Blood Red Rose (Rose and Thorn Book 1) Read online

  What felt like days later, they gave me some food. Plain, hard bread that tasted like heaven to my starving stomach.

  It felt like I was slowly starting to lose my damn mind. In the darkness, with nothing but the tapping of my foot to create some distraction, my senses were deprived and so was my body. I started to shake, the cold seeping through the floor and through my flimsy dress, making me shake with fear and anticipation as well as the freezing room. It felt like somehow, the heating in the room had changed. It was impossibly cold now. Maybe they’d turned off the heating. Maybe they’d decided I wasn’t worth saving.

  Hours later, the temperature went up again.

  Up so much I stripped my dress and lay on the cold tile, the floor the only relief in the steaming room. I felt sick, retching water, overwhelmed by the smell of ammonia and the unbearable heat. I sweated it all out, lying there a complete mess, losing touch with reality as a fever rocked my body to sleep.

  I woke up because I was freezing, and groaned when I realized what they were doing.

  It hadn’t been enough to take away the light. They had to toy with me further.

  The hatred grew inside me, bubbling from anger, ready to boil over and drown anyone who dared come close. I touched the screw in my panties, my fingertips touching the ridges and wondering when I’d get the chance to use it. It was tiny, but at least it was something.

  Seconds blended into minutes into hours into decades. I was in there a lifetime. My dream of using the screw faded slowly, but surely. Now, I was too weak to even stand on my feet. I’d made a mess, because I was too hot, too frozen, to get up and pee in the bucket. I felt on the brink of death. My fingers tried to grip uselessly at the screw, but my hand fell away, wet from perspiration and too weak to be of any use.

  I felt the life draining out of me, slowly, slowly breaking until I started crying. Slow sobs at first, and then full-blown tears.

  It was then that the door opened, and a shadowed figure appeared in the doorway.

  All my dreams of attacking him fell aside. He laughed at me, and I cried some more.

  “Finally breaking,” he said. “What a sight you are.”

  I couldn’t discern who it was. The light illuminated his silhouette, but not his face.

  My eyes felt heavy, my body felt broken.

  “Help me,” I begged him, my voice ragged from days of not speaking.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Freedom, a chance to escape – everything I’d been praying for, and I lay on the ground uselessly, like a broken doll.

  “Help me,” I repeated in a whisper, and then my eyes closed for good.

  4

  Harlow

  I woke up in the middle of a fluffy, soft cloud.

  My eyes flew open in a rush, scared and fluttering as I drank in my surroundings. The instinct I woke up with was telling me to fight, but the room I was in was saying ‘calm down’.

  The first thing I did was check for the screw.

  It was gone. All I felt was the fabric of my underwear. Someone had found it, taken it away from me. I wanted to kill them. Instead, I decided to look around.

  It was a pretty bedroom, more like a boudoir. Beautiful ivory bedding lay all around me, the sheets heavenly soft and light pink, like nothing I’d ever felt before. A chandelier hung above me, though the lights were out. Sunlight was streaming in through a large, barred bay window. And the room looked like it belonged in a magazine.

  Bookcases stacked with endless reading material, clothes hanging in neat order in an en-suite wardrobe, and a white door leading into a gorgeous pink marble bathroom. Luxury like I’d never seen, let alone felt in my previous life, and I didn’t feel worthy of it. Then, I remembered why I was there. I remembered I’d been taken, stolen. I remembered I was a captive, and my blood boiled in anger.

  I jumped off the bed, my eyes bulging when I realized I wasn’t wearing my tattered dress.

  I felt a sob threatening to rip through my chest, but I made it stay down. The longer I was alone, the better aware I could become of my surroundings. If they realized I was awake, I would have no time to explore without their supervision.

  I was wearing a floral dress, pretty and fitted on top and flared out at the bottom. I somehow looked older, maybe because of what they’d done to me and because I knew things would only get worse. Or maybe it was because of the pained, fearful expression in my eyes that almost made me look like a feral animal.

  I reached the window in three long steps. My fingers wrapped around the bars and I rattled them to no avail. No escaping this place.

  Next, I knocked on the glass through the bars, testing it, but coming up disappointed. The glass was thick – seemingly impossible to break. I sighed in exasperation, but the next second, I was already scanning the room for more clues.

  Just as I was getting ready to check out the bedroom, a voice interrupted the soft quiet of the room.

  Someone was laughing, chuckling at me. And the sound was coming from all around me.

  Confused, I ran to a wall and pressed my back against it, trying to protect myself from the unseen intruder. The voice was coming from above me, still laughing at my misfortune. It took me a few moments to realize it was coming through a speaker. There was nobody in the room with me, but when I looked up at the ceiling, I saw a white speaker accompanied by a small red dot.

  They were filming me. And somebody was watching.

  I wanted to scream, but I told myself to stay calm. I’d have to keep up my strength, so I could take on whoever was doing this to me. God, I was going to kill them for taking me. I already knew I wouldn’t sleep peacefully until they were six feet under. But in the moment, I decided to stay calm, not say a word and just wait for them to say something.

