I'm my own person.
I never realized just how much of a person I could be by myself. All my life I was dependent on someone to hold me up. I thought I could make it alone, always had a plant implanted in my head that I needed some kind of support, emotional or even mental.
Whether be my sister, my father, my friend, or even Zade.
There was a time in my life when I felt like I wouldn't make it far without them. I forgot just how strong I can be. I forgot my worth and abilities because I thought I needed to sun to reflect on me so I could shine.
In the end, they've always proven to never be the support I needed. The strength I sought and the love I wanted.
Diego is just a man, a stupid man.
He thought chasing me into the woods would make me somehow surrender. Hell no.
I need to go back and get Kim. She's my best friend now. I can't escape without her.
We are not far from the mansion, maybe a twenty-minute run from here. It's already been fifteen and I see wood from the far end.
I don't know where I lost Diego but I can't care less, I took his gun, and I'm killing every one of these motherfuckers who hurt her. And that woman who owns all of this. She deserves to be tortured to no extent, she deserves to know how it feels to feel like you're slowly dying even though you are not.
I shoot the three guards at the entrance and jog up the little stairs leading to the back door.
I fight with the door for a few minutes and walk inside, as usual, the rapists were watching soccer while some girls were hanging around them, looking unhappy but forced to wear a smile. I put the safety of the gun on and off, sweat trailing down my body, my chest rising and falling rapidly. I shoot all five of them in the neck or in between their eyes.
The girls scream, at the scene, blood everywhere and splattered brain contents. Everyone in the rooms comes out and I shoot everywhere, making sure I'm only killing men. I don't know how many bullets this fucker contains, so I go and look for my best friend. "Kim!" I yell. "Kim!!" She opens the room and I drag her, Anyone who wants to follow will, if they don't that's their problem.
"Aia... Aia!!" She shouts, enquiring where we are going, but I pull her, We are both barefoot, my feet are bleeding, my throat is dry and I don't know if I am crying or my eyes are sweating too. We run out the door and go into the forest.
I ignore all of Kim's protests and just continue running, thorns in my flesh and stubbing my toe every once in a while against a stone.
I called Daniel back so I could search this whole forest, I will leave no stone unturned to find her.
I run through the forest, calling out her name, I know she's somewhere here. And I won't give up until I have my princess in my arms again.
Trails of blood are on the the rocks, as if someone sat here and took a rest. And it's not Aia. She never rests until she grasps what she is searching for. It has to be that fool after her.
Go in that direction I think he went there. It was getting dark, the green trees had turned black and I could barely see.
I can't run anymore, I used all the energy from the food I ate five days ago. I can't anymore.
My feet hurt from all the thorns and stones stuck inside them, I'm out of breath and I have double vision because of my lack of energy. "Go," I rasp, coughing. "Don't look back." Kim looks back at me, her beautiful green eyes looking like a pool. "I can't leave you." She jogs back so she's helping me up. "I said go, Kim." I grit, placing my hands on my knees.
"I'll be fine, but you need to get out of here." She farrows her brows and opens her mouth to speak but I push her foreword a little, urging her to go.
She runs, looking back at me and tears in her eyes. I mouth the word "go" to her and he looks forward, running faster than ever, and in a few seconds, she is out of my view. I kept my end of the bargain to her, whatever that happens to me after this, I'll accept.
-flashback-
"When exactly did you get here?" Kim and I were supposed to be asleep but we found an old book and a working pen so we were playing x and o.
"Ten years ago." She said, drawing an x in the box. "But how?" I drew an o.
"You see," She pressed her lips together. "I lived with my mom and brother but we weren't financially stable. Not at all. We didn't have a penny. So this beautiful woman offered to buy my newly born brother from my mother for a large amount of money." She looked at me to see if I had an ounce of judgment in my eyes. She found none.
"Long story short, my mom said yes and got paid millions. We were good after that, but she changed, she was missing my brother more and more every day, and it broke her. She still tried to make me feel loved but it was prominent that she regretted her choice. She was willing to die in poverty, as long as the woman gave us our little boy back. We didn't. I grew up, the money finished and we were back in stage one. This time I sacrificed myself. I became a stripper to pay off the house bills and take care of my family. It wasn't enough to buy us food and pay household expenses... so I... I became a prostitute."
My mind had a little flashback to the green-eyed girl back in high school. She also did the same thing to take care of her family.
"Got a lot of hate when people found out. They started making fun of me and asked me to book appointments for their grandfathers and other older family members. It was embarrassing."
My eyes widen. I stopped drawing the x midway and looked at her in slight realization.
She avoided my eyes. "Kim..."
