to. None of them would have been in the mess if it hadn't been for me and my father. I didn't think it was all my fault, but I couldn't help but see the family name popping up in times of crisis. 

"Thinking about how much this all sucks isn't going to help you," Rylee told me.

"I wasn't thinking about that," I told her. 

"What then?" I paused. I hadn't known Rylee for very long, but at this point, she was the closest thing that I had to a friend. 

"I gave myself up to Newman to save my family. I guess I just can't help but think that there was another way." I rested my head on the wall, looking up at the ceiling. "And the way that Marcus looked at me-"

"Marcus as in Marcus Thein?" I nodded my head. "Does he love you?" she asked me. I looked at her, my eyes brought together. 

"What do you mean?"

"I mean does he love you? It isn't that hard of a question."

"I mean, I don't know. We aren't even dating-"

"Fuck." I looked at her harder, trying to decide what this meant. Why did she care about what Marcus thought of me?

"We care about one another, he just has a complicated dating history. Why do you even care?" I asked her. 

"Because if there is one person that might be able to break you out, it's him. But if he doesn't love you then you aren't going to be worth it." She sighed, almost annoyed with me as she walked away. I put my head back against the wall as I tried to process everything. Did he love me?

I shook my head, the thought so silly that I couldn't even think about it for more than a second. He wasn't even my boyfriend, and the first reason that I had tried to be nice to him was for his mom. I liked him now that I knew him, but he didn't feel the same way. He probably just hadn't had sex in so long that he was stringing me along. No, that wasn't right either. Whatever was between us I didn't understand it, and I wasn't going to from here. 

From down below all the girls could hear the men moving around upstairs. It was like a built in warning to all of the girls that just one step up the stairs and they were there. I sat in my own corner, away from everyone else, trying to figure out a way out of this. I thought through escape routes, but I hadn't seen the house well enough. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I sensed from our walk in here. There was a farmer's porch, and we walked straight for a while, as if there were two rooms, before they turned us left, and then right again. And then right down the seller. Okay, straight, left, right right. So backwards would be left left, right, straight and that should be the door. 

"I can see you're thinking. We aren't getting out of here, I think you need to understand that," Rylee said, sitting next to me. 

"We need to try before they have enough time to set up their defenses." I told her. "If we listen tonight, then we can find out when there is the least amount of foot traffic. We can escape, Rylee, you just need to be willing to accept that."

"You're crazy," she told me. 

"Crazy might be good in this situation. No one else is making any attempts, and the only other option is to let yourself be the tool of pleasing men for the rest of the time that they let you live." I turned towards her more, holding her eyes. "What happened when you get too old? When your body is no longer the fresh one that their clients want? What happens to you?" Rylee glared at me. "You can hate me all that you want, but I am right. The only way to live is to get out of here. Even if staying here means another five years, in the end, they are going to execute you like you're nothing."

"Why are you such a bitch?"

"I thought I was crazy?" I told her. She glared at me before sighing, a semblance of a smirk on her face. 

"Fine, but don't involve any of the other girls. They will trade anything for a better place here. You can get sent to clients that treat the girls well, or to someone who might kill you. They will trade your freedom for their comfort."

"And you?"

She hesitated, "Freedom is comfort."

N/A I am so sorry that I haven't updated in so long. I got really sick, and I am going into midterms, so I haven't had the time to be writing as much as I usually do. I hope you liked this last chapter, and I will try to get the next one out as soon as I can.