Deep Page 18

  She laughed again and uncrossed her legs. Both sisters sat up straight in their seats when she stood up from her chair.

  “I would have expected more from Rhebecca’s children.”

  Hearing her mother’s name shocked Ahli. She scrunched her face up and tried to force her eyes to see past the darkness and into the assailant’s face. “How do you know my mother?”

  “Rhebecca? She was one of my best girls; that is, until that man came and stole her away. I never saw her again, and she stole something that I want. Something that I need, and you two are going to tell me where it is.”

  Her heels were loud in the quiet, musty room with each step she took forward. She wore a sleek black dress, as if she were going to a funeral, and her long jet-black hair hung freely around her face. Her face was so smooth that Ahli couldn’t tell if she was a natural beauty or if she had makeup on her face. Either way she was the most gorgeous woman Ahli had ever seen in her life. The red lipstick on the woman’s lips resembled blood and she had something in her hand that gleamed in the light of the one light bulb. Ahli wasn’t able to make it out until the woman was closer to her. The machete was long and freshly sharpened, like she had prepared for this very moment.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  “Exactly what Anna here did to your father. After I told her to, of course. Come here, Anna. Now!”

  She pointed to somebody behind Ahli and she tried to turn her head around, but she didn’t need to. The pretty golden brown–skinned woman they met earlier stepped around where Ahli’s chair was. Except that time the only clothes she wore were lingerie.

  “You killed my daddy?” Rhonnie asked incredulously, staring at the woman who had given them all a ride in the rain. “You killed my daddy!”

  Rhonnie fought so hard against the ropes on her arms that her wrists began to bleed. Ahli, on the other hand, felt like somebody punched her in the gut. Something her father told her made its way back to her frontal lobe and something clicked.

  “You’re Madame,” she said finally, with tears in her eyes. She took an unsteady breath and looked to Anna and back to the woman in the black dress. “Aren’t you?”

  “I see my reputation precedes me,” Madame said with a sickening smile. “Tell them, Anna. Tell them what you did.”

  “I killed him,” Anna whispered, stating the fact of the matter. Her voice was monotone and she relived the last moments of Quinton’s life. “I rang the doorbell and he answered, not knowing that I was going to be the one to slit his throat. He made me so mad. He wouldn’t talk. No matter how many times I stabbed him, he wouldn’t talk. He didn’t tell me anything that I needed to know, so I slice his throat out. Since he wouldn’t tell me what I wanted, I made sure he could never talk again.”

  Rhonnie’s breathing was rigid, but she’d used all her energy to do any more fighting. She felt helpless.

  When she looked into Ahli’s eyes, her big sister saw something she never thought she’d see again in them. Defeat.

  “You, my dears, are in the Opulent Inn, where my girls can either fulfill your every desire, or make every nightmare you’ve ever had come true. Whatever I tell them to do, they do. Except Rhebecca, she is the only girl who left me. She was disobedient and ungrateful. I took her from the streets and gave her a home!”

  “You made her a sex slave!” Ahli screamed. “You took away any ability she had at making a choice of her own! That’s why she ran. That’s why she left!”

  “And that’s why you’re here!” Madame snarled and swung the machete at Ahli’s neck, stopping abruptly right before it connected. “You both will be repaying her debt. She stole something from me, and you both are going to tell me where it is.”

  “We don’t know what you want!” Rhonnie’s eyes were frozen on how close the blade was to her sister’s neck.

  “Oh, but you do. Or, at least, she does.” Madame leered down at Ahli. “Come on, Ahli, tell Madame where it is.”

  “Where what is?”

  “The formula!”

  The formula? Ahli thought until it clicked in her head. The formula! “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But it was too late. Madame had already seen in her eyes that she knew what she was talking about. She placed the blade on Ahli’s collarbone and cut her deeply. Rhonnie gritted her teeth, trying to stomach the pain, but it didn’t work. The scream still seeped through her lips.

