The men approached and once they were within close proximity, the older man reached out his hand as if to shake hers. Maddy wiped her hand down the side of her gown to remove the moisture on her palms before reaching over to accept. As soon as they touched, his grip tightened around her hand and his smile dripped with malice.
“Good evening, Ms. Clark,” he said. “I wanted to introduce myself to you and let you know how impressed I was by your performance.” The words were polite, but there was an undertone of cruelty. Madeleine’s heart pounded against her chest as she forced a smile.
Her voice was laced with trepidation when she responded, “Thank you. I believe it was one of the best I’ve given to date. Are you a fan?”
She attempted to pull her hand from his grasp, but his grip tightened in response. He pulled in closer and said, “I have not always been a fan, but I came here tonight because my son has a huge appreciation for you. His birthday is coming up, you see, and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind giving him a private performance.” His eyes seemed to darken as he spoke and the two men behind him moved so that they were on either side of Maddy. Suddenly, their hands came up, grabbing her arms. Before she could react, one of the guards covered her mouth so that she could not scream.
The man’s smile faded once his guards had her secured. “There is no need to struggle, Ms. Clark. It won’t do you any good.” With that, the man turned and started making his way back to his car. One guard lifted Maddy while the other retrieved her instrument. She screamed into the guard’s hand, but knew that there was no one around to hear her pleas for help. She was dragged to the car and shoved into the back while the other guard took her instrument to the trunk.
Desperately kicking and flailing her arms, she attempted to break free, but once she was placed in the car, more hands grabbed onto her, and a cloth bag was thrust over her head. She felt rope being tied around her arms and legs. Finally, something hard hit her in the back of the head, and her body instantly went limp. Madeleine realized, as the blackness slipped in and stripped her from consciousness, that tonight, the stage was not what she needed to fear.
Chapter Two
Madeleine woke up to discover herself locked inside a dark room. Groggy and slow moving, her head was pounding and she was disoriented from the lack of light. The normal symptoms of panic were oddly absent; her mind struggled from the lack of adrenaline pumping through her body. Slowly, she moved her hand to her head and pondered how her body could feel so weightless, but unusually heavy at the same time. As she tested her ability to move, the squeak of metal could be heard. She reached down to find what felt like canvas pulled taut beneath her. Her hand slid across the canvas, the sound reminding her of the same serrated harmonic you would achieve by lightly sliding your finger along the string of an instrument. The sound was oddly comforting in its familiarity. Abruptly, her hand came upon a cold metal bar, to which the canvas was attached, and Maddy deduced that she was lying on a simple cot.
Rolling onto her back, she felt something cold against her leg. Slowly, she pulled her leg up to investigate and discovered a metal shackle locked around her ankle. She reached down and gave the chain a hard tug and quickly determined that the binding was secure.
She laid back down, the throbbing in her head increasing from her movement. Her thoughts were slow and jumbled and she felt numb in some areas, while tingly in others. It was difficult to move her appendages and oddly, she felt like giggling. As she laid there in confusion, her mind traipsed back to her performance at the concert hall. Her thoughts briefly touched upon events from that evening: the solo performance; Jeremy’s smiling eyes; the green-eyed stranger; and finally, the older gentleman in the parking lot. She remembered being grabbed and forcefully shoved into the back of a limousine. Her nerves started to regain feeling, the synapsis in her brain communicating once again. Adrenaline began to finally wind its way through her veins while fear tugged at even the deepest recesses of her mind.
She opened her mouth to scream, but her throat was so dry and raw that she couldn’t get out much more than a raspy whisper. She wondered if this was the type of nightmare where she was paralyzed, unable to free herself from some unseen force. Her body felt languid and she wondered if she’d been drugged or if this was an aftereffect of the blow to her head. A cold breeze caressed and prickled her skin. Her hand reached to investigate, delivering the realization that she had been stripped of her clothes.
She wanted to be strong. She wanted to think that she was adjusted well enough to be able to face her circumstances with determination and courage. But as understanding seeped into her mind, fear consumed her, leaving her feeling helpless, reducing her to tears. Although it’s easy to scream for a victim to run or fight when you see them in a movie or read about them in a book, the futility of the situation is far more evident when you find yourself in their place. Maddy curled herself into a tight ball; her body shook as she sobbed. The heat from her tears slowly cooled, leaving icy trails from the paths they traveled down her cheeks.
After regaining consciousness, time snuck by as Madeleine lay unaware of its passage. The lack of light or sensory stimulation kept her mind stagnant and confused. Second, minutes, hours or days could have passed and she wouldn’t have known. Desperate for sound, she kicked out her leg at times just to hear the rattle of the chain, or she would move on the cot to hear the thin aluminum bars groan from her weight. Any noise was welcome within the suffocating silence of her dark space. At some point, her eyes dried up and she reached a numb state. She wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t happy, she wasn’t sad; she just was. Her mind wandered from why she’d been captured, to the identity of her abductors, and on to the question of their intentions. But even those thoughts were smothered under the weight of the hopelessness she felt.
