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  Jack clutches me to him and puts his hand to my face, stroking my quickly bruising cheek. Though I try to keep still, I flinch. ‘Eden, I apologise. It’s Sienna’s fault. It seems she’s found it difficult to abide by our rules.’ He strolls into the bathroom, wets the edge of the towel and on his return, dabs my bloodied lip with it. It stings like fuck. I wince.

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken this out on you.’ He rocks me in his arms. Then he kisses along the line of my jaw.

  ‘Let me love you. I’ll make it better.’

  I can’t help it. A tear escapes my eye. I’m bruised and disoriented and he’s going to assault me again. Once more, I close myself down and focus on the pain coming from my lip. While he invades my body my mind drifts, I repeat the mantra, my body will be strong, my body will be strong.

  He leaves me with a passionate, bruising kiss that makes me want to cry. He clutches the bruised side of my face with his hand. The pressure on my lip breaks the wound open. He’s reminding me who is in charge.

  I wake hearing screams. They make my flesh crawl. Screams of pain. The noise of wailing comes closer. Shrieks of ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘Please, no.’

  The door opens and Sienna is hurled inside. Jack’s face is mottled. ‘You can spend some time in here, dear wife. Maybe I’ll let Eden out tomorrow. Let you swap places.’

  ‘No, please, no.’ She crawls toward him and clasps his leg. ‘I’m sorry. Please, let me out.’

  He kicks her off, his foot connecting with her abdomen. She clutches her stomach and heaves. He pivots and storms out of the room, the door slamming behind him and the lock turned.

  Sienna’s eyes peer around the room. ‘I can’t be in here again.’ She says it so quietly I almost don’t catch it.

  I watch as her eyes wander into the bathroom where the door lies open. Her eyes focus on the words scratched into the wall.

  ‘We’ll be okay. ’I tell her.

  She shakes her head and laughs a hysterical laugh. ‘I tried to help you and now I’m back in hell.’

  My brain fits the pieces of the puzzle together. The writing under the sink. It’s Sienna’s. She was here before.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I ask.

  But she’s catatonic, staring at the writing. I wonder what horrors she’s recalling. Regret comes over me. I’m sacrificing this woman to save myself. But it's my only way out of here. I sit with my back against the wall. Patient. Waiting until she stops seeing her nightmares and is ready to talk.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Xavier

  How does one comfort a person you’ve only known for days over a missing friend you’ve only met twice? If I didn’t know any better, I would think I’d hit the bottle again and was hallucinating. I sit close while Kara sobs on the seats in the police station.

  After a few minutes, she fumbles in her bag for a tissue, swipes it across her eyes and then blows her nose. She looks across at me.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s the first time I’ve let myself believe that something might have’-she swallows-‘that she might be-’ She closes her eyes and breathes slowly, trying to collect herself. When she opens them, I pass her a glass of water.

  She accepts it and takes a few sips. ‘Thanks for sitting with me. I’ll be okay now. I just need to make a call.’

  She phones someone called Dave. He picks her up from outside the station. I wave her off and make my way back to the agency.

  Jane corners me in the staff room.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘The couple had false identities. It’s a crime investigation now.’

  ‘Oh, Xavier.’ Jane’s face turns pale. ‘Try not to get too involved.’

  I shrug. ‘They want to interview me. I’m one of the last people to have seen her.’

  Jane busies herself, putting the kettle on and putting tea bags into two mugs. ‘I’m sorry this is happening to you, love. It doesn’t sound good, to be honest. That poor girl. You take on a job as a Housekeeper. You don’t expect to be abducted. Gosh, it's like what you read about in the newspapers.’

  ‘What’s sad is that other than her friend Kara and her fostered brother, she has no-one to worry about where she is or what’s happened to her. I think that’s why I can’t get her out of my mind. If I didn’t have you, who would worry and look out for me?’

  ‘Don’t let me hear you talking like that. You have relatives.’