  “Now we can be twins.” Madame pointed to her own neck. “Do you both want to know how I got this? I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and walking home. I went the route that I took every day, but I guess that didn’t work in my favor. Somebody had been watching me, a group of someones, actually. They surrounded me in an alley, told me they liked how my titties bounced when I walked. They held me down and one of them held a machete to my neck while the others copped feels all over my body. They stuck their fingers in all my holes and taunted me, telling me that the only reason they were doing it was because they could. They told me that pussy ran the world and so they wanted some of mine.

  “I was still a virgin, and that was stripped from me by a dirty man and his friends. My neck jerked while they were violating me and the machete cut my neck deep; a little more to the left and my throat would have been sliced open. The blood must have scared the one holding the machete, because he dropped it and the person holding my arms down let me go too. I grabbed the machete and started hacking away. I killed all of them, and then chopped their dicks off.”

  Ahli couldn’t even begin to feel sorry for the woman before her. She was the one responsible for her father’s death. “If that happened to you why do you have women as sexual weapons?”

  “Because pussy runs the world. I learned then that men will do unethical things for pussy. I realized then that men are weak and now I control them. Every woman here is a woman I saved from what happened to me and I prevented it from happening to them. Now they know the power that they have. Now they know that they can get whatever they want from a man.”

  “But what about from you?” Rhonnie asked. “You’re so busy trying to control them that you don’t even realize that you’ve become the thing you claim you’re trying to protect your so-called girls from. You’re a monster!”

  “But they call me Madame.” Madame shrugged. “Once I get that formula I will become even more powerful. Not only will I have a drug that nobody else has even come close to creating, but I will have dominance over the world. Both men and women will bow to me, and the Opulent Inn will expand to many more places. I will have influence everywhere.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “No.” Madame turned her back on them and looked at Anna. “You’re going to be sick if you don’t tell Anna where the formula is. I’m giving you thirty minutes. Fifteen minutes each. Make it hurt.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “Wait! Where is Brayland?” Ahli asked. “The guy I came with?”

  Madame turned around and smirked at the sweaty girl who looked so much like her favorite girl. “I had no use for him. He’s dead,” she said and left the room.

  Chapter 16

  Anna got straight to business as soon as Madame left. All she wanted to do was please her and remain in her good graces. If all she had to do was cause others pain so in turn she would not feel any, why not? She thought back to when she traveled to Quinton. She didn’t know why she had been so scared to hurt him at first. After all, it was just a little blood. Gone was that frightened girl who tried to run away from it all. Her mind was clear, more like empty, but still she was able to see everything clearly now. When she looked down at Rhonnie and Ahli, she didn’t see two helpless women tied to a chair. She saw the enemy, an enemy who needed to be punished for not giving Madame what she wanted, so she made them scream. Starting with Rhonnie.

  “Where is it?”

  “I keep telling you I don’t—”

  Anna sliced her in the side with the machete that Madame left her.

  �
�Hssss! Ahhhhhh!” Rhonnie clenched her eyes shut and yelled out.

  “Stop lying! Where did Quinton put it?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Once again, Anna didn’t like the answer that she was given. Not once did she think that maybe Rhonnie was telling the truth. If Madame said they knew, then they knew. She hauled off and punched Rhonnie in her face, causing a sickening thud and throwing Rhonnie’s head to the right. When Rhonnie tried to turn her face back Anna punched her again, harder. And again, and again.

  “Stop it! I’m going to fucking kill you, bitch! Get the fuck away from her!” Ahli fought against the ropes on her arms and legs and made her chair shake violently. Her head was still pounding from the drug, but seeing the blood coming from Rhonnie’s nose and her side was giving her all the adrenaline she needed.

  “Rhonnie!” Ahli screamed and watched as Anna continued to use her sister’s body as a punching bag and a carving tool. “You stupid-ass bitch! He didn’t tell her. He told me!”

  “Love your sister, honor your sister, and most of all don’t let anyone hurt your sister.”

