But I shook my head. He had to know, had to understand the sacrifices I had made to ensure Samantha’s life and safety. He had to understand that I did not steal her from her birth mother.
I tried to find the words, but they got stuck in my throat. I fidgeted on his lap, and as soon as I realized he was willing to loosen his arms this time, I sprang from him. This was going to be hard enough as it was. I didn’t think I could be touching Tangaloa as I told him the rest.
“He made me get on my knees. I didn’t know what fellatio was. I saw him…put itin the others’ mouths, but it wasn’t something taught to me. Not like what I now know is missionary sex.” I kept my back to him. More than not wanting to see him, I didn’t want him to seeme.“I’ll spare you the details of what happened next. I’m sure you can guess. As someone who had neverperformed oral sex before, you can imagine how…disappointed,” I chose with disgust, “he was at my efforts.
“Sayuri was still there. I realize now I didn’t even ask her if she wanted to carry a baby. It should have been her choice all along, but I couldn’t stand the idea of him beating her until she miscarried. I’d been taught all about pregnancies and miscarriages in my lessons, sothatI was familiar with. But the one thing that was also made clear to me was that it was thehusband’schoice about whether or not the wife is allowed to have a baby or keep her baby. So at the time, I was under the misconception that it was That Bastard’s right to choose.”
I looked down at my nails, having been absentmindedly picking at my cuticle until I made it bleed. Ow.
“He made mepleasureSayuri. Perform oral on her. She was still laying there, beaten, and he made me put my mouth on her. Be-between her legs,” I clarified, stuttering slightly. “I wasn’t sure what I was doing, or how. A part of me will always question if what I did was pure selfishness or if it was sacrifice to save an unborn child. At the time, I did not have any intention of raising the baby or taking her from her mother.
“I remember looking at her. Sayuri. I’m not sure why, exactly. She’d always hated me. Fought me when I was assigned getting her ready for That Bastard. She even bit me once. But as I knelt down between her legs, something passed between us. An understanding, I think. That we would do anything to save her baby.” I licked my lips as I confessed, “So I did as I was told.EverythingI was told. And as I…pleasuredSayuri, That Bastard took his pleasure out on me. Over and over again, each time making me touch or kiss orinsertsomething into Sayuri.
“And when it was over, he locked me inside with her. Told me that if I wanted the baby so badly, I could take care of the,” I flinched, recalling his wording, “cow who bred her.”I walked around the opposite side of the bed from Tangaloa to where I’d been sitting earlier and gulped down my remaining water. I did not look at him, and I turned my back again as soon as I could. “It was a difficult pregnancy to say the least. But he left both of us alone during that time. Somehow, through it all, we became friends. Sayuri explained to me a lot of what happened and what was happening in that basement. She told me about her family back in Japan and how she was out at a nightclub one night, and when she left her friends to go to the bathroom, she was drugged and abducted. Since neither of us was a doctor, we had to rely on the knowledge I’d learned about pregnancy and her instinct to guide us.
“And then, several months later, Samantha was born. She was…incredible.” My chin quivered with emotion, both happy and sad. I hadn’t brought my daughter into this world through my own body, but I’d worked so hard to save her, to do everything I could for her.
I sniffled, knowing the worse confession was yet to come. “Sayuri let me name her. I chose ‘Samantha’ after Elizabeth Montgomery’s character onBewitched. It was one of the few shows I had been allowed to watch, and I always admired Samantha’s determination to break free of her culture and become her own woman.” I started picking at my nail again. “About a week after Samantha was born, That Bastard came into our room for the first time. I stupidly thought he was there to see hisdaughter. But even after nearly a decade of living with him, I was still just as naïve as I had been when I was a child.” I had a hard time keeping my voice steady as I continued speaking. “He wasn’t there for Samantha or me. He was there for Sayuri. He… He hosted a party that night. The first that I knew of, or the first since I’d come to live with him.
“I was kept in the basement, so I don’t know specifically what happened that night, but he brought me up the next morning toclean. And there, in the living room, was Sayuri’s body. She was…” I had to cover my mouth as I gagged. “They broke her. There was so much blood, and her jaw was twisted like it was fractured or dislocated. Her body was riddled with cuts and burns, and there was a rope around her neck. But not like a noose, like a dog collar. The carpet was so stained, the walls and the furniture all splattered too. He made me clean everything, but wouldn’t let me touch her. A little bit later, two men came in wearing all white outfits. They were completely covered, I couldn’t even see their faces. And they took Sayuri’s body away.”