  “Good morning, little one,” the voice told me over the speaker. “I see you’ve woken up.”

  Staring into the camera, I raised a hand and flipped it off, which only made the voice chuckle again. I figured it was the man who had been in the car with me. By then, I was starting to recognize his voice, but I still had no idea what his name was or why he’d taken me.

  “Do you like your new outfit?” he asked and I growled in response, which made him sigh. “Don’t act like a wild animal, little one. You’re going to have to get used to a new set of rules here. I said, do you like your new outfit?”

  “It’s…” I fought the urge to spit out the venom I felt in the pit of my stomach. “It’s pretty.”

  “There you go.” The voice sounded pleased. “Isn’t it better when you act all nice, little one?”

  I didn’t reply. He was pushing me too hard. There was no way I was going to submit to his sick fantasy this fucking fast.

  “I won’t see you today,” the voice said.

  Was I imagining it or was there a hint of regret in his tone? What a sick fucking bastard he was.

  “But you will still have company.”

  The words made me shiver in fear, which made him chuckle again.

  “Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen to you,” he said slowly, then, after a small pause, added, “Yet.”

  I hated him. My body throbbed with the anger I felt for this stranger who’d taken me away from my life. And it had just gotten started… Finally, after years of hard work, it was starting to pay off. And now here I was, in a strange place I didn’t know and with people who wanted to harm me. How could this happen? How could I have let him take me? I should’ve put up more of a fight.

  If only I hadn’t walked home that night.

  If only I’d left with the other girls.

  If only I’d been more careful…

  “You look deep in thought, little one,” the voice said. “Worry not, like I said. You will have a woman’s company today, and I think you might make a new friend.”

  I perked up at those words. A woman? Surely she wasn’t here willingly, and surely, she would share my despair at being forced to be a prisoner. Maybe together, we could concoct a plan to get out of this pla
ce, whatever the hell it was.

  “She will be with you in about an hour,” the voice told me. “And be ready to let her do her thing. I’ll see you after.”

  The speaker crackled into nothing, but the red light on the camera was still flashing, telling me I was being recorded the whole time. It made me angry and I pursed my lips as I made my way through the room towards the en-suite bathroom. It was beautiful, the pink marble high quality and it looked like the whole bathtub, which took up most of the room, was made of a single slab of stone.

  I felt a sudden urge to undress and scrub my body clean, but a quick look up at the ceiling revealed a flashing red dot just like in the main room. So they were even filming me in the bathroom… I would have no privacy in this place. They would attempt to rip the last shred of dignity away from me.

  I spent the next hour filing systematically through everything in the room. There were no weapons – no cutlery I could use and no scissors. I found I was starving and realized it had been God knows how fucking long since I’d eaten. But I kept going, exploring the room until I finally came up empty.

  If I had enough time later, I could maybe fashion a weapon out of the wiring in the bedside lamp, or maybe from the hooks of the hangers in the closet. But with the camera’s eyes permanently on me, I felt hesitant. Would I be punished again if I tried something? I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t go back into that cell room, be treated like a violent prisoner. I would do anything – well, almost anything – to avoid it.

  There was no clock in the room, but the door clicked open a while later. A pretty woman entered, wearing a white and black maid’s uniform. She didn’t speak, didn’t even look at me as she rolled a food cart inside the room.

  “You have to help me,” I begged her, running up to her, fighting back the tears. “I’ve been kidnapped. Please, please help me get out of here!”

  Nothing, just a look in my direction and a small smile as she lifted the cloches, revealing delicacy after delicacy that made my mouth water.

  “Please!” I begged at the top of my voice. “You have to believe me, you have to help! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “I wouldn’t waste your breath.”

  A sexy, rich voice interrupted. I looked up in time to watch the maid leave the room, taking her cart with her. After a few seconds, another woman stepped into the room and locked the door behind her with a card.

  She was so beautiful it was distracting.

  Her features were incredible. Big, stunning gray eyes, a small pointed nose, and small, but incredibly plump lips. She was petite but curvy, and she wore her long, glossy dark hair in rich waves falling all the way down to her shoulders. Her voice was slightly accented.

  I was taken aback by her beauty, and I just stared at her as she approached. She wore a skin-tight black pencil skirt with a crisp white blouse and a thick leather belt around her waist. On her feet, she wore impossibly high heels I would struggle to even stand up in. She was still shorter than me though, but immeasurably more beautiful.

  “Who are you?” I asked, feeling too in awe to say another word.

  “My name is Pia,” she said simply, offering me her hand with a gracious smile.

  The way she turned it, it also seemed like she expected me to kiss it. I shook it awkwardly instead, and stared at her, waiting for her to go on. I needed her to explain. The maid was probably instructed not to talk to me, but surely this woman would show me some mercy.

  “Why don’t we sit down and have some breakfast,” she said in a friendly manner. “Maybe I can answer some of your questions.”

  She sat down at the small table in the room, daintily folding a white cloth napkin over her lap. I plopped down next to her, eyeing her suspiciously as she filled her plate.

  “Well?” she asked pleasantly. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  She cut into the French toast with precise tiny motions, and I glared at her before loading my own plate with my bare hands.

