“You just called me pretty girl,” I say excitedly.
“Oh yeah?” He chuckles. “The girl speaks Spanish. Good for you. Eat your food and stop blocking the fucking door.”
He turns to leave, and I catch his sleeve as he moves. He freezes, staring at my hand like it’s bird shit on his shirt.
“You’re Colombian,” I whisper.
His face turns to thunder, his hands to tight fists. I back away as fast as I can without even thinking.
He stalks over to me—his steps slow and agonizing—and it’s all I can do not to throw my arms up in front of my face.
“I’m Mexican,” he says darkly, towering over me. “Born and fucking bred. Don’t ever fucking mention Colombia again in this house or I will shoot you in your Nina Bonita face. Got it?”
I’m shaking. I nod my head.
“Words, girl. A nod means shit to me.”
“Yes,” I say dejectedly.
“I thought you were nice,” I call out as he opens the door. I almost stamp my foot, but I’m not five years old. Fuck. I really did think he might be useful in getting out of here.
He pauses, chuckling dryly. “The boss thought you were nice too, baby. Look how that turned out.”
He slams the door with force. As I stare at it, I think to myself, yeah, you’re right.
But you’re Colombian.
Mariana was Colombian.
I have to wonder if he’s somehow connected to her. A younger brother, perhaps? A son? She would have been young to be his mother, but it’s entirely plausible. But if so, what’s he doing here, now, under Dornan’s thumb?
Is he like me?
My mind goes full speed with wild conspiracy theories for the next hour, until I have to stop myself and think about something else. I’ll go insane otherwise, and I’m already pretty close to insanity as it is.
But his face doesn’t leave my thoughts. Should I remember him?
Despite The Prospect’s threats to kill me after I called him a Colombian, it seems he doesn’t want me to die.
A few hours later, there’s a soft knock at the door, before the key turns and my mother enters the room.
I stare at her in shock. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed frame, my mouth falling open as she enters. Because despite my vague suspicions, I didn’t dare hope that she would actually be here.
She could be my way out.
My mother enters the room with a stack of clothes and a first aid kit. She doesn’t look at me right away. She stops in front of the small wooden table that sits between the bare bed frame and my chair. I watch idly from the corner of my eye, my vision rejoicing at finally having something new appear in front of it. It’s been too many hours of counting the cracks in the floor and alternating between being so hot I want to explode, and so cold I feel like my veins are ice. I’ve stopped throwing up now, because there’s nothing left inside me to throw up, and the bucket next to me now contains only yellow bile.
I’m sick. Really fucking sick.
As I watch her movements, I can’t help but wonder if she’s been taking drugs - or if someone else drugged her. As I catch a glimpse of her vacant green eyes, I guess that it’s the second one. Her gaze is completely empty. There’s nothing there.
“What did they do to you?” I whisper as she moves around. She mostly ignores me, fussing with food trays and piss buckets and cleaning the blood from the floor as well as she can.
And this time is no different. She carries on her tasks as if I’m not there, an invisible girl strapped to a chair in a dungeon of horror and doom.
“Mom,” I say. “It’s me, Juliette.”
She doesn’t give the slightest indication that she’s even heard what I’ve said. I grasp for something, anything that might snap her out of her drug-addled haze and back to me. I search my childhood memories for a story, an event, a stuffed toy that might jolt something within her.
It was a shitty childhood. I can’t think of anything.
“Take your shirt off, please,” she says. I look at her oddly, before shrugging my shoulders. What the fuck? I don’t care anymore. I shrug the T-shirt off and drop it beside me. I cover my breasts with one arm, lifting them up to give her a clear look at the mess that used to be my stomach and hip. Used to be a tattoo, and before that, used to be my scars. But now, it’s just a mess of dried blood and flesh that can’t heal. It’s a fucking mess.
“This is getting infected,” she says softly, taking a piece of gauze and dabbing at my stomach. As soon as she touches the raw wound I scream out, and she pulls her hand back.
“You need antibiotics,” she says. “I’ll get some for you.”