Page 36 of Hidden

And so I obeyed. I listened. I trained.

And I fucked up each and every time.

Raising my hand to knock at her door, I froze as the assault on my senses washed over me.

Drip, drip, drip…

The blood dripped from her cold fingers, running down the greying skin and dropping to pool on the floor.

The laughter. Her body still jerking as the men continued to use her.

The girls screaming.

Their screams coming to a violent end, silenced in the middle of their wails.

The smell of their fear. Their sweat clinging in the air, mixed with anger, humiliation, and ultimately… defeat.

The snap of bones. The tearing of clothes. The grunts and groans as they satisfied themselves on the shame of the innocent.

“No,” I whispered to myself, shaking my head.

The rally hadn’t been a success. Not in the slightest. And I had an hour with my mother before Nico summoned me. He had already grabbed my elbow as I tried to usher the remaining girls out of the clubhouse. He told me that I would be punished for this. That their failures rested on my shoulders.

With a shudder running through me, I raised my hand and knocked on the door, plastering a huge smile on my face, stretching it wider than was natural, as my mother called me in.

“Oh, darling,” my mother said as soon as she laid her eyes on me.

An hour didn’t give me much time to change, and so she was seeing me in all my glory.

Drip, drip, drip…

The blood. I desperately tried to stop the flow of her blood.

Slap!

The sting of the hand around my cheek as punishment.

The tearing of clothes, the girls screaming…

The grunts, the laughter, the animalistic, feral noises as they fucked—

Stop it!

“I’m fine, Mum, I promise,” I told her, crossing the room and climbing into the other side of her bed.

“How many?” she asked. I didn’t need her to explain.

“Three,” I whispered. “It would have been more, but I managed to get the rest of the girls away.”

Three lives lost. Three mothers had now lost their daughters. Three fathers now without their pride and joy. Those womenwere friends, nieces, cousins, girlfriends… and now they were nothing.

And in their final moments, they had been fucking slaves.

“Gabby… you know Nico—”

“I know,” I interrupted with a shaky nod, trying my best to smile through my tears. “He’s already told me he’ll be coming for me.”

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, pulling me close and wrapping her arms around me. Her nails were digging into my shoulder as she cried, her heart breaking once more.