I'm so excited for you all to read this chapter! This is where the fun REALLY begins :)
(Sorry for any errors! Camille on the side!)
I have a small request for y'all! Please check out my book The Beach House. It only has four chapters right now so it would be easy to catch up. Thank you!
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A Fighter's Love - Chapter 6
Human trafficking.
That was my initial thought and just thinking about it made my heart pound loudly. I took a shaky breath and attempted to free myself from the cloth that was bound around my hands.
This wasn’t happening.
Oh God. No. Please. I know I was a bad person but surely I didn’t deserve this? I wanted to cry so badly and the tears burned in the back of my eyes but I held them in. If I cried right now that would show a sign of weakness and no matter what happened, I wouldn’t let these bastards think I was weak.
I couldn’t even remember what I last said to my mom. What if it was something awful? Knowing me, it probably was. The blindfold bit into my skin on my forehead, cutting me off from any form of sight but the duct tape that one of them had slapped onto my mouth was thankfully coming loose.
I could feel the presence of two people on either side of me, holding me down using only their presence. I opened my mouth and finally got the piece of tape to tear free.
“You fucking son of a bitch! Let me out or I swear to God I will rip you all to shreds!” I shouted as loud as I could.
A girlish giggle came from my left side and I whipped my head toward the girl and gave her my harshest glare, despite the fact that half of my face was concealed.
What kind of woman would allow this to happen? How could she watch as an innocent girl got taken away from her home and sent off to some horrible place to be used as a sex slave?
The giggling immediately stopped. The anger tactic clearly wasn’t working so I tried another approach.
“Please. I’m only seventeen years old. This can’t be happening to me. I have a family. A mom, a boyfriend, a brother. I’m too young to die.”
No one answered back. I didn’t expect them to.
I cursed and swore and cussed with everything that I had but it still wasn’t enough. After twenty minutes of screaming, the tears finally started to shed. They came slowly and soon after, I couldn’t even stop myself from sobbing.
Still, the car was filled with an eerie quietness that no amount of yelling could disturb. The person on my right finally decided to grow some brains and stuck a new piece of tape onto my mouth but something told me that they had taken this long because they liked hearing me cry for help.
I felt the man’s leather glove linger on my face as he leaned in close to whisper into my ear. I recoiled in disgust and tried to shove him away but his hands were like iron and he restrained me easily.
“Stop struggling. This is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you, hun.”
I scowled and ripped my face from his grasp. Fuck you! I screamed in my head.
The person in the seat behind me spoke for the first time. “Ay, how much longer do we have?” I could tell by their voices what gender they were but I clearly couldn’t see their faces.
“Chill out, Zachariah. We have a couple more minutes,” said the girl who was driving.
“Can we stop by McDonald’s? I’m hungry as hell,” said the man in the passenger seat.
“Yeah, sure. And then you can explain why we have a blindfolded girl in the back of our van, dumbass,” snapped the driver. Why were these people acting like they were five-year-olds? Maybe they were amateurs at this kind of stuff.
I could sneak away easily if they were really as stupid as they sounded. But they could also really hurt me if I tried to try something that they didn’t want.
Fucking hell.
Why did this have to happen to me?
Couldn’t they have picked someone else who happened to be walking at night?
All I could think about was my poor mom and what she would be going through when she came home from work and found her daughter missing. Now she would really be all alone.
Oh God.
The loneliness would probably kill her. She didn’t deserve that. I just wanted to find her and curl up onto her lap while she stroked my hair and sang lullabies into my ear just like when I was a little girl. I know the only thing she knew how to do was yell at me but I still loved her so much it hurt even though I never showed it. Every single happy memory I had with my mother came exploding into my mind like fireworks and before I even realized it, tears were gathering again and soaking up the blindfold.
I whipped my body up and down, left to right, any direction I could go and stomped my feet as loudly as I could. What little noise I could make released through the tape. The man next to me put his arm on my shoulder trying to control me but I screamed even louder and bumped his hand away.
