Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
“Eric is ... dangerous,” The Beast said. “If they’ve hired him, then they want her removed. They will not be able to control him.”
“This is not fucking helping me,” Ivan said.
It had been a long time since I had seen Ivan lose his cool. Within seconds Ivan stood toe-to-toe with The Beast.
“That is my sister. Do you understand me? That is my flesh and blood and I promised her she would have a life. She’d been lied to all her life. Abused, pretty much tortured by people she thought were family, but they knew they were not her family. She is a Volkov. She is an Abdulov. She is family,” Ivan said. “And that has just put Eric at the top of my list of enemies. He came in, uninvited. I don’t care what it takes. Freya is coming home in one piece.”
“He’ll get more doing it piece by piece,” The Butcher said.
This drew my attention to her. “What?”
“Eric is black market. He is a sick fuck, and there is a chance Freya will stay alive, but for how long, I do not know,” The Butcher said. “It’s not going to be easy, or pretty. This is going to be hard for her.”
“What are we talking about?” I asked.
The Butcher and The Beast shared a look.
“Eric is not ... he will do anything he wants,” she said. “Rape, torture, beat, anything to get the viewers ... ready.”
“Viewers?”
“There’s a whole black market for this kind of thing,” The Beast said. “Think of it as a cattle market, only Eric serves people. Some people want to see sick shit, and they’re more than willing to do it.”
And with that, I lost it.
****
Freya
All my life I’d been in a cage of some kind, or at least I thought it was a cage, or a prison, or something.
Back with Harris as my dad, I thought I lived a normal life, although it was a prison, with random acts of punishment from him whenever I didn’t do the right thing. I could live with that. I had lived with that.
Then being married to Victor. Scared to move around in case he saw me, and then discovering my fake father had put a hit out on me.
One long cage for another.
Only, now I realized they hadn’t been true cages.
I stood in a cage right now. I wasn’t the only one. The man who had taken me had a whole supply of people locked in cages. I spotted five other people—three women, two men, and then me.
I’d been dumped in this cage with a bucket as a toilet. My stomach was causing me pain, and I feared what that meant.
It was dark. Barely anything could be seen.
“What are you in for?” a soft feminine voice asked.
I turned and could just make out a shadow. The dark terrified me. Shadows made it even worse. I felt sick. This was not good.
“Being alive,” I said.
Even though I was sitting, the world kept spinning, and I had no choice but to lay flat on the floor. I don’t know if there are rats or mice, or even spiders. There is no bed. There is nothing.
The pain kept getting worse in my stomach.
I tried not to think about Victor. I tried not to think about anything.
Taking deep breaths in, what I tried to think about was saving this baby, of becoming a mother. Even though I was terrified of being a mother, I wanted to be one. I wanted to have a son or daughter, make cookies, help them with their homework, hold them when they scrape their knees. I wanted to have a big family.
“Yeah, me too,” the voice said. “I’m ... Emily.”
“Hi, Emily.” I was able to see the hand that stuck through the cage.
I also happened to notice it was missing a couple of fingers. There were only two small finger and a thumb. I was going to be sick.
Crawling to the bucket, I was able to make it out, and I grabbed it and threw up everything I’d eaten the previous day.
“Sorry,” I said, calling out to everyone.
My voice felt croaky, but they all responded, wishing me well. That was odd. We were all in hell, yet still able to be civilized. It was ... nice. Totally fucked up and wrong, but nice at the same time.
“I think I should warn you,” Emily said. “When they come in, they turn the light on. It’s harsh, but we’ve all been here awhile. Some of us have parts missing, and scars and stuff.”
“Parts missing?”
“You already know about my hand. They have also taken an eye and a couple of teeth,” Emily said.
I was not prone to cussing but, “What the fuck?” I asked.
I heard her sigh.
“My husband sold me to this,” Emily said.
This was fucked up.
“Your husband?”
“Yeah, I’m rich, or, at least I was rich. I mean, I still am, but he faked my death by putting me in this place, and from what I know, he is paying millions to see me regularly beaten, tortured, and raped.” Emily let out a laugh, but then I heard the hysteria behind it. “I had no idea how much he hated me, or that he’d been trying to kill me from the start. He is going to succeed this time.”