Chapter Twenty-Two
Ariella
“You okay?” I whispered to Hazel.
We sat huddled together in the back of a van. Darkness surrounded us.
There were more than just the two of us. Nearly a dozen women had been crammed inside the back of the white van, the same vehicle we were brought in with, just a short while ago.
“No,” Hazel muttered. “None of this is okay.”
I knew that.
“We’ll get out of this alive,” I said.
“How?” Hazel asked. “As sex slaves? I’d rather take a bullet to my head.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “We do what we have to for survival. We can fight these men. As far as I can tell, there’s only one driving us. When we get to wherever they’re taking us, we fight.”
“That won’t work,” another girl said. I didn’t recognize her voice. It was raspy and thick. She sounded parched. “You fight, you get tied up, beaten, raped, the list goes on. The men, they all take turns, and we all have to watch.”
“How long have you been with these men?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but it was clear she’d been around for a while to witness what transpired when the prisoners fought back.
“Not long, a few weeks. Some of the girls have been shuffled between families. Bought, used, and sold like garbage. That’s how they treat us, and you’re lucky if their interest is sexual and not masochistic,” she said.
A shiver ran through me.
“Being forced to marry Franco Ivanov suddenly sounds like a picnic,” Hazel muttered.
I wrapped an arm around her shoulder, trying to reassure her as best I could that we would get out of this alive.
I just wasn’t sure how.
* * *
With a gun poised at your temple, there’s no way to fight back.
Two men stood guard outside of the van. One held a gun at our head while we climbed out of the vehicle, the other secured a collar to each of our necks.
A third guard waited just a few feet away, a black remote in his palm.
“No one’s going to fight back?” he asked with a chuckle and tilted his head. “That’s too bad.” He pressed down on the button, forcing a jolt of electricity to run through all of our bodies at the same time.
I fell to the ground. My eyes squeezed shut.
Everything inside of me ached like lightning burned through my veins. I gasped for breath. My heart hammered in my chest.
The electricity lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like forever.
“There will be no insubordination,” the man said, “or you all will suffer the price.”
We were connected. All of us, forced to endure torture together.
The collars were their method of control. There was no way to escape.