Intertwined (Redemption #2) Page 2

  To this day, the same two men help keep me in line, and quite frankly, they’re the closest thing that I have to a family. It doesn’t hurt that they are the most attractive men that I have ever met either. Each of them is aware of what I’ve been through, and they are the only two people whom I’ve trusted enough to delve deep into my memories and relive for them some of what I went through as a teenager.

  Liam Jensen and Waylon Brass have been the sturdy rocks for me to stand on when I couldn’t take another hit from life. I met each of them in college, and they were the ones that made me prove myself to . . . myself. They forced me to take a step back and figure out who I am and what I want out of life aside from changing my name.

  It’s because of them that I went from bartending at a strip club where I wore little more than the strippers did to my comfortable position today. The stripper joint helped me pay my way through college when I could barely afford ramen noodles, so I don’t regret doing it. The plus side to it was that it forced me to be comfortable in my own skin. It made me realize that I had the potential to seduce others and engage in some of my darkest fantasies. I learned a lot that I wouldn’t want to take back during my time of slinging cheap drinks down the bar rails, but I’d rather not relive it.

  Thanks to those two fuckers, I went from indecent exposure to managing the most renowned whiskey library in the country and it’s right here in Chicago.

  “Isla? I need some help in the back. Do you mind?”

  I’m snapped out of my daydream as one of my newer librarians calls out to me across the silent room. It’s only his third day on the job, so I’m not expecting much from him at this point in time.

  “Uh, yeah, just give me a second.”

  Before I make my way to the back, I pour myself a finger of Highland Park 50-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch and weave past the bar and into my office where I dig out the last of my prescribed depression medication and toss it back with the whiskey.

  The taste of tobacco and dusty wood hits me before being replaced with smooth notes of raisins and nutmeg. The spicy and slightly smoky finish lingers as I walk into the back and straight into a conversation that seems to be going on about me, one that is obviously one-sided and obnoxiously obtuse.

  “What the fuck is up with her? She’s like damaged goods that no one wants to play with.”

  Eden looks over the new guy’s shoulder at me and shrugs before turning back to her task of inventorying all of our new bottles.

  I clear my throat and pick up a rare bottle of Macallan, inspecting it for a moment before speaking. “I think that you should grab your shit and get your sorry ass out of my library.”

  His rusty chuckle is unsettling as he turns to face me. “Yeah, sweetheart? What are you, the owner’s chew toy?”

  Eden giggles as she takes note of the bottle ID numbers on her tablet.

  “The general manager, actually, and you’re fired. I trust that you know your way out.”

  “You’re firing me? I doubt anyone besides the owner is able to do that.”

  “Yeah?” I take my phone out of my pocket and dial Waylon before putting it on speakerphone.

  “Isla?” he answers immediately.

  “Hey asshole. I’m going to need security in here in two minutes to remove a disgruntled employee from the premises. He’s refusing to leave.”

  “Jacobs is on his way. Give him five minutes.”

  “Thanks, Brass.”

  He hangs up while I watch the jerk’s eyes go from arrogant to wide with fear before he runs over to grab his backpack and hightails it out of the back entrance.

  “Such a pussy.”

  “I thought that you were going to eat him alive,” Eden says from her post in front of one of the many shelves in the storage area.

  I chuckle as I walk back to the front of the library. “I’m not particularly in the mood for anything inadequate at the moment. I’m sure that even house whiskey would taste better.”

  I don’t hear her response as I close the door to my office, pull on my black leather jacket, and grab my phone before shooting off a text message to Wade about the fucker running. I yell out to Eden that I’m going to grab us coffee from one of my favorite coffee shops in Chicago before walking out of Blended and onto the bustling sidewalks of the Magnificent Mile.

  Coffee sounds incredible right about now, but combining it with whiskey sounds oh so much better. I’m a whiskey girl at heart, so much so that I’m sure that’s what runs through my veins.

  To understand me, you have to understand my past.

  I do not and would not discredit those who have strayed away from me in recent years. I’ve disengaged myself from my social circles and immersed myself in alcohol, sex, and more recreational drug use than what is socially acceptable.

  I’ve used drugs and alcohol as a pain reliever, as a sedative for death. A death that solely stains my hands. The boundaries of life and death took her from me, and today and every day, I ache in the vague shadows of what once was.

  Loss. It’s merely a word, but it is a word that is often underestimated. It does not take into account the years of longing for someone who will not return, or the power that it strips a person of. When Chloe vanished two days before our wedding day, I lost myself.

  I have yet to come up for air even though it has been several long months since they found her mangled and distorted body in Mexico and seven years since I was last able to see her smile. She spent seven and a half years in hell: being exchanged for sexual favors and money should never be tolerated.

  Grief is the last act of love that I will be able to give her. I failed her. Immensely.

  Chloe was stolen from me and sold into sexual slavery on her bachelorette trip all of those years ago, but yet somehow, it feels like it happened yesterday. I can still hear the hysterics of her friend’s voice over long distance and then she passed the phone to the other girl with her who was able to keep it together long enough to deliver the news. Wild chills break out on my forearms every time I think about answering that call, the call that changed my life in ways that I didn’t know were even possible.

