A/N: Wow. Y'all really said chapter 8 could just GTFO, eh? Okay, well... here's 9. MEGA TRIGGER WARNINGS: graphic and explicit depictions of rape herein. I can't stress enough how much you should turn back now if you don't think you can handle it. Also, the chapter was way too long, so I split it in two. Yeah, it's gonna be a long, rough week.

Chapter 9.

Prayers to St. Jude

. . .

Time seemed so frangible during the other abductions. Like the broken shards of a mirror, some pieces missing, others savagely sharp and glinting, but all cracked beyond repair. No matter how often Olivia tried to put it back together, the glass always shattered again, never quite solidifying in her mind. There were days with Lewis, hours with Calvin, that she would never get back. Moments of her life stolen, along with everything else they took from her.

But now. The mirror was whole, so crystal clear it reflected everything in high definition, and so bright it practically blinded her. Time wasn't frangible. It was sheet metal, solid and inflexible, glaring hot in the sun; it was the blade of a guillotine, swift and brutal. Even at that speed, she saw it all unfolding around her in exquisite detail.

The Kid coercing his younger brother into snorting the powder that remained from the crushed up Viagra and ecstasy, then laughing hysterically as Little Brother clutched his nose and keened in pain.

The chest-slapping and shoulder-thumping that the Crier and the Driver engaged in, psyching each other up the way football players did before a big game; the way Elliot used to during summer softball league between precincts, and sometimes in the locker room before a big bust.

The flash of a tactical knife that Gus removed from a hidden pocket, though he made sure she got a good long look as he unsheathed it. The blade wasn't particularly large—maybe four inches in length—but it curved into a sinuous, wicked grin, mocking anyone who doubted its capabilities.

Knives were like scorpions—the smaller ones could be more deadly than the big ones, especially in the right hands. And Gus definitely knew how to handle the full nine inches of this one. Wait'll she gets a load of my nine inches, she thought, her guts gone loose and watery, her mouth the same. She had to swallow several times just to get out the please she instantly silenced as he grazed the tip of the blade along her jawline, traced the outline of her lips with it, and glanced the edge across the opposite cheek, closely enough to remove peach fuzz.

This was how it always started. They used
(a police baton or your own gun)
a weapon in place of their dicks to frighten you into submission, to give you a little sneaky-peek of what was to come. She'd been so terrified that Lewis would rape her with her service pistol—and why not, he had jammed it into her crotch enough times to create a vivid mental image and leave her sore for days—it was almost a relief when he had only used his hands.

You could survive penetration by a gun if it didn't go off, and on rare occasions even if it did, although the damage was usually catastrophic. But the cases Olivia had encountered of foreign object rape with a knife (and there were many) seldom had a live victim to follow up with. Too much blood loss, too many delicate parts severed beyond repair. When an attacker hated his target enough to fuck her with a blade, she usually wasn't meant to walk away from the assault.

Four inches might be short enough
(like he'll stop at the haft, yeah right)
for Olivia to be one of the lucky ones, but she couldn't remember which vital organs to worry about; which she could live without and still be fairly functional, still desirable to her wife. How would Amanda ever look at her again, let alone touch her, knowing she was mutilated like that? It was so hard to think, with the knife poised at her throat, nicking the skin when she swallowed convulsively.

"Please," she whispered, afraid of what else Gus would nick if she moved suddenly or breathed too deep. "Don't do this. I'm not some street kid or an illegal they'll let fall through the cracks. They'll be looking for me nonstop. My wife won't give up until she finds me. You don't know her like I do. This will end badly for you—"

He pressed the blade flush with her windpipe, releasing a trickle of blood she sensed more than felt. She had experienced that same spreading heat, similar to a hot flash but more contained, the last two times her throat was slashed. "It's not a threat," she said quickly, her voice paper thin, crackling as if she were losing the station. "I'm trying to let you off the hook. I don't know where I am. Take me somewhere and drop me off. Blindfold me. I won't be able to lead them back here. I won't look for you. You can go on with your business, and I'll go on with mine. You know me. I keep my word."

"That is true. It's one of your best qualities." Gus angled the knife blade under Olivia's braid, gliding it from the top notch to the fringe at the bottom, the entire plait dropping back against her shoulder with a flick of his wrist. He placed the sharp edge at the crook of her neck this time, leaning in to murmur the rest. "It's one of mine, too. So believe me when I say, if you make this difficult for me or my boys, I will carve you out a new cunt with this knife. Clit to asshole. You're allowed to resist, I wouldn't expect anything less from you, and it gets these fellas going. But if you fight and don't let us do our job, by the end you'll wish that all we had done was fuck you."

