Chapter 3

3

Evenie

T hen

My eyes fluttered open, and all I could see around me was darkness. My head was pounding, and my limbs felt heavy as hell. I tried to sit up but quickly realized that I was strapped to something. Frantically, I tried to free myself, but to no avail.

“Help me!” I screamed. “Somebody, help me, please!”

Just then, a door opened. The light cast the shadow of a figure, but I couldn’t make out who or what it was. The figure slowly advanced toward me, causing my heart to race.

“Who are you? What do you want? Please… just let me go. I have a family—”

“I’m your family, Lisa,” the figure said.

A light flickered on, and I looked around. I was in a small bedroom. Looking down, I realized I was strapped to the bed. As the figure approached me, it took me a second to notice that this was the same man from the grocery store. He stood over me with a tray of food in his hands. I recoiled in fear as he placed it on the table beside the bed and took a seat next to me.

His rough, ragged look was gone and replaced with a clean-shaven face and a low haircut. The polo styled shirt and khaki pants he wore looked freshly pressed and free of stains. He smiled, and if he wasn’t a deranged lunatic, he might have been handsome.

Nervously, he rubbed his thighs. “I wanted to look good when you woke up,” he stated, staring at me. He leaned into me and stroked my hair. “How could you just leave me, Lisa? You said we’d be together forever, then you just up and left me. We were so good together, baby. Can’t you see that?”

“I’m not Lisa,” I whispered.

“Liar!” he bellowed. “You can’t trick me!”

“I’m not trying to trick you! I just want to go home. Please, I have a little girl that needs me—”

“You—you cheated on me?”

I frantically shook my head. “No.”

“You had a baby. You had my baby.”

“No. She’s mine.”

“She’s ours. Where is she? I can go get her and bring her home.”

Again, I shook my head, my voice trembling as I spoke. “She’s mine. You can’t have her.”

He frowned. “First you leave me, now you wanna keep my daughter away from me?”

“She’s not yours!” I screamed. “I don’t belong to you. I don’t know who Lisa is, but I’m not her. Please let me go.”

He stared at me for a moment before angrily flipping the tray of food over. I screamed, but he clamped a large, callous hand over my mouth. He leaned into me with angry eyes.

“You can’t leave me. Not again. I’ll just have to keep you to myself until you learn to love me again.” Gently, he stroked my hair. “You can love me again, can’t you, Lisa? I’ll be good this time. I promise.”

He removed his hand from my mouth and pressed a kiss to my lips. I wanted to throw up.

“I’m sorry about the mess,” he said, stooping to pick up the contents off the floor. “I’ll go fix you another plate.”

Without another word, he left the room, leaving me alone. Tears streamed down my face as I lay there praying to God that someone would find me somehow. This couldn’t be real. Things like this didn’t happen to me. I was minding my business and trying to make dinner for my family. There was no way that a trip to the grocery store turned into me being run off the road and taken by some strange man who thought I was his wife.

I shouldn’t be here.

I should have been home with my husband and my child… my husband and my child. Oh, God! What was Tyrion going to think if I didn’t come home? What would Summer Rose do without me? My baby was only six months. I’d barely got to watch her grow up, and now, we’d been taken from each other.

I had to get out of here.

Some way, somehow, I had to get out.

Now

It was eerily quiet.

The type of quiet I wasn’t used to. I mean, the room I was in was soundproof, but something just felt… weird.

Leon, my captor, was always going on about something. In the last ten years, I’d grown to hate him even more than I thought was possible. When he first took me, all I did every day for weeks was sleep and cry. All I wanted to do was go home, and since I couldn’t do that, I just wanted to die.

I refused to eat, so he force-fed me.

When I say force-fed, I meant he put a feeding tube down my nose while I was strapped to the bed. I refused to bathe, thinking that he was going to try and touch me. That was until he took it upon himself to bathe me one night. After that, I handled my hygiene, deciding that I would just have to put up a fight if it ever came to that.

There had only been one night where he forced himself on me. I screamed and cried so bad that he never touched me again. There were other nights he would come into my room while I was sleeping and watch me. I’d wake up, and he’d just be standing there looking down at me. He never spoke a word; he just stood there until he was ready to leave me be. A few times, I woke up to him lying next to me, sound asleep.

Those nights, I didn’t sleep at all. I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, wishing I was home. I missed my husband. I missed my baby girl. Knowing that she was growing up without me hurt me to my soul, but it gave me strength to stay alive. One of these days, I was getting the fuck up out of here. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know when, but it was going to happen.

I rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom to handle my hygiene. Leon had converted his basement into an apartment-like setup for me. While it was soundproof and there were no windows, it was actually pretty nice. I remembered when he brought me down here a few months into my stay.

The door to the small bedroom opened, and Leon stood there with a smile.

“Good morning, wife,” he said, cheerfully.

I’d learned to accept that he was never going to stop calling me his wife or the name Lisa. Instead of trying to beat it into his head that I wasn’t who he thought I was, I said nothing when he greeted me that way.

“How did you sleep, beautiful?”

Again, I offered him nothing.

“You can’t give me the silent treatment forever, Lisa. To think, I had a surprise for you. I was gonna let you out of here today.”

My eyes widened, and my ears perked up. “What?”

I’d been stuck in this room for so long that I feared I’d go stark mad. The single window had bars on it, so there was no way to get out. Even if it didn’t, there was nothing around for miles and miles but woods. I had no idea where I was or how to find help, but I damn sure would have tried.

