Page 54 of Unwritten Vows

Liza

My eyes feel glued shut. In fact, everything feels stuck, like someone has gunked my joints up with clay and weighed down all my muscles with sandbags. I try to think of what I’m doing, what’s happening, but there’s a block on my thought process, and I’m drifting in and out of awareness as it is.

I feel bumps and a hard, cold surface beneath me.

I’m moving. I crack my eyes open here and there, but can’t make out much.

Metal walls. The noise of a collapsible door opening.

I’m so uncomfortable, dragged, and then hauled up, the wind knocked right out of me.

I groan, but I’m paid no mind, besides a harsh slap, just above my thigh.

It’s unwelcome and makes me squirm. Someone swats me again, then says, “Stop fucking moving, little whore.” I know something is wrong—that I’ve never been treated like this before in my entire life.

If someone thinks they can speak to me like this, I’m not where I’m supposed to be.

I start to remember in bits and pieces: coming home from classes, my guards—the ones I’ve had since I was a child—run off the road by unmarked vans.

They told me to go into the woods, but I didn’t want to leave them.

The police were called, but the gunshots came too soon after.

I did try to run, finally, but it was too late.

Men in ski masks came after me, and it’s hazy from there.

I sense when we get inside of a building and try to open my eyes for longer than a split second at a time. White walls. Cages with mats on the floor. Someone kidnapped me. They’re going to put me in a cage.

I’m finally starting to get sense back into my brain. I’m thrown onto a real bed in a small room, with strange men all around me. No women. No comforting faces. Danger , my brain screams at me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I can still barely move.

One of them grabs me and pulls off my sleep shorts and underwear. My arms instinctively go to cover myself, but they’re immediately grabbed and held at my sides. A large man presses down on my naked pelvis and smiles. “Look at that boys; no chastity belt.” They all laugh at my expense.

“Stop,” I mutter weakly, feeling tears leak out my eyes. This is a violation. This is painfully wrong.

“Or what, Princess Andreeva?” the man closest to me asks in a mocking tone. “Are you going to text Daddy to come to your aid? Because I hate to break this to you, but he’s going to be away for a long time.”

“What’d you do to him?” I try to annunciate, but the words are all strung together.

They get the point anyway. “We just helped the process. Helped justice reign.” The men laugh and I feel pressure between my legs. So intrusive and violating.

“Stop!” I cry, squirming to shut my legs as they pry me open and attempt to take ownership of something that isn’t theirs. “Don’t touch me!”

His fingers go impossibly high, but I have no way to stop it. His face registers shock. “It’s not there,” he says, almost angrily. “This little bitch had sex with him! What a fucking idiot!”

The men around the bed laugh, and my arms are taken and roughly held over my head. My limbs are still so weak and uncoordinated, and they strip my shirt off easily. “Get your fucking hands off me!”

“Oh, she knows how to curse!” The man who has had his hands all over me since I showed up here flips my bra up to expose me fully.

I’ve never seen this guy before—in fact, I’ve never seen any of these men before, yet I just know this has something to do with Edoardo.

This man can’t be Edoardo, though. He must be early to mid-twenties, tops.

He continues speaking with a maniacal grin on his face.

“Understand, little girl, that you just cost me a lot of fucking money. But the only good thing about you not being a virgin is that I get to test these goods before we ship you off.”

“Fuck you!” I say as my eyes rove over his features.

Daddy taught me this at least: to remember as much as I could about an attacker if I was ever in a bad situation.

I see a tattoo with a hammer and crushed bones.

I make note of the scar that runs from his lip and down under his chin, like a fishhook.

He pries my mouth open with his hand and grabs my tongue, pulling on it, tugging it out of my mouth painfully. It’s utterly humiliating and demeaning, and I can do nothing to stop it. The feeling is so helpless, it makes me sick.

“You know, I’m not much of a ‘wash the whore’s mouth out with soap’ kinda guy.

I’m more of a ‘cut her tongue out and let her choke on her own fucking blood,’ kinda guy.

” He looks over at his friends and lets his fingers come to close to my mouth.

I get my chance then; I bite down as hard as I can on his fingers until I taste blood.

The man lets out a strangled squeal of pain before ejecting his hand quickly from my mouth. The men have let go of me out of sheer surprise, and I take the opportunity to roll over and gag the blood out of my mouth. I’m so disgusted that I think I can actually feel myself becoming traumatized.

“Please leave me alone.” My voice comes out small to my own ears. I’m fucking scared. I’ve never been so scared. I can’t logic my way out of this, and without that, I don’t know what else to do.

“You little bitch!” One of the others pulls me up by the hair and smacks me across the face.

“Cut it the fuck out, Valentino. We still need to sell her!”

I’m jostled from one pair of rough hands to another; all of these men are morphing into one violent fever dream at this point.

“Ow!” I cry, as I feel the sharp sting of a needle in my arm and an immediate cold seep through my veins. But as whatever is in this drug kicks in, I almost welcome the numbness. Soon, my shame and pain is wiped away, and it’s even easier this time to sink into the feeling.