THE VICKERS

Chapter 25

Dahlia was in a new place now. Her head pounded as she tried to sit up. She couldn't. She pulled against her constraints and winced at the pain from the soreness of her wrists. She glanced downwards and saw her legs were bound too. Her eyes needed to adjust to the daylight streaming in from the window above her head. Her brain pounded against her skull, with every pulse.  Someone had hit her pretty hard last night. At least she was still alive.

 She looked around as the blurriness of the room faded slightly. The mattress didn't have a sheet and parts of it were charred and crispy. It looked like it had been dragged out of a burning building. The thick dust suffocated her. The walls sported a dark colour like it was covered in ash, burned. The floor was too. But the white door to the bedroom stood out against the rest

She twisted her body so she could see the window above her. Light streamed in but metal bars cast shadows over her face.

There goes my means of escape. There was nothing else in the room, except the bed she was tied to. There was a scrap of wallpaper that wasn't completely burnt on the wall to her left. The light caught it just enough for her to see its design. It was light blue with little yellow flowers pattered across it with green vines connecting each delicate flower.

Panic rose from the pit of her stomach. No, it couldn't be!

The frame of the bed that her legs were tied now looked familiar. So did the rusted metal bars and the burnt walls. 

"No no no no..." she started to whisper to herself.

Plenty of people had that wallpaper, she tried to convince herself. The alarm still grew steadily despite her attempts at reassurance. She tried even more vigorously to free herself from her bonds, ignoring the pain. Suddenly the woman's familiar eyes made sense. It was her. It was Margaret. And the man with the burned face, the one Dahlia broke was Barry?

Tears burned her eyes as she remembered the sinful things that happened in this room. Her skin began to crawl as she remembered how Barry traced his fingers along her arms and legs. The way he cupped her cheek. He called her beautiful before ripping off her underwear and forcing himself on her. She tried to fight back, but he threatened her brother's lives. 

She saw how Barry and his friends beat Devin for defending her. She was beaten when she scratched his cheek. Margaret, the witch, knew about it and blamed Dahlia for everything. Adding even more torture to her wretched life. Life here was worse than what she imagined hell to be. She thought they were finally free, that the bastards were dead. 

She wasn't afraid of what would happen to her, not until now.

~~~~

We went over the plan one last time. Marcus had gone back home and was attempting to make contact with the people who had taken Dahlia. It's obvious he wasn't kept in the loop.

We told him a plan we had to corner Juno and kill him. He didn't argue with it at the time. But I don't think he had a better idea. I still didn't trust him. This bastard got us into this.

Even if he did it for his mother, he'd thrown us into an unforgivable hell. What if he told these people our plan? What if he stabbed us in the back again?

Still, we needed to know where she was and if she was still alive.

It had been an hour since he'd left. We didn't hear from him. We had ditched the car we took from the man in the park.

It was left just down the street from where we'd made the deal to give up the diamonds. We stole another one not long after and made our way back to the warehouse that we'd use as a base to plan our attack on Fitz.