Red

C H A P T E R E I G H T

I opened my eyes, everything was dark but I could see the shadow of a man standing by the doorway. I blinked trying to put my eyes into focus but he kept his back to me and right now nothing was clear.

“Ace?” I called out. At the mere mention of his name the figure froze, I could see every muscle of his back clench. He half turned his face but there was still a darkness to him and although I could see he wasn’t wearing his mask I couldn’t see his features clearly. “Why do you call me red?”

“I see Red was the song playing when you gave me the lap dance.” His deep voice replied.

“Oh.” I whispered into the darkness.

“Get some sleep.” He walked out and closed the door. My eyelids closed and the world faded away.

———

Everything was dark and cold, they had me laying on a dirty mattress for days. It was just dumped on a hard, concrete floor. Mommy hadn’t moved for two days. She lay perfectly still surrounded by her own blood.

“Mommy” I tried again, sitting next to her and clutching her cold hand. She looked different now, a grey complexion with lips that almost looked black, she no longer smelt of freshly washed clothes. “You need to wake up, father will get us out of here and then you can shower.” I told her, pushing on her hard, cold body slightly with my small hand.

She didn’t respond. She never does.

The doors flung open and the man walked in, I didn’t like him. He hurt mommy real bad. She told me she was frightened of him and made sure I knew to do everything that he said. He made her cry. He made her so poorly she didn’t want to wake up, not even for me. I sat in front of mommy, protecting her from this evil man. He laughed.

“Brave little thing aintcha?” He wasn’t getting to mommy, not this time. I was ready to fight him.

He stomped over to me and grabbed hold of my arm, holding me tight enough to leave a bruise from his grip. He tugged me away from my mom and then highered a gun to her face, pulling the trigger only once.

BANG!

I sat up in a pool of my own cold sweat, heart pounding erratically.

“Easy.” His voice spoke next to me, shoving my shoulders to lay me back down.

“I’m drowsy and disoriented.” I tried to move my legs, but they were too heavy. “I can’t move, why can’t I move?”

“I drugged you.” He backed away from the bed and sat in a lone chair in the darkest corner. I couldn’t see him properly but I knew the sound of his voice.

I blinked in my surroundings. My hands felt my face, my mask was still on and I was laying in a dark room in the worlds most comfiest bed.

“My neck.” I felt the throbbing pain at the base of my skull. There was a gauze bandaid over it. “What did you do to me?”

“Whatever the hell I wanted.” He replied, no emotion what-so-ever.

I wiggled my limbs in the bed, only now feeling that my feet were tied tightly.

“I’m going to come closer, don’t fight me okay? You don’t have the strength and you’ll end up doing yourself more damage.”

He pressed a button on a small remote and the blinds started electronically opening. I cowered down like a burning vampire, squinting at the overly-showy view of manhattan’s skyline. He had a floor to ceiling window, a whole glass wall.

“Yeah, your senses are a little hyper sensitive right now.” He chuckled, carelessly.

“Why am I here Ace?”

“Because I don’t trust you.”

He walked over to the gigantic bed I lay on and lifted the pillow from beneath my head. It was covered with a huge patch of blood. He smiled at me sinisterly and then stripped the pillowcase away.

“What did you do to me?”

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me into a sitting position. I felt dizzy, the whole room a blur and I thought for a second I was going to pass out. He rested my head against his chest and moved strands of hair away from my neck.

I felt him peel back the bandaid, dab the area with something cold and then replace the bandaid with a new one. The glass on the bedside table was now filled with red cotton wool balls.

“You’re healing good.” He stated. “I gotta go Red, but look.” He pointed up to the security cameras in every corner. “They’re in every room, watching you always.” His hands set to work untying my feet and I tried to kick out but I still use my legs. Ace laughed knowing my attempts.

“It’s a paralytic drug. It will take a few hours to get out of your system completely. I suggest you sleep until then, the feeling in your feet is the last thing that will come back. I will get you some water before I leave and I’ll come back tonight to make sure you’re not dead.”

I watched him leave the room with only the movement from my eyes.

“Get some rest.” He parted me with.

I closed my eyes, focusing all my energy into wiggling my toes. Seeing it with my mind, believing I could do it with my strength. To the camera, I looked to be sleeping but I tirelessly worked hard to free myself from this paralytic state.