The girl intervened and pulled my hair tightly, painfully tilting my head upwards and making my eyes water again. In a vision of hot rage, I shifted my shoulder and slammed it into hers. My body vibrated from head to toe as the pain resonated.
She gave a yell of surprise and pain and shouted to the man next to me. “Do something! She’s going out of control!”
A felt a small prick in my arm and then one by one, a trickle of sleepiness wound its way into my mind.
The piece of shit had drugged me.
My breathing slowed, my fingertips tingled, and my head felt like it was suddenly way to heavy for my body.
“I’m going…to…fu…fucking…kill…you…” were the last words out of my mouth.
***
“Why isn’t she waking up? Dipshit, did you give her too much?” An angelic voice floated through my head.
“No. I gave her what we usually give them.”
“Well, she’s clearly not waking up.” The angel’s voice was irritated now. Mad, even.
There was the sound of a door opening and a new voice joined in. “Guys, what’s taking so long? Boss is getting pissed. He wants to meet her. Badly.”
“Camille isn’t waking up because Dumbass over here gave her too much sedative.”
“I did not!”
I couldn’t take it anymore. Gently, carefully, I moved my lips and took a shaky breath. My eyelids flickered open as I got used to the intense, white light and I was relieved when I noticed that I wasn’t wearing the blindfold.
“Look! She’s waking up! Fuck yeah!” The angel’s voice was ecstatic now. But as my eyes adjusted to the faces around me, I realized that she wasn’t an angel. She was just an extremely pretty girl around my age with a small, button nose and lashes that literally reached her eyebrows. I didn’t have time to register the appearances of the rest of the people around me but I noticed that we were no longer in the car. I was lying on a large, u-shaped leather sofa in a blindingly white room without a window in sight.
As soon as they realized I had gained consciousness, one of the guys put his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me upright. He fastened his arm around my elbow and pulled me off the sofa while another guy came to the other side of me and did the same. The drugs hadn’t fully left my system and I stumbled blindly along the plush carpet. They dragged me along like I was a doll but the girl still gave me the occasional push from behind.
The trek to wherever we were going seemed to last forever as the two guys towed me down a vast hallway. My head bobbed forward and backward and my eyelids drooped shut involuntarily. I shook my head around a little bit to stay awake.
“Where...where are you taking me?” My voice sounded scared even to me.
“To see the Boss.” The man on my left side who answered was suddenly alert and stoic.
We finally stopped in front of two, brass double doors and the girl stepped up to knock on it three times. It opened soundlessly.
The woman who had opened it stepped up to the man on my left and harshly whispered, “You’re late. You know Boss hates waiting.”
His face suddenly tensed up, the muscle in his jaw ticking. Who the hell was this ‘Boss’ guy and why was everyone so scared of him? I assumed he was the head pimp. But I found it a little strange that everyone here was wearing black clothing; I had never heard of human traffickers having a dress code.
The girl who I thought was an angel dug her fingernails into my skin as one of the guys tied a blindfold across my eyes again. I gritted my teeth until I heard one of my molars crack. I hated not being able to see.
Abruptly, I was shoved into the room and pushed down onto a hard chair. Someone immediately tied my hands behind the chair. Smart move.
“Where the fuck am I?” I ground out.
“Watch your mouth. You may be new around here but we will not tolerate bad behavior,” said the same woman who had opened the door for us. I resisted the urge to throw her the finger.
“State your name.” The man’s voice was deep and rumbling but there was definitely an edge of uncertainty and hesitation in there. Well, well, well. This was the infamous Boss.
“George Clooney,” I snorted and mentally patted myself on the back. No way was I going to let this pimp get any information out of me.
“I am not going to ask you again.” That single sentence had so much power and authority in it I couldn’t help but cringe and shrink back into my seat.
“Camille Germaine,” I stated in a small voice.
He took a deep, long breath before continuing. “How old are you?”
“I’m only seventeen so you can’t possibly use me for your little human trafficking business.” I paused. “Unless you’re one of those worthless bastards who use underage girls.”