Olivia felt strangely bloodless as the words passed through her ear, into her brain. For a moment, she wondered if he really had cut her throat and she was slowly exsanguinating. She wanted to look down at her shirt, to see if it was stained in a waterfall of blood, but Gus was too close, the knife too eager to bite into flesh. Left with few other options, she nodded. After all, she did believe him.

"Good. I like that you're a quick study. It will serve you well here, as long as the lesson that you learn is who's in control. I know plenty of men have failed to break you before now, but let's face it, they were amateurs. This is what I do." Gus gave a conversational gesture with the knife, then reached behind her, tugging her arms up painfully, until she was forced to bend forward and relieve the strain on her muscles. "I'm cutting you loose because I prefer it, aesthetically. There's just something about a woman's wrists pinned above her head that does it for me. Don't make me regret it."

Her wrists snapped free of the split tape all at once, arms falling to her sides so heavily she almost dropped to the floor face-first. After an hour (had it really been that long, or was her mind playing tricks on her again?) of being tightly trussed behind her back, and crushed a couple of times too, the limbs were leaden and numb. They felt useless, and she feared trying to lash out like she'd planned to while he was sawing at the restraints. What if she missed? What if she didn't?

But she had to do something—he'd signaled to the other men, who advanced as a unit, save for Little Brother (he was already rolling on the E, grinning and hugging himself, an erection tenting the front of his pants). "How do you know about the other men?" she blurted, hoping to delay the inevitable. He liked to pontificate, maybe if she kept him talking a while longer, it would be enough time for Amanda to find her. To get her out of this awful place.

Maybe.

"Lewis I get. That was all over the news, everyone knows about it. But the others . . . " Harris, Calvin, Amelia. The most anyone—other than Amanda and Dr. Lindstrom—knew about Olivia's experience with the Manhattan Mangler was what she had told the press: an attempt was made on her life, but she was ultimately unharmed. With both perps dead, there hadn't been a trial to dredge up the gory details. And Amanda was the only living soul, besides Olivia herself, who knew the full extent of what Lowell Harris had done to her. Supposedly, dead men told no tales. So where were these monsters masquerading as men getting their information?

"Nice try, Olivia." Gus's smile held a tinge of sadness, as if he were saying goodbye to a child who would be grown when next they reunited. "We'll have plenty of time to chat in the coming days. Weeks, perhaps. Depends on how well you cooperate. Right now, my boys are getting restless."

His boys grabbed her by the arms just as she swiped for the knife in Gus's hand, not even coming close. He had already retreated a step, calmly standing back to watch the other men haul her upright. It was a weightless, jostling sensation, like the times she'd fallen from the wall during her days of indoor climbing, jerked up short by the harness. For a moment her feet really were off the ground, and she flung out a wild kick, but it only grazed the sleeve of Gus's leather jacket. Without her shoes on, she couldn't land a hard enough blow, anyway. She felt a flash of anger not at the men, but at herself for not wearing socks with her tennis shoes. It had seemed so unnecessary this morning. She was just going a few blocks for some bagels . . .

Her bare feet dragged across the unsanded flooring, scraping the skin off her heels when she tried to dig them in, splinters driving into the soles when she shuffled for purchase. How could she be so stupid, forgetting her socks like that? She hated to be barefoot outside of her home, where it was safe. Where she was safe.

"No," she grunted, her legs twisting and flailing over each other as she attempted to wriggle loose, tossing her weight from side to side. She'd expected to be thrown back onto the disgusting, flea-bitten mattress, but they were toting her to the rusty old desk that had served as their drug buffet minutes earlier. So that's why they had moved it away from the wall and into the light.

That was to be the site of her very first gangbang.

She'd never even participated in a threesome before (though a couple of past boyfriends had definitely made their case for why she should) and now she was going to take five at once. Maybe only four, if Gus stayed on the sidelines. Three, if Little Brother couldn't perform. Could she get it down to two—cram her foot into the Kid's crotch and put him out of commission? She could probably handle two, especially if the Driver's dick was as small as the Crier had claimed. Steroids were known for causing ED too, so maybe she would get lucky.

That just left the Crier himself, and that realization shattered the entire illusion she was constructing. She couldn't stop him. (Amanda wasn't coming.) She couldn't stop any of them. (This was really happening.)

As her hope began to crumble, so did her sense of propriety, of honor—captains didn't grovel, they didn't scream in terror and desperation—and her sense of shame—she hated losing control, showing weakness. She gave into the fear and the panic, and she screamed for help. She screamed so loud and so long, one of the men uttered a startled, "Jesus." Little Brother stopped hugging himself and covered his ears, face contorting in a pantomime of horror.