It took a few hours before the drugs wore off and I was able to stand on my own two feet, albeit wobbly but still able.

The floor beneath my feet was glossy, navy marble with large flakes of glitter to give it a starry night appearance. I gripped it tightly with my bare feet, letting it anchor me.

Shakily I took small steps into his en-suite and scooped my hair, trying to see impossibly see the back of my neck in the mirror but it was a blind spot. Gently I peeled back the bandaid and felt with my fingers. My skin had been stitched up.

Ace had sliced open the nape of my neck and did something to it. I pushed in with my fingers, silently absorbing a world of pain. But I could feel something. A foreign object wedged inside my skin.

A tracker? Did he chip me like a fucking dog?

Branding? Did he do this to all his men and women?Audio device? Could he now listen to anything I said?

Shit, what the fuck did Ace do to me?

I made my way into the main room of this apartment. It was pristine and extravagant. The walls were just painted white but huge art canvas hung in every free space, adding colour and dynamic to the apartment. Everything was organised and uniformed. The furniture was minimalist and there was nothing personal laying around - like photographs or possessions.

In my short sweep of the room I didn’t note a single weapon but one of the framed paintings hung three millimetres away from the wall. This meant there was a safe or something hidden behind it.

To the cameras, I was admiring the art.

But I was figuring out how I could destroy the door and load myself up with ammo.

I searched the kitchen cupboards and drawers, they were all empty like nobody actually lived here. This was decoy apartment.

I needed something. A knife, a letter opener, a pen, something sharp enough to slice through flesh and get this object out of my body.

I returned back to the bedroom, his whole apartment smelt of freshly laundered clothes. Clean and brand new. I opened the drawers on his bedside table, rooting through the contents. Nothing but dust.

His closet was empty too, not a single sock in sight. However he had dressed me in one of his basic T-shirts before slicing me open and putting me to bed.

I pulled open his medicine cabinet, expecting it to be empty like everywhere else except there was one small orange container. It read ′take one daily for heart defect.′

“Honey I’m home.” He shouted from the main room. “Good, you’re on your feet. I brought dinner.” He unloaded food tubs out of a plastic bag and set them down on the kitchen counter. “Come eat.”

“I’m not hungry.” I stood in the doorway of his bedroom.

“And I’m not asking, come fucking eat.” I walked over to him and sat down at the table. He didn’t look at me, he just kept unloading his bags.

He set a plastic knife down and continued removing the lids. Gingerly, I inched the knife into my hand and hid it on my lap.

“How do I know you haven’t poisoned this food?” He laughed.

“You don’t.” He answered with amusement. “But would I go to the great lengths of fitting your neck with an exploding device if I was only going to poison you anyway?”

“What?!” I exclaimed, grabbing the nape of my neck in horror. “You put a bomb in my neck?”

“That’s right Red, I could make you explode with just the touch of a button, anywhere, anytime.” He shovelled dumplings into his mouth and chewed like a fucking psychopath. I sat incredibly still, not wanting to move a muscle.

I clutched my hand around the plastic knife. It was blunt and would likely snap before penetrating anything but if it snapped in just the right way I might be able to get it deep enough into his neck to bleed out his artery.

“Eat.” He demanded.

“Why?” I asked, he ate another dumpling.

“Why, what?”

“Why did you do that to me?” He dropped his plastic fork and leaned forward on the table, clasping his hands together.

“I don’t know who the fuck you are or what you want but I’m the fucking don. I’m up against two families and have a whole empire of my own to run. You think I’ve got time for shitty lone wolves like yourself?”

“So why not just kill me, why hold me hostage under your command?” He smiled.

“For fun?”

“Fun?” I repeated.

“Simply because Red, I enjoy the hunt. Why do you think we wear these masks and use no real names. We both know I could find out everything there is to know about you in under five minutes. Life is better with a little mystery, don’t you think?”

“What makes you so sure I’m not just another girl brought in from the street.”

“You Red, are fearless.” He ate another dumpling and then wiped his mouth on a napkin. “You stand up to my men and they listen. You’re not afraid to look at me. You can fight. And you know what?

I like that, it’s fun. Adds some depth to my day. I’ll play, I like games but I also need to know that if you ever become an actual threat to me, if you ever cross me, I can eliminate you in a second.”