Leon walked over and stood in front of me with two sets of cuffs in his hands. One set was for my wrists, the other was for my ankles. I knew the routine. We went through this every time he escorted me to the bathroom to shower.

“Don’t try anything stupid,” he said, cuffing my ankles first.

He released the chains that bound my arms to the bed and cuffed them behind me before helping me to my feet. With a firm hand around my biceps, he guided me out of the bedroom and down the hall. I looked toward the front door, contemplating if I should make a break for it, even though I wouldn’t make it very far.

I sighed heavily as he yanked me toward the kitchen. When we got to a door with multiple locks on it, he unlocked them and opened it. Behind that door was a steel door with a keypad. He stood where I couldn’t see and punched in the passcode. The locks disengaged, and the door opened. He flipped a light switch.

The next thing I knew, he was lifting me over his shoulder and carrying me downstairs. When he placed me on my feet, I looked around the space. I could smell the scent of fresh paint. The walls looked new, and so did the furniture. This must have been what he was doing when I heard all the movement outside my door.

“What is this?” I asked.

“I wanted to make sure you were comfortable,” he said. “I made you a space where you have everything you need. You don’t ever have to leave.”

There was a twinkle in his eyes, like he was proud of his work. He started rambling as he pointed out the bathroom and small kitchen area. There was a TV, books, magazines, and a radio for my entertainment. All I could do was stare at him.

“Well… do you like it?” he asked.

I shook my head, tears streaming down my face. “I want to go home.”

“This is your home.”

“I want to go home to my family!” I screamed.

He shoved me on the bed and towered over me. “You’re so fucking ungrateful! You never appreciate anything I do. I break my back trying to make you happy, and all you do is bitch and complain. Don’t make me have to teach you another lesson, Lisa.”

The slap to the side of my face stunned me. I knew at that moment that Lisa, whoever she was, left for a reason. If she didn’t leave, I was certain that his “lesson” didn’t end pretty.

“I’m sorry…” I whispered, cowering into the fetal position. “I’m sorry. I like it. It’s really nice.”

He backed off momentarily. “You’re just saying that.”

“I mean it. You did a good job.”

I heard him take a few steps back and looked up from my position. He smiled a crooked smile at me.

“Great. Well… you just stay down here and get acquainted. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and removed the cuffs from my hands and feet. My first instinct was to fight and run, but I remembered that slap to the face that still had my cheek stinging. Alas, all I could do was watch his back as he ascended the stairs and closed the door.

Down here, I had the freedom to roam about. Leon was smart enough not to leave anything behind that I could use as a weapon. There was one way in and one way out, to my knowledge. Even if I made it out of the basement, I still had to get past him to get outside. He was a stocky man, with muscles everywhere. There was no way I could beat him in a fight without playing dirty.

For ten years, I’d been gone.

Ten years, I’d tried plotting every escape possible, only for it to all come back to the same damn conclusion: I was stuck, and I was going to die here.

Swiping the tears away from my face, I turned on the shower and stepped in. I stood under the water allowing it to penetrate my scalp and flow down the length of my body. My once short bob had grown out, and my hair hung down my back in long coils. My nails had grown out. My body, once a solid hundred and twenty pounds, was probably more at a buck fifty now. I’d gained weight, but I’d also been working out to battle the depression I’d slipped into.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw nothing of my former self. I barely knew who I was anymore. My thoughts drifted to Tyrion. If he saw me now, he’d hardly recognize me. In some alternative world where I managed to escape, I wondered if he would welcome me home.

Had he moved on?

Had he looked for me?

Had he given up hope?

I wondered about my baby. She would be ten now. I wondered what she looked like. Whose personality did she have? Was she a good student? Did she play any sports or extracurricular activities? Did Tyrion tell her about me, or was I just a ghost in our home? Then I wondered about my parents. Were they still alive? I knew my disappearance tore them up. We’d always been a close family, especially me and my mother. I prayed to God every night that the people I loved were okay in my absence.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Evenie,” I said aloud. “Pull it together.”

I shook the thoughts from my head and finished up in the shower. Once out, I towel dried and left the bathroom to get dressed. Just as I had pulled on my socks. I heard the steel door unlock and pop open. No doubt it was Leon coming down with my breakfast. I could time him at this point.

I waited for a moment when he didn’t immediately come down. From my position, it sounded like he was gasping for air. Then came a crash that had me springing to my feet. Suddenly, everything went silent. I stood there, waiting to see what would happen.

Nothing.

Sliding my feet into my slippers, I slowly ascended the stairs. The sight of Leon’s body on the floor caused me to gasp. He lay motionless, the spilled breakfast splattered around him. I pushed the door open and stooped to check a pulse. It was faint but still there.

Run, bitch! my inner voice yelled.

I grabbed the cell phone from his pocket and made a break for the front door. There were so many locks on it that it took me a minute to get them all off. I grabbed the keys and his wallet from the bowl beside the door, praying that one of them went to whatever he drove. I took one last look back at Leon, who was still on the floor, before opening the front door and stepping onto the porch.

The bright morning sun hurt my eyes.

I hadn’t seen outside in so long. The air was fresh, a huge change from the stuffy basement. There was a slight chill in the atmosphere, causing me to shudder. Quickly, I descended the front steps. I didn’t have time to pussyfoot around about the scenery. Running over to the old pickup truck, I fumbled with the keys until I could find the one that opened the door. Jumping inside, I put the key in the ignition.

An excited squeal left my lips when the engine turned over with ease. I put the truck in reverse and backed up to the road. With one last look at the place that had been my prison for ten years, I floored the gas pedal and took off down the dirt road.