And while she screamed, she fought. She fought like they were dragging her down to hell, because they were; she fought like her life depended on it, because it did. Fuck Gus and his fucking little shrimp-dick knife. He might carve her out a new cunt with it, but these guys were about to do the same thing, just using a different type of weapon.

Rape was never pretty, and one man could do a lot of damage, but gang rapes were often the most violent crimes Olivia had to investigate. Men lost their inhibition in groups, lost themselves. They did things they wouldn't normally do, sometimes to impress, sometimes to assert dominance, sometimes to belong. Whatever the reason, it always escalated the violence. It was an important component in weaponized rape in places like the Congo—the brotherhood it created among soldiers, raping together. Destroying together.

Look at that, Alex, you didn't have to go all the way to Africa, after all, she thought, writhing in the men's relentless grasps. Her left shoulder, the one weakened by her rotator cuff injury and subsequent surgery, was already crying out for mercy as they yanked and twisted her by the arms. You could've found what you were looking for right outside your front door.

"Lemme go," she bawled at them, her voice already giving out at the end. She was unable to draw in the adequate breath for another lengthy shout. Her lungs weren't as strong as they used to be, nor were her core muscles (especially after taking a foot to the gut). Maybe if she were younger and thinner. If only this had happened when she was thirty-four, instead of fifty-four.

"Motherfuckers! Don't touch me! You're dead, you hear me? You'll rot in jail, you sick fucks!" And when that didn't work, when they only laughed at the profanity and idle threats, and lifted her so she peddled air the last few steps to the desk: "Please don't do this. I have a new baby at home. My oldest is only eight. Please, don't. I'm begging y—"

She managed to plant the arches of both feet on the ledge of the desk, bending her knees and shoving backwards with every ounce of strength she possessed. A solid surface to spring from might have slowed them down a bit, but the desk lurched sideways, emitting a banshee shriek. Or maybe that was just Olivia screaming again, because they didn't find the defensive move nearly as funny as her cursing, especially when the back of her head smashed into someone's chin.

It must have been the Crier, who nursed his bloody bottom lip and wrenched her arm up high enough behind her back she thought it might snap. "You fucking bitch," he growled, so close his breath warmed her cheek. He smelled like engine grease, or some kind of motor oil. Olivia didn't know much about cars, but from this day forward she would think of him whenever she was in a repair shop (if she ever went to one—or anywhere—after this).

She would think of him grabbing her by the nape of the neck, his long, unkempt fingernails digging into her flesh as he slammed her facedown on the short end of the desk, the metal ledge driving into her pelvis like a battering ram, and said, "Boss won't need to cut you, 'cause I'm gonna tear this pussy up. You can forget the Vaseline now, I'm doing you dry."

I'll do you cold, Lewis had said, indicating his willingness to rape her corpse if he was forced to kill her for not cooperating. Dead or alive, cold or dry, it was all the same; they were ending her life. This was just the latest death. She was about to be raped by the pallbearers who had carried her casket.

On the cinematic screen in her mind, where the picture was always so much more vivid and visceral during a crisis—and never so much as when she was under attack—she saw Amanda and their children at her graveside. Amanda in mourning dress with a widow's veil, Tilly wearing a little blue coat and saluting her mommy's coffin like John-John in that iconic photo. To her older children, she would be the mother who had abandoned them; to her two youngest girls, she would be nothing more than a headstone:

Olivia Rollins-Benson
Beloved Wife and Mother
1968 - 2022

And to Amanda, she would just be gone. The ghost of what might have been.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." For a moment, they were the only words Olivia could say, and she repeated them until other words finally flew out of her mouth, whatever she could think of: "Please don't hurt me. Please don't do this. Get off me— I can't— please, don't!"

"Well, since you asked so nice," the Crier said, even as he started to undo his fly. One of the men (Driver, she thought) stood behind her, his own hard-on nudging at her ass, his large hand at the small of her back, pinning her to the desk like an insect mounted with a straight pin in some display case. She couldn't turn her face away with the Crier still gripping the back of her neck, either.

His erection, strangely dusky for his skin tone, suddenly jutted out of his unzipped pants, reminding her of a curious animal poking its head up from a hole. He had a Prince Albert piercing, one of those barbells that went in through the urethra and out beneath the glans. Olivia had seen one or two perps with that piercing over the years, but she'd never gotten such an up-close and personal look before. Most men were revolted by the idea of shoving something sharp through their penis. They couldn't stand the pain.

I'm doing you dry, he'd said.

