Page 58 of Desperate Measures
I gingerly touch my stinging scalp. He made a deal. He’s treating me like I’m a cow to be traded, and the derision on his face stings more than my flaming skin. “You bastard.”
“Only according to my mother.” He laughs, but the men at his back remain as stone-faced as ever. Ali motions to the one on the right. “Pick her up. Let’s go.”
I don’t want to go wherever they intend to take me, but I haven’t magically developed combat skills along the way, so I’m helpless to fight as the man ignores my attempts to hit him and tosses me over his shoulder. I barely get a chance to register how different this is from being hauled around by Jafar when the asshole throws me into a trunk. Ali’s face is the last thing I see before they slam the lid closed.
A trunk.
That fucker put me in a trunk.
Panic flutters in my throat, but I force it down. Jafar might come for me, if only to deprive Ali of his prize, but the fact remains that Ali has evaded Jafar’s reach for days. Will he find the man eventually? Yes, I have no doubt of it. Will he find him in time to save me?
That I can’t guarantee.
I close my eyes and concentrate on taking slow breaths until I can think clearly again. I can’t count on help, which means I must save myself.?3 The path forward isn’t clear to me, but there’s not a single thing I can do while I’m trapped in a trunk. I cannot panic. Panic is death.
I settle in to wait.
Time passes strangely without any indicators to guide me. It could be fifteen minutes before the car rolls to a stop. It could be two hours. Despite my best intentions, I’m left blinking into the light when Ali opens the trunk and grins down at me. “Welcome home, Yasmina.”
Horror washes over me with a sickening finality. Surely he can’t mean…
But when he pulls me to my feet, I see that he meant it in the most literal way possible. He’s brought me back to my father’s house.
My legs refuse to hold me, but that barely causes Ali to blink. He merely motions to his man to pick me up again. There’s no crowd waiting for us this time, just an eerie echoing feeling that makes me believe everyone else has emptied out. And why not? This house makes little sense as a location for a base of operations. It’s not even in the city proper. Of course Jafar would have ordered the men to move to key spots in his territory to consolidate power.
Has he even been back here since that night?
They carry me down the hallway, and I stare hard at the spot where Jafar fucked me. My panties and robe are still wadded up against the wall, evidence of what I considered my shame. The very idea is laughable now. That night was the cumulation of five years of stifled desire and need. I still desire Jafar. My leaving changed nothing.
I still can’t rely on him to save me.
Ali’s man drops me to my feet, and Ali grabs my arm in a rough grip to shove me into an all too familiar room. My room. He stalks to the wall and yanks the landline phone out of the wall. “You won’t be needing that.”
I plant my feet and stare him down. “This isn’t going to end the way you want it to.”
“Bullshit.” He hits me. It’s almost casual, a backhand to the face that sends me stumbling a few steps from him.
The blow is so reminiscent of my father that I laugh. Those are too large of shoes for him to ever be able to fill, even on his best day. Ali is a bully, and if he’s sly, he’s nowhere near sly enough. Coming back to this house was a mistake, bringing me here an even larger one.
Ali shrugs and puffs out his chest like he thinks he’s some kind of prize fighter. “Play nice, Yasmina, or you won’t like what comes next.”
I straighten slowly and stare him down. “I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?”
He must expect me to fall to my knees and beg for mercy, because my calm seems to rattle him. Ali shakes his head. “I’ll come for you later.” And then he’s gone, sweeping out of the room and slamming the door behind him. I listen, and sure enough, the lock clicks as he seals me in. It seems I am forever destined to be locked away by men.
No longer.
I cross to my desk, to the spot on the floor where, half hidden by my rug, my sharp letter opener lies where it fell that first night. I hesitated then, whether because of nerves or because some part of me recognized the man in my room as Jafar.
I won’t hesitate again.
The letter opener feels good against my palm, its coolness a contrast to the angry heat throbbing in my cheek where Ali hit me. A feeling wells up inside me, the sensation akin to seeing a train barreling down the tracks in my direction. I could try to flee, but the train is inside me. There is no escape. Instead I welcome it with open arms, embracing the emotion fully and letting it permeate every part of me.
Rage.?4
It’s blades and fire and pain, twenty-five years’ accumulation of it. How many times have I swallowed this emotion down, again and again until I’d surely choke? So many nights spent staring into the darkness and wondering if it mirrored what I held inside me.
Now I know the truth.