As her mind aimlessly drifted, a solitary note lightly played within the recesses of her mind. Like a small glimmer of light and warmth, Maddy chased the note within her thoughts as it grew in volume and intensity. That note slowly changed into another, and then, blessedly, another. She tried to let herself be absorbed in the haunting melody of the cello’s song that played within the confines of her imagination; an escape from the tragic circumstances of the present. She was most likely hallucinating, but it didn’t matter. The song was a gift, a distraction, and she was swept up in the feelings it elicited. Her body floated with the waves of sound as it rose and fell. At times it was so loud, it caused her heart rate to increase with its intensity, but when it dipped back down to only a slight, soft reverberation, she felt like she was sinking into nothingness with its threatened absence. Her breathing began to keep time with the tempo of the melody. She became the music, losing herself within the ethereal plane it produced.
One song gracefully ended, allowing another to begin. Each piece, wrapped within melancholy and despondency; but the absolute perfection of the harmony within the notes, the sharps and the flats, combined with everything in between, added beauty to the evocative and emotional depths of that sadness. Was this her soul speaking to her from within? Or had she simply lost her mind to the environment that surrounded her? In truth, the cause of the music didn’t really matter; the freedom she found within it was the only thing for which she cared.
As she continued to be carried within a musically induced trance, a sliver of light appeared before her. It was distant and faint and she blinked repeatedly, thinking visual illusions had now joined her auditory manifestations. She held her hand out above her, sweeping it along as she created the music from air. Her other hand moved as if playing an instrument that did not truly exist. She didn’t pay much attention as that sliver of light became wider and she all but ignored the creaking hinges as a door was being opened. Still lost in her fantasy, she didn’t notice as a large man entered through that door and walked over to her. A beam of light hit her face just before the force of the man’s hand rocked her head sideways.
“Snap out of it, bitch!” he yelled.
She was instantly remo
ved from her reverie and her jaw stung from the impact of the slap across her face. Tears sprang from her eyes and her mind was suddenly stripped of any happiness she’d gained in her delusional state. Before she could react, a large hand painfully gripped her arm and pulled her up from the cot. The chain around her ankle rattled as she was forced to stand; her legs threatened to give out from their lack of use.
Another vicious slap impacted with her face and the force of it knocked her back. Her neck craned and her head spun in the direction of the blow.
“You need to wake the fuck up. It’s almost time for the party.” The man’s voice was rough and menacing and it was followed by a sickening chuckle. Maddy instantly recoiled at the sound, but his grip around her arm was so tight, there was no means for her to escape.
As her body reawakened, her bladder suddenly screamed with the need to release. She wasn’t able to hold it in the vertical position she now found herself and a warm trail dribbled down her leg.
The beam of the man’s flashlight traveled down her body, stopping suddenly on the puddle forming beneath her. “What the fuck?! You sick bitch!” Maddy was thrown back suddenly, landing in the urine that now spread along the floor. She watched the beam of the flashlight as the man turned and left the room; closing the door, he returned her to the pitch-black darkness. Multiple nerves called for her attention: her head and neck ached from being struck in the face; her body retched from being soaked in her own foul-smelling fluid; and a sharp pain shot through her hips and back from being thrown to the ground. Before she could process anything more, the door once again flew open and Madeleine was struck with the ice-cold spray of a fire hose.
A scream tore out from her throat as the deluge of water bore down on her body. The icy temperature of the water only adding to the pain caused by the strength of the hose’s spray; she felt like someone was dragging razorblades across her skin. Within minutes the onslaught of frigid water stopped, but her skin continued to sting. Her body began trembling, now completely soaked, in the freezing cold of the room. The door closed and she was consumed, yet again, by the void and unrelenting darkness. Her arms folded across her chest in a pathetic attempt to warm herself as she sank to the floor.
The door swung open again, but this time, a different man entered. He was backlit for the most part, shadows hid the discernible features of his face, but she could see that this man’s frame was thinner than the first. His shoes slowly clicked as he walked, finally stopping just short of the puddle of water that surrounded her.
“Are you going to continue sitting there crying?” he asked. “Or are you going to be a good girl and get up to follow me? I’ll be extremely disappointed if I have to get my shoes wet grabbing ahold of you and forcing you up.”
His voice was smoother than the first man’s, almost consoling in the depth of its tone. The only response she could manage to his words was the chattering of her teeth.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Cricket, are you going to get up on your own, or do I need to force you?”
Cricket??
Her body was frozen … in motion and temperature … and she wasn’t able to respond to him or the odd name with which he’d referred to her. Even if she had been able to respond: What do you say to a strange man who’s been holding you captive? It’s not exactly like a person can simply blurt out ‘No, thanks, but I’m happy sitting here freezing on the wet concrete floor.’ It didn’t matter. Fear was constricting her body in such a way that even an attempt at movement or response would be feigned at best.
The man let out an exasperated sigh, “I guess we’ll do this your way.” Then he called for someone outside the room, “Marcus!”
Her body flinched when he raised his voice, almost as if, subconsciously, she knew what was about to happen. As feared, the first man came lumbering back through the door. A whimper escaped her trembling lips as she shook her head and cowered back from his approach.
“No.” Her voice was whisper soft and barely discernible, even to herself.