More than anything, Olivia wanted to cry out again, but she was afraid to open her mouth with him that close to it. Hot, hopeless tears seeped from her eyes, and she screamed through gritted teeth—in frustration as much as terror—thrashing as best she could with someone grasping her arm on the opposite side and the other two men pressing her to the filthy metal surface of the desk. It felt like twenty pairs of hands holding her down, rather than three, and any movement she made was quickly subdued. They were so goddamned strong.

"I wanna go first," said the Kid, so petulant it was almost laughable. He was definitely the one who had Olivia by the left arm. She tried to yank it away from him, not caring if she reinjured her shoulder, if it meant getting his hands off of her—but the little son of a bitch held fast. "You got to shoot her up with the Cryo and rub off on her in the van. Should be my turn."

"I'm the one who did all the work getting the heifer here. You'd still be trying to haul her ass into the van and dropping shit and jizzing yourself if I wasn't there to keep you from screwing up the whole grab." The Crier scoffed loudly, a drop of his spittle landing on Olivia's cheek. She flinched and writhed some more, until he squeezed her neck so roughly, she yipped. Frannie made that sound when someone accidentally stepped on her tail. "No one wants your sloppy seconds, junior."

"None of you woulda got anywhere without me," said the Driver, whose prowess behind the wheel was undeniable. He had gotten them through the city streets in no time and didn't even need lights and sirens to do it. He punctuated his assertion with a brisk slap to Olivia's ass, which made her gasp and clench, and made him chuckle. "I'm taking her for a spin first, eses. If that's a problem, talk to el jefe."

Either the Driver had more authority than Olivia first suspected, or the other men didn't want to be tattletales in front of their boss, because no one argued with him. He clapped her on the hips like he was patting a horse's withers or a dog's rump—some loyal, well-trained beast that had followed the commands of its master. "On her back," he instructed, his hands sliding down to her thighs, helping to flip her over. "I like seeing their face when I put it in."

The lights were blinding as the three men turned Olivia onto her back, a disorienting shift that gave her vertigo and left her squinting at the figures looming above. For a second they were featureless shadow demons, and that was frightening, but then they came into focus: real sneering, leering men whose hands and eyes were all over her body—and that was most frightening of all.

"Please don't," she whimpered, defeat creeping in no matter how hard she fought to keep it—and the men—at bay. She still hoped for her squad, led by Amanda (who always came for her in the past, always), to burst through the door at the last second, like it happened in the movies. Sometimes it did happen that way in real life too.

Didn't it?

Not for Olivia. Not this time.

While the two men leaned heavily on her shoulders, both gripping her by the wrists with their free hands, the Driver shucked off her yoga pants like he was whipping a tablecloth from underneath a setting of fine crystal. The snug material and swift removal bunched her panties around her hips, but thankfully they stayed on. She longed to tug up the waistband and shield herself, or at least to cross her legs against the stubby fingers kneading her inner thighs, but every time she tried, the Driver forced them apart, until it felt as if he were trying to rip her straight up the middle.

"You got some nice long legs, girl," he said, stroking the limbs admiringly, even as Olivia kicked and peddled and bucked. Her heels hit the side panel of the desk, punching in the aged metal with a sound that reminded her of junior-high lockers. Two eighth graders had gotten into a fight in the hall during first period one semester, and that was the sound the boys' fists made when they swung wild, whanging the locker doors. "Mm-mmm. You wrap those pins around me nice and tight, okay? Let's see who can crack whose spine first."

She obliged right then, snapping her knees shut around his middle like a triggered bear trap and squeezing so hard it made her thighs shudder. She half expected a crunch of breaking ribs or at least an indignant shout, but the Driver hardly reacted beyond a smirk that extended to his skinny goatee, sharpening the already pointy corners.

In her precinct, Olivia might be formidable—a force to be reckoned with, some called her—and even out on the streets, with a squad behind her and a gun on her hip, a badge on the other, she had considerable strength, especially for a woman. But here, stripped of authority and now her dignity, strength was failing her too. The eighty or more pounds of muscle he had on her surely made a difference (she wouldn't have tangled with him outside of an interrogation room or gunpoint, under normal circumstances), but it still felt like failure. She should be able to stop him, stop all of this. If not, what was she good for?

"Fuck, bro, look how eager she is," the Driver commented to one or both of his buddies, or to no one, it was hard to say. He grabbed Olivia's knees and jerked them open with no more effort than undoing a stubborn clothespin. "Can't even wait till I put it in her. Little puta. I already smell her from here."

To demonstrate he dipped low, spreading her resisting thighs wide beneath his palms, and buried his nose in the crotch of her underwear, for a deep whiff that traveled from perineum to clitoris. A miserable groan escaped Olivia's throat when she tipped her head back on the desk, striving to be as far removed from the violation as possible, even if only by sight. Why couldn't she just dissociate and step out of her body like she had in the past?

