A/N: Hey, guys. I considered holding this chapter back and posting it later as, like, a "deleted scene" or something, but there's some details in it that are referenced throughout the story, so I decided against it. And that's not to say it's not a good chapter—I like it a lot, actually, but it's much with the darkness and I'm trying really hard to get y'all to some daylight here, lol. My hatred for Gus, Sondra, and all these assholes is considerable, I promise, and I want them to suffer accordingly. Trigger Warnings: graphic depictions of sexual assault, including gang rape; child abuse and suicidal ideation. Thanks to all for your continued readership and feedback.

Chapter 19.

Karma Is a Cat

. . .

It was that word ripe. A description for fruit, for strong odors, like a baby's diaper ("Phew, girl, you are ripe," Amanda often announced while toting Samantha to the changing table). It could apply to cheese or beer, to animals ready for slaughter, and funnily enough, to being drunk. Sometimes it was used to describe cunts and bitches too.

As in, I can go for hours with a ripe little cunt like you. Fourteen years had passed since Lowell Harris grunted that line, now infamous in Olivia's brain, while he forced his dick down her throat. In the years since, she'd come to wish he had used less unique phrasing, particularly that piquant little adjective ripe. She couldn't shake it. She thought about how Serena would laugh: her cop daughter picking apart a rapist's word choice like she was deconstructing Keats or something.

That just made it all the more vivid in Olivia's memory. She could smell him—taste him—every time that damn line went through her head. So when she heard it repeated by the guy in the MAGA hat, right before he shucked off the scrap of fabric that used to be her underwear, she instantly made the connection. The phrasing was different, but the sentiment the same. I can always get it up, especially with a ripe bitch like you. Olivia was a ripe, rapeable cunt bitch all the boys couldn't wait to fuck.

She did wonder if it was a comment on her age. Although, she had been younger than Harris at the time, physically fit, limber, and at an age some would consider her sexual prime, so probably not. (It occasionally crossed her mind that he was referring to her scent, but that was too awful to dwell on.)

This man whose name she couldn't recall, but whose erection she clearly remembered pressing against her ass while he restrained her over a prison lunch table, wasn't that much younger than she was. A couple years at most. And she only knew that from studying his jacket before and after Sealview; guard or not, prison had aged him. He still had that crooked nose—a break which hadn't healed properly, from the looks of it—and that gash in his face, meant to be a smile.

And he still wanted to follow in the footsteps of his long-dead buddy, enough so that he had adopted Harris' favorite adjective as his own.

Son of a bitch, what was his damn name?

"The prison," Olivia managed to rasp before her voice gave out. Her throat felt like she had swallowed a handful of razor blades, her neck so stiff and sore she could barely turn her head. She feared that some irreversible damage had been done to her larynx. No doubt it had been done to her soul. "Sealview. You— you groped me."

It had gone beyond that, his middle and ring finger sneaking into the seam of her backside, glancing across her labia as he commented on her workout. That was what had sent her into attack mode, after Huang specifically told her she couldn't react to the injustices she witnessed or experienced herself. Her ass got grabbed plenty on the job, especially during undercover gigs—hell, that one guy had gotten to second base with her, his hand on her breast like he was picking low-hanging fruit—but Parker's fingers in her nether regions was not what she'd signed on for.

Parker. That was this dirtbag's name. The women at Sealview had called him Parker the Poker, because his dick always managed to poke you in one place or another whenever he got close. Olivia had been so certain he was their perp, and obviously he'd taken up the torch for Harris since then, that she was blindsided when the real attack came.

Afterward, she'd been too shaken to pursue charges against the man who now teased her, stroking the insides of her thighs, drawing his hand back each time she batted at it, stroking higher when it returned. Her case against Harris hadn't gone through, so why subject herself to the humiliation of describing the base and petty assaults by Parker, who at least had never forced his dick into her mouth?

Why hadn't she stopped to consider that he might escalate? Of course he would, they always did when they were left unchecked. And without Harris there to call the shots and poach his game, Parker had flourished into a full-fledged rapist and sex trafficker in his own right. God, how could she have been so stupid? Surely this mistake would be her last. Surely it had cost her everything.

"Parker," she said, trying to whisper loudly enough for the camera to pick it up. The type of people who tuned in to these guerrilla porn videos probably wouldn't contact the police or listen to the victim's pleas for help, but maybe someone out there still had a shred of humanity. And if not, she might at least ID one of her attackers posthumously, should NYPD find the recordings. The only way she could bear to think of anyone she knew seeing the footage was if she was already dead and there was no other way to get justice. "Mark— Matt Parker."

"Well, looky there." Parker sounded delighted that she remembered him, as if he were an old student of hers, expecting to have been forgotten in a sea of academic faces. "Guess I made a lasting impression on you after all, huh, kitty cat?"

No, not kitty cat. Kitty Kat. That was where the disgusting nickname had come from—Katrina Rae Lewis, her undercover alias at Sealview Correctional. She was desensitized to the name now, because of Officer Tamin, and she'd forgotten the handful of times Parker had called her by the nickname during her stint in the prison, usually meowing after her like a damn cat in heat. That meant the Crier (or Angel or Nicky, or whatever the hell he went by) had picked up the name from Parker, and it wasn't just some quality they had both seen in her.

Her relief was tempered by Parker's hands trying to slide under her t-shirt and the realization that she still didn't know who was behind her abduction. Harris had died years ago, leaving behind only a couple of estranged siblings that didn't care enough to show up for his trial or his burial, let alone exact revenge in his name. No one had mourned William Lewis, either. And Calvin had killed everyone who might have loved him or Amelia enough to hold a grudge against Olivia. The Mesners were relieved that Henry was locked away again . . .

