Chapter 67

I feel like I’m in a dream and emotionally exhausted. ‘‘No,’’ I admit emptily. I’m shell-shocked and metaphorically naked right now. I have no energy to lie when it’s obvious to him that my fear was not for the unknown. I’m giving him more ammunition, but I am beyond caring. I feel stripped and broken and just need the solitude of my room. If obediently answering him means he lets me go, then it’s what I will do to get away from him.

‘’It wasn’t consensual was it, or enjoyable?’’ Darkness falls over his face and I shake my head, seeing a brimming and brewing storm moving into the pale colour and darkening them too. I don’t know why that makes him mad, seeing as he had no intention of what he just did being fun or enjoyable. It was a punishment and non-consensual, but somehow, he always disregards his actions when he makes statements like this. One rule for him and one rule for the rest of mankind. He really does have a superiority complex.

‘’What were you?’’ He asks such a simple question, yet the answer is complex. Alexi has had hints that I was a damaged girl but I have never come out and told him about my life before America. All he knows is I was a girl who got creative in making money and sold other girls for sex, but I have never told him I was sold a million times before that. He doesn’t know about the before in great detail only hints of the truth. I am no fool and I assume he knows I have been a hooker at some point. I mean I did for a while even when I got here and needed to keep feeding myself.

‘‘A sad story of a girl who ran away for a better life.’’ I move into the lift and put distance between us, praying he stays out there and lets me find solitude alone upstairs. I don’t trust this ‘‘nicey, nicey’’ act and I’m waiting on him to snap and revert right back into cruel. I feel ravaged and emotional and I know that breaking down in front of him again just killed all my self-respect in one fell swoop. I feel desolate.

‘‘And then you fell into my lap.’’ He says sardonically as another sob escapes me, despite myself. Who knew those seven little honest words would be the start of a whole new kind of emotional pain?

‘‘Water finds its own level. I should accept my fate. You can’t rise above your station, no matter how hard you try, what accent you give yourself or how expensive your clothes may be.’’ It’s the most self-depreciating thing that has come out of my mouth in a long time, but he’s ruined my mental state and I can’t see beyond the misery right now. I started life as a worthless common shell being used by men, for men, and that’s exactly where I am now. I never climbed out of my dark hole; I just found myself much more dangerous captors.

Alexi drops his chin and stares at the floor for a long moment, his hand still on the button holding the doors and I hold my breath, willing him to let it and me go. I need space to be alone, and I am so afraid of what he’s still capable of doing to me when I have no way of defending myself anymore.

I’m a trembling shell of weakness and barely keeping myself up on my shoes. My whole life has been unravelling since the day I met him and I would be better off more than a hundred miles away from him.

Finally, he brings his eyes back up to mine and looks at me without a word, that normal lack of expression, although something hinting in the depths of those empty eyes. He says nothing more, just let’s go of the button. Letting the doors close slowly between us as it blocks him out of my sight and presence and releases me from his painful hold. Watching him as he disappears behind my own reflection in the chrome surface and I sag back to burst into a fresh wave of tears when I realise, I’m finally safe.