  ‘Yes, but they have nothing to do with me. They only made themselves known when there was money and belongings to fight over after my parents’ deaths. Actually, that’s a valid point. If I go missing the vultures will circle to see who can have my money.’

  The spoon makes a ringing noise as Jane whisks the tea bag around the cups one after the other, pulling out the bag and putting it on a little plate on the side. I hate that but I’ve never told her. Why can’t it go straight in the bin? Instead, the carcasses of expired tea bags rot on the side until I eventually move them.

  I stroll over to the fridge, extract the milk and pass it to her.

  ‘So what are they doing next?’ she asks.

  ‘House to house enquiries. Hospital searches. Interviews.’

  ‘I wish you weren’t involved.’

  ‘I’m not worried about being interviewed. I’ve done nothing wrong. I just hope we find out sooner or later what happened to her.’

  ‘I’m here if you need me, Xavier. The door to my home is always open for you.’

  ‘I know.’ I take my mug of tea, leave the kitchen and set to work as I’m running behind after a morning out.

  They call me for an interview a day later. They seem satisfied with my answers. I only have a limited amount of information to give them. They ask the same questions in a different way over and over as if trying to trick me. I’m asked to keep in touch and let them know if I need to leave the country. I assure them I’m going nowhere.

  It’s difficult to picture her face now. My mind can’t do it. Maybe it's my body’s way of coping? To deny her existence. Another part of my body remembers her, and that makes me feel shame. To desire someone who may not even be alive any longer. I immerse myself in reading business books for distraction. It's no good. My mind returns to the night we met.

  It had been a mistake to go to the club. A friend of a friend’s thirtieth birthday. Jane had encouraged it. Said I spent far too long in the house. That I needed to get myself out. That my friends would stop asking me to join them soon. I hated it. As soon as the liquor hit them they turned into idiots, like screeching monkeys. They were grabbing onto girls who walked past, feeling their arses. I headed out of the room, deciding to get a taxi home. My days of getting pissed out of my head were behind me.

  I’d spotted her on the dance floor. Lost in the beat of the music. Arms up, hips swaying. Dark hair swished around her face from its ponytail, rising into the air and then lashing her breasts as it fell. She was all legs. The dress with its flashes of skin a homing beacon for idiotic pissheads like my mates. One was fancying his chances. A youngster. I doubted he had a hope in hell, but I held back, thoughts of leaving the club forgotten.

  She’d shaken her head and returned to her dance but he wouldn’t leave her alone. Being egged on by his mates who had a girl each. They needed him gone to have any chance of a quick grope and a possible shag. The mystery woman made a gesture of getting a drink. I saw straight away that he’d mistaken it for encouragement. He thought she wanted him to get her a drink.

  I’d stepped in his way, telling him she was my girlfriend, and he needed to back off. He’d headed back to the dance floor to spoil his friends’ fun, either that or to find some drunk teenage girl who’d let him get to second base.

  I wasn’t expecting her to touch me. To thank me.

  I didn’t do this anymore. Meet people in clubs. She moved out of my line of sight as she headed to the bar. For some reason, I didn’t leave. I bought a drink from a different bar and hung around the club.

  She told me she di
dn’t like the music in Find, so I was surprised when I saw her in that side of the club. Until she accepted a drink at the bar from an older man and got up to leave after drinking it.

  No.

  What had I meant; no? What business was it of mine what she did? I’d walked towards them as if compelled. My mind asking what I was doing, yet I moved closer to her. I didn’t know her name so the first thing out of my mouth was to ask Charlotte what she was doing? The man had backed away, not wanting any trouble. My mystery woman looked pissed. Ten minutes later she’d looked flushed while I fucked her in the corner of the club. What was I doing? Afterwards, I was so shocked at my behaviour, that when she ran, I didn’t pursue her.

  Regrets. We all have them. I don’t regret fucking her in the corner of the club, but I regret not getting her number. The what ifs never leave my mind. What if I’d had her number? What if we’d been dating? Would she have taken a job as a lover to another couple? Would she now be missing?