She'd done it the first time her mother beat her, after discovering twelve-year-old Olivia had emptied all the hidden vodka bottles in the apartment down the drain; it was so successful that, upon returning to herself, Olivia couldn't remember how she had gotten the bloody welts that covered her body. To this day, she didn't remember what implement Serena had used to make those leechlike wales.

Once or twice with Daniel, her first fiancé, she had gone blank (that was the only way she knew how to describe it, at age sixteen) when he asked her to do something sexual she didn't enjoy. He did that a lot, actually.

It had come in particularly handy during her previous assaults, though she never managed to tap out quite so fully as she had in her childhood. Those times—Harris, Lewis, Arliss—she had stood outside herself, watching the men hurt that poor woman who screamed and wept and bled and begged. At least that was how she remembered it. With all the alcohol and drugs pumped into her system the last two times, it was hard telling which memories were hers, which were the sedatives, and which were the nightmares she'd had since. That was what she consoled herself with, at least: the idea that parts of those attacks must be illusion.

This was wide awake, brutal reality—the musclehead rooting in her privates, his bros slamming her shoulders, elbows, wrists against the desktop whenever she lifted one or the other—and she was maddeningly sober, maddeningly present. From her upside-down vantage, she caught a glimpse of Little Brother staring wide-eyed at the lurid scene, wringing his baseball cap in his hands.

"Help," she called to him weakly, praying he might appeal to the others on her behalf. Make them see her as human. But he just stood there wringing his stupid hat. "Please help me."

The Kid grabbed a handful of her breast and gave it a vicious twist that would have hurt worse without the padding of her bra cup, but still caused her to wince and gasp in pain. It redirected her attention to the men ahead, in particular the Driver, who had finally finished sniffing and stood up to declare, "Not half bad for cop pussy." He smiled at the little white stars on her black cotton bikinis before grasping the underwear at the hip and rending it from her body. He tossed the tangled material aside, presumably in the same direction he had pitched her pants.

It happened with no more import than if they had wandered across a skin flick on television and paused on that channel with mild interest ("Nice," the Driver said of her pubic hair, meanwhile the Kid observed, "Huh, I expected a bigger bush"). For Olivia, who had never been nude—partially or not—in front of a group of men before, it was earth-shattering. She squirmed frantically, trying to kick out at the Driver, but he was standing between her dangling legs and the most she could do when he pushed her hips flat to the desk was whiplash her body at the torso, in the hopes someone would lose their grip.

No one did. Not until Driver let go with one hand, reached into his low-slung joggers, and pulled out his penis. He was hard and not as small as Olivia had hoped. Longer than the four-inch blade introduced by Gus, but shorter than the nine inches promised by the Crier. Like the rest of him, the Driver's girth was the intimidating part. He looked from his genitals to Olivia's, weighing some unspoken option, then spat into his palm and smeared the saliva between her legs. That doesn't work, you dumbfuck, she screamed at him in her mind.

Aloud she cried, "No! Please."

Then he was inside of her, and all screaming, all crying out for mercy, ceased. Other than the man's initial grunt upon entry, the room went momentarily still and silent. It was as if the entire world held its breath
(no, she could hear the jackhammer going in the distance; the outside world carried on, despite the woman being raped in a shipping container on the waterfront, ob-la-di, ob-la-da)
until the second thrust, much deeper than the first.

Sometimes Daniel had gotten too eager and pushed his way in before she was wet enough, but nothing could have prepared Olivia for being entered totally dry. It was that over-full, gagging sensation she'd felt when Harris shoved his dick in her mouth, except this pulled at her insides, dragging back and forth like sandpaper between her labia. Now she knew how the barrel of her gun felt when she plunged it with a stiff-bristled bore brush, by design larger than the opening for which it was intended.

"Oh yeah," the Driver said in a long, guttural exhalation, as if he'd just settled into a bathtub of steaming hot water after a hard day's work. He released Olivia's hips, pressing his hands to the desktop on either side of her and leaning into the thrusts. "Fuck. Bitch is tight. I can hardly fit."

"That's 'cause you got a dick like a damn Spam loaf." The Crier, whose own dick kept grazing Olivia's arm whenever she moved it, snickered at the wisecrack and winked conspiratorially down at Olivia. "Open wide, pussycat. Hope you're in the mood for some canned imitation meat that smells like ass. Probably tastes like, too."

