Page 2 of Hart of Hope
Mumbling death threats, he wiped my spit from his neck as his phone rang.
Thea mouthed, “What are you doing?”
I shrugged. We were dead anyway.
He tapped his earbud. “What is it, son?”
Thirteen-year-old Zane—if that was his true name; I suspected that both the boy and his father were using aliases—was as much of a prick as John was. The crazy boy jerked off while watching his father rape girls.
“I had to take a detour. There’s construction going on near the house. Get the chains ready for our beloved Grace.” He glanced at Thea in the rearview. “Yes, son. I think it’s time you become a man. We’ll discuss it when I get to the farm.”
Thea shuddered, knowing exactly what John was referring to, as did I. Zane, with dark hair and cold, empty eyes like his father, had a hard-on for Thea. He would feel her breasts or dip his hand into her panties any chance he had.
I couldn’t believe that a father would subject his child to the depravity and corruption of sex trafficking. Sure, my dad was an alcoholic who beat me, but he never raped me. In the beginning, I’d often wondered where John’s wife was or how she felt about her son watching his father and his clients torture young girls. But along the way, I learned that Zane’s mom had died from a drug overdose.
After John ended the call, he laughed. “Zane is dying to get in your pussy, Thea. I think tonight I’ll let him. He’s earned it.”
Thea steeled her shoulders, snarled like a lion, and kicked the back of his seat. “Like Grace said, fuck off.”
She finally mustered the courage to join the fray.Hallelujah.
I laughed, and it felt better than anything I’d experienced in a long time. What was one more beating? I was numb to the bone anyway.
“You two want to die,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Better than the hell we’re in,” I fired back.
Thea looked at me as she unclipped her seat belt. “Might as well die now.” She nodded at me. “Right?”
I had no idea what she was about to do. The child locks were on, so we couldn’t open a door and throw ourselves out.
“Grace, whatever happens to us, promise me if you live, you’ll find my parents and tell them I’m sorry. That I loved them.”
“Ride or die,” I said to her. “You do the same. Find my brothers.”
Everything slowed down, crystallizing into perfect clarity.
Thea launched forward, her fingers clawing John’s eyes as I dove into the front seat to get the gun out of the glove compartment.
The SUV swerved violently, trees and brush whipping past the windows.
“Hurry, Grace. Get the gun. I can’t hold him much longer.”
As the SUV sailed off the road and into the thicket of trees, the world spun in slow motion, the gun gleaming just out of reach. Time stretched like a saltwater taffy, and in that suspended moment, I felt peace. Better to die fighting than to live another day on my knees.
The impact came in waves—each one threatening to tear me apart as my body was thrown every which way.
I prayed that my death would be quick and painless. No more cage. No more spreading my legs. No more beatings.
I always knew that the only way out was death, and I welcomed it, gave into it, and in the seconds before darkness consumed me, I was free for the first time in four years.
1
GRACE
Iran like a sprinter in the Olympics. At one thirty a.m., the streets of Boston looked like a ghost town.
I should’ve had Paul, the bartender at Yvonne’s, where I also worked, escort me to my car. But that would mean admitting my sense that I was being followed wasn’t just a delusion brought on by too many nights researching sex-trafficking statistics for my thesis. Because of my nightmares and the endless hours I’d spent poring over case studies at the Boston University library, I couldn’t trust my own instincts. After all, I’d walked these streets alone hundreds of times after my shift.
