Page 14 of Savage Redemption

I learned something of pleasure at his hands., I learned to say ‘no’ and be heard. I was competent at the domestic chores and life was okay. Not good, exactly, I was still a prisoner. But it was bearable, and I knew how quickly that could change in a world where violence was the currency.

Adan was powerful. He ruled his family interests with a rod of iron but somehow, he remained decent. He was respected as much as feared. It made a refreshing change.

So, when he asked if I wanted to accompany him back to Tenerife to deal with a problem which has arisen there, I jumped at the chance. Better that than take my chances in Madrid, alone.

Adan was the devil I knew.

I had no idea what the ‘issue’ was. I never asked. When we arrived at a dilapidated, deserted farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, I still asked no questions. I just set about cleaning it up and making it habitable. I got the stove working, spread clean bed linen on the single bed tucked away in the back room. I walked down to the market in a village a mile or so away and ordered fresh vegetables to be delivered. Adan was angry that I walked all that way and back again in the heat. He ordered one of his men to drive me in future, so I went back for bread, cheese, eggs. The cottage was quite homely by the time our ‘guests’ arrived.

I was astonished, and horrified. A woman, and a girl no more than twelve or thirteen. At first, I thought they’d been trafficked like me, destined for a similar fate. Not the case. They were hostages, a mother and her daughter, the family of some enemy. They arrived bruised, battered, terrified. I could easily relate. Adan locked them in the only bedroom and asked me to look after them. He assured me it was temporary. He meant to release them once he had whatever it was he wanted. He didn’ttell me the details. I didn’t want to know. But I’d learned to trust him after a fashion, and I believed him when he promised me the prisoners would be safe.

If he said it, it was true.

I brought food, fresh water. I kept the room clean. By then I spoke fluent Spanish, but the prisoners didn’t understand it, so I tried English and that worked. We could communicate, after a fashion. If they wondered why I spoke English like a native, they never asked. They had more on their minds, I expect.

After a day or two, Adan let the younger one go. The mother, who I’d learned was called Julia, remained with us. I spent more time with her, I enjoyed her company. I came to trust her, enough to ask her to help me. I gave her my father’s phone number, hoping I’d remembered it right and he hadn’t changed his phone in the years I’d been away. I asked her to let him know where I was, that I was alive. If she got the chance…

Afterwards, I wondered what would have happened if Adan ever found out. Would he be angry? Punish me? Or would he have let me go? Would he have phoned my dad, if I asked him?

At the time, it seemed unthinkable. I had learned not to trust, to be wary, cautious, always to expect violence and cruelty. Adan seemed different, but it wasn’t worth the risk. So, I confided in Julia in secret, and prayed she wouldn’t let me down.

In the end, it never came to that. Julia’s family came for her. They attacked the farmhouse early one morning, killed all the guards, and took Adan prisoner. They might have left me there, or killed me, but Julia pleaded for me to be rescued, too. So, I found myself on a helicopter being flown away to Christ knows where. The leader of the attackers recognised me, and I knew him. He was the man who had Mateo and Alejandro Domingo murdered, the one who spared me and sent me downstairs to escape the horrors of what was happening.

I told him my story, the first time since I was abducted. He listened, but I don’t think he entirely believed me. Not until we landed, and I was recognised by Janey. Janey and I briefly shared a house in Stirling a lifetime ago, she knew me, knew who I was, and what had happened. Well, some of it. It was enough to convince my new captors that I was telling the truth.

One of them, Julia’s husband, took the number I’d given her and phoned it. He spoke to my dad, told him where I was and that he could come and get me. He arrived the next day.

And so,I came home. Home to our gorgeous house in Yorkshire, the home I grew up in. I had my life back. Adan was dead. The horrors were behind me. My dad arranged for me to see a therapist, just to make sure, and everyone tried to encourage me to take up my old life again, to carve out a future, as though everything was normal. They meant well, still do. And really, what’s the alternative? Life goes on, whether I want it or to or not.

In more ways than I could imagine. I’d been home only a few weeks when I discovered I was pregnant. At first, I didn’t believe it. How, after all that time? Why now?

Actually, that question was relatively easy to answer. The trafficking gang forcibly injected all of us with a contraceptive. I was ill for days after. I suppose it eventually wore off. Adan never repeated the ‘treatment’.

I said nothing at first, just hoped it would go away. It didn’t, and Eva’s no fool. I was three months gone when she sat me down and confronted me. There was still time for a termination; she offered to help me sort that out if it was what I wanted. I agreed, because I thought I could keep it from my dad that way. Eva was having none of it.

“He has to know. You need him now, more than ever. He loves you, whatever you decide will be fine.”

“He’ll be angry. Disappointed. He’ll wish he never…”

“Never what?”

“Never adopted me.”

Eva was incredulous. “Where did you get that from? He adores the bones of you. There’s no world in which he’d ever regret you being in his life. Nor me.”

“I know, but Bella?—”

Bella — Isabella — is my sister. She’s nine years old, eleven years younger than me. She was born soon after my dad and Eva got together.

Eva’s incredulous. “Bella has nothing to do with this. You’reourdaughter, we’ll support you whatever happens.”

“You say that, but?—”

“I say it because it’s true. We live it, we breathe it. Bella’s our daughter, too, and we love the pair of you equally.”

“But she’s yours. Yours and dad’s.”

“You’re both ours. Let us prove it.”

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