The Kid joined in with the older man's derisive laughter, egging the Driver on, not just by mocking but with slaps on the shoulders and a vigorous rub of his shiny bald pate. He lowered his gleaming head, already beaded in sweat from his efforts, and drove into Olivia harder than before. Hard enough that a hiccup of pain and trapped air from the lungs she'd forgotten how to use escaped her lips.

It reminded her to breathe, although she would just as soon not, when each breath hitched in her throat, mingling with the Driver's convulsive grunts in a vulgar sort of harmony. She had given up fighting once he penetrated her, once that first irrevocable thrust undid the fifty-four years of fighting that came before it—all those years of dodging her mother's boyfriends, with their wandering eyes and wandering hands; all those years of burying the truth about the assaults she had endured, until she believed the lies herself; all those years of pouring her heart and soul into protecting women and girls from scenarios like this one: being raped on top of a rusted-out desk by a man whose St. Jude medal swung back and forth, inches above her face, as he rocked against her.

Olivia was being raped. There was no way around it this time. She couldn't argue that it was consensual, or that her desires had been unclear and therefore absolved the rapist of any wrongdoing, as she had with Daniel since the moment he first assaulted her (then went on doing so, in various ways, for months after). She couldn't claim the "five-second rule"—that it wasn't full-fledged rape because he hadn't made it all the way in; hadn't been in her mouth longer than one or two thrusts, barely enough time to cut off her air supply; had only used a single finger, and her body was already so numb she didn't really feel it anyway. She couldn't let awareness slip away, protecting her from the harsh reality of what
(Daniel, Lewis, Calvin, the Crier)
the man on top of her was doing.

He put his penis in my vagina. How many women had she encouraged to say those precise words? How many thousands of victims had she listened to recount the exact moment someone stripped them of their humanity, agency, safety, pride? And now she was one of them, for however long she survived after this attack.

Tonic immobility, that's why she couldn't move. Could barely think. God, she was one of those statistics now. The seventy percent of women who experienced involuntary paralysis during their rape. Likelihood doubled if you had experienced it before (she had, the first time with Daniel, and if she were being honest, it was part of the reason she'd kept so still during that last time with Lewis) and if the assault was violent or included multiple attackers. Check and check. She was like some small, helpless creature curled in on itself while the big bad wolf batted it around with his paw.

"Get her legs up," the Driver instructed, lifting Olivia's legs one at a time, behind the knee, and hooking them over the other men's arms. Her upper body was momentarily unrestrained as they followed his directions, but it didn't matter since she couldn't move on her own. The men did it all for her, anyway.

She had inched higher up the desk with Driver pounding away at her like he was, so he jerked her back down by the hips, positioning her ass right at the edge. With her knees cocked apart and her ass about to slide off the cold slab below, she felt as if she were on a gynecological table, feet in the stirrups. I'm doing this for you, her mother had said while they were waiting on the doctor's arrival for that first, forced vaginal exam. Olivia had simply stared at the wall, refusing to acknowledge her mother's existence. You don't know what he might have given you. Men are filthy.

Like you ever asked any of your fuckbuddies from the bar if they had VD, Olivia thought, distantly. She hadn't said it back then; she would have gotten her mouth slapped. Besides, Serena was right—Olivia had known nothing of Daniel McNab's sexual history and what diseases he might pass on to her (none, as it turned out).

Lucky. She'd been so lucky over the years, except for the pregnancy scare that turned out not to be a false alarm. When she was still trying to do something important with her life. That was the story, at least. Never mind that she would have given birth at the same age her mother had delivered her, and she couldn't bear to see the look on Serena's face when she announced an unplanned pregnancy. Serena never would have forgiven her if she dropped out of college to raise a child. So she hadn't.

Maybe it was better to be raped at fifty-four, after all. Of the many unpleasant outcomes, it did take unwanted children off the table. Had her mother thought about that, Olivia wondered, while lying on that dirty concrete landing below street level, with Joseph Hollister on top of her? That she might have a child who was conceived down there in the lonely, godless dark, among the broken bottles and decaying newspaper? That, no matter how far the child ran from it, how long and hard she fought it, she would end up right back in that dark in which she was conceived?

Had this been written in Olivia's stars all along? Not family, not happiness, not peace and safety. What a fool she was to have believed any of those things were meant for her.

She watched the St. Jude medal pendulum above her, gaining momentum with each stroke, until it pitched wildly back and forth, like a playground swing the occupant had jumped out of midair. It was close enough for her to reach up and touch, to squeeze in her palm and say a prayer. Jude was the patron saint of lost causes, if she remembered correctly. Nothing could be more fitting than that.

