Chapter 10

LEILA

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 I moved closer to the door of my room, the unease in my gut tightening with a hesitant breath, I pushed the door open.

The sight that greeted me was jarring.

A young woman was sprawled on the floor, her body wracked with sobs, curse escaping her lips in ragged gasps. She looked small and fragile, completely overwhelmed by whatever happened.

 I ran to her side, dropping to my knees, my hand instinctively reaching out to rub soothing circles on her back with my eyes  moving towards the doorway, scanning for any sign of who might have done this, and if someone was close to the door or something.

“What happened here?”

She didn’t look up rather her gaze was fixed on the rug beneath her, tears streaming down her face, my the pain in my heart deepen, making me remember how vulnerable I was too.

“They… they said my father owes the Alvaros…” Her voice was thick with tears, barely audible.

“…and I have to serve for it… they said I will be taken to a stripping agency… with time… and I know nothing about this… I’m barely eighteen…” Her words trailed off into another wave of desperate sobs.

My eyes widened.

 The Alvaros.

The pieces clicked into place, forming a grim picture of the kind of world these people inhabited.

Taking humans as payment for debts?

It  was a level of cold-blooded cruelty that made my stomach churn. I really did want to know how their twisted money laundering schemes worked that they would rather enslave innocent people than go after the ones who had actually committed the crime.

“Who asked for your stay here?” I inquired, my voice tight with a mixture of anger and concern.

Her tear-filled eyes finally strike  upwards immediately,  meeting mine.

I could tell she was so scared “Gerald” she whispered, the single word heavy with fear.

Of Course it has to be one of the Alvaro brothers.

I reached out and embraced her, pulling her closer and patting her back in a comforting gesture.

“Okay,” I said, my mind already beginning to formulate a plan, a desperate grasp at any possibility of anything to get out freedom.

An escape.

 “Okay, listen to me. I have a plan. We can actually get our freedom. But all of this has to do with… critical thinking.”

I stood up, moving towards the door, my gaze sweeping over the hallway outside at least the door hadn’t been locked meaning we the freedom to move within this… prison. That was something, a small sliver of an advantage.

“Can we do that?” she asked, her voice barely a breath, her eyes wide with a fragile hope.

I nodded, trying to project an air of confidence I didn’t entirely possess. She was depending on me now, looking to me for a way out of this nightmare. I had to deliver.

“What’s your name?” I asked, offering her a small encouraging smile.

She looked into my eyes, a tentative trust beginning to appear  amidst the fear and despair.

 “Tracy,” she answered, her voice a little stronger this time.

“Tracy,” I repeated, the name feeling strangely familiar.

 “That’s nice. I had a close friend who bore that name once, until she moved. She stayed in my neighborhood.” A small, almost insignificant lie, but it felt necessary, a tiny attempt to build a connection in this bleak situation.

I moved around the small, sparsely furnished room to where some food had been left on a dusty table, the kind of plain, uninspired fare they likely served anyone they considered insignificant but at least it was edible.

I picked up a piece of stale bread, stretching my arm out towards her as she slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, brushing invisible dust from her worn clothes.

The small, almost unconscious action brought a faint smile to my lips.

“I don’t think I want to eat anything,” she said, her voice still laced with a tremor.I stared at her, my smile softening with understanding.

 She was just a naive young girl, thrown into a terrifying situation she didn’t understand. The thought of her being forced into that club, men with their grubby hands all over her… it sent a wave of protective anger surging through me.

“I think you have to,” I said gently but firmly. “You need your strength, you know? We might have to run.” I make alittle laughter.

I could see the weight of my words dawning on her, the stark reality of what was about to happen settling heavily in her eyes.

“We need a real plan,” she said, finally finding her footing, walking slowly towards me.

I guessed the initial shock was starting to wear off, replaced by a burgeoning sense of determination. She picked up a piece of bread from the tray, dipped it hesitantly in the watery sauce, and took a small bite.

“Someone seems ready,” I commented, a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

“I have to be, right?” she replied, a flicker of resilience in her gaze.

I smiled at her. Despite the fear, there was something interesting about her, a spark of fight that hadn’t been completely extinguished.

“The club… stripping… all of that… it’s scary,” she confessed, her voice dropping again, the fear momentarily overwhelming her newfound resolve.

 “I… I had once been sold before. And this time… I can’t go back to that. The family I currently stayed with… well, they had bought me. Made me work my ass off. You needed to see me working… I had all the gardens cut and…”

I walked over to the edge of the bed and sat down, the image of this delicate girl tending to sprawling gardens oddly amusing amidst the grim reality of our situation.

 “You did work on the gardens, greens and flowers?” I couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped me, a brief moment of levity in the heavy atmosphere.

“Oh, sorry, you heard that wrong,” she said, her face flushing slightly with embarrassment. “I meant… the gardens of humans. Their… pubic hairs. That was just the little of it.”

My eyes flew open, my leg, which had been swinging idly, stopping abruptly mid-air. She dropped the piece of bread she had been holding as if it had suddenly burned her fingers, her eyes glazing over, the traumatic memory clearly flooding back, pulling her away from the present moment.

“Okay,” I said, jumping off the bed, the flimsy robe falling open, revealing the damp lingerie I had walked into this place with.

She looked at me, her eyes wide with surprise and a hint of curiosity. “Let’s draw up a plan. Umm… I think I have an idea.” I turned to face her fully, the urgency of the situation overriding any sense of modesty.

“What happened here?” she asked, her gaze sweeping over my revealing attire, a mixture of confusion and concern etched on her face as  embarrassment washed over me.

“The Alvaros,” I said, pulling the robe tighter around myself, the name leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

She shivered, the fear evident in her eyes, but I also saw a nascent spark of hope, a fragile belief that together, we might actually be able to plan something out, something that could get us both out of this nightmare.

I crossed back towards the wall, my mind already racing, trying to piece together any information I had gleaned from Gerald’s conversations.

“Have you actually been out of this… environment before?”

“I guess it’s obvious,” she said, gesturing vaguely around the sparsely furnished room.

“That means you probably don’t know anything about the layout, the security…” she asked

“Well,” a small spark of defiance flickering burning my  eyes, “I did manage to find my way back here myself. So that’s… something, right?”

She looked at me, her blonde hair catching the dim light filtering through the grimy window, her features delicate but with a newfound strength hardening her gaze.

For a fleeting moment, a thought crossed my mind – had Gerald brought her here for himself? He wasn’t as overtly monstrous as Damien, not in that same cold, calculating way.

He was more… opportunistic, perhaps even capable of a twisted form of affection.

“There’s a bodyguard assigned to this place,” she blurted out, her voice tight with a fresh wave of fear.

 “The one who… who threw me in.” I looked at her, then at the door, then back at her, recognition finally sparking in my own mind.

 The burly man who had shoved me into this room before Damien had made his unwelcome appearance.

“I heard them call him Matteo,” she added, her voice trembling slightly. She was getting scared again, I could feel the tension radiating off her in a known waves. Maybe that’s why she was so readily offering every scrap of information she possessed.

“Okay,” I said, my voice firm, cutting through the fear that threatened to engulf us both.

 “Let’s get to work.”