Passed on.
Handed down.
Dismissed like a worthless, broken toy.
He’s made me pretty for my new owners. He polished my exterior so well none of my cracks can be seen. My hair was washed and blow-dried out until every curl represents a golden wave of perfection. I’m wearing lipstick for the first time. I even have on a pretty dress.
If you didn’t know what I’ve been through, you could think I was worth a few pennies.
Perhaps even a dime.
I know I’m not worth that much.
I’m broken.
Abused.
Incapable of escaping the dark.
That’s why I’m clutching the tiny shard of glass from the mirror in the back of the brush Achim left in my room. It’s my mother’s brush, a family heirloom that has been passed down from generation to generation. Its sentimental value meant nothing to Achim when he used it to ensure I’d fetch top dollar at his auction later today. He taunted me with it. Reminded me that I’m an orphan who got everything she deserved for whoring myself out to an unknown, now-dead man.
He snickered when he said his last comment, loving the faintest flicker of despair that darted through my eyes before I could shut it down. Then he gave credit to his remark I would have never believed without proof. Twenty-one teeny tiny lines of an obituary hurt me more than anything I’ve experienced the past six years. It siphoned the blood from my heart as effectively as my parents’ death, and saw me shattering the mirror on the back of my family heirloom against a set of drawers in my room.
It’s time to end things. To take back who I once was.
I’ll never be free until I free myself, and not even the dark can save me this time.
With my head tilted high, and my mind shut down, I stab the end of the glass into the vein in my neck that hasn’t quit thudding out its own tune the past thirty seconds before I thrust down.
Death usually means the end of a life, but that only counts for those who have truly lived.
Twenty-Four
Trey
Ten minutes earlier…
This place reeks of death and discretion, a stark contradiction to the elaborate compound scoured into the foothills of a sleepy hamlet west of Prague. Champagne is flowing, bids have been placed, and caviar is being served to pompous pricks in priceless tuxedos and over-beaded ballgowns.
None of the festivities have reached this far down, though.
The women here are glammed to the nines, but no amount of polish can clear the skank smell of desperation. If Achim’s guests were to come down here, the bids of men and women seeking their own live-in sex slave would be significantly reduced.
All the money in the world would never have you forgetting the smell. I scrubbed my skin raw in a shower five times a day for months when I was released from captivity. When soap failed to free me from the putrid scent, I took to my skin with a knife. Little nicks and a handful of well-hidden cuts stopped my stomach rebelling every time the slightest breeze rustled by, but within weeks, it was no longer enough.
Confident the undeniable scent of determination would overtake the smell of desperation, I commenced working out. I lifted weights, ran for miles, and swam in a lake not too far from Clarks even in the middle of winter. My plan was working. The putrid smell I was swarmed by was slowly weakening. However, I had amassed more scars after I was freed than I had when I was imprisoned.
I hated them. They weren’t just a reminder of what I had lost because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants, they showed I had failed, that I’d been played for a fool.
Nikolai didn’t suggest I use tattoos to cover the marks I loathed. He merely suggested for me to join him at his favorite tattoo haunt when he was getting a mottling of scars covered by a dragon’s head.
My addiction switched from drugs to tattooing shortly after. Piercings closely followed them. Although I have as many piercings as I do tattoos, my visible scars still outnumber their combined total. Some I’ll never be able to conceal. They’re not on my body. They are on my heart, in my head, and burned into my soul.
And my newest nick is compliments to her—K. I can’t see her face as she stares at nothing, but I know who she is, I can feel it in my bones, hear it thudding in my chest. She’s healthier than she was in the surveillance image Nikolai showed me. Her hair is glossy and hanging loosely down her back. A light blue floral printed dress hugs her svelte yet still enticing frame, and she’s wearing a pair of shoes no amount of heel could hide the foreignness of it. Her feet are too cracked, flat, and grubby underneath to pretend she wears footwear often.
When K lifts an antique-looking brush into the air, I grab Eight by the scruff of his shirt and pin him to the rock wall beside me. The brush has a mirror on the back of it. It’s only small, but the angle of its reflection would give away our stake in an instant.
Despite the screams of the voice inside me, I can’t move for K until I get word from Nikolai. He’s several floors above us attending the auction as if his face is too hideous for a woman to warm his sheets without handing over a bundle of cash. He gave me the option of taking down Achim myself or freeing K.