"Look at me," the Driver panted, heaving his pelvis into her with a faint smack of flesh against flesh. Wet, sloppy sounds that curdled the blood inside Olivia's ears. She forgot them a moment later, when his hands went up her shirt, sliding the hem to her shoulders, and began harshly massaging her breasts. Even through the bra cups, it hurt. "Hey, bitch, up here. Look at me while I fuck you. Yeah, that's it, show me them pretty brown eyes."

She tried not to. But the longer she avoided eye contact, the harder he squeezed and the more vicious his thrusts. Her breath caught with each one, and she could swear she felt him in the back of her throat. She felt him everywhere. "No. S-stop," she said, in a voice so thin and broken he probably wouldn't hear her over his pornographic sound effects. "Stop."

The Driver swatted her cheek smartly with his fingers, not hard enough to be called a slap, but enough that it startled her into obedience. She didn't want to be hit anymore. Perhaps if she cooperated, he wouldn't be so eager to make it hurt. Some men couldn't rape a woman who looked them directly in the eye. But Driver held no such reservations.

The moment he had her full attention, he bucked faster and twice as violently, until she was sure he would do internal damage. She wasn't delicate or of small build, and she'd engaged in plenty of vigorous sex over the years, particularly in her teens and early adulthood, but nothing like this. Nothing that made her whimper in pain and reach blindly for something to hold onto. She caught a handful of the Kid's shirt and knotted it around her fist. If she could have brought it to her mouth to bite, she would have.

It occurred to her then that she had developed that habit—needing something to bite down on when she didn't want to cry out during
(rape)
sex—while she was dating Daniel. At first it had been to muffle the sounds coming from the bedroom so his roommates wouldn't hear; then, as he'd gotten more adventurous with his sixteen-year-old plaything, Olivia had bitten whatever was handy (usually herself) for reasons she couldn't explain. Daniel thought it was sexy. My little carnivore, he called her.

"Sugar tits," the Driver called her. He groped her breasts like he was trying to crush a pair of grapefruits with his bare hands. St. Jude flailed above, his useless, sad face staring down as if he were fucking her, too. Patron saint of carnivores and women with big tits the boys just loved to squeeze.

And finally, abruptly, the Driver came inside of her, spilling his seed where few men had and adding to the slimy sensation she was almost certain must be blood. It sure as hell wasn't arousal. Her body might be numb from the shoulders down, it might feel like it belonged to someone else entirely—the man straining inside her, perhaps—but there was no part of her that had wanted that. Daniel had convinced her otherwise; even Lewis made her question the reactions her body had given him. But no one, including herself, could tell her what just happened wasn't rape.

If she made it out of this godforsaken place, if she wasn't sold and used up till there was nothing left, she would have to describe for countless listeners what the Driver had done to her: how he wetted her down beforehand, his saliva as thick and sticky as his semen; how he yanked her into each thrust by tugging on her breasts, his fingernails leaving hot, red crescents in her flesh; how he smiled when he pulled his cock out of her with a faint pop, like a cork plucked from a wine bottle. How she could only lie there, naked from the waist down and half out of her t-shirt and bra, shivering uncontrollably, while he vowed, "Not finished with you yet, puta. Gimme a couple minutes, we'll go again."

She began to panic at the thought of relating those details to a jury, to other cops, doctors, or even just to her wife. At least the other assaults had been very much in the past tense when she finally disclosed them to Amanda, but this was their present, their here and now. Rape often tore relationships apart, or at the very least, changed them forever.

And what if Amanda blamed her for not fighting harder? The detective hadn't let it show much lately—not since the night that almost ended their marriage before it began, when they pushed each other to their limits, emotionally and sexually—but it still angered her when Olivia didn't defend herself well enough. During the last Super Bowl, Olivia had apologized for blocking the TV at a crucial moment, inciting Amanda to bellow, "Move, woman!" and toss a throw pillow across the room, and the blonde practically wouldn't speak to her the rest of the evening—not for the interruption, but because Olivia had excused the yelling and throwing. Amanda went into labor the following day, so it had all been a moot point anyway.

Nothing about this was moot. Amanda would never forgive her if she found out Olivia had just lain there and taken it. She would have her proof that Olivia was weak and deserved the blame for the past assaults as well, things she should have put a stop to, but didn't. And then Amanda would leave her, because no one wanted a wife who didn't fight with every last ounce of strength not to be gang raped. Wasn't that like complicity, when you really got down to it?

"Damn, Captain, you're tore up," said the Kid, gazing down at her with fascination and a hint of disgust. It was the way Noah and his ballet friends sounded when they showed off their calloused feet and split toenails, challenging each other to see who had the best war wounds.

