Chapter Sixteen

Diana

I MAY BE stronger but I still haven't run for a long time, and I get out of breath by the time I round the building, so I hunker down, not seeing, not thinking, filled with pure fear.

He thinks I'm dead. What will he do if he finds out I am alive?

"Diana! Diana, please tell me you didn't run away," Lisa calls in exasperation.

"No, she saw something in the caf," Catherine says. "That's why I haven't shocked her yet. I don't think it's us she wants to evade."

"You better be right," Lisa grumbles. " Diana !"

"Don't call my name!" I whine, hopefully loud enough to be heard. "Please, please…" I cover my ears and tuck my head between my knees, wishing I was still in jeans and didn't change into a dress with easy access.

Stupid!

"There you are."

I don't look up, I can't. If he followed…

"Diana, what on Earth?" Lisa whispers. "Why can't we call your name? What happened back there?"

"He can't have seen me," I gasp. "He'll kill me. He'll know I'm alive and he can't have me alive so he'll kill me , please—"

Small hands grab my wrists and gently pry my arms from where they are protecting my head and face.

"Hey, nobody is gonna lay a hand on you. Not while we can help it," Lisa promises.

My whole body trembles; I can't stop it. It's nice and warm out but I feel like it's below zero, and I can't focus on anything. Any second now and I will dissociate and I can't do that when he might see me.

"We need to get her home," Catherine says. "Sweetheart, come on. Please stand up."

"Can't." I shake my head and hide again. Just like I used to cower in bed, in the corner by the wall. Not that it made any difference. It couldn't save me then and it won't save me now.

Funny, Thomas said he wanted to save my soul. As if I can ever escape my past. As if any pain will remove the permanent stains on my heart and mind.

"He might see me. He can't see me."

"All right, fuck this. Sorry, Mother."

Did Lisa just curse? My jumbled brain can't grasp much, until my body gets jolted. Lisa is strong as she pulls me to my feet, but I'm unsteady and need to hide.

"I don't know who you're worried about, hon, but no one will hurt you," Catherine assures me. She holds me on one side, Lisa on the other. "Come on, let's go home. You need to rest and you're not going to do it behind a strip mall."

My breathing hasn't slowed, and I want to cry but I can't cry. I'm too scared to cry and blur my eyesight. All I can do is hide within my mind, sink back into that place I go when I feel helpless and hopeless, when all I can do is pray to a God I am not sure I believe in that this will all be over soon.

I don't recall the ride back to Thomas' house, only being jolted once more when Lisa and Catherine get me out of the car. Glancing back, I am positive I will see that familiar black Mercedes behind us.

Nothing.

"There's nothing and no one there," Catherine says. "Come on."

Lisa has a key to Thomas' house and she opens the door and calls tentatively, "Tommy? Need a little help."

A deep chuckle comes from down the hall. "How much did you buy that you need—" He rounds the corner, sees me, and stops speaking as his green eyes widen. In a flash he has me in his arms and the strength and warmth should comfort me, but it only unleashes the terror I kept locked away.

"No! Let me go! Let me go, he's gonna find me; let me go !" I shriek the last few words and hit at Thomas' arms and chest, but he doesn't budge or let me go.

"Little dove, who? Who's going to find you?" he asks, but I can't speak; I can't say his name or even think about the fate that would await me.

He'd do it all over again, and this time watch and ensure I am dead by the end of it.

"I don't want to give her anything," he says to the women, still trying to hold me captive. I need to run, to get away. Far away. I'm not safe here; not if Mike has shown an interest in Lisa. He may know where she lives. "What happened?"

"Remember that creep who keeps bothering me? He cornered me in the café and when Diana saw him, she lost it," Lisa explains.

"Please let me go!" I shriek, using all my strength to push Thomas away. Just when I think I'm free, his arms come around me from behind, holding me closer, pinning my arms to my sides.

"Shh shh shh," he rasps. "I'm not letting you go, and I am not going to let anyone hurt you. I promise. You're mine ; no other man is allowed to even look at you without my permission."

I start to sob; irrationality and trauma causes me to believe if I stay here, I am going to be found. Taken. Raped and tortured and killed. Why won't they understand I need to leave? Why won't they let me go?

"She's in shock and this is a trauma response," Catherine says.

"She'll wear herself out," Lisa adds.

I sob harder; my throat hurts from screaming. I just need to go .

"We can sedate her, but that may make it worse when she wakes up," Catherine says.

I can't get free. I can't escape. So I do the one thing I have not done since that first night when I was thirteen, when Mike forced himself on me.

I beg.

"Don't let him find me! Don't let him take me, please. I don't want to die! I don't want to go through all that again, please !" My body sags, my energy flagging even as panic still grips my heart and mind. All I can do is cry.

