Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 44321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
How dare he, but then, what did she expect? They had taken her against her will, and now she was at their mercy. After she had finished using the toilet, he allowed her to wash her hands, and then back down to her cell she went, chained up, and left alone.
The first day in her cell, she tested how far she could get from her bed. Exactly five steps. That was all she was allowed. Five tiny steps.
She divided her time between laying down on the bed, sitting on the floor, and then slowly walking around. Several hours of doing this was weighing on her mind, driving her crazy, and she found it hard to accept this was happening.
Faith held it all inside. Not once did she freak out, start throwing furniture, not that there was a lot to throw—a single mattress and a bed frame, that was all.
Staring at the floor, she had a horrible feeling he would have left her alone in the cell with nothing and found some way of chaining her up. So, like a good little prisoner, she sat on her bed, on the floor, or walked the small distance she had been given grace.
Brute kept coming down every three hours or so, to escort her to the bathroom. She had figured out his name by overhearing people coming into the basement. Several men and women had entered and left. They didn’t touch her cell, and she had to wonder if they were even aware of how clear it was to hear. She doubted it.
By the end of the second day, she felt gross.
It had now been three days since she last showered, seeing as she didn’t get the chance to do so before her date with Rat Boy Pete, as he was referred to.
Then she’d been taken, and now two days later, she was pretty sure she smelled. She wasn’t sure if the rancid smell was herself or something else. By the end of that second day, she had a horrible feeling she was going to be close to begging.
Her dinner was brought down, a couple of slices of pizza that tasted like cardboard. She was used to eating crappy food as she’d grown up with her mother’s cooking, and that hadn’t been good at all. Beverly Dawson had been more interested in trying to garner the attention of Nikki Golubev and Sergey Golubev to even care how to cook or clean house.
To her mother, taking care of her home was an afterthought. Whenever she did get to spend time with her mother, it was often spent with Beverly daydreaming about what could have been. The people she could have commanded. The fear they would have had because of who her husband was.
Instead, Beverly was nothing. She had been passed over time and time again. She didn’t get any respect.
The door to her cell opened and Faith looked over to see Brute stepping into her room.
“May I shower?” she asked.
He burst out laughing. “You want to shower?”
“Yes.”
He tutted.
“You’re not going to allow me to shower?” she asked.
“Sweetheart, this isn’t a hotel.”
She sighed. “What have I ever done to you?”
“You’ve done nothing to me, but I have it on good word that you’re one of Sergey’s favorites.”
This made her laugh. “No, I’m not.”
“Really, so he doesn’t come and check up on you, give your mother money to help provide for you?”
“I don’t live with my mom.”
Brute smiled even wider. “So he gives your mother money to keep her out of your life. Faith Dawson lives a separate life from the one her family is associated with. You work at a small artisan food shop and have been doing so since you were eighteen. You help them at local food markets, and serve at the shop. You moved into your small apartment in a very nice neighborhood when you were twenty years old.”
She had grown tired of her mother’s constant lashing out and screaming fits. At two in the morning, Beverly, drunk, would blame her for all her life’s problems.
Faith loved her mother, but there were limits to what she was prepared to accept. She didn’t know if that made her a bad person or not, but she just couldn’t take anymore.
“Do you know who owns that building you live in?” Brute asked.
“No.”
He chuckled. “Your grandfather does.”
“I had no idea.” And she didn’t. She had found the rental advertisement in the paper and phoned, hoping it wasn’t taken but figuring it was. Then, when she got the call to say it hadn’t been taken, she had gone to see it and agreed to the terms.
Now, as she looked back, the rental had been within her price range. She thought because it was a slightly smaller apartment than the others within the block, but now she knew it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with who owned it.