I covered my mouth, breathing through my nose for several long minutes. “We discussed a lot of things in the months I was locked in Sayuri’s room with her. One of the most important was the safety of her baby. I don’t know how she knew, but she guessed her fate. Maybe I did something, maybe I pushed That Bastard to get rid of her like she was yesterday’s trash…” I shook my head, trying to hold back my tears. “But she made me swear that I would look after Samantha. After Sayuri’s murder, I kept my promise. I don’t know when she became my daughter over my charge, and I don’t care. All I know is that she’s mine.
“I did everything he asked of me. I became the best wife I could be. During the day, I cooked and cleaned. When she was a baby, he kept her locked in a dog crate while he was at work. I could just barely reach her through the bars to feed her, but I had to wait until he was home to unlock the crate so I could comfort and change her. As soon as she was released from the crate, I was banished below with her. His dinner waited for him already on the table, and then I would clean up the next morning when I was released from the basement as he got ready for work. Once she was potty trained, he forced her to stay in the basement while I cooked and cleaned upstairs all day. I hated it, hated being separated from her, but she was my bargaining chip, my incentive. If I misbehaved, he wouldn’t unlock the basement so I could get to her.
“And then about six months before you showed up, Mitsuko,the other woman in the basement, died. I don’t know what happened, only that those men in white came again to get the body. Ayame, the woman whoyou rescued when you came for Nishi, was his only captive for some time. And then Nishi was brought down…and you know the rest.”
Chapter Fifteen
The silence in the room was heavy. Though I stayed immobile on the bed where she’d left me, I was wound tighter than a coil preparing to spring. My back was to her, not because I didn’t want to look at her, but because I couldn’t risk moving. So much as a finger twitch would release the hold I had on me, and who knew then the damage that might occur. The wall certainly would not survive.
I regretted dubbing him “That Bastard” to her. When we first returned from Yonkers, I did not like how Car—fuck.Maisy. I did not like howMaisysaid his name. “Mr. Dalton-Jones.” Like the man was owed respect. I realized now that it was part of her conditioning. He was the man of the house,her husband—even in my head the word tasted sour—and he was owed respect because he had a fucking penis.
I hadn’t even known the half of it. “That Bastard” was too good a name for him, and being slowly skinned alive before being tossed into a frenzy of sharks and other marine life that had already been feeding on his strips of flesh was too easy a death. Iwas not a good man, but I looked like a fucking saint compared to him.
Had I really just told Aloiki we were even because I had killed Kayl and he got Jones?
Not even close.
Not even a little bit.
Her parents were fucking dead. I didn’t know how yet, but I would make them see their own entrails long before they met their end. Her tutors were fucking next.
I still had so many questions, but I wasn’t sure I could take anymore answers. What she’d gone through… A part of me questioned why she hadn’t fought harder, why she hadn’t tried to escape every day. But I had no room to judge her or second-guess her decisions. Not until I lived inside her body and experienced what she had for thirteen years. Hell, I could even take it as far back as five years old when her story had started and make it eighteen years. It was a wonder she was as well-rounded as she was.
I couldn’t… I couldn’t imagine the strength it had taken to survive that. I didn’t remember what age Neo had said Jones was, but he sure as fuck was older than fifty—and he’d “married” a fifteen year old! In the loosest possible definition of that word. The man must have considered himself married in real life if Neo had found evidence of the marriage. But even they had said they couldn’t find much.
I remembered thinking that Mrs. Dalton-Jones IV wasn’t in the house the day we raided it because she was out at the country club with her prissy, rich friends. How fucking wrong I’d been…
And then for me to have touched her as I had… She wasn’t underage, which only made a marginal difference in the grand scheme of things. Maybe of the two of us, I was the one who should have been in therapy. Clearly, she was more mentally stable than I was, if she was even contemplating allowing another penis-wielding human anywhere near her.
Fight? Maisy was barely over five foot. She might have gained some weight in the three months since she’d been here, but I would still only estimate her weight around one-ten, maybe one-fifteen. She’d felt featherlight to me that day I carried her up from the beach before we showered together. What physical threat would she be to a man like Jones? Add in the conditioning she’d been subjected to for most of her life, and it was no wonder she didn’t fight.
But then, not every fight was physical. I was a large man, well over six feet, and had close to two hundred pounds of muscle on me. My instinct would always be to fight, to overpower, an opponent. And now I was being given a smalltasteof what Maisy had suffered through for eighteen years.
Because I couldn’t fight this. There was no enemy to battle, no victory to be won. I was as helpless now against her past as she had been living it.
Something wet hit my hand. I ignored it at first, but then another drop hit me. I risked blinking my eyes open. I was on the bed, my elbows on my knees, and my head bowed over my clasped hands. From a different perspective, it might have looked like I was praying.