Chapter 1
Standing at the window of the library, staring out absently as water droplets rolled down the glass, I said quietly “I was a whore once.” The steady rain slowly fed the lush greenery surrounding my family’s secluded estate, making everything appear darker, more green...reminding me of his eyes as they'd follow my every move. My family had sent me back here, to our family home in New England to ‘rest and recover after your harrowing ordeal’.
What a joke.
They may as well have shipped me off to Siberia. I wouldn’t have felt nearly as cut off from the world in that barren landscape as I felt here, trapped in the saccharine nightmare of the false security of the large house that had become my prison. I’d been there for months, but it felt like a fucking lifetime had come and gone since I’d been dragged away from my life and forced back into this artificial world.
“You say that like you miss it, Bess.”
My eyes slid over to Justin, the new therapist my family had hired. He was sitting in a posh wingback chair, looking like he was on set for a photoshoot as he sat surrounded by bookshelves in the library where our sessions were held. All he needed was a glass of brandy and a cigar, and he could have been the poster boy for a centerfold ad in Men’s Magazine.
“Elizabeth,” I corrected, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice. I knew my ire was misdirected. Justin had been deliberately or inadvertently misinformed of a great many things by Erica, the frigid bitch sitting next to him (whom I’d effectively fired the week prior), and of course by my family.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I wasn’t told you had a name preference aside from Bess.” Justin replied kindly, his Scottish accent thick as he spoke.
He was a decent looking guy; mid-40’s with salt and pepper hair. His trousers were fitted just enough to show off the muscles in his thighs without being obscene and the same could be said for his white dress shirt. He wore a cable-knit sweater vest over it - an attempt to tone down the sex appeal of his muscled chest. His biceps and corded forearms, the former which were accentuated by his rolled-up sleeves, rippled as he jotted notes now and again, and I couldn’t help but be impressed by the obvious care he took in his physical appearance.
“I’m sure you weren’t, Justin,” came my bland response. “Erica’s preference has always been to spend our sessions arguing with me and telling me how I was tortured, abused and brainwashed, rather than actually listening to a damn thing I have to say. She may well not have even known I stopped going by ‘Bess’ almost 4 years ago.”
I watched with secret joy as Erica’s face turned red with anger. But when her sickeningly sweet, fake voice hit my ears like nails down a chalkboard, I felt anger start boiling in my veins.
“You mean when you were abducted, Bess? Remember, we focus on reality here. You’re safe now. It’s okay to speak honestly. You were abducted and your kidnappers changed your name...”
Before I could let my tongue loose to spit an acidic retort in her face, Justin held up his hand, silencing whatever she was going to say next and making her eyes go wide with shock. Watching Erica choke on her own words was enough to pacify me for the time being and I focused my attention on Justin as he spoke calmly and with a quiet kind of authority I thoroughly appreciated.
“Erica.” Justin’s use of her name was clipped, betraying his irritation with the stupid bitch. “Please don’t put words in Elizabeth's mouth. She’s fully capable of expressing her opinions and sharing her story without you correcting her.” Erica snapped her jaw shut and I nearly laughed out loud as she crossed her arms and flopped back in her chair, pouting like a petulant child. “I’m sorry about that, Elizabeth. Now, you said you were a whore once, but it sounded like something you missed. Would you share more about that with me?”
I moved away from the window and sat down in my favorite plush chair, pulling my stocking covered feet up with me as I sat down, and wrapped my arms around my shins, resting my chin on my knees as I held them against my chest and continued staring out towards the window. My mind wandered as I thought about Justin’s question, back years…back to what felt like a lifetime ago.
Back to Costin…
I was barely sixteen when I was abducted in Italy. I’d been on vacation with my parents and was gallivanting around a quaint little village with some random guy I’d met at a coffee shop. I’d spent the day giggling and flirting with all the skill and finesse of any teenage girl who had received her worldly, romantic experience via romance novels and bathroom gossip. When the boy suggested going to a winery just outside the village, I didn’t even think twice about getting into the car he flagged down. As I went to climb into the backseat, he said my name and when I turned, I saw his fist flying at my face too late to do anything more than gasp before it was lights out.
I woke up with a hood over my head, my wrists and ankles tied together so tightly my toes and fingertips felt cold and swollen, and completely unaware of my surroundings save that I was in a moving vehicle. When I started to scream, someone hit me again, over and over, yelling at me in a language I didn’t understand. I tried to curl into a ball to get away from the blows when I was suddenly grabbed by the throat and pinned to the floor of the vehicle.
Rancid breath fanned across my cheek as a heavily accented voice rasped in my ear thickly “Scream again and I’ll cut out your tongue and fuck the bleeding hole while you choke to death.”
