But she was beginning to understand that she would be trapped by her past no matter what her future looked like. Her emotions weren't going away, they were there for good. There would always be that tainted view of the world, the knowledgethat evil existed everywhere, that even good people couldn’t really be trusted.
Maybe the shock of being rescued had worn off, taking away the protective layer that kept her emotions somewhat subdued, but her emotions were raging inside her now. Growing bigger and stronger, harder to control, with each stroke of her paintbrush.
Sooner or later, they’d consume her.
When that happened, she wasn't sure that she wouldn't give in and take the easy way out. And it would be easy. So very easy. All she had to do was run to that window and fling herself through it. The three-story drop, combined with the damage the glass would do to her body, should make it a fall she wouldn't survive.
Then she could just … cease to exist.
How many times had she wished that would happen to her over the years?
In fact, she’d tried it once, in the early days after she was abducted. Left alone after the man who bought her finished playing with her, she’d snuck into the kitchen and found a knife. She’d dragged it through the veins in her wrist before she was found.
Unfortunately, it hadn't been enough, and she’d survived.
Punished for her actions, she was locked in a box for almost a week, given no food or water, then brought out only to be raped until she bled. By the time she was returned to the traffickers, infection was already running rampant throughout her body.
But she’d survived.
Survived only to endure another hellish decade before Thunder and his team found her.
Now she wished she’d cut deeper, sliced her hand clean off if that was what it took to end her life. Being dead couldn’t be worse than being alive, trapped inside her own head, forced torelive the horror she didn't want to have survived, stuck living the rest of her life knowing that safety was nothing more than an illusion.
Tears blurred her vision, but still she couldn’t make herself stop painting.
These weren't pretty pictures. They lacked detail and precision, there was nothing realistic about them, and yet in a way, they were the most real paintings she had ever created, because she poured her soul into each one.
All of her broken and damaged parts were there for the world to see. Blacks and grays represented the pain locked inside her. Bright reds symbolized not just the blood she had already shed but her desire to shed more. To shed enough that she just drifted away into nothingness.
Her arms ached, every muscle in her body felt tight, and her eyes kept drooping closed, but she wasn't going to stop, too afraid of what would happen if she did. So Maya fought through the exhaustion, kept painting, until she couldn’t any longer.
“Let’s get the bidding started at one hundred thousand dollars. An absolute steal for this stunning virgin. Fourteen years old, blonde hair, gray eyes, any man would be lucky to walk away tonight with this beauty on his arm.”
The words were so … weird.
A stupid way to describe it, but this was surreal.
There was no way Maya could have foreseen that a simple trip to the mall with her friends would wind up with her standing on a stage in a ballroom, completely naked except for the collar around her neck, as people bid on her like she was nothing more than a piece of meat.
Only she was nothing more than a piece of meat.
That’s what she’d been told every day since she woke up in this place. She was a body to be used, she no longer belonged to herself and wasn't a human being anymore. She’d been beatenand starved, taught how to pleasure a man with her hands and her mouth, punished any time she rebelled in even the slightest of ways, until she’d learned that fighting wasn't worth it.
If it wasn't going to save her, she may as well not bother.
And nothing was going to save her.
That much at least was clear to her, even if she still wasn't sure what to expect once she was sold off. She did understand what she was now, a sex slave that some rich monster was going to take back to his mansion and keep as his newest toy. Or maybe pet was a better word for it.
But she didn't really know what thatmeant.
What was going to happen to her?
Her entire body shook as the bright lights obscured her view of the men dressed in tuxedos who were placing bids on who got to own her. She knew they were dressed in tuxedos because she’d already been forced to stand on a pedestal, allow those men to touch her, prod her, turn her around, and examine her to decide what they were willing to bid for her.
Now it was happening.
Numbers were called out.