  Rhebecca’s voice snuck into Ahli’s mind and she did the only thing she could to save her sister. It worked because instantly Anna whipped around and took a few steps to get to her. She placed the blade on Ahli’s already open wound and applied pressure. It hurt but if Anna thought the pain was what was causing the tears to fall from her eyes, she was mistaken. Ahli’s gaze was straight forward and on her sister. If she hadn’t been tied to the chair she was sure Rhonnie would have passed out on the floor. It looked like she was trying to get a grip on herself, but the trauma to her face was causing her to nod in and out of consciousness.

  “Then where is it?” Anna punched Ahli hard in the mouth with her knuckles. “If you don’t tell me, Madame will do much worse to you than what I did to her.”

  When Ahli hesitated she pressed on Ahli’s wound even harder and blood trickled down the white shirt she was wearing. Ahli’s lip stung and the pain in her neck was something she’d never felt in her life, but it wasn’t until she looked into Anna’s eyes that she realized she would never know what true pain was.

  “She doesn’t love you,” Ahli told her, spitting blood to the side. “She owns you. There is a difference.”

  “Shut up. You don’t know anything about Madame!”

  “I don’t know how many of you killer hoes there are here, but from the size of this building there must be a lot of you. I know that right now, at any second, any one of you could wise up and run. Just like my mother did.”

  “Your mother was a traitor!” Anna dropped the machete to the ground and grabbed a fistful of Ahli’s hair. She straddled her and got so close to Ahli that she could see the pores in her skin. “She disobeyed Madame and now her entire family is paying for it! Do you know Quinton begged me to spare your lives? He begged me not to lay a finger on you two.” She threw her head back and gave a hearty laugh.

  “Maybe you’re right, but one thing she never was, was a traitor. She did something none of you other bitches have the balls to do. The only thing keeping you here is fear. There are no locks on your doors, no shackles on your feet.”

  “She will kill us all if we run! She will always find us!”

  “She never found my mother, and she only found us by chance.” Ahli smirked at Anna and nodded to all the cuts on her body. “Aw, did she slice that mentality into you? Sounds a lot like what masters do to their slaves, slave.”

  Her words jarred a memory in Anna’s head. Her taunts touched her in a place that had been dead and gone for so long. The place that had caused her to run when she had first gotten to the Opulent Inn, the hopeful place. She let go of Ahli’s hair and looked down at her own hands. Turning her head around she looked at Rhonnie’s bludgeoned body and felt a rush of remorse.

  “But Madame, she saved me. Sh . . . she took me in.”

  “And never let you leave.” Ahli saw that she was getting through to her. When Quinton was telling her about the place that her mother came from, he told her that most of the women were incapable of thinking for themselves. That the place was equivalent to a cult and Madame was the head of it. Ahli didn’t know how to feel for Anna, but she knew that if she could maybe open her eyes then she had a chance at saving Rhonnie’s life.

  “Do you know what she will be able to do if she gets the formula to that drug? My mother ran away because she understood; now I’m going to make you understand. She will force you all to take this drug, and she will force you to stay on it. She has already gotten inside of your mind with fear, but you still have a choice no matter if you think you do or not. This drug will take away your choice. Not only will she own you, but you might as well call yourselves Madame too because all you will be is an extension of her in an empty shell. Imagine all of the women she will taint. Imagine the money and power she will gain around the world. What do you think someone like that will do with complete domination? You can kill us now, but you might as well kill yourself too.”

  Anna’s eyes glossed over and she looked into Ahli’s eyes trying to find dishonesty, but she couldn’t. She didn’t see any. She jumped to her feet when she heard the sound of a vibrating phone coming from behind Ahli’s chair, where she originally was when the girls came to. She picked up her machete and went to answer it.

  “Yes, Madame.” She paused for a moment. “No, neither of them are talking.” She paused again. “Okay.” She hung up the phone and turned back to where the girls were strapped to the chairs. Rhonnie was still nodding off and Ahli was beginning to lose too much blood from her neck.

