Page 15 of Fallen to Thievery
She didn’t seem to trust his answer because she asked again, “Is she okay?”
He looked at me again. His brow furrowed in irritation or anger. I couldn’t tell. I debated whether I should scream for the woman to help me, but I knew it would be no use. It would only anger him more. So, I stayed quiet.
“Yes, she’s fine. Go back to bed.”
There was whispering outside the door. The other man was also there. It sounded like they were arguing. A few seconds later, the floorboards creaked as they moved away. Yes, she wouldn’t have been able to help me. No one could.
I sat, my knees to my chest, silently panting. It was over. I couldn’t get away. And he was mad. He was still staring at me, but I kept my head low.
What was he going to do?
“Remember when I said that it was up to you how your time here would be?” He talked too calmly.
I couldn’t respond, couldn’t look up. An urge to crawl under the bed and hide like a child pulsed through me. Grayson gripped the front of my shirt and pulled me off the floor. He backed me towards the bed. It frightened me so much, that I almost lost control of my bladder. He pushed me onto it, and I scampered backwards until my back hit the headboard. He was on the bed too, tugging my leg down, towards him.
I was screaming again, struggling. He climbed on top of me and pinned me down before slapping me across the face. Again. It did what it was intended to do and shut me right up. Gods, how could I survive him, if I can’t fight him? All I could do was grit down and endure him.
“For the love of God, shut the fuck up!” he hissed. He pinned my hands together above my head and pulled out a rope behind the headboard. The same one he tied me with when he drugged me. I sobbed while he tied me up. My hands were tightly fastened to the headboard. They couldn’t even bend at the wrist.
Grayson braced himself on his hand next to my head, sucking in air through his nose, steadying himself, before leaning down into my face. “I would love to play with you like this, darling,” his eyes roamed from my tied-up hands down to where our bodies connected, “but I don’t fuck someone without their consent. I’m a monster. Just notthatkind.” He patted my cheek harshly, then climbed off me and the bed.
He left the room for a few minutes before returning with a hammer and nails. He walked over to the window and started hammering the window shut. “This is your fault, you know? I didn’t want to make you feel like a prisoner, but here we are.” He plucked at the window. It didn’t budge. “I can’t trust you.”
He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him. There were more noises outside the door. He was doing something to the door. Then I heard it. A slide lock sliding into place. He had put a lock on the outside of the door.
The numbness took hold of me again. I had the sinking feeling that ending up in this room was my fate. And there was no escaping fate. The little omen I had experienced in the bank was now fully realised. My time had run out.
The crow was back, pacing the length of the windowsill as it watched me. But it was the witching hour. What was it doing up? Did my screaming wake him?
Grayson came back in, satisfied with his handiwork. “This,” he gestured around the room, “is the consequences ofyouractions. You will be tied to my bed until I feel I can trust you again.”
He turned for the door but stopped. He was quiet for a moment, then turned his head to look at me, seemingly puzzled. “Were you really going to run into those woods? In the middle of the night?”
I didn’t answer.
He chuckled and shook his head. “You’re either a fuck of a lot braver than most people orimpressivelystupid.”
Isleptwithmyhands tied to the bed. The knot was made on the back side of the headboard, and I couldn’t twist my hands to reach it. It was impossible to get free.
After Grayson had left, I tried my best to stay calm and think myself out of the situation, but I couldn’t. There was no way out. My hopes were shattered. It had finally sunk in—if the police didn’t find me soon, I was going to die here.
I hoped they were still looking for me. I hoped they hadn’t given up on me. My parents and Rachel would never, I was certain of it. Racheldidmake a pact with me.
I let my mind wander into the memory, letting it carry me off, away from this room.
It had been our first semester at college. We were at a party and Rachel had decided to leave with the infamous soccer player, Jake. They had been making eyes at each other since the day we arrived and ran into him at the coffee shop on campus. I had felt uneasy about it, but she promised to send me a message as soon as she got to his apartment. She had always been the brave one. Unlike me, she didn’t let fear stop her from living. From having fun.
But her message never came. By three o’clock that morning, I called the police, frantic with worry. Her phone went straight to voicemail, and I had no idea where Jake lived. I had gone back to the party, to find someone who might know where Jake lived, but they were shut down, and everyone had left.
The police were better at finding him than I was. Within ten minutes they had his address, and I insisted on riding along with them. Jake opened the door of his apartment, groggy eyed—with a confused, half-asleep Rachel peering over his shoulder.
“Rachel! Oh, thank the gods!” I had pushed past the officer and Jake, slamming my arms around her. Seeing her, safe and unharmed had felt like a boulder was lifted off my shoulders. I had imagined all sorts of bad scenarios. I cried and she cried.
The officer had scolded her for making me worry that much, while I had stood there, red faced, feeling like I had overreacted. Rachel, of course, had been too enthralled with her crush to remember her promise to me. She had thought, at her insistence, that I went home with Shuan, the business major who had been flirting with me all night, who would later become my boyfriend through most of university. In her mind, I was too busy to worry about her.
When we got back to the dorm, I cried some more over ice-cream, unable to shake the terror I had felt for my friend, while she tried to soothe me. We made a pact that night, a sacred pinkie promise—come hell or high water, we would always find our way back to each other. We would never leave this world without the other.
“Quick, A. Give us a spell,”Rachel had said, teary eyed.