“Ah, she speaks. It’s a miracle.” His droll words were spoken with obvious condescension. “Stand, Cricket, or else Marcus here will have to assist you.”
She had no other choice but to do as the man ordered. Yes, technically, she could resist, but the last thing she wanted was for Marcus to touch her again. She peered up at the backlit silhouettes of the men standing above her. Her hair hung in damp clumps in her face, which, thankfully, was long enough to hide her breasts. Uncurling herself from the ball she’d formed on the floor, Maddy pushed herself up, despite the disputes of her body and mind. She stood on shaky legs and nearly fell over from the lack of muscle strength. Once she was standing, the smaller of the two men stepped around the puddle and gently took her arm in his hand.
“Marcus, leave us,” he said.
The large man let out a huff at having been dismissed, but turned around and did as he was told.
She was pulled closer toward the door, her legs resisting the movement. Pulling a key from his pocket, the man bent down to remove the shackle from her leg. Once she was free, he forcefully shoved her toward the door. Maddy stumbled over her own feet and the man’s grip tightened around her arm to keep her from falling. Tears began pricking at her eyes and she considered fighting back. Realizing that any fight she could put up would be a weak attempt in her condition, the uselessness of such an effort was not lost on her. She was a gentle person. She played music, that’s ALL she’d done; she began to lament the life experiences she passed up as she realized the likelihood of ever experiencing them had been taken from her.
As they neared the door, the man stopped and moved in closer to her. Maddy flinched back as his grip tightened, but he pulled her in closer, so that he could speak softly into her ear. With a business-like tone, he said, “Listen, Cricket, once we walk through that door, your acts at resistance need to stop. I’m somewhat more forgiving than your Master will be and I’m certainly more patient than his father. If you want to make it through this with the least amount of pain possible, I suggest you do as you are told without fighting. You will not win against them, so you need to accept your circumstances and make the best of it.”
The grit in her voice sounded as painful as it felt when she asked, “W-why … why are you doing this to me?”
He took a moment to consider his words, before responding, “This is your fate, Cricket. Asking why isn’t going to do anything for you except make that fate a much more painful journey. You need to learn the rules of your position and learn them quickly if you want to make a smoother transition into your new role.”
“And what is my role?” she asked. Her voice was stronger this time and she would have been glaring at him, if she could actually see him.
Pulling her close once again, he warned. “I will tell you this one more time: asking questions will only make this more difficult for you to survive … ”
Maddy flinched at the word ‘survive’; it was an open confirmation that her life was endangered. Her mind could no longer hide behind the mask of denial that it used to defend her sanity.
“ … but maybe, it will help you to know this sooner, rather than later. You are a slave. You caught the attention of the man to whom you now belong. You are to do as you are told without asking questions and you are to follow instructions exactly as they are given. Obedience is paramount from this point further. Any infraction on your part will provoke dire circumstances. Do you understand?”
She was able to nod her head in response, even though the rest of her was paralyzed by the realization that she was now a missing person. She’d seen notices about them all the time: on the news, in the paper, on the internet, and on those flyers she received in the mail. Never had she imagined she would become that random face plastered across the media. Those things always happened to someone else; someone less careful than her; someone less scared of life outside.
The man must have been satisfied with her silence because he turned and moved swiftly to the door,
dragging her along as he walked. The door swung open and she was momentarily blinded as he dragged her out from the darkness and into the light.
Chapter Three
The girl looked like shit and Xander was instantly pissed that she would need to be cleaned up before she could be presented. Her skin was literally blue from having been sprayed down in that meat locker they called a room. He felt sorry for her as he watched her feet trip over themselves, desperately attempting to match his pace. He wanted to be kind and slow down to accommodate her weakened condition, but his kindness would only work against her in the end. She needed to learn now that she was no longer a free person, and that she should no longer expect compassion or understanding from any of her superiors.
Xander knew Aaron wasn’t going to be pleased with this turn of events and he was not looking forward to Aaron’s reaction when his new slave was discovered. If Aaron were to have his way, his birthday would have been forgotten. He would have been left alone to tend to his own interests. Unfortunately, his father, Joseph Carmichael — also known as the head of this Estate — was a cruel bastard and had learned to take anything of enjoyment to Aaron and turn it into something dark and disturbing. It was a subtle manipulation tactic on his part, and Aaron was powerless to fight against it while his father still held the reigns.
Xander’s eyes couldn’t help but take in the small girl walking ahead of him. He inwardly chuckled at the irony that such a little person would have absolute mastery over an instrument that was damn near the same size as her. Unfortunately, it was that very same talent that caught Aaron’s attention. Xander had to admit, Cricket was beautiful. Even with her small stature, her body was a sight to behold with the perfectly proportioned curves of her chest and her ass. If a man had to have a slave, she was definitely not one to be passed up. Regardless, he worried for her. Even though Aaron never intended to enslave her, he wouldn’t exactly be the type to set her free. No concessions would be given to this little beauty and he knew Aaron would not stand for any questions or rebellion on her part. Aaron was a good man, but lacked the patience it required to train a decent slave. Believing that Cricket would, most likely, be passed to him for training, he decided to pity her this one time and prepare her for what was to come.