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“I have to get this off,” I blurted out, craning my body, trying to reach for a zipper, the act ripping a hole through my awareness, the pain in my side flaring for one searing moment. “Ow!” Sudden tears, they gave me no warning, just came, a drip of them down my cheek as my hands grew frantic, trying to unzip something that some sadist designed just out of reach.
“Here.” His hands soft but efficient, the relieving sound of the zipper, the loosening of the dress and I yanked at it, freeing my upper half, Brett’s quick move off the seat shedding his jacket, the smooth feel of his suit’s lining sliding around me, my arms wiggling into his sleeves. I kicked off the dress with the cheap heels and watched it settle onto the floorboard. Toed off the shoes and watched black soles and silk straps join the dress. Curled into Brett’s chest and let his arms come around me, his head dropping to mine. I was dirty, he would need to burn this jacket. This truck. Everything associated with this event.
“I love you.” I whispered the words that I had said a thousand times into my empty cell, imagining this moment, imagining his smell, his kiss, the desperate relief that I just saw in his eyes. I got all of those things and it took five minutes for me to remember to say I love you.
“Oh my God, Riley.” His hands cupped underneath my bare legs, pulled me onto his lap as he inhaled my scent and placed a long kiss against my lips. “I love you too. I love you so much.”
Riley. I had thought, for long nights in the cell, that I would never hear that name again. Had coveted thoughts of it, like a fantasy I was scared to indulge. I pulled at him, needed more of his kiss, more of his contact, more of the sound of my name on his lips.
Riley. Never again would I be subservient, lost, dead.
I was alive. Free. With Brett, his mouth warm and gentle against my own. My head spun as I tried to process it all. The hope I had held onto for so long… it had happened. I pulled off his mouth and gulped in air. Shook against the strength of his hands. For a moment I couldn’t breathe.
Never again would I be Kitten.
When Elyse disappeared, I was asleep. In my home in Fort Lauderdale, I slept right through the moment when, in a nightclub, she collapsed. Most of her bachelorette party was on the upper floor of the club, drinking martinis around a private table. Elyse and her best friend left the group to go downstairs to dance. Those nearby said that Elyse collapsed on the dance floor and was taken away by a doctor and a helpful bystander, Brittany glued to her unconscious side. Everyone assumed they were taken to a hospital; only Elyse and Brittany never made it to one. They never made it anywhere. My phone rang right before dawn, a bridesmaid’s voice nervously coming through the receiver. She let me know what had happened. I was on a plane within the hour. In a Mexican police station by 7 AM. Six hours too late.
That day cracked the foundation of my life, my soul. The day her body was found destroyed me, a piece of my being forever gone, lost into the cruelty that was this world. I thought, on that day, that I had experienced the worst loss of my life. That, if I ever crawled out of my hole of despair, I’d be a stronger man for it. That I’d be tougher, smarter.
Elyse’s death had destroyed me. Riley’s disappearance … I almost took my life in those days. Had her body turned up in the Mexican desert, I would have. The only thing that kept me alive, kept me breathing, was my mission to find and save her. I wasn’t the same man who had searched for Elyse. I was smarter, more connected, savvier. I was also more ruthless.
That night, in Puerto Vallarta, when Riley had followed me – I was buying girls. Had gone – not upstairs, as Menas had mentioned to Riley – downstairs, into the basement of the club, a giant space that housed over a hundred women. I bought thirteen that night. Climbed back up the stairs, into that salsa club, proud. Happy. Glanced at my watch as I re-entered the club. It was still early. She’d be up, waiting for me. And I suddenly couldn’t wait to see her. I didn’t know that she was already an hour away, in the trunk of that asshole’s car. I walked out of that club a naïve individual. Walked into the hotel still clueless. Didn’t even understand it when I walked into an empty hotel suite, her satellite phone on the bedside table. It took me another hour to fully comprehend it, the moment when I fully accepted it … it was a punch hard into my chest, a punch that broke through bone and gripped my heart and squeezed so hard that I physically ached. I fell onto my knees in the middle of the Puerto Vallarta police station and sobbed like a child. I broke into pieces on that dirty linoleum floor. Then I called my men.
In the nine months of Riley’s disappearance, I killed three men in my search for her. I wasn’t proud of that fact. But trust me, they were men who deserved to die. I wanted to kill this man as well, wanted nothing more than to physically rip him apart with my hands. But that would be Riley’s decision to make. I couldn’t weigh her down with my sins, wouldn’t burden her with the guilt that I would always carry.
Elyse’s disappearance hadn’t been my fault. Riley’s had. I was the sole reason she was in that salsa club. The sole reason she was alone, in that dangerous country, without protection. Nine days would have been too long, much less nine months. I didn’t know how to take that time back, didn’t know how I would love her the rest of her life without smothering her. Because, honestly, all I wanted to do, for the rest of my life, was protect her. Never leave her side. Love her. Treasure her. Marry her. Make her smile. Hear her laugh. Love her sweetly, deeply, and into forever.
I watched her sleep and wanted to touch her, but worried I would crush her with my love.
Carlos Menas made it five steps out of the building, a new slave by his side, when he was taken. The girl was put into one black SUV, he in the other, accompanied by three men. Men who had spent the last four years in Brett’s employ. Men who rescued a thousand girls from men like him. Men who had killed before, and put no value on his life.
At the house, an oceanfront mansion rented for the trip, Brett drew me a bath. Climbed in behind me and held me when I cried. Brought in a team of chefs, a doctor, and a masseuse, all of which were unnecessary. I wanted only to be in his arms, nothing else. The next morning, we climbed up the steps and onto his jet, heading straight home to my family. Jena had been right, sitting in my kitchen eons ago. The jet was twice as big, twice as luxurious as the plane I had always taken. A hundred questions and confirmations that could all wait for later. I settled into the seat, my hand in his, and didn’t know. Didn’t realize that back in Puerto Vallarta:
