Page 39 of Forever Found
Max. He’s the one on top of me now – pinning me down. His eyes filled with glee as he grunts in satisfaction. “Now I havemy own piece of the joy I saw on your father’s face when he was taking you that night,” he sneers, and I know the words are a reference to what Max said to me on the plane.
The realization that this can’t be real, that it has to be a nightmare, has me bucking my hips and fighting harder to get free.It’s not real, I keep telling myself.You have to wake up!
A hard slap to my face makes me stop and I can taste blood in my mouth as I glare up at the monster I had once trusted like the naïve fool I have always been.
“Stupid girl!” he hisses angrily. “I told you what would happen if you didn’t behave, didn’t I? He turns to look to the right, and I follow, I see Eli laid on the floor, his face barely recognizable and blood pouring from cuts all over his body. His clothes are torn and he has obviously been beaten.
“No!” I cry as I fight to get any sound out of my rapidly tightening throat. “Eli!” At my second cry Eli groans and lifts his head, turning to me, his face so swollen he can hardly open his eyes. Blood is pouring down the side of his head and when he tries to talk, he can’t.
The sound of a click causes me to look up at Max with a knowing horror. I catch sight of the gun in his hand, pointed right at my brother’s head.
“NO!” I scream.
“This is all your fault, Addy,” Max laughs. “I told you what would happen if you didn’t behave for me. You’re the reason he has to die.”
The shot is deafening. I turn in time to see the bullet tear through Eli’s forehead, and instantly he slumps to the ground, his eye’s still looking up at me lifelessly.
“ELI!” I scream as my heart jolts, feeling as though it stops right along with his.
My own scream ripped me back to reality, and I sat up gasping for breath, covered with a sheen of sweat, and crying hard.
I looked around frantically, confused where I was for a moment, and filled with fear because of it, but the lamp beside the bed illuminated the room enough for me to see the gauzy curtains hanging at the window. That reminded me that I was at the cabin, with Asher and….
“Addy!” I looked up as Eli came hurtling through the door into my room, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and looking sleep mussed. “I’m here. Shortcake. You’re okay. Everything’s alright,” he soothed as he landed on his knees on the bed beside me and instantly pulled me into his arms. I threw myself against him and gripped him with desperation, so relieved to see him alive after the horror of the terrifyingly real nightmare.
“Sorry,” I gasped breathlessly as I lay my forehead against his chest and accepted the comfort he was offering. I took deep breaths and just tried to calm everything down.
Eli just held me for a while allowing me the time I needed to come around and catch my breath. The nightmare had felt so real, even though I knew the things Max was saying were linked to the threats he made on the plane, when he abducted Eli and I. That meant it couldn’t be real, didn’t it?
The realization that I had no true way of knowing hurt and angered me in equal measure. Had Max hurt me too in the time I had been held by the traffickers, or Hilton? Just because I had embellished the nightmare, didn’t mean it’s foundations weren’t based in truth. Max certainly would have had the opportunity, as wrapped up in both the trafficking and sick parties as he was.
My stomach turned as I realized I would likely never get the answers that I needed. Whatever had happened to me in those two years that I was taken, was a convoluted mess of the memories I had recovered, things I had been told by the cops, and images of nightmares I couldn’t decipher as fact or fiction, made of the darkness within me.
Joseph was dead, not that I ever expected answers from that monster even if he weren’t. Max was in FBI custody and refusing to talk, pleading his innocence, and lawyering up, and the others that had been arrested were all doing much the same, or so Asher had been told.
It was highly likely I would never know for sure everything that had been done to me, and by whom in the years I was gone, and that fact ate away at me. The idea of living the entirety of the rest of my life with the threat of more soul crushing memories returning to me at any time, destroyed me. How could I learn to live that way?
“Addy, you need to try and breathe, sweetie. You’re gasping more now than when I came in here,” Eli prompted and he was right. I was freaking out again, my fingers and toes tingling with pins and needles as my anxiety took a grip on me.
I sat up releasing him, and tried to take a breath in, but all that came out was a sob. Things were so messed up. I knew now that it was so much harder to live with all I had been through when I had no way of ever knowing everything that had been done to me. If I could remember the whole thing, maybe I could deal with it and find a way forwards, but not knowing – having it all looming over me at every moment of every day – knowing I’d have to live with the threat of recalling past terrors hitting me like a MAC truck at any possible time. I wasn’t sure that was something I could ever live with.
Add to that the not knowing, and the wondering if every person I came into contact with could have been a part of my trauma, it was overwhelming and horrifying. I’d spend the rest of my life thinking every man I met could have been a customer who raped me at that damned club for the months I was there. Every time I met any one of any wealth, I’d wonder if they were ever at one of those sick, twisted sex parties I was dragged to. Every time I saw a cellar or an out building in someone’s home, I’d have to question if they had some hidden annex with a prisoner tied up down there.
“Just stay there. I’m going to get you some water,” Eli said as he rose from the bed and moved to the adjoining bathroom.
I didn’t even speak as I got to my feet and fled the room. I ran down the wooden staircase and straight for the front door. As I threw it open, cold air and heavy falling snow blasted at me, but I didn’t even slow down as I threw myself outside into the wild winter weather, slipping and stumbling down the steps.
As I stepped off of the last porch step and onto the driveway, I was almost up to my knees in snow. I faltered as I tried to run, falling to my ass, cushioned by the deep snow that had fallen in the last few days that we had been holed up there.
A scream ripped from me as I gave up, not even trying to get myself out of the snow that almost covered my entire body as I sat amongst it. I grabbed the sides if my head in my hands and I ripped at my hair as I screamed as loud as I could, all of my anger, confusion, and frustration needing an outlet before it blew me apart from the inside out. I was almost hoarse by the time Asher came barreling out of the door in only a pair of sweats, a gun held loosely in his hand.
I buried my face in my hands, knowing what a fuck up I was, and ashamed at the mess I knew my brothers were going to find me in once again.
“Addy!” I heard Eli yell, then they were both there, either side of me. I didn’t lift my head. I couldn’t. I knew all I would see on their faces was worry and stress, and knowing I put it there would only add to the turmoil inside of me.
What the hell had happened to me? I may never have been strong, but I kept myself together. I was alone, so I had to. I handled my own issues and I never crumbled when a challenge presented itself. Sure I may have handled everything as easily and peacefully as I could, always avoiding confrontation out of fear, but I wasn’t like this! I wasn’t falling apart at every single turn! I was sane, for Christ’s sake! Now I was losing my damned mind and even though I knew it, I couldn’t seem to stop it.
“Addy? I need to get you inside, sweetheart. It’s too cold out here. Can I pick you up?” Asher asked cautiously, and I felt his tentative touch on my quaking shoulder.