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“Did you hear me, Kayla?” Doctor Eric Collins calls, his smile as soft as his crystal-blue eyes. “Do you need a minute?”
No. I need a new fucking life. Think you can help with that?
But of course, I don’t say that. Kayla is nice to people. She doesn’t talk like that. Doesn’t let anyone see what’s truly behind her pretty mask.
A flush creeps across my cheeks, for losing myself for a moment and forgetting where I am: in his office at Helping Hand.
“It’s a lot to process,” he goes on. “The things that are happening are bound to be triggering for you, and you need to be able to talk about them.”
I give him a tight-lipped smile, but I snicker to myself.
Yeah, murders are definitely triggering for people like me, especially when there’s a damn serial killer on the loose, raping and killing women.
“I can understand if speaking to me about this is hard. So if you prefer a female therapist, I can refer you to someone else.”
Helping Hand has a bunch of them on staff, but he’s the one I connected with. I don’t know why. Maybe because he didn’t push like the other two I tried out did. He gave me space to talk as much or as little as I wanted. He has a kindness to him, and I almost forgot men can be kind. It’s been so long since I met one like that, so when I was in his office and felt this ease, I chose him.
My eyes find his, and I let out a deep sigh. “It’s not about who I talk to. It’s talking about it at all that’s the problem.”
He nods and lifts his black frames up the bridge of his nose. Dr. Collins has been as helpful as he possibly can be. Providing me with techniques to deal with my anxiety and panic attacks, giving me a safe space where I can tell him my worst thoughts. And he’s heard them all—the things I wish I could do to those men if I had the chance. He just listens and writes his notes on that yellow notepad he carries with him. But I don’t let him know all my thoughts. Those are mine, and no one has a claim to them.
Maybe that’s why therapy sucks for me. I can’t really open up. I can’t be myself. Not with anyone. Not even with my friends, which is odd since they know exactly what I went through. They went through it too. But unlike me, they’re managing. They’re living their lives. Sure, they’re hurting in their own way, but not like me. I’m glad about that, though. They should be happy.
But when willIbe happy?
Elsie’s with Michael Marino, the man whose car she escaped into after she ran away from our traffickers. He’s also the head of the Messina crime family. Yeah, I know. Why would she ever want to get involved with the Mafia after what they did to us?
But it wasn’t them. They’re nothing like the Bianchis. Everyone hated those bastards. They were rotten fruit, and no one mourned their deaths.
Michael, for all his flaws, is good to her, and together with his six-year-old daughter, Sophia, they’re a family.
I envy that.
What kind of person envies her friends for falling in love? But I do. I wonder how it feels to even trust a man. To let him touch you and do all the things those men did to us without it being ugly and cruel.
Tears sting my eyes, and I grind my molars to stop the aching.
But I’m not dead. I feel things. I want things. And some of them, I don’t even understand. Like how I want to be subdued. Thrown on the ground and fucked like an animal.
Disgust curls in my gut even as arousal grows between my thighs.
Maybe I’m a monster too. Maybe that’s what I’ve become.
“How about we start at the beginning again?” the doctor says.
My attention zeroes in on him because I know what he’s going to ask. What he always asks.
“Tell me about the first time you were taken.”
As soon as those words leave his mouth, my stomach heaves, because I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to remember the time I was ripped from my family and thrown into a world far uglier than I ever realized.
“Isn’t she pretty, boss?” The man with the yellow-stained teeth grins at Agnelo Bianchi, the older man beside him. The one I know to be in charge of the girls and the children.
“Why is she still dressed?” He pops a brow, his brown eyes dark and dirty.
Simultaneously, his mouth curls and I start to tremble and whimper, tears aching behind my eyes.
Please don’t touch me. Please let me go.
