Chapter 2

Ihave been living in darkness my entire life. Maybe not like this, but still its own form of being kept from the light. My family is very powerful in Cuba and not for good reasons. They are Cosa Nostra as my family says. Others call us the Cartel. I don't care what you call it, it's evil.

In my family women are expendable, toys to be played with, possessions to be traded and wombs to breed heirs. Fathers keep their daughters locked up so they remain unspoiled, untouched and untainted so they can be given to a man who can give him more power. That is my fate. Well, it was two weeks ago until men took me from the orchard behind my house, a place that was still supposedly guarded but ironically the security on me that day was nowhere in sight.

The men who took me, I deduced early on they were not from my country, and I saw with my own eyes how they dealt with girls who fought back. So I stayed quiet. I stayed quiet, listened and watched. I figured out they were Russian when one of them came into the basement to retrieve another girl, naked, covered in tattoos but the ones on his knees told me who had kidnapped me. The Russian Mob. On his back, was the name Popov.

Every time the basement door opened, I sucked in a breath of fear, praying it wasn't my turn, but they had yet to touch me. Then, five days ago, they brought in a new set of girls and to my horror one of them was a minor. The minute I saw her I thought of my own little sister, Talia.

My protective instincts kicked in and I began talking to her, and keeping her next to me. I learned her name was Sylvia, she was thirteen and they took her from her neighborhood in Manhattan. The day they came for her, I tried to bargain with them, trade myself for her, anything. They laughed and said as a virgin, they had a separate plan for me.

Knowing no matter what I said they would do what they wanted, my heart broke as she cried out for me as they were dragging her from the room by her hair. Then, I found myself getting up and launching at them. I began screaming and scratching and kicking at them. I tried to fight for her, little old me, thin frail me from being starved here, but I had to do something. All of the others were too scared to move. That is when the first blow came right to my rib. I hit the ground in a whoosh of air being taken from my lungs. The second blow to the same side ensured I wouldn't move.

Although I laid there on the floor, crying not for myself but for her, Sylvia who I could no longer hear, I continued to scream and curse at them. Gasping for air I felt a man kneel over me, say something that sounded profane. He lifted my head and gripped my hair, and the blow was the last thing I felt. That was three days ago.

Yesterday they came for me and even in my sore, breathless, disoriented state I tried to fight them, no longer caring if I lived or died. Hell, the pain in my lungs is worth death. The wheezing in my ears is like a signal of impending death that I welcome. Instead of the beating I anticipated, they injected me with something, laughing the entire time. I recognized the word junkie and before I could protest, I was once again out.

They have drugged me for what seems every eight hours from there. I am in such a state of…something that I can barely walk as they lead me, with a bag over my head, somewhere, dressed and shaking violently since they haven't dosed me yet. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would depend on drugs, but now here I am wishing for the shot.

"Don't move," one of my captors says in his heavy accent. I don't know if I am in this room alone or if there are other women like me here, but with our mouths taped shut and bags over our heads, sans a hole in the nose area, there is nothing for it.

Yes, I am used to the darkness. This is just another level on the way to hell.