Page 69 of Craving Dahlia

I bite my lip, fiddling with my key ring. If someone has moved in, then the locks will have been changed. They’ve probably been changed anyway. But I could try?—

If anyone hears me trying to unlock the door and comes out, I’ll just say I got the wrong place. Easy.

This is so stupid.But I walk to the door anyway, wanting to go home so badly that it overrides all of my better sense.

To my surprise, the key works. I bite my lip, wondering if there’s any possible way the locks might not have been changed if someone else moved in—the last thing I need is the cops called on me for breaking and entering—but surely that’s not possible.

I push the door open, and walk inside.

It feels wrong from the moment I walk in. It’s silent in an empty way that tells me there’s definitely no one living here, but it’s empty of everything that made it mine. It’s been thoroughly scrubbed even more than how I left it, and it smells sterile and cold. It’s not my apartment any longer, and I instantly regret coming in here. I could get in trouble, and for nothing. All it did was make me feel worse, like my last memory of this place now is of something cold and empty, instead of what it used to be when I lived here.

I swallow hard, backing up towards the door. I turn to leave—and blocking the doorway that was empty a moment ago is a tall, bulky man in black clothes and a hoodie, the hood over his head and a balaclava covering his face.

“Who the fuck are you?” I blurt out, a moment before I realize there’s no way he’s going to answer that. I drop my bag, darting for the small space between him and the edge of the door, that I don’t think I can possibly fit through. But I have to try, and as I try to shove my way past him, his arm goes around my waist, dragging me back.

“Let go of me!” I scream, kicking and twisting, fear lancing through me as I try to get free. All of those classes that I took at the martial arts center come rushing back, and I try to remember what I’m supposed to do in this situation. Alek isn’t going to come out and save me this time, and I have no idea what thisman wants. He might be connected to the men I saw at the speakeasy and at Sal’s, or he might just be a run-of-the-mill New York burglar, who saw an open door and a dark apartment and tried to take advantage of it.

“There’s money in the bag,” I gasp. It’s not a lie, my wallet is in there, with my debit card. There isn’t much cash, and by the time he can do anything with my card I will have canceled it, but he doesn’t need to know that. If he is just a burglar, it might save me. “You can have it. Just let me go. Let me—” I twist again, and the chuckle that rumbles against me as he turns around and drags me with him makes my stomach flip with cold nausea. He’s considerably bigger than I am, and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to fight back.

“What do you want?” I cry out, and he chuckles again, his free hand rummaging in his pocket. When I look up, I see two other men waiting back by the stairwell, and that sick nausea slides up my throat. “There’s money, I promise?—”

“I don’t want money,devochka,” the man growls, and the now-familiar accent sends another dizzying wave of fear over me. “You’ll find out what we want soon enough.”

I struggle harder at that, slamming an elbow back into his stomach. He coughs, doubling forward, and I take advantage of the momentary loosening of the arm around me to wrench myself away, ducking under his arm the way I was taught and bolting for the elevator.

It’s too far. I realize that as soon as I see the other men coming for me, cutting me off. One of them grabs me, growling something in Russian at the other that I don’t understand. I try to wrestle myself loose again, looking up and seeing the man that I elbowed striding towards me, a dark look on his face.

He snaps something at the man who isn’t holding me, again in Russian, and snatches something out of the man’s hand. I’m too busy kicking at the man holding me—who was smart enoughto grab me in a way that pins my arms—to see what it is. I kick his shin, and then I try to catch him off balance enough to sweep his ankle out from under him. I’d rather grapple with him on the floor than be pinned like this. But he’s like a fucking cement wall. I kick at his shins again, and he grunts, but he doesn’t flinch.

The man I elbowed grabs my hair, wrenching my head to one side as I struggle. “Be still,devochka,” he growls. “It will hurt more if you’re not.”

“What will—” I twist again, ignoring his suggestion as I flail frantically in my captor’s arms, fear pervading all of my senses until it’s all I can think about. I can’t think about how I’m supposed to get out of this, how to fight back—all I can think about is how fucking terrified I am, how alone I feel—and how maybe I should have stayed at Evelyn’s after all.

How if Alek had just told me the truth, maybe this wouldn’t be happening.

A sharp sting pricks my neck, and I look in my periphery just enough to see a syringe in the man’s hand, a needle no doubt now embedded in my neck. Terror of it snapping off freezes me still, and the man chuckles darkly as he pulls it away.

“Good girl,” he mutters, and I rear back just enough to spit in his face.

Like a flash, he backhands me, his knuckles hitting my cheek hard enough to send my head snapping to one side. “That’s not the last one you’ll get,devochka,” he threatens. “But first, we’ll take you to where you’re supposed to be.”

“I’m supposed…to be…here…” My tongue feels thick in my mouth, the room beginning to spin, like the worst episode of vertigo possible. It tilts, shifts, and tilts again, and I feel the rush of nausea as my eyes start to close, bile burning the back of my throat. A little of it spills past my lips, dripping down my chin as I feel my body go heavy, and for one terrifying moment, I’m paralyzed but still aware—of the vomit on my chin, theman dragging me towards the stairwell, the inevitability that I’m being taken somewhere and my absolute inability to do anything about it.

And then, mercifully, it all goes black.

—

The roomthat I wake up in some time later is cold.

It’s the first thing I realize when I open my eyes, even before the dryness of my mouth or the sour taste on my lips, or the fact that I’m lying on my side in a strange bed. It’s freezing cold, and my skin feels like ice?—

I’m in nothing but my underwear, on a bare mattress, with no sheets or blankets, not even a pillow. I sit bolt upright, shivering hard enough to make my teeth clack together out of both fear and cold, wrapping my arms around myself as I search the room for my clothes.

They’re nowhere to be seen. The room itself is small and bare, with only the mattress on a basic frame, a chair pushed up against one wall, and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. There’s nothing else—no windows to give me an idea of where I am, no objects I might use to try to escape or defend myself. And no clothes.

Fear rushes through me in a dizzying wave, and I shift experimentally, looking for some soreness that might tell me if the men who brought me here violated me while I was asleep. There’s nothing—not even any fresh bruises, other than the soreness in my cheek from the slap and the ones from the attack at Sal’s. My neck feels sore from the needle, but that’s all.

I have no idea what time it is. No clue how long has passed. And the last conversation Alek and I had rings painfully in my ears, reminding me that I might be very, very alone.

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