Page 7

OPHELIA

H ope.

The cursed emotion bled into my fear and desperation when James kissed me.

His lips moved in such a sensual way against mine. The swipe of his tongue was a promise. His hands an anchor.

You’re mine .

He didn’t say it. Didn’t have to.

Possessiveness bled from his every move. The way he held me. Handled me. Coaxed my lips open.

James Hawthorne wasn’t Topher’s cold and distant father in those moments. Not the mysterious, older man I’d met over dinners.

My jailer was gone.

There was only violence. Ownership. A savior who’d take me away from this hell I’d been thrown into.

I hoped so.

I let myself submit to this hope.

Worse still. I let myself believe it.

Foolish. I’m so foolish I could cry.

There’s no savior here, in this cell.

There’s cruelty. Now that he’s done kissing me, I see it for what it is.

His expression is set in stone.

Cruel eyes. Vicious grip.

It feels like I’m staring at him through the looking glass. Ice slices down my spine, and I shiver. I hate that I do. I hate that his lips twist into a fleeting smirk.

“See for yourself?” I say when the silence becomes intolerable.

I’m still in the process of waking up. Still trying to understand what’s happening.

One second, I’m a free woman sitting at the last dinner with her boyfriend and his dad. The next, I’m bombarded with information I never asked for while being locked behind bars.

“Yes.”

These things he’s saying—there’s no way I’m hearing them. This whole night has to be a dream. A nightmare. I’m hallucinating this, I have to be.

But since he isn’t moving or offering up any other explanation, I have to ask, “See for yourself if I’m really a virgin?”

“Yes. Lying to our buyers would ruin our reputation.”

This word again. Buyers. I could scream. I could kill him.

I can’t do either, so I spit on his face. “Fuck you. You’re not checking me for fucking nothing. You won’t get away with this.”

James lifts his hand, slowly wiping my saliva off his nose and his mouth. And then—then, holy shit—he licks his tattooed hand clean. While staring down at me.

My traitorous body. Heat pools at my core, and my knees threaten to buckle. I won’t let them. I’ll fight it until the day I die.

“We have.” With little to no effort, he spins me around. I scream while he bends me over and pushes my head onto the bed. “For decades.”

The sheets are dark gray and smell like me. I’ve been here for that long. I don’t want to spend another second here.

Panic clutches at my lungs. “Let me go!”

James’s hand pins my wrists to my back. I hear a bag dragging across the floor. A quick glance tells me I heard right.

It’s the bag he brought here.

“Sage will call the authorities,” I warn. I wriggle. I stomp on his foot again. Nothing deters the big James Hawthorne, who unzips his duffel casually. “She’ll file a missing person’s report. Topher is—was—my boyfriend. He’s the first person they’ll come for.”

“Sage Wright knows what’s best for her, and that’s keeping her mouth shut.”

Is that why she’s been slumming it with me? She’s been hiding from people like James?

She told me she’s trying to rebel against her mom.

She’s just another person who’s been lying to me.

“She’ll file a missing person’s report,” I try a second time.

James’s hand gives my wrists a threatening squeeze. “She’ll never go up against us.”

“Why?” Fear pushes against my ribs. It forces another shiver through my body. Another wave of heat between my thighs.

I’m so sick. So fucked in the head for being turned on by this monster.

This man, who presses his legs to the backs of my thighs while he bends to get something from his bag.

A flash of plastic in my periphery—zip ties. When Topher dangled the cuffs in my face, I almost threw up. Watching James’s large hand gripping the zip ties has the opposite effect on me.

I’m hot all over. I’m breathing fast. I’m humiliated.

Conflicted.

I wish he’d hike my dress up and relieve me of this pressure in my pussy so I can think again.

I wish with everything in me that he won’t. As soon as he sees the dark spot on my cotton panties, he’ll know. There’ll be no hiding my shameful need for him.

“Stop touching me, you monster.” Stomping on him is useless, but I won’t stop. He doesn’t even acknowledge me. “Don’t you dare tie me up. I don’t give a fuck what you say, Sage will go to the authorities.”

James goes on, closing the zip ties around my wrists. His touch is rough, yet he doesn’t hurt me.

I loathe him for it.

If he would hurt me, I could truly despise him like he deserves.

“Hmm. Let’s just say…” My shoulders strain when he lifts my hands. He isn’t pulling on them or anything; it’s me who fights and thrashes. “Stop fidgeting, Sonnet.”

“I’m not a sonnet! Let me go!”

He places a hand between my shoulder blades. “You’ll only end up hurting yourself.”

I refuse to hear the gentleness slipping into his tone. He’s an evil man, a sadistic, delusional psycho. That’s it. I have to stick to that.

I stop resisting him. For the slim chance of ever making it out alive, I need to have my shoulders intact.

“Good girl.”

“Shut up, asshole,” is all I say.

If I weren’t trapped in his hold, I’d run to the nearest wall and slam my forehead against it, again and again, until my brain spilled out. Maybe then, James would finally be gone from my head.

After that, I’d tear open my own chest and rip him out of there too.

That’s how badly I want him out of me. His praise that my pathetic soul clings to. The effect he has on me.

I need to purge him from every part of me.

But I can’t do any of it.

A watery sigh escapes me once the zip ties are finally locked around my wrists, as tight as possible without harming me.

I blink the tears back as best I can. I have to listen to him. The more he talks, the more I have a chance of figuring out exactly what I’m dealing with. How to fight it.

“Sage’s uncle”—she has one, I remember she told me about the esteemed member of the city council—“has dirty secrets caught on camera. We have them.”

My stomach dips when I realize he isn’t lying.

When I connect the dots.

She knew who I was dating all along.