  But what ifs are useless, so it's back home to my apartment every evening, waiting for Kara to ring. But she doesn’t.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DC Seth Logan

  It's puzzle solving. A sticky spider’s web where you keep tugging at threads until one binds itself around you and won’t let go. A game you have to win. I study the visitors sheet for Drew Wilson and one name stands out from the others.

  Bingo.

  Time to visit an inmate of Her Majesty.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Eden

  It’s hours before Sienna utters a single word. By this point, I honestly thought she’d lost her mind. While I wait, I tie my hair back with a ripped off piece of material from the edge of the bedsheet to get it off my face. It was hot in here before, but with two bodies in here, it's unbearable.

  Her eyes narrow, her expression full of venom. ‘I’m back here because of you. We only ever wanted to love you. Now we’re fucking damned.’

  My eyes widen. ‘Jack, your husband, is keeping us imprisoned in this room. How is any of this my fault?’

  Her expression remains hard. She balls her hands into fists.

  ‘I can’t believe I agreed to you being a part of us. I don’t know why he needs anyone other than just the two of us, anyway. It complicates things. It’s difficult enough as it is?’

  ‘Why?’

  She scoffs. ‘Blackmail. We’re respected business people. Then you get someone like Malcolm, who thinks that instead of getting off his fucking arse and working for a living, he can just threaten to expose our lifestyle to our clients and neighbours. So you have to pay them off or get them to shut up.’

  I shiver. ‘What did you do to Malcolm?’

  She looks at a fingernail. ‘I’ve no idea. I leave the major decisions to my husband.’

  ‘Is Jack really your husband?’

  ‘We’ve been married for over eleven years. I was proud to be his wife. Then we had to change our names and move because our family found out about our lifestyle and refused to have anything more to do with us. Like what we did is a sin. Some of my family have been cheating on their partners for fucking years, but us. We do it the right way, in the open, and we’re weird?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair.’

  She looks at me, surprised. ‘Yes, you understand. That’s why we chose you.’

  ‘How many people actually interviewed? Were there people who knew you from the scene?’

  She looks at me with a frown on her face. ‘No. We chose you. Just you.’

  I sigh. She’s fucking lost it.

  ‘How did you meet? You and Jack?’

  ‘The usual way. Work. We were rivals for a lot of work. It made sense to go into partnership once we were engaged. We were so in love.’

  She’s talking to me but it’s like she’s staring through me.

  ‘He brought us here on our honeymoon. Our own tiny version of paradise. Somewhere to relax and make love. He asked me if I was willing to experiment sexually and of course I said yes. I adored him being in charge. He worshipped my body. Then he brought home another woman. I thought I wasn’t enough. He made me see the error of my ways by putting me in here.’

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘He brought another woman back and put you in here on your honeymoon?’

  ‘Yes.’ She stares at me as if I’m struggling with my two-times table. ‘I had to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I hated it in here. But it’s all about the greater wisdom. When he let me out, I was free out there’-she points outside of the door-‘and in here.’ She clutches her chest.

  ‘So that’s why I was put in here? To learn to be free?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Free with you two though, not free really, or I’d be able to leave.’

  She frowns again. ‘Why would you want to leave us? We love you.’

  The key in the door turns and Jack walks in. ‘Quite a chat you’re having there, ladies.’

  Sienna peers up at him like in worship. She’s turned into a Stepford wife.

  Jack touches her face with his fingertips. ‘I understand what you were trying to do. However, you must never action anything without my permission.’

  Sienna looks up from the floor. ‘Yes, Jack. I’m very sorry.’

  Is this crap for real? Or is she playing a very well-rehearsed game to get out of this room? Either way, I school my face to hide my revulsion.

  Jack stands with his shoulders back, his chin high. A playful grin lights up his face. ‘I’ve decided you can both come out for the evening. I’m in the mood to be entertained by my women. What do you say, Eden?’

