Page 26 of Fractured Devotion

“Help me get her out.” He yanked open the cage and dragged me out by my feet as I attempted to kick him. “No use in fighting, Princess.”

Andrei pulled a syringe out. “Hold her down. This will make you less likely to fight on our way to the plane.”

“Plane?” I writhed in the guard’s hold, desperate to get loose. The sting of the needle and the burn of something streamed through my veins like a lightning bolt. “What did you do? What did you give me?”

“Something to make you more pliable.”

My mind swirled with confusion as the drug began to alter my perception. I felt like I was floating, but my unsteady feet rested on the cement beneath my body. I’d never been drugged—not during my first captivity or even after when I was desperate to rid my mind of the memories of what they’d done to me in Columbia. Why now?

Whispers of elusive shapes and shadows danced across my senses, teasing my half-lucid mind as I found myself being hauled—part dragged, part carried—out of the cold embrace of the metal structure. Each flutter of my heavy eyelids battled the fog clouding my thoughts, leaving me to grasp at the tendrils of consciousness slipping through my fingers. The sensation of pain became a distant echo as Andrei’s arms hoisted me with unsettling ease that left my protests unvoiced, my body folding into the unwelcoming embrace of a car’s trunk. I could manage only a frail whimper as he slammed the metal cover down, shrouding me in darkness.

The journey from the trunk to wherever Lipovsky was taking me felt like drifting through a nightmare. I was a ghost of myself. My consciousness tugged along on strings of fog and confusion. The world pitched and swayed under the influence of whatever drug pulsed through my veins, making it hard to know up from down, light from dark.

The car came to a stop with a jarring suddenness that pulled a gasp from my lungs. Voices filtered through the walls of my metal prison—harsh, biting. The lid flew open, and hands—Andrei’s, no doubt—grasped me, hauling my unresisting body out of the trunk. The world tipped and turned as he maneuvered me over his shoulder with an ease that made my stomach churn.

Airports have a smell, a mix of jet fuel and ambition, but it was all distant, an afterthought as the sharp scent of asphalt filled my nostrils, the ground beneath me a grey blur. My ears rang, but through the dissonance, I caught snatches of a conversation—Lipovsky’s gravelly tone dripping with disdain, slicing through my drug-induced fog.

“We’re heading back to Columbia.” He spat out the words as if they were venom. “The highest bidder will take this mess off our hands.” A laugh, dark and humorless, pierced the air. “Look at her, Andrei. That scar—she was a beauty before the crash. Now? She’s nothing more than an easy fuck.”

I wanted to scream, to protest, to escape, but my body was a traitor, heavy and unyielding. My skin crawled, knowing their eyes were tracing the jagged line down my face, a permanent reminder of a nightmare I couldn’t forget.

The hands that held me were ungentle and careless as they shifted me into a metallic cavern that hummed with the promise of flight. The cold of the floor seeped through my clothes, but the chill was nothing compared to the icy terror that crept into my heart when Lipovsky’s voice continued mercilessly.

“She’s caused enough problems. It’s time she learned her place before the auction. Use her. Punish her. She’s nothing to us now.”

A shiver ran down my spine, and a silent sob stuck in my throat. Every fiber of my being protested against his words, against the injustice, but the drug was a chain I couldn’t break. The plane’s engines roared to life, and with every vibration, I felt the last remnants of hope slip away as the skies prepared to swallow me whole, delivering me to a fate I was powerless to avoid. Unable to fight the hum of darkness that’d skittered on the edge of my vision, I closed my eyes and gave in.

Unsure how long I had been out, I slowly started to let my eyes flutter open. I was greeted not by the familiar but by the stark and foreign ceiling of a room I didn’t recognize. The last remnants of grogginess clung stubbornly to the edges of my mind, a grim reminder of the chemical haze that had been my unwelcome companion. Naked as the day I was born, I was splayed on a bed that felt too pristine, its sheets too crisp against my bare skin.

There were hands on me, impersonal, dusting and dabbing at my skin with powders and scents that felt like armor being applied for a battle I’d never enlisted in. I squinted against the light, catching glimpses of women moving around me, their expressions set in concentration so intense, it almost masked their pity.

I sat up, feeling the air kiss every inch of my exposed body, leaving a trail of helplessness in its wake. The room spun slightly, and I gripped the edge of the bed as if it could anchor me in this spinning world.

“Easy, chica,” one of the women murmured, her hands coaxing me back against the pillows with a gentleness that was in stark contrast to the situation. “We need to get you ready.”

Ready—the word was a stone in my stomach. Ready for what? But I didn’t need to ask, not really. The moment I stepped out the door, I knew why I was there and what was going to happen.

My fingers found their way to my head, the strands slipping through them, not the blond locks I remembered, but a rich chestnut brown, the color a dark echo of a past I thought I’d left behind. They had stripped me of my disguise, revealing the woman I used to be, the woman they’d broken once before.

I wanted to protest, to fight, to scream that I wasn’t their doll to dress up and parade around, but the words lodged in my throat from the fear that was starting to take root deep within me.

Reflections danced in the mirror across the room—of me, yet a stranger at the same time. They painted my face with makeup, tracing over features that Lipovsky had said made me damaged. I watched, detached, as they transformed me into the centerpiece of some sick show, primping and preening the merchandise for the monsters waiting to take something that wasn’t theirs. The very thought made my skin crawl, a shudder rippling through me that had nothing to do with the cool air of the room. I was back in the compound, the place where choices and freedoms were a fantasy.

As they led me to stand, guiding me toward a fate I dreaded to face, I swore to myself that somewhere within the shell they’d polished to a shine, the real me—the fighter, the survivor—was still there. And she wouldn’t go quietly. She couldn’t.

As I stood, the women stepped back, their job done, leaving me feeling like a mannequin poised in the window of some twisted boutique. The men—Lipovsky’s cronies—lingered in the doorway, their eyes crawling over me, a thousand unwelcome touches in every lecherous glance. Their smirks spoke volumes, suggesting a familiarity that hadn’t been earned, and every inch of me recoiled from the unspoken violation of their gazes.

Lipovsky, a man with eyes like a shark, circled me. His fingers trailed along my arm, a feigned gesture of admiration that left a slick trail of revulsion in its wake. I stood statue-still, but inside, a storm was brewing—a tempest of rage that churned with every inappropriate brush of his touch.

“Very nice,” he muttered as if I were a prized mare at the market. “Maybe you will fetch a good price after all. And maybe… I’ll sample you as Andrei has.”

His words, so carelessly thrown, sparked something feral within me. A silent vow etched itself into the very marrow of my bones. When the time came, I would end their vile games. I would turn their depravity back upon them tenfold. The spark of defiance that had smoldered temporarily was now a blaze that refused to be ignored.

Before I could act on the swelling tide of anger, a sharp pinch at the crook of my arm drew a gasp from my lips. Another dose of drugs was delivered with clinical indifference, the syringe robbing me of the fight I so desperately wanted to give them.

My world began to tilt, the edges blurring as if someone had smudged them with a dirty thumb. The figures around me became distorted. Their laughter warped and stretched as though underwater. I blinked hard, trying to anchor myself to something, anything real.

How had my life come to this?

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