She warned me off Topher in a cryptic manner.

You deserve better, Ophelia.

Don’t settle for someone who doesn’t give you any less than his everything.

There are better men out there. Lots of fish, you know? You could do so much better.

Leave him. Leave him. Leave him.

She tried as best she could.

And I didn’t listen.

“Not to mention…” James’s lips are on my cheek. Hot and alluring.

A monster’s lips.

“Not to mention what?” Another kiss from him, and I’ll lose this battle. I have to keep him talking. Have to keep my sanity intact. “What, you sick fuck?”

His dark chuckle pushes the air out of my lungs. Heat creeps up my neck. Damn it.

“We’re in business with every person who counts in this country. The government. The Feds. The local authorities. The Mafia.” Such conviction in every word. Such vehemence is his hushed voice. “No one wants our operations to stop. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

He’s serious. He and Topher weren’t drunk or high or playing a sick roleplay game.

They’re human traffickers.

“You kidnap women?” I’m breathless. My blood runs cold in my veins. “Kidnap and sell them?”

“Not always.” He grinds his hips into me. James is hard. Huge. Hot for me, despite the cold facade he maintains so well. “The rest of the time, we auction off women who come to us.”

Another roll of his hips and a moan nearly breaks out of me. Fuck, it was a close one. Fuck, he feels good.

“Most of them offer themselves to the highest bidder for an hour or a day. A month. Sometimes a year.” Pulling on my hair, he flips me and manhandles me until my head is on the pillow.

His forearms bracket my face. His eyes terrify me.

“We have an organization that handles the auctions and the girls. People who follow them. Watch over them. Record their…interactions.”

“ I’m not here willingly.”

The pressure on my wrists has been lifted. While I’ve been lost in his explanations and my fear, James has slipped a pillow underneath my back.

“The…virgin sacrifices…never are.” There’s something he’s hiding from me, I can tell.

Problem is, I can’t bring myself to care right now.

To ask him to elaborate “They serve a purpose. Once the Hawthorne and Morgan’s sons turn twenty-one, the ritual starts with the virgins.

” His thumb brushes the hair that’s stuck to my cheek, his gaze never leaving mine.

“Luring them, tricking them, then auctioning them. Those steps are a part of the rite of passage for the men in our families. A show of commitment to the cause. It reminds us of who we are. What we do. That’s what makes the sacrifices so valuable in the eyes of our buyers. That’s why they sell for millions.”

Sick. Everything about this is absolutely fucking sick. What’s sicker still is that I’m not scared.

Nothing about James screams impatience or murder.

His voice is cool and calm. Lips relaxed. Forehead smooth. My questions don’t bother him. He’s offering me explanations when I’m just a piece of property to him. An artifact to put up for sale.

Liar.

This has to be another trick.

“And you’re telling me this, why?” I try to wriggle out of the zip ties.

The movement lands me a harsh glare, and it gets me nowhere. The plastic isn’t cutting into my skin, but there’s no way I’m getting out of it.

“Tomorrow night, you and another girl will be standing on a stage. A man or a woman will take you home later. You’ll be theirs for life.”

His hand slides to my throat. Another manacle. Another soft touch to keep the merchandise intact.

“Fuck you.” The reality of my situation settles in. I’m terrified. Even my voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Fuck you for doing this to me.”

“You have to be prepared. For your own good.” His glare is harsher now. The hint of compassion in it has withered and died. “Screaming and crying on stage will attract the wrong type of buyer.”

“You said you watch over the girls,” I whisper.

“Not the virgins.” A storm gathers in his eyes. “In case one of the men in our families grows attached and tries to get them back. Which, for the record, never happens.”

Everything about him is harsher all of a sudden. Rougher.

The idea of getting attached angers him.

“You might grow attached to me.” Down there, somewhere, he has a heart. I’ve watched glimpses of it. That’s the man I’m reaching out to. I hope he hears me.

“It’s better that you let me go. I’ll disappear. Promise.” Not before I burn this place down and hopefully save the other woman . “Please, James. I-I’m begging you.”

“It’s cute.” He lifts himself, his suit jacket stretching over his lean arms. “How you think I’m here to bargain. You hear the things I’m telling you. Still, you refuse to listen.”

“You’re going to put me up for auction,” I repeat Topher’s words from what seems like a lifetime ago, staring into James’s eyes. Imploring the small, decent side of him to help me. “You don’t have to. If Topher is asleep, you can help me sneak out.”

An emotion I haven’t seen on him before splits his impenetrable expression. A splash of color on a blank canvas. Something violent that James has no control over for all of a second.

“You understand the first part. That’s good. Really good.” My chin is in his grip. “That leaves us with the second part. Why am I here?”

Terror and panic rush through me, causing my heart to pound faster. Cold sweat beads form on my forehead. But James isn’t the only coldhearted bastard in this room.

My past forged a bad bitch out of me.

New girl, this is my bed. Get the fuck off.

Ophelia fucking Monroe, why isn’t my plate sparkling? I told you to wash the dishes, didn’t I?

Not all my foster siblings and parents were bad. Most of them were awesome.

Then there were the few that jerked me around. Treated me poorly. I learned to talk back then. Lift my chin and say Fuck you, this bed is mine . Or, I did my best, stop being an asshole to me . To hit back.

I call for the strength I know I have inside me and face him. “Because you get off on torturing me.”

He leans in closer. Every nerve ending in my body sparks when his lips brush mine.

I’m hyperventilating, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing but pinch my lips shut and hope he doesn’t notice my rapid breaths.

A light sparks in his eyes. He does.

Shit. Of course he notices.

“I get off on torturing you, yes. That, and then some.”