  I smile and nod my head in an imitation of Sienna, ‘Of course, Jack.’

  This time I need to find a way out.

  We’re taken to Jack’s bed where not only am I forced to perform with Sienna in a Sapphic display just for his enjoyment, but I’m abused with various items I would have never in a million years have considered as sex toys. The handle of a broom is first, followed by a slim glass vase. I’m petrified of the glass breaking inside me which means I go rigid, causing extreme pain. Jack delights in penetrating me with these items. He savours the moment, telling me I’m a good girl. A pleased expression on his face. I can’t block out what’s happening to me this time. To avoid Jack’s face, I stay silent and turn my head to the side. I can’t pretend to be enjoying this. Overwhelmed, I begin to weep.

  Jack pulls my chin so I’m facing him again. ‘Oh, my darling girl. You’re doing amazing. There’s no need to get upset. I’m very happy with you.’

  As he withdraws the vase, my muscles relax. Jack mistakes this for how the body relaxes after orgasm.

  He replaces the vase with his cock and fucks me hard. It feels like my insides are tearing. Sienna sticks her breast in my mouth. I try to reject her, but she’s insistent, pushing it in. I’m struggling to breathe because my crying has made my nose block up. She places a hand between her legs and gets herself off.

  The nightmare over, they lie back on the bed. Jack tells us how fantastic the evening was and how this was how it was meant to be. He insists on embracing us both, wrapping his arms tightly around us as he lies in the centre of the bed.

  ‘Another few minutes, Eden, and then I’m afraid you must return to your room.’

  I remember something that used to relax me when I was younger. The stroking of my own skin. I run my fingers down Jack’s arms, his chest. A couple of minutes later I hear a light, rhythmic breathing. I wait a few minutes more until I’m sure he’s fallen asleep.

  I sit up slightly to see what Sienna’s doing. If Jack disturbs I’ll have to pretend I was going to suck his cock. She’s also asleep.

  They’re both fucking asleep.

  My chest tingles and my stomach clenches.

  One chance. I have one fucking chance.

  I slowly extract myself from the arm around me and lower myself to the floor, crawling towards the door. Body trembling and mouth dry, I hesitantly open the door. They don’t disturb. The minut
e I’m out of that room I rush down the corridor towards the kitchen. Right, I’m naked. What the fuck do I do now? I see the cat laid outside the patio window, cleaning itself. My eyes cast around the room. I pull the strip of material out of my hair, then rip the corner off a magazine and grab a pen. I write help, get the police in both English and the Spanish I learned from my online class and describe the house and car. My hand shakes the whole time. The words can’t be written fast enough. There’s a window locked in a slightly open position so I wave the material near it. Seeing a potential food source or item of interest, my cat jumps onto the window ledge. I pet it and tie the material band around its neck, hoping to fuck the note will stay tucked underneath. I tell him to shoo and push him gently off the windowsill. Adrenaline pumping, my need to flee is heightened. Is it worth me trying to make a run for it? I wrap the kitchen table cloth around me and slip on Sienna’s shoes. They’re a size smaller but they’ll do. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and go to the door, but there’s no key.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Eden?’

  I close my eyes in a silent prayer that I can get away with this. As I turn around I know that I’m fooling myself.

  Both Jack and Sienna are standing there, both unclothed. Jack looks eerily calm. His expression thoughtful.

  I lift my chin in an attempt to appear confident. ‘I was going to fix us some breakfast.’

  ‘From outside?’ He says, his voice slow and steady. He saunters towards me.

  ‘I wasn’t going outside. That would be stupid. There’s no key.’

  He backhands me, re-splitting the corner of my mouth. This is followed by a swift punch to my abdomen. Winded, I fall to the floor.

  ‘Watch me discipline her, wife,’ he says to Sienna. He pulls my jaw wide, the blood pouring from my cut and the rip tearing more and he pushes his cock down my throat until I gag. I bite down as hard as I can.