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Everyone turned toward me, including Conrad.
“Dr. Davenport leaves for California in two days, and he needs his wife to be with him.” Mrs. Ivory’s jaw ticked as she looked at me.
“Okay.” I nodded and avoided her gaze. That meant Bradley’s sister would be leaving here. What was his plan? Would he try to escape? Would he try to save her?
But then I recalled what he had said to her. He said he tried everything.
There was no way out of here. We all had a one-way ticket to hell, and I was starting to realize that the ones who would eventually leave were just going into a different side of it.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Bradley and I walked back to our wing in silence. I had a multitude of things I wanted to say to him—millions of questions to ask him, comforting statements to say to him—but I took one look at him and knew that the best thing I could do was be silent and let him process the horrors he was faced with just moments ago.
We got back to my room and the door slid open. Bradley kept his eyes on the floor as I walked inside. “Bradley, will you come inside for a minute?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer but took two steps forward as the door slid shut behind him.
His eyes lifted, and I could see the tinges of red from what had to be him doing everything in his power to not breakdown.
“What’s her name?” I asked and put my palms out in between us.
Placing his hands into mine, he replied. “Daisy.”
“Daisy… that’s so pretty.” I offered a small smile as he sighed and held my hands. “How can we save her?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Demi, I’ve been here for years, ever since Daisy was sold.” He closed his eyes. “They hired me knowing I’d never leave because they told me if I tried anything, they’d slaughter her in front of my eyes. So, I stayed; I watched her suffer, I watched them torture her. But I also watched her breathe and knew she had a heartbeat.”
“Who sold her?”
“My mom sold her to a man named Trent Smith. We’re originally from Tennessee, and he’s the largest trafficker in the state.”
Trent… Smith?
“How… how is that possible?”
Bradley’s forehead creased as his eyes drooped slightly. “Demi… none of this was a coincidence. Trent Smith works for Ian Ivory. Just like a butcher has an animal-supplier; Ian Ivory has a supplier for trafficked women.”
Backing away from Bradley, I began to pant with my chest constricting. “No…” I shook my head with tears running down my cheeks. “I saw the ad, the listing. I applied for this job. Raina…” I paused, thinking about how Raina just so happened to be driving exactly where I was.
“Raina dropped that paper off to your motel room in hopes that’d make the process easier for you. Raina was paid to follow you and pick you up. Raina is basically the Ivory’s adoptive daughter, and her husband Jax once worked here.”
“How’d they escape? How did they manage to not tell anyone about what’s happening here?”
“Demi, you just don’t get it.” Bradley rubbed his forehead as if it were aching. “It’s not white-therapy; it’s white-torture. We all went through it. You’re the first they haven’t done it to in years. For two years, we all lived in those sound-proof rooms, eating nothing but plain white food. No sounds, no color, no stimulation. It stripped us of emotion. It made us completely submissive and devoted to this family.”
“But you don’t seem submissive. You seem like you’re just pretending so you could be here for Daisy?”
“I can’t imagine leaving this place. I’m messed up, Demi. I wanted to help Daisy escape, but thought I’d probably stay here and work for the family. Because if they caught me, they’d put me back into a cage. No one speaks to you, you hear no noise, no sounds, you see no color or anything. They shave your head and put you in all-white. You stare at four white walls all day and eat white food so your senses are depleted.”
Fear churned inside of me as my legs trembled and I forced myself to sit down. “Why do they do this?”
“Because they need staff. Loyal staff who will help them with their business. They sell these women as mail-order brides essentially, and their wait list is filled with the world’s richest men. Each woman is guaranteed to be completely obedient, subservient, and designed to be exactly what that man wants. Each woman sells for one to three million dollars.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. This had to be some sick nightmare. I pinched my skin and flinched when my nails dug into my flesh hard enough for me to know this was reality.
“Trent… knows I’m here?” I began looking around the room wildly, terrified that the man who made me kill my sister was here waiting to kill me, too.
