Page 102 of Punked By the Playmaker
“Anyway, that was how I met Bodhi. He had the painkillers, but I didn’t have the cash. I believe the asshole’s exact words were ‘Too bad, so sad.’” I scoffed in disgust. “So I went home, and with trembling fingers, reached into my mom’s purse and stole money out of her wallet so I could buy drugs.
“I thought I was so slick, taking only enough to secure my fix, but it wasn’t more than a month before she caught me. We had this huge argument where I screamed at her for not understanding how much I needed the meds. She blamed herself for not noticing the signs sooner—she’d had to take on a second job after Dad died and was hardly ever around—and begged to take me somewhere I could get help. But I didn’t want help; I wanted to get high.
“That night, I left her house and didn’t come back. I was now fifteen and homeless, and Bodhi took me in. When I started going through withdrawal again, he offered me an alternative payment method. My body.” Shame curled through my insides. “I let him take my virginity for a handful of pills.”
Levi’s eyes bulged. “How old was this fucker?”
I lifted a shoulder. “If I had to guess, maybe early thirties?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw.
Buckle up, dear husband, because if you think that’s bad, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
“After that, he knew he could get me to do whatever he wanted if he dangled those painkillers just out of reach. It started slowly, with him bringing home ‘friends’ every once in a while, making me suck their cocks in front of him. I didn’t dare refuse because I knew he controlled when I got my next fix. Blowjobs turned into sex, and before I knew it, I was being moved out of his apartment and into an abandoned warehouse. That’s when I met the others.”
“There were others?” Levi’s shock was audible.
“Yeah. Bodhi wasn’t just a drug dealer; he was a bona fide human trafficker. Most of the girls weren’t local. They’d been brought to San Diego by his ‘associates.’ It didn’t matter how we’d gotten there because, one way or another, we’d all become his prisoners.”
“Prisoners,” he repeated.
“We weren’t exactly allowed to leave. And if we refused to put out for men who were brought to us, we suffered. The worst punishment was days of withdrawal, but other times we were denied access to food and water. Hell, once they placed a padlock on the door to the makeshift bathroom, and we were made to sit in our own filth until they were convinced we’d learned our lesson. After a while, we stopped fighting back, accepting our role as teenage prostitutes.”
“Oh my God.” A horrified expression stole over Levi’s face as his hands flew to his head. “I’ve called you a whore. So many times.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Fuck not knowing.” He scoffed. “I feel like a total ass.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, and you kept doing it because you saw how much I liked it.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
It was clear that nothing I said would stop him from beating himself up over what I deemed consensual degradation, so I moved past it, continuing to tell the tale of my past.
“Bodhi viewed all of us as his property. But me? I was special. He loved to brag to his clients about how he’d personally broken in my cunt, that it was the best he had on offer. And even though I was thoroughly used by multiple men daily, he still made sure to come calling at my cell/bedroom at night. While condoms were mandatory for everyone else, he never bothered to use one.”
“Motherfucker,” Levi gritted out, his fists clenching.
“Drugged out all the time, I grew so thin that I stopped getting periods. I didn’t even realize I was pregnant until one of the girls happened to catch me coming out of the shower and noticed my stomach was poking out. By then, it was too late to terminate, and while Bodhi had no interest in a baby, he sure as shit cashed in on the situation, pimping me out to every sick fuck with a pregnancy fetish.”
I swallowed down the bile that rose up the back of my throat as memories assaulted me—hands roving over skin pulled taut over my belly, aggressive fingers tugging at my nipples in hopes of getting milk to appear, and every guy role-playing as though he was the one who’d put me in that condition.
“I never got any prenatal care, and I was so high that I barely registered the baby kicking inside me. But it sure caught my attention when I started bleeding heavily.”
My husband stared at me with wide brown eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbing along his throat.
“The guards had no interest in dealing with me, so they dropped me off at the entrance to an emergency room. They peeled out, tires squealing, before the medical staff reached where I lay collapsed on the sidewalk.
“After that, I don’t remember much. From what my mom explained years later, I had placenta previa. Basically, the placenta was blocking my cervix, and when it began to dilate prematurely—they estimated I was around thirty-three weeks—I started hemorrhaging. They knocked me out before performing an emergency C-section.”
“The scar,” Levi remarked, gesturing to my stomach.
“Yeah. The ‘well-meaning’ doctor performing the surgery took one look at the junkie teenager whose baby was born addicted and decided to remove my uterus. He felt like he was doingthe world a public service by removing my ability to further procreate.”
His mouth dropped open. “He can’t—he can’t justdothat. It’s illegal!”
I hummed. “He made sure to fudge the medical report to say that the hysterectomy was required to save my life. The only reason we found out the truth was because one of the nurses pulled my mom aside and confessed. Winning the medical malpractice lawsuit paid for Austin’s NICU stay and my two stints at rehab.”