A collective gasp sounded throughout the room, hinting that there were more people than I had expected.
When the man spoke again, his voice had a tinge of humor and laughter in it. Did he think this was funny or something? My life was at stake, God damn it. I scowled at him in response.
“Do you even know why you’re here?” he asked quietly.
I held my breath and didn’t answer for a couple moments. “Of course. You’re going to sell me as one of your profits and make me sleep with old men to get dirty money.”
His chuckled echoed throughout the room. “No, Miss Germaine, that’s not why you’re here.”
“Then what? Get to the point, old man.” I asked, irritated.
He ignored my insult. “We specialize in recruiting and training young adults like you into combating the local criminals on an everyday basis.”
“What? You’re joking right?”
“Miss Germaine, I’m not laughing.”
“Well then, you’re crazy. Why haven’t I heard of something like this happen before? This type of stuff only exists in movies and books, not real life. You need to check your meds, old man.”
He sighed, like he was used to this reaction. “You haven’t heard of this before because the government wants to keep this whole thing under wraps. It’s not something Americans would really like to know about. Don’t you think? What parent wants to know that their teenager is in danger of being whisked away to some boot camp so they can physically fight off criminals?”
“What if I don’t want to do this?” To be honest, I didn’t think I did. The whole concept was freakishly scary and dangerous but I had never been one to turn down adventure, even as a little kid. Fighting off the bad guys seemed like fun but this was crazy. Maniacal, even. I had so many questions for this guy that I was sure to make him answer.
“You’d be a good asset to us. We’ve been watching you for weeks. And we know all about that conflict with that girl at school a couple weeks ago.” I stiffened in my seat. What the fuck? They had been spying on me? This was getting too creepy for me.
“So you’ve been stalking me? For how long?”
“We call it ‘investigating’. Miss Germaine, you don’t understand how careful we have to be. I have to be completely sure that you’re good for this job. It’s not easy and I can’t risk you telling anyone either. So I’d really like it if you stayed. The majority of the recruits choose to join us.”
I took a deep breath before asking the question that I had been longing to question him with. “Will you stop me if I say no?”
A long silence casted throughout the room as the man considered my question. “No. But ask yourself this: do you really want to go back to that life? The one where the same thing happens every single day? Wake up, shower, go to school, kiss your boyfriend, come home, go to sleep. Is that really what you want? I don’t know you well, but even I thought you were going to want to burst out of your bubble and live a little.”
“Shut up.”
“Excuse me?”
“Shut up already because I’ll do it.”
I could practically hear him grin. I had surprised even myself when I said I would do it. He was right. I didn’t want to go back to that boring life and do the same thing over and over. I was going to miss Matt like hell but I knew we were never going to last anyways. Crystal was a whole other topic. She was my best friend, my sister, my savior. She would never understand why I was doing this. I never wanted to hurt her but it seemed like that was all I did nowadays. From the moment I met her, it was all just pain and guilt in her life because of me. I would just leave her alone from now on. There was no need to drag her into this.
Someone’s gentle fingers untied the blindfold and whisked it off. When my eyesight finally focused, I noticed that everyone was gathered in a circle around me, smiling. What had happened to the pushy, rude people I had encountered just minutes ago?
“Welcome.”
“Now you’re one of us.”
“This is going to be the best thing that happened to you.”
“You’re going to love it here.”
One by one, they all shook my hand and introduced themselves but there were so many of them, I felt like I was being suffocated. People of all heights, gender, and races greeted me warmly. But there was only one person I really wanted to see.
The man who interviewed me.
When I miraculously detangled myself from the crowd, I spotted him sitting at a long granite counter with his head ducked down and files scattered around. I approached him warily, with a small smirk on my face.
I reached him and mumbled, “Hey, old man.”
Cautiously and painstakingly slow, he raised his head inch by inch. My smile dropped and my heart leapt into my throat. I felt the air get knocked out of me like I had been run over by a cargo truck repeatedly. Seeing him brought all these unwanted memories back.
“Dad,” I breathed.