"I got kidnapped by one of my regular clients; Diego, and I've been here since. Right after the day I met you."
She's the girl who gave me the sweater she made herself, the one where she told me she didn't like the purple hearts on it because it didn't blend in with the pastel colors.
I still have that sweater in my cupboard.
My eyes watered, and I hadn't noticed, but she's been crying, I only see it now because her tear drop falls on the page. "We never found my brother, and uh, my mother... I don't know how..." her voice breaks as her cries surface.
"I remember you." I touch her tear-stained cheek. "I knew who you were from the very beginning." She says. "I've heard Diego talking to Mr. Volkov about you."
I think the fact that I couldn't stop crying was mixed up with everything that happened to me in the past twenty-four hours.
"My little Zade." She sobs. "I miss him." I've never heard of feeling my heart drop so fast. "What did you call him?" I rasped.
"Zade." She confirmed. "My mom named him Zade, but she called him Zee, I called him Zaza because he always looked high even as a newborn."
Is she talking about my Zade?
"And you know he had these strange eyes, he had my father's eyes. Just lighter. They looked white. It reminds me of snow."
Zade is her brother...? She's describing his appearance right now and it looks just like him. The beauty mark under his lip...
Do I tell her Do I no—
"ZHAIAN, COME HERE NOW."
I startle when Diego shouts my name, wiping away my tears and hugging Kim as comfort before I raced down the stairs.
-end of flashback-
Kim is gone, it's been about fifteen minutes and I've been hiding behind a tree until I spotted an abandoned train behind me. I walked with my bleeding feet that left a trail of blood everywhere until I got inside and sat on the cracked leather that probably had spiders or other deadlier animals inside.
I'd rather die here than for those idiots to find me again, I just know they'll kill me this time, or gang-rape like they did to that other girl because she spilled a droplet of coffee on one of their white shirts.
I close my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, hoping for tomorrow to be a better day... somewhere out of here.
"There's no one here, boss." The five men who went in the east direction appear. "We found her." I instantly turn my head to the ones who claim to have found my baby.
It's not her.
It's another girl who's wailing her ass off like a damn baby. "Shut the fuck up." I grit. "Who are you?"
She shuts her mouth.
"Kimberly." She says, weirdly relaxing when she notices that I don't recognize her. "What are you doing here?"
"I was... trafficked." All the other men came out of the bushes claiming they didn't find her either. I look back at the girl and pull out my phone; maybe she knows Aia. I showed her my wallpaper, which is a picture of Aia in Tokyo, one that she forced me to take off her.
"Do you know her?" The girl's eyes widen. "Ye-yes, she was with me just now but she told me to go-" I don't wait for her to tell me the rest of what she had to say because I'm yelling at her to show me where she last saw her. She was walking very slowly due to fatigue, so we moved ten times slower.
We get to a place, filled with big trees and large rocks. "Search every tree, every rock, every nook, make sure you find her." I tell my men, and then I turn to the girl, "Henry, take her back to the car."
She looked oddly familiar like she rang a silent bell in my mind. I turn around and search for my Aia, I'm not going home without her. I walk deeper into the forest until I can spot the hidden old mansion in the distance, and a train track alongside me.
There are men standing outside the cracked door, holding guns.
I decide to go and search the train first before I take a larger step. That girl did say they were in the woods together, I'm sure Zhaian is smart enough to know that she shouldn't go back in there.
I climb inside, my boots making a clamp noise, and I hear shuffling of some sort, sounding like an animal scurrying away. I search every seat, under the seat... I search the whole front and travel to the back.
"Zhaian." I call out. "Are you in here?" I get no response, but when I stop in my tracks I here sniffling, quiet sobs and harsh breathing. I slowly turn my head to the left, and there I see her.
Dark brown hair, a tattoo behind her neck and she curled up into a ball. "Baby," I kneel in front of her and remove her arms from her face. "It's me, it's Zade." My eyes burn, and I don't recognize my own voice. "Come here." I take her in my arms and stand up, not having the time to weep like a fucking baby.
What the fuck am I? A little boy who just met his mother after years of not knowing her? Fuck no.
I shouldn't be crying because I found her. I'm not weak. I'm not a pussy.
She holds onto me and buries herself in me. She sobs, clutching my hoodie. And I couldn't help but to swallow my man-strength down and let my heart burn at her embrace.
I have her, my Aia.
I'll never let her go ever again.
___
THE END.
I'm joking, bitch.
But actually, theres only a few chapters left of this story and here's the reveal of the story y'all asked for😝😛
It was a tie between the enemies to lover + arranged marriage and Angelica's book (academic rivals to lovers)
🫦🫦
The other book next chapter😚