  I should have been seeing a therapist about all of this for years—I’m well aware of that—but I didn’t have the balls to man up and deliver my sorry ass to a chaise lounge chair and say my piece to someone who I probably won’t be able to trust. Yet here I fucking am. In a leather chair, staring up at a white ceiling while some fucking asswipe with a doctoral degree is watching and taking notes as I spill my life story on dispassionate ears.

  “I’m going to assume that you have trust issues from your past experiences.”

  “Yes, I have trust issues, and I know that what I’m about to reveal doesn’t help with it in the slightest, but this is my life. Those trust issues? You can blame my mother for those because it’s where they originate from. These are the cards that I was dealt, and I’m learning to play and manipulate them as well as I can before that last card drops, and I can’t go back.”

  “Do you trust yourself?”

  “Do I trust myself? That’s an interesting question and one that I’ll have to come back to, but right now the answer is fuck no. No, I don’t. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”

  I clear my throat before I continue. “The truth is, I insisted that she go on her bachelorette trip with two of her closest friends, both of whom are alive, safe, and comfortable in their homes. Do they feel guilty that they left her alone in a club to hit up the bathroom with a man who ravaged the two of them long enough for his goons to snatch my bride? I have no doubt, but let’s focus on the fact that this shit is about me and what I’ve done to remedy this fucked-up situation.”

  “Then we’ll focus on you, Liam. What have you done, as you said, to remedy this situation that you’ve found yourself in?”

  I cast a glance at the fucker with gray hair and glasses, and I swear to myself that this is the one and only time that I’ll be coming here. I may as well get all of this shit out and in the open before I
keel over from the weight of it.

  “Between myself and my good friend, Waylon Brass, we’ve spent more time and coinage in an attempt to find Chloe than anyone would have thought possible. In a bid to save her, we assembled numerous teams of rescuers over the years. For years, we came up empty-handed until one monumental day when her last card dropped and I picked it up, added it to my hand, and tried to continue with life.”

  He clears his throat to draw my attention to him once again. “Are you telling me that you were the one who found her?”

  “No. I had a team that is part of an organization that I started. They came across countless dead ends until they found her with a still heart, a heart that once belonged to me. I felt the absence of her for all of those years, but the knowledge that she’s no longer alive to suffer soothes a side of myself that I’d rather not acknowledge,” I confess and he nods.

  “I’d like for you to try and explain it,” he says in his cultivated Australian accent. I’m sure his blue blood runs thicker than even mine does. I scrub the thought from my mind before relaxing back into the chaise again.

  “It’s difficult to explain because when it’s said out loud, I sound like a selfish dick, but that’s not why I’m better off with this outcome as opposed to another. Yes, I’ve lost an important part of me, and she lost her life, but I’d rather her be dead than suffering under the hands of some fucking pricks.” I pause to run my palm over my face.

  “Go on.”

  I blow out a heavy breath before I continue. “I remember the pictures that the police and rescue teams showed me of her body when they found her in a shallow creek. She was barely recognizable with black hair that was too long and knotted and a body that hadn’t been cleaned or seen the sunlight in years. There was irrefutably nothing left of the woman that she once was, the woman I loved. Her skin clung to her bones as if there was nothing left of her physical form. The worst part was seeing parts of her body dismembered, from her once-delicate fingers to her—fuck.”

  “We only need to discuss what you feel comfortable discussing, Liam. Take your time, and when you feel ready, you may continue.”

  I watch him type something out on his device before I open my mouth to speak again. “Those images are permanently etched into the inside of my eyelids.”

  My mind starts running, and I go silent for a few seconds to think and sort out the shit in my head.

  I have no doubt that she wanted to close her eyes and never open them again for those years that she was held captive and endured the sexual exploitation. To those fuckers that took her, she was nothing more than a paycheck, but to me . . . to me she was my entire life wrapped up in one gorgeous woman.

  “She was it for me, and I lost it all because I did not think to take any precautions while sending her away. Her family has since disowned me, blaming the outcome of Chloe’s life on me and my actions, but I really cannot blame them for their harsh judgment. It rings true for more reasons than one. I’m the reason why she went to Mexico. I’m the sole reason that she was taken and is now unable to experience life as a free woman again. Or any kind of woman, for that matter.”

  “Do you remain in contact with any member of her family?”

  “Yeah, but just the one, and she doesn’t exactly have a relationship with anyone in that family either. I mean, it wasn’t her choice, but it is what it is.”

  “How is this woman related to Chloe?”

  “She’s her twin sister.”

  “I would imagine that relationship can be hard for you at times.”

  I chuckle and throw my head back, closing my eyes and forcing the images of Chloe out of my head. “At times, but I’ve managed to look past it. They weren’t identical, but they did have many features in common.”

  “I see. Let’s continue, shall we? What happened next?”