  “I told you,” Anna whispered. “I told you that if you didn’t talk she would hurt you far worse than what I could. It is time to go to Madame’s quarters.”

  Chapter 17

  When Anna untied her, Ahli wanted nothing more than to fight her off and rescue her sister. She wanted to snatch the machete from Anna’s hand and give her a taste of her own medicine. But when she stood, she collapsed. She’d lost too much blood and she was losing control of her body. The room around her began to fade to black and she knew that she was about to be reunited with her mother and father.

  Anna untied Rhonnie and forced her to her feet.

  “Ahli?” she moaned. When she got no response she began to sob. “Ahli!”

  Her sister was lying on the ground of the cold room with blood dripping from her neck. She looked lifeless and Rhonnie tried to focus her eyesight on Ahli’s chest to see if it was moving even in the slightest bit.

  “Help her walk.” Anna pointed the blade in Rhonnie’s direction. “Or I will make you immobile just like her.”

  Rhonnie didn’t need to be told twice. The aftereffect of the drugs and the trauma to her head made everything a blur, but she pushed through to kneel down unsteadily. Placing a shaky finger under Ahli’s nostrils, Rhonnie stopped breathing herself and stood still to see if she felt her sister’s breath. When she felt the warm air on her finger she felt relief, but she knew that if she moved Ahli the blood flow coming from the wound would quicken.

  “I need something to stop the bleeding,” Rhonnie said and looked around. She scrunched up her face from the throbbing in both of her temples. Her vision would blur and then come back into focus, but she didn’t stop scanning the large room. Along the white brick walls were many things, like old furniture and other trinkets, but no cloth.

  “I need something for her neck! Whatever you want, she knows it. Whatever you need, she’s the only one who can help you find it!”

  Anna still stood over them, seemingly unmoved until Rhonnie pointed to the corner.

  “There! Rip that cloth so I can put it around her neck.”

  She’d pointed to the corner to where the white bags were and Anna followed her finger.

  “Those are dead bodies,” she said emotionlessly. “The customers I killed to ensure that you two wouldn’t suspect anything.”

  Rhonnie’s stomach turned at the thought of putting the cloth on
Ahli’s open lesion, but she didn’t have a choice. “Rip it, or she dies. And Madame never gets the formula.”

  Anna hesitated at first. The only person she took orders from was Madame, but seeing Ahli bleeding out she knew Madame would be upset if she let the girl die. She went to where the bodies were. Touching one of the bags she felt that it was still warm, being as it had been a corpse only for a couple of hours. She rolled it over, preparing to cut the cloth, but that side was covered in blood. She’d forgotten that she slit all of their necks, so she was forced to cut the cloth by their back. Using the machete she slit a piece long enough to fold and wrap around Ahli’s neck.

  “Hurry up,” Anna said, handing her the piece of fabric. “Madame does not like to wait.”

  Rhonnie took it and folded it so that it would provide a thicker comfort. She then gently raised Ahli’s head so that she could tie it around her neck tightly, but not so tight that she would choke.

  “LaLa.” Rhonnie smacked her sister’s face to get her eyes to open. “I’m going to help you walk, but you have to help me back, okay?”

  Ahli’s eyes rolled to the back of her head, but she heard her sister speak. She weakly nodded right before she felt Rhonnie hoist her to her feet. Their legs were shaky, but by leaning on each other they were able to get a firm footing.

  “When I use my right leg, use your left, okay?” Rhonnie panted into Ahli’s ear. “I’m not going to let you fall, sister.”

  “The elevator is down the hall.” Anna opened the door for them to go through and watched them struggle through the door and down the long hallway. When one slid, the other would muster the strength to pull her back up. Anna knew from personal experience how they felt. She reflected on the nights that she was severely punished. The many nights she was forced to sleep on bloody sheets while the gashes in her back bled out. She remembered not being able to move, even if she tried to will herself. She was beaten until she submitted to Madame’s will. Madame literally beat obedience into her, like a slave.