At first, Olivia thought the Kid was talking about her genitals, which indeed felt raw and stretched beyond their limits—inside and out—but his eyes were on her breasts. More specifically, the pucker marks that marred her deeper cleavage and curved along the outsides. The scars from Lewis' cigarettes always reminded her of bullet holes in glass, that striated outer web with the puncture at its center, signifying where he most firmly ground in the tip. She had five of those bullet holes altogether, and considered herself lucky not to have five times that. Most days she hardly noticed them, and she no longer hid the scars from Amanda or felt self-conscious having them touched and kissed. She had very nearly forgotten how ugly they were; how "tore up" she was, truly.

And that wasn't even counting the serpentine mark on her hip from the coat hanger, or the various and sundry scars she had accumulated over the years, from her various and sundry attackers. God, how Amanda didn't find her completely repulsive was beyond Olivia.

"Guess you've got a little more mileage on you than most of the cunts that come through here, though, huh?" The Kid traced a fingertip from one cigarette burn to the other, connecting the dots. His fingers were cold, but the touch seared Olivia's skin as surely as any smoldering Marlboro. "You're gonna be the oldest bitch I ever had. It's kinda hot, actually. Like that Mrs. Robinson chick. Roll over, Mrs. Robinson, I want you from behind."

As he spoke, the Kid unzipped his jeans and peeled them back from his slender hips. He was rummaging for the bulge inside his Calvin Klein boxers when Olivia threw her elbow sideways, aiming for the crotch of the plaid shorts, but swinging high in her frenzy to get away. She caught him in his soft, concave gut, drawing a faint oomph and a bow, as if he were inviting her into a Baroque dance. Near the wall behind him, visible only when he ducked, was his father Gus, looking on with a dispassionate eye. He didn't seem at all bothered by his son's difficulties, nor did he spare a glance for Olivia. It looked like he was watching a dogfight, the outcome of which he had no stake in either way.

The Crier, however, thought his friend's plight was hilarious. His laugh sounded rusty, like a gate forced open after years of disuse. It was a harsh, hateful sound, maybe the ugliest one that Olivia had ever heard, and she longed to shut him up. She longed for a metal bar to beat in his brains and shatter his kneecaps with; to bash against his crotch until he went flaccid, his balls turned to mush, Prince Albert embedded deep; to stand over him and wield, making him feel small and helpless and afraid.

Her elbow would have to do. He was at her left now, after that last-minute flip the Driver—her rapist—had requested. That was her weaker side, thanks to fractures and surgeries, but she mustered all her strength and hurled that elbow at the Crier. Once he was doubled up, clutching his stomach like the Kid was doing, she would only need to kick the Driver, and run. Little Brother couldn't stop her, and perhaps Gus was far enough away for her to get a good head-start . . .

She had barely finished the thought, or worked out how she would find her pants and get them on before she fled, when the Crier smoothly stepped aside to avoid the blow. Heaving herself sideways into nothing, into the fetid air, threw Olivia off balance and she rolled from the side of the desk, crashing heavily to the floor. Her arm crumpled beneath her, and she feared it might be broken, but then the Crier's boot came hard and fast. She felt a definite snap when it connected with her upper abdomen, and if that hadn't fractured some ribs, the next two kicks undoubtedly did.

He continued to laugh while he kicked her, hitting a maniacal crescendo before cutting it abruptly short and wrestling Olivia upright. "That the best you got, you dumb fucking cunt?" He exhaled hotly in her ear, holding tight around her middle as he hoisted, the pain in her freshly injured ribs bright and exquisite. "You think you're a real tough bitch 'cause you got a badge and a gun? You wouldn't last five minutes where I been, kitty cat."

"Fuck you," Olivia rasped, her shortness of breath no longer from panic or adrenaline, but from his foot colliding with her solar plexus. She'd had the wind knocked out of her a few times as a kid, and this felt a lot like that. Except she only need worry about defending herself from her staggering drunk of a mother back then. "You're gonna burn in hell a lot longer than five minutes."

The Crier's laugh was sharp and brief this time. Not a laugh at all, but a warning, like the growl that preceded a dog bite. He grabbed her t-shirt where it had slid back down her shoulders, and jerked up, momentarily shrouding her in white, until another yank freed it from below her chin. The shirt—just a markdown from Gap or somewhere, purchased for its soft, airy texture and mostly worn for lounging around at home—went the way of her yoga pants and underwear before it.

Nude, except for the bra she was only half in anyway, she felt divested of everything that made her Olivia Benson. He might as well have reached in and ripped out her soul. Perhaps that was what he intended, because he popped the hooks of her bra with a swift tug, unceremoniously spilling her from the cups, and groped her bare breasts from behind, burring, "This is hell, baby. And you better get used to it. You and me are gonna be here a long, long time."

. . .