  I nod and think back to the last thing I said about her family. I decide to skip over the fights and arguments that took place with my every visit and instead dive into something more important.

  “In the last seven months, I’ve tried to find out where she was held and by whom, but I’ve come up empty-handed each and every time. With each attempt, I’ve delved deeper than the time before. I should never have trusted myself with her, and I will not trust myself with another woman again. It’s better for me to be alone than to have someone need my protection, which is why I’m still in Australia.”

  “Where else would you have to go?” he asks as he adjusts himself in his seat. I don’t even have to look at him to know that he’s still staring at me like I’m on fucking stage giving my own eulogy.

  “I moved away from Chicago, Illinois, after dropping out of college in my freshman year, and a couple of months later, I met Chloe. We were together for a year before I realized exactly how much she had changed me as a person. I wasn’t the self-righteous prick with a never-ending bank account when I was with her.”

  I shut my eyes and think about the man I was before her and then who I became when I was with her. I was the man that she deserved at the time, but I can’t go back to him. I’m not afraid to die; I’m afraid to live and be human. I swallow my pride before speaking again. It goes down hard.

  “Once I proposed, she got busy and arranged the wedding in a few months, and I was more than ready to begin a new journey with her by my side. Unfortunately, it was stripped away from me when she was stolen. When some motherfuckers took away my reason for existing.”

  “We’ve been over this terrain before, but if you feel the need to clarify it, then please continue,” he interrupts, and I allow him to finish his comment before I continue my story.

  “I remember sitting up late each night, researching what it meant for her to be taken and what they might have been doing to her. The images that came across my screen destroyed me as well as any faith I had left in this sick, manipulative world.”

  “And you’ve witnessed this aspect of the world on multiple occasions?”

  “Through the agonizing years of searching, yes, and I lost myself to the world of drugs and consenting women. I invested significant amounts of my trust fund into substances that should have been able to rid me of the constant sinking feeling, but honestly, nothing worked.”

  “Ah,” he comments as he moves his fingers along the screen again.

  “The drugs would steal me away from a conscious reality, but they would place me in a world where I would watch some sick fuck torture my bride. The images that were forced into my head were ones of her chained up in a dank, dark dungeon while men took turns on her, doing things I would never dream of doing.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that nothing you did to alleviate the pain you were experiencing seemed to help. Is that correct?”

  “I mean, yeah. When I’d come out of a drug-induced stupor, those visions would meet me in my dreams, and then again when I woke. I have not been able to escape them since the day she was taken, and over the last several months, they seem to have intensified. I swear that in my dreams I can still imagine her ear-piercing cries for help. It’s a sound that won’t soon disappear . . . it will haunt me until the day I die.”

  “Liam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When do you believe that it will be acceptable to move on from your grief and misery?”

  “When is it acceptable to move on? I mean, when is it acceptable to give up and go on with a normal life?” I ask to get a better handle on what he’s asking from me. I shake my head as he waits for my answer, and I decide to go for one that I know I should have given myself a long time ago. “I don’t have the answers to those questions for anyone in particular, but for myself, I do. My answer is unpretentious: tomorrow.”

  These fuckers stole my life and put a limp in my stride, but I refuse to be a victim to them any longer. I will not remain silent about things that matter, but I also need to put distance between myself and the tyrants in my head that have seen more than their fair share of bruised and battered women.

  “
Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. It’s never too late to change our paths, and this is me taking my strides back.”

  “I’m impressed,” he says while trying to hide a smile. He doesn’t know how long and hard I’ve stewed over all of this, and he won’t ever know. Throwing my legs off of the chaise, I cup my face in my hands and rest my elbows on my knees as I think about what my tomorrow holds.

  Fuck the world’s expectations when it comes to what I do with my time and life; tomorrow is my day. It’s the day that I will figure out what to do with all of my knowledge and be the one person to change lives, starting with mine. Again.

  It’s a late afternoon in Sydney when I decide to shut off my laptop after sending an email to inform my teams that I will be out of touch for a while. They will not be under any duress because of how I initially set up the organization. Wade Brass, Gage Cooper, and I hold the three lead positions in RW. Each of us has been in charge of three teams and three rehabilitation houses all over the world for those women who were saved while we were looking for Chloe. Neither of them advertises their involvement in this under-the-radar organization, Remission Worldwide, and neither of them physically put their lives on the line as I have in the past.

  We’ve been fighting to improve the statistics and numbers of the women-lost to women-rescued ratio. Slavery is not a thing of the past—it’s disgustingly common in today’s society—but nobody pays enough attention to see it.

  Remission Worldwide was established a couple of months after Chloe’s disappearance, and we’ve been expanding the organization ever since. It is the sole thing in my life that I am able to say that I am proud of. Screw the money and all of my conquests because none of that means shit to me. This organization, though, is what I’ve put my life into.

  In fact, my rehabilitation houses will remain where they are while I take this break. I will continue to prove that human trafficking isn’t pretty. I’ve made a move in the right direction with their help, but it’s my time to take a step back from the enslaved world and free myself.