Page 72 of The Voice We Find

“Please don’t hurt me,” I try again. “I’m—”

“I saidshut up!” A hot jolt of pain zings through my spine as I fall to my knees in front of the cellar’s entrance, panting hard.

The thick redwood door is a recent addition of my father’s, as is the security feature on the outside to keep my dad’s most prized and valuable possessions from walking out unattended from their locked display cases. The man behind me enters the code without hesitation.

The locks release.

“Get up.”

I struggle to engage my feet beneath me, and he pulls my hair until I’m standing. I cry out, and it’s then I note the wet warmth between my legs, soaking through my pants.

He still has a hold of my ponytail when he whispers into my ear, “Scream all you want down here,Principessa. Nobody will hear you.”

He shoves me inside my family’s cellar, where I stumble onto shattered glass. The shards slice through the denim covering my knees. But at the sound of the automatic door closing behind me, I spin to find the retreating back of my captor.

“Wait, please,” I sob. “Please don’t leave me down here.”

The tomb seals and locks me in from the outside. And then the power is cut. The security lights flicker off, and soon I’m plunged into a darkness so thick it seems to seep into my soul.

I scream for help until my voice is raw. And then until I have no voice left at all.

Someone is singing. No, someone is humming.

A smooth, melodic baritone taps on the walls of my subconscious, coaxing my eyes open as I work to make sense of the world around me. My head is propped on a throw pillow, my legs curled into the back cushions of a couch, and my spine is being played like piano keys by fingers that don’t belong to me.

Shadows flicker on the ceiling from a light source I can’t see frommy current angle. And it’s then I remember. The storm. The power outage. The panic.

August.

Groggily, I sit upright, my head throbbing something fierce at the sudden change in orientation.

“Easy there,” August says, steadying my arm.

I twist on the cushion until my feet are firmly planted on the floor, hoping to simultaneously ground myself and delay the mortification sure to come. It’s already seeping in. I slap my hands over my face and groan.

“I’m so embarrassed. You must think I’m a total freak—and maybe that’s exactly what I am. But I’m also horrified that you—”

“Sophie.” The pained way he says my name cuts off my words. I don’t want to look at him, but it’s clear that’s exactly what he wants from me when he reaches for my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “You’re safe. That’s the only thing I care about. The only thing that matters.”

Time slows again as his words burrow into my heart, and even though it’s difficult to look him in the eye, I do.

“I owe you an explanation,” I say.

“No, sweetheart,” he counters as he runs his thumb along the back of my hand. “You don’t owe me anything you’re not ready to give.”

The threat of overexposure is a current that runs through each of my limbs, my core, my heart. And I’m certain that if August were anyone else, I would take the out he’s so graciously offered and push this decade-old trauma down deep where it belongs.

Until the next time it surfaces, that is.This thought is immediately followed by another.Haven’t my captors stolen enough from me?

The answer resounds inside my head as I study the patience etched in August’s expression. I drop my gaze to our joined hands, drawing from his strength as I open my mouth to tell a story that sounds like fiction but is as real as the scar tissue on my knees.

On the tail end of a long exhale, I do my best to summarize the nightmare I’ve failed to outrun for the last ten years.

“When I was sixteen, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time....” I begin.

August stills beside me as I describe the details of that fateful night. The light in the tasting room. The masked men. The broken glass. The dark cellar. The locked door.

I don’t know how long it takes me to tell it, but when I finally come up for air, August’s voice sounds almost robotic when he asks, “How long were you down there?”

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