  I didn’t stop until it was filled, and then I poured a healthy dose of maple syrup all over my food. And I dug in with my fingers.

  The woman, Pia, watched me calmly, without saying a word. Her eyebrows shot up when I wiped my fingers on the beautiful floral dress, but she still didn’t say a word. Then, she started speaking as if everything was perfectly normal, and this fucked-up ritual happened every day. For all I knew, it did, and I just wasn’t privy to that kind of information yet.

  “The first thing you must understand,” she said in her husky, melodic voice. “Is that you are no longer the person you used to be. You left that woman outside. Harlow Granger?”

  My eyes shot up at the mention of my name. It had been a while since I’d heard it.

  “Forget her,” Pia said softly. “She’s dead, she’s gone. And the sooner you realize that the better off you will be.”

  So she was in on this. Part of the fucking game, just like the man who had taken me.

  I pushed my plate away, having suddenly lost my appetite. A desire to smash my plate over her head took over, but she was so ridiculously pretty I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t be responsible for destroying her masterfully put-together face.

  “The second thing,” she said, averting her eyes to pat her perfect lips with the napkin, and then folding it again over her plate. “Is that you better do as they tell you, or you will be punished.”

  I looked into her eyes, desperately searching for a sign of the girl I still was inside her. But it was all gone. Erased by their fucking brainwashing, by the stories they fed her. She truly bought this shit, and I hated them for turning a beautiful woman like her against a victim like me.

  “I pity you,” I told her, the first words I said since she’d walked into the room. “I pity you because you will never know what it means to be free.”

  “Neither will you,” she told me with a pleasant smile. “Not ever again. Now, let’s begin.”

  5

  Harlow

  The name you used outside of this house is no longer,” Pia told me with a simple smile, as if what she was saying wasn’t heartbreakingly painful. “You will receive a new name when you are sold to your new owner. Until then, you will be nameless. You are not deserving of a name until you’ve been properly trained.”

  “Sold? What the hell are you on about?”

  “Exactly what I say. You will be trained and then sold.”

  “Do you hear yourself speaking?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Seriously, do you even hear yourself? This is ridiculous. I’m not and never will be anyone’s property.”

  She gave me a beatific smile as if nothing in the world was wrong at all.

  “Like I said, the sooner you accept what’s happened, the better off you will be,” she explained simply. “Girls who do not comply with the rules don’t have the best time at the Mansion.”

  “What do you mean?” I eyed her suspiciously, my expression wary.

  “Well, you noticed the maid earlier…” A sweet smile lit up her face. She was so ridiculously beautiful it was throwing me off, and I wanted to hate her for it. For thriving in this sick environment when I already felt every bone in my body fighting what they were trying to make me do. “She can’t speak.”

  “Is she not allowed to?” I asked, my expression doubtful. Was that the worst she could offer in terms of punishment? Being told to shut up wouldn’t stop me. I would spend the rest of my time there fighting for a way out. “I don’t see how that made her break.”

  “She cannot speak,” Pia said, her eyes now sharply turning to mine. “Her tongue has been cut out and her vocal chords severed. She was a prospect here until one of the men went too rough on her. Once she’d been scarred, she couldn’t find a buyer. It was too late to let her go, so she joined the rest of the maids. None of them have tongues. But… I guess it’s a fate better than death, right?”

  She laughed melodically. She spoke of this as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if it was perfectly normal to maim wome
n and make them serve their sick needs. I want to throw up on the spot. She was just as disgusting as the man who had taken me, and I hated her even more than I did him. I promised myself she’d be one of the first people I’d turn in once I got out of that hellhole.

  “And you think that’s normal?” I snarled at her. “You’re willing to go along with this madness… and for what?”

  “To belong,” she answered, her eyes angry as she looked at me. “To belong to someone, to be a part of something greater than me, to serve a purpose.”

  “Of course,” I laughed bitterly. “Because that’s all a woman is worth in your world. Belonging to someone who is better than you. Well, I don’t know about you, but I live in the 21st century, and I don’t believe in men owning women like slaves. So, I’d appreciate it if you just left me alone.”

  “Not just yet.” Once again, her pleasant smile was back, and so was the urge to slap it off her face. “We have some work to do. Why don’t you come sit here at the vanity table so I can get a good look at you.”

  I glared at her, every fiber in my body wanting to defy her.

  “And what if I don’t?” I asked, my head held up proudly. “Will you cut my tongue out, too?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she laughed easily. “Not for a while, no. You will go back to the bad cell, though.”

  God, I hated her.

  I made myself get up and sit on the white chair in front of the vanity table. Light from outside filled the room, and I realized I hadn’t even looked at the view outside. Pia approached me with her perfectly measured, pretty steps in those sky-high heels. She lowered herself to look at my face. She was even more beautiful up close, and I hated her for that, too.

  “You have beautiful features,” she said softly. “The kind that will look pretty, even when you age.”

  “How lucky for me,” I said sarcastically. This whole ordeal was turning me into a bitter little bitch. Fortunately, it seemed Pia hadn’t been sent to punish me. I still wasn’t sure what her purpose was.