Pleas are useless. They always have been. I learned that the hard way, that's why I stopped pleading after the first time. No one listens. No one cares.

"Diana," Thomas whispers. He holds me tight; I may be bruised. " No one will find you. No one will take you away from me. Not now. Not ever." He is all that holds me upright now; I'm too exhausted. "I promise you."

I can't answer, and I think he knows that. I also think he knows I don't believe him.

In an instant, Thomas literally sweeps me off my feet, into his arms, bridal-style. "Open my bedroom door, please."

"Thomas, you know you can't—"

"I wouldn't dare, Mother," he interrupts Catherine. "I am not carrying her down there right now. Let her rest up here."

"I can't rest," I whisper, my voice hoarse.

Thomas walks with me, then I am placed on a butter-soft mattress, my body sinking into it like a cloud. I've never felt anything so blissful. I'm so tired, and my eyes burn from crying, I can't open them much to see the room around me.

When a duvet covers me, I try to kick it away but am too weak to even do that properly.

"Little dove, stop ."

The sternness in Thomas' voice breaks through the haze and I listen, blinking to clear my eyes of tears. My eyes won't focus.

I want to sleep, but my brain doesn't want to listen to my exhausted body. It still commands me to leave, but I can't. Too weak. Always too weak.

For a moment, I have no idea where I am. It's soft and smells nice, like fancy cologne. Warm. Safe.

I've never been safe.

My eyes struggle to open; they're dry and crusted. My body is heavy; it doesn't want to follow my brain's commands.

My ears work, though.

A soft, deep male voice speaks in a language I can't understand. Fear jolts me and makes me turn my head and force my eyes open.

It's Thomas, knelt at my bedside, his silver cross necklace clasped between his hands; he's praying.

I try to speak, but my throat hurts. My voice manages to make some little squeak, and Thomas looks up sharply, startled.

"You're awake." He drops the cross and it bounces against his chest. "Here." He reaches for something on the nightstand and in the dim light, I see it's a Powerade bottle. He twists the cap and asks, "Can you sit up?"

I do so with effort, soft pillows making it easier. He hands me the bottle and I take a few sips, my hands shaky as I hold it like a baby drinking from a bottle.

"Do you remember what happened today?" he asks, his voice a low rumble as he takes the bottle from me, putting it back on the nightstand.

I nod, fresh tears swimming in my eyes.

"Little dove…" Green eyes plead with me. I've never seen him look so earnest. His hand twitches. Perhaps he wants to touch me? "I need to know exactly what happened. We cannot move forward… You cannot move forward unless you unburden your soul."

"Did you really think what you do to me is the worst I have been through?"

I don't realize I am going to say that until it slips out, and I wish I could take the words back. His punishments are rudimentary compared with my life, but I don't think I'm strong enough to handle them now.

"I did," he replies. "And that was my mistake. But I cannot help you if you do not speak to me. What happened to you, and what does it have to do with the man who always corners my sister?"

"You already judge me based on what you know," I argue. "You only know a fraction of it; what will you do to me when you know it all?"

"Help you heal."

"Torture won't heal me."

He leans back, pensive. "Perhaps not. But I need to hear it from you. I require full disclosure, or else everything I am doing has been for naught."

I still don't speak. I don't know if I can.

With a sigh, he stands up. "I let you out once and something happened, and now you won't obey me. How far back are we going to have to go and do this dance again, Diana?"

I shake my head, not wanting to go back to the first few weeks here. I don't think I could handle it again, knowing the cycle will have to repeat.

Just tell him. Tell someone, my conscience whispers. It's self-preservation more than anything.

"If…" I swallow hard and he hands me the sports drink again, eyes still hard. I drink and hand it back to him. "If I tell you, would you punish me for being weak? For not escaping Hell on Earth?"

"I cannot tell you what I will and will not do when I have no idea what you're going to say to me," he says.

I take a breath. "My father died when I was twelve. I found his body."

Thomas nods. Likely, he knew this.

"My mom took a second job to make ends meet, because Dad was up to his eyeballs in debt we had no idea existed. What I didn't know right away was that Mom was being pimped out and testing new street drugs."

Thomas' face is still impassive.

"The man she was working for is Mike Sullivan, he's a businessman on paper but his real money comes from women and drugs … and kids."

"Excuse me?" Thomas' eyes harden again.

"Basically low-key human trafficking. He'll keep a woman and a kid or two to personally rent out, and he sells others. I didn't actually see him do any of that; he just mentioned offhand that he sold some of us off, and the rare few he kept should be grateful." I tighten my hands in the soft, thick duvet. "Mom got progressively more drugged up, lost her first job, and hooking for him was all she had. He pressured her to move in with us, to take care of us. She believed him." I scoff.

How had she been so naive?

"When was this?" Thomas asks.

"When I was thirteen, a year after Dad died."