I was literally terrified into silence. I’d never heard of anything so cruel and barbaric in fiction, let alone in real life, but the tone of his voice gave me no reason to doubt his sincerity, so I decided to choke on my fear instead of my own death. I would make that same decision repeatedly for the next 2 years as I was transported across Europe, being exchanged and sold numerous times to varying individuals in an effort to ‘dispose’ of me.
Rancid Breath and his henchman drove me to some kind of warehouse and then hauled me inside, throwing me down onto a filthy mattress before cutting my limbs free. When the blood rushed into my fingers and toes, it made me sob with pain. They’d laughed and laughed as I rubbed my hands and ankles, trying to get the pins and needles worked out of them. They spoke to each other in something that sounded like Russian; it was an ‘Eastern Block’ accent that makes men sound angry and violent, no matter what they're saying.
They’d started circling me slowly and I’m ashamed to admit it took me more than a few moments to realize what was happening and that I was in serious danger. As soon as I did, I scrambled off of the mattress, trying desperately to get my feet underneath me so I could run. But I still couldn’t feel them and ended up tripping and falling on my face. Rancid Breath grabbed my ankles, dragging me back to the mattress where his friend joined him, grabbing my arms and pinning them down over my head. Rancid got ahold of my pants and started ripping them off my hips while I kicked, screamed, and begged, both of them laughing riotously the entire time. Out of desperation and panic, I’d screamed that I was a virgin, a declaration which halted the assault. While in retrospect, I understand how unbelievably stupid that was, at the time I was naive enough to think saying such a thing would save me.
The two men tied me back up and left. I had no idea if it'd been a few minutes or even hours before they returned - time seemed to drag on forever as fear gripped me tightly. When they returned, they had a third man with them and panic sank into my stomach so deeply I felt bile start to rise in my throat. Upon reaching me, the first two resumed tearing off my clothes and then held me down while I bucked and screamed and begged. The third man said something to his two accomplices and they each grabbed a thigh, wrenching my legs open. I was mortified (which in hindsight seems so fucking stupid). When he crawled between my legs, I started thrashing wildly, screaming and trying desperately to get away. He reared back and backhanded me across the face so hard I swear to Christ I saw fucking stars. I was stunned into stillness, but when I felt his rough hands moving on the most tender parts of me, my stomach revolted and I gagged violently before swallowing back bile, trying not to throw up all over myself. The man touching me said something to the other two and all three of them quickly let me go, backing away and moving off to talk quietly.
I sat up, sobbing as I gathered my ruined clothing and tried to pull my underwear and pants back on. Suddenly, Rancid Breath was walking back over to me like he was on a mission; I saw him cock his fist back and thought briefly to myself ‘well, this is gonna suck’, right before he clocked me in the face and my world went black once more.
Given my experience with the skin trade over the last several years, I can guess with relative certainty that the men who took me initially, probably planned to simply rape me and sell me to a larger trafficking organization. Once they discovered I really was a virgin as I'd claimed, their plans changed. With the right buyer, virgins can bring millions in the sex trade. More than enough to make dollar signs flash in the eyes of smaller criminal enterprises like the one I was held by at first.
They kept me in a warehouse while they looked for a buyer and made inquires to different organizations for my sale. I slowly came to understand that it wasn’t all that easy to find people interested in high profile victims, virgin or not. But, I wasn't the only girl held in that shithole. I don't have any idea how many of us were actually there, each chained in a separate stall. Men came in and out all day and night, and I sat on my dirty mattress, forced to listen to them as they were raped and tortured. The memory of their screams still makes me nauseous.
I have no idea how long I was actually kept at that warehouse, but it felt like an eternity. Eventually, I was taken to a woman by the name of Miri. Miri ran a brothel that reminded me of something out of a western movie. The women were all scantily clad the majority of each day, painted and pressed and always ready to flirt with the patrons who came around. But unlike the warehouse, the women at Miri’s were all over the age of 16 and seemed to be much better cared for. Once in a while a customer would get over zealous, or sometimes they just paid a handsome price to take out their aggression on someone, but Miri had a doctor who came around as needed to treat injuries or STI’s. This same man gave me a head to toe exam when I arrived; he spoke English, which made the process a lot less intimidating, but considering it was only the second time in my life a man had seen me naked, it was still a horrifying experience.
The doctor confirmed to Miri that I was, in fact, a virgin and declared I was healthy (if a bit malnourished by that point). Because my ‘value’ was based on my virginity, Miri couldn’t turn me out the way she did the other girls in the house, so instead I was put to work as the house maid, laundress, and cook…which was hilarious considering I’d never in my entire life been responsible for any sort of domestic duty. My learning curve was steep to say the very least, and my lack of skills earned me Miri’s wrath on more than one occasion. Thankfully, the other girls in the house took pity on me and helped me learn how to clean, cook semi-passable meals, and how to do laundry. They also taught me how to steer clear of the problematic clients, how to tell when Miri was in a dangerous mood, and how to recognize the red flags in the customers.
