Chapter 4 Chapter 0004

•KRISTINA•

I woke up in the back seat of a car after a few hours had passed. My head was throbbing, and I winced, trying to sit up.

My neck was sore where the needle had gone in, and my mouth tasted like metal. I sat up slowly and looked around.

The car had a black interior, tinted windows, and no door handles on my side. Voss was in the front seat. And a driver I didn't recognize was behind the wheel. Neither of them looked back.

I tried opening the door, but it was locked.

I pressed myself against the seat and looked out the window, and realized that we were on a highway.

I didn't recognize the road or the surrounding landscape. It was too open to tell me anything useful, so I watched the signs we passed and counted the exits.

My hands were trembling in my lap. I pressed them flat against my thighs, but it didn't stop.

I could feel something underneath my skin that pushed outward, as if it was trying to get through. I had felt it before, usually when I was angry or cornered, and I struggled to control it.

I didn't know what it was. It started when I turned eighteen two years ago.

I pressed my hands harder against my legs and looked back out the window. I memorized the last exit number I'd seen and kept counting.

•••

We arrived at the holding house, and it was a two-storey building set back from a narrow road with no neighbors in sight.

Voss walked me inside without touching me. He closed the front door behind us and led me to a room down the hallway before he went upstairs.

There were four other girls already there.

They were sitting in the living room when I came in, two on a couch, one on the floor, one standing near the window.

The one near the window came over. She was about my age, with short dark hair and a kind smile.

I imagined how they were all sold to Voss, just as I was. They were probably promised a future that they could never touch.

"Hello," she greeted me. "My name is Regina."

"Kristina."

She nodded and sat down on the nearest chair. I sat across from her.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Eleven days," she answered. "I was on the streets when Voss approached and told me he had a job for me that would take me off the streets."

My heart broke when I heard that.

"What will happen to us here?" I asked, feeling my stomach sinking. I started to think that maybe Voss was the same man who was watching me from the alley.

She looked at the door, then back at me. "We won't be here for long. Voss will sell us to collectors, mules, and pimps."

My chest tightened. "And we just wait here until someone buys us?"

"Yes."

I looked around the room. The window near Regina had a latch but no way to open it from the inside, it was sealed shut.

The front door was the only exit I could see. I hadn't seen the back of the house yet.

"I'm going to get out of here," I replied. "I won't let him sell me to someone else. I won't stay here to watch that happen again."

I knew when my mother introduced me to him that there was something fishy. That money on the table was enough to tell me that they were making a transaction with me.

Regina looked at me and shook her head. "A girl tried," she answered. "About a week before you came. She got as far as the road."

"What happened to her?"

"Voss found her and shot her in the head in front of us," she answered. "Please don't do anything you will regret. He won't hesitate to end your life. Being sold is better than that outcome."

"I have been through worse in my life, and I won't sit here, Regina, and be sold to someone who will exploit me," I answered as I got up from the chair. "If I must die, then I will die."

"We have seen bigger fools than her." The girl on the floor murmured.

"Let her kill herself if she wants," another commented. "That would give the rest of us a chance to be bought out of this place."

I looked at them and shook my head. They looked as if they had given up already and accepted their fates to be sold to human traffickers.

I didn't understand why they didn't want to find a plan and escape that god-forsaken place. It was obvious that Voss wasn't even taking care of them.

"That's enough," Regina scoffed, turning and looking at the other three faces. "We can't let one of us die again. We are supposed to stand in this together and advise each other instead of fighting."

"Did you see us fighting, Gina?" The girl on the floor asked as she stood up and folded her arms across her chest. "This girl here has only been here for a minute and has already decided that she is smarter than us and will find a way out of this shithole. Isn't that insulting for the rest of us who have tried to get out but know that we can't without dying?"

"So, are you going to sit and do nothing?" I huffed. "You will die anyway in the hands of whoever is going to buy you. You won't be free!"

"No one is going to die." Voss's voice came from behind us.

My chest tightened as I turned around and looked at him.

"Don't worry, Kristi," he muttered as he leaned toward me and caressed my cheek. "You won't be spending the night here. You already have a buyer. And they are paying a lot of money for you. I guess what your mother said about you being special is true."