He nods. "Continue."

"One night I heard him yelling at Mom. She didn't seem to be yelling back; it sounded like she was drugged out of her mind to me. He told her … he said she had one purpose for him and if she was too … can I curse?"

Thomas' lips quirk. "I'll allow it."

"If she was too fucked up to do it, she was warned what would happen."

At my pause, he asks, "What happened?"

"You can't guess?"

"I need to hear it from you, Diana."

I sigh and hide my face, unable to look at him as I admit how weak I was, what I allowed to happen to me. "He came into my room and he… I was thirteen ! I begged and pleaded and he didn't give a shit!" I didn't think I could cry any more tears, but I was wrong. "I learned quickly begging never does any good.

"And any time my mother was too strung out to service him, he came to me. For the next year and a half, and then…" I hiccup.

"Then?"

"Mom overdosed when I was fifteen. Stopped her heart. It wasn't an accident." My hands clench into fists, closing around the duvet so tight I might tear it. "She was useless to him, too addicted to be pimped out. But that was okay, he could ‘ get rid of her '. He had another product."

"You." Thomas' voice is little more than a whisper in the dark.

"He kept me locked up for three years," I continue. "Some of the people who paid to rape me knew me . He beat me and raped me too. Withheld food. I needed to stay as small as possible, to look young. All my body hair was permanently removed for that reason, too. And he—"

The sob rips from me as I remember the doctor, and I can't breathe properly.

Thomas kneels back at my bedside, not touching me but his warm hand is close. "Be strong, my dove. You withstood everything I did to you and will do in the future. You can be strong and withstand a memory."

"He didn't want to deal with a baby; it would put me out of work and take too long to sell it — he said he'd sell it — so he took me to a doctor and they performed a hysterectomy. He took my mom's happiness. He took her life. He took my childhood. And he took my fucking future!"

I don't care that I cursed two more times than I was allowed, and I'll likely have my tongue burnt with hot sauce again. I can't care. The trauma I repressed since I managed to survive what he thought would kill me is far greater than any momentary burn.

"Diana…"

"I know," I say through my tears. "I shouldn't curse."

"No." His voice is tentative. "May I touch you?"

He's … asking?

I shrug. "Does it matter?"

"Yes, it does."

I nod. Let him get whatever he is going to do to me over with. Maybe I will be lucky and die.

A hand touches my back, and instinctively my whole body stiffens. I don't push him away, however. Whatever he's going to do, does it matter? But he doesn't do anything, just keeps a gentle, warm pressure there.

"I wish you had told me sooner," he says. "Can you tell me how you escaped? You said if he found out you were alive, he'd kill you."

Nodding, I say, "He had me gang raped and tortured the night before I turned eighteen. Then had my body dumped, thinking I'd die in the heat… I survived." I did survive. The question is, why? "A good samaritan found me, brought me to a battered women's shelter where a doctor treated me, and that was how I got sent to Rick's building. And I had no job so I … resorted to the only thing I knew."

Thomas exhales, rubbing my back some more. "My brave dove. Look at you, how far you've come."

"What do you mean?" I ask. "I haven't changed. I'm still the same person you brought here and promised to break and mold into whatever perfect Stepford Wife you want me to be."

Thomas arches an eyebrow. "You haven't changed? You truly believe that?" He moves towards me and it takes all my strength not to flinch away anymore.

You know when he wants to hurt you, my mind chastises. Now is not that time.

His hand moves hair from my face and he tilts my head to look up at him. "You are a work in progress, yes. But so am I, my dove. You are stronger. Braver. More beautiful than I could have dreamed."

"I'm still not perfect," I argue. "I never will be. Look at what I've been through."

"Darling girl, who said I wanted perfect?" He grins. "I admit I went about your training wrong. I finally realized that earlier today, as you broke down. As you fought any comfort I attempted to give you until your worn body gave out from the stress. And now … you ensured I knew my methods were incorrect for your unique situation. If I am to slay your demons, I must not feed them." His grip in my hair tightens and his smile widens. "Your eyes dilated. Pain is an old friend, isn't it? One you're starting to like."

I don't want to listen, I don't want to believe him, but his words slide into my mind anyway.

"You started to like it once you realized I didn't hurt you for my amusement. I didn't hurt you to keep you in line. I hurt you to free you." He sits close to me on the bed, still holding me by the hair at the nape of my neck. "God brought you to me, and I realize my mistake. You must forgive me, little dove, as I am but human. I was not meant to save you. You never needed saving."

He runs his nose alongside my cheek and chuckles when I shiver.

"I was meant to find my darkest hour, my imperfections, reflected in your sin. I was meant to cleanse you." He steps back again and kisses my forehead. "I need you to trust me and know this is for your own good. And once I finish cleansing you, we can take the final steps to eternity."