Miri wasn’t looking for a ‘highest bidder’ type of sale where I was concerned, but rather someone to sell me to outright (which was odd, according to the other girls). She had several men who came to look at me, but she must have been asking an exorbitant fee, because none of them ended up being interested. After being with her for over a year, I’d picked up enough information to realize the men who looked at me were happy to pay a premium for a night, a weekend, or even a week, but none of them wanted to take me beyond that. Despite the money she could have made from one of these brief interludes, Miri refused any offer that fell short of taking me permanently; I can’t tell you the number of times thanked any god listening that she never gave in to those offers.
There was a small alcove off the main parlor, hidden by a curtain where I typically sat in the evenings so I could watch the other girls working. I’d peek out from behind the curtain now and again, watching as they chatted and flirted and wandered off into darkened corners or bedrooms with the guests. I wasn’t ignorant about what they were doing, of course; they’d all gladly given me numerous sex education lessons, delighting in my naivety. I was grateful that at Miri’s, the girls seemed relatively happy. Several of them had told me they were actually content. They teased me about being a virgin and schooled me endlessly about the brighter side of sex. At Miri’s we were able to form actual friendships with each other, and that in and of itself made life more bearable.
I’d been with Miri for almost two years when I first laid eyes on Costin. He arrived one night with several associates and all were warmly welcomed. When the raucous party walked in, several of the girls told me to get out of sight, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. The group consisted of 7 or 8 men, all of whom radiated violence. Even though they were laughing, every one of them was constantly scanning the room for any sign of trouble. A couple of them quickly grabbed a girl, hauling them onto their laps or throwing them over a shoulder and ducking into a nearby room for a quicky.
Costin was the obvious ringleader of the group. Even though he would laugh occasionally, his entire demeanor was reserved, comparatively. From my hiding spot behind the curtain off the main parlor, I watched them - staring - perversely captivated by Costin. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Even from 15 feet away, the green of his eyes was hypnotic. His hair was thick and so black I would have bet money it’d shine blue in sunlight. I wanted to run my fingers through it so badly I realized I was unconsciously clenching the curtain I was hiding behind.
He was tall, at least 6’3”, and built like a fighter. His thighs and arms rippled with muscle and he had wide shoulders that lead down to a tapered waist. His lips were lush, and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about what they would feel like against my own. His laughter was deep and infectious, and his smile made his eyes twinkle with mischief, though something in the way he sounded and looked told me either could be as evil and horrifying as they were delightful and captivating. The man looked positively lethal, and it made him infinitely more handsome and intriguing.
After a while, I abandoned my spying and sat down on the small couch in the alcove, picking up a worn paperback I’d been reading. Suddenly, the curtain was pulled aside, and Miri stood in front of me with Costin beside her.
“This is her.” Miri said in heavily accented English.
“Miri, you can’t be serious.” Costin’s voice was a deep baritone and flowed across my skin like an electric current. His words were made even more melodious because of his Romanian accent, and when he switched to his native tongue, my thighs clenched together tightly at the sexy vibrato of his voice. “This girl has been gone for 2 years and the American Embassies across Europe are still inquiring after her. How the fuck have you kept her hidden?”
“I don’t exactly advertise her, Costin.” Foreign languages were never my strong suit and Romanian proved to be far more than my meager skills were capable of processing, so as Miri and Costin continued their conversation, I was hopelessly left in the dark after only a few words.
As the two of them finished talking, Miri laughed happily, kissed Costin’s cheek and walked away, leaving us alone. I hadn’t moved from my seat on the sofa and was still watching him, completely baffled by the exchange I’d just witnessed.
“Vorbesti romaneste?" (Do you speak Romanian?) He asked as he crossed his arms over the muscled expanse of his chest, leaning against the doorway.
“Puțin. Și nu bine." (A little. And not well.) I replied, haltingly.
Costin laughed derisively, “Măcar ești sincer." (At least you’re honest.) He continued in English, his accented words licking at my ears. “My name is Costin. You are Elizabeth, correct?”
I couldn’t hide the shock that he already knew my name, despite hearing him talk about the Embassies looking for me. “Yes, but…but everyone calls me Bess.” He wrinkled his nose with distaste at the name.
“Bess? That sounds like an old woman or a cow.” He waved his hand dismissively. With that, Costin turned and left.
It was an odd exchange, to say the least.