All of Olivia's monsters were accounted for. Or so she had thought, until she met six new ones.

"What stuck with you the most, would you say?" Parker asked, his tone so conversational anyone watching might think it was normal discourse between friends. If not for the half-dressed woman on the floor, brown blood crusted on her thighs, black blood crusted on her shirt. "Was it when I copped a feel at intake or when I restrained you for inciting a riot? Gotta hand it to you, you did keep things lively. You've mellowed out a little since then." He looked her up and down, and smoothed a hand along her body, not playing keep away anymore. "But I bet you're still a great fuck."

Fuck you, she thought, but couldn't make her lips say it. Words were a precious commodity for her now, and not one to be wasted on repartee or comebacks. If they thought it meant they had broken her—and maybe they had—then so be it. She was too weak to fight back, her throat too ravaged to speak above a whisper, leaving her with few other options than the pathetic, degrading one she chose.

"Please don't do this," she begged, tears leaking onto her cheeks. She didn't have the energy to cry hard, but her eyes had kept up a slow and steady stream since yesterday. Almost as if it were her natural state. "Help me, Parker. I need— need you." Her touch-and-go voice was a blessing then, the last few words not reaching her ears as she mouthed them. His hands were partially cupped to her bare ass, and she was asking him for help. It was one of the more debasing moments she'd had since this whole thing began.

The gash appeared where Parker's smile should be. He shook his head as if he thought she was a real piece of work, but he also looked mildly charmed. Like she had strolled over to flirt with him at a bar. "Aww, don't be giving me those big doe eyes like Vaughny does. I'm a sucker for that shit, you know. Most guys are, although you probably found that out before you went full Ellen, huh?"

Olivia stared at him, confused by the names. He was massaging the tops of her thighs, delving in a little deeper each time, and talking to her about people she didn't know. She took his wrists and tried to pry them in opposite directions, but they didn't budge an inch. When she brought her thighs together, he forced them apart. They were too sore from being forced open for hours yesterday, she could hardly move them. She felt like a wishbone, cracked up the center.

"You bagged a hottie, though, I'll give you that. A little small up top, but you more than make up for it." Parker flashed an actual smile this time, and it was no more pleasant than the gash. He smoothed a hand over Olivia's breasts, one at a time, buffing with his palm until her nipples were erect. He tweaked them through her t-shirt, admiring his handiwork. "I'd offer to eat you out, since that's what you're into, but you're kind of a mess. Down here."

He swiped two fingers up the middle of Olivia's vulva and showed them to her, like he was doing the white glove test on a mantel. Judging from his disgust, she hadn't passed. He paid no attention to her squirming bottom half, pinning her with a hand at her pelvis, as he dried his fingers on her shirt. Trying to buck him off only succeeded in making him bear down harder, pressing against whatever internal injuries she'd already incurred.

"That's what you get," he said, giving an indifferent shrug when she yelped in pain, sounding like a kicked dog. He did slide his hand higher, applying the pressure to her abdomen instead of her reproductive organs. Not that she believed he had any knowledge of female anatomy, or cared at all about hers if he did.

"Anyway. You're not as bad as some of the broads we get at the prison. They come in at intake smelling like BO, their periods, pot, my high school jockstrap. Sometimes all at once. Weigh about five hundred pounds too. Makes you wonder where a guy's supposed to stick it, you know?" Parker lifted the bottom of Olivia's t-shirt like he was peering underneath, looking for a place to stick it. Unnecessary, since the hem barely covered her genitals in this position, but he didn't seem to mind the discrepancy.

"Most of them look like butch-ass lesbos," he went on, sliding his hand up Olivia's shirt to stroke her belly. The worst part was that it felt good compared to the violence she'd endured so far. No—the worst part was that she didn't try to get away. She had finally accepted that this was happening. "Like that bulldyke on Orange is the New Black. No offense to your people. Thank God you're a real woman, though. You and Vaughn. Wish I had gotten to you sooner, before menopause dried you out, but I'll get you nice and slick here in a second. They leave that Vaseline nearby?"

Olivia only heard bits and pieces of what he was saying (someone named Vaughn or Von, menopause, Vaseline) her brain doing what it had always done, preserving her sanity by tuning out the ugliest moments. The irony that this ability she'd acquired at a young age, to disappear inside herself during a trauma, made her an unreliable witness—an unreliable victim—was not lost on her.

Most of her account of the Lewis maelstrom had been cobbled together from half-memories, guesswork and likelihoods, and details gleaned from the case file, her doctor's report, and the rape kit. She couldn't even have said with absolute certainty that there was no rape, if not for the inconclusive results of that kit. Inconclusive meant that, while there were no obvious signs of forcible penetration and no evidence of semen or spermicide in the vaginal canal, there was room for interpretation based on her other injuries. Her interpretation was an unequivocal no. Her body would have told her if that had happened.

Never mind that it had hidden so many other offenses from her over the years.

His hands on her bare breasts, kneading. It occurred to her that he was saying something about still working at the prison ("—usually handjobs or blowies, can't really do her right there in the cell, you know?"), but why that was important she couldn't exactly say. Pinching and twisting, jolts of pain shooting through her nipples, into breast tissue, more raw now than they had ever been from nursing Samantha. Oh my God, she would never get to hold her baby girl again, would she?

Don't cry, he said. Hate it when women cry, he said.

A belt unbuckled, pants unzipped. Olivia's version of Pavlov's bell. She didn't salivate, though; nor did she try to get away, the response she had trained herself for so diligently, since that very first warning her mother had given her about men who liked to do The Bad Thing to little girls. It turned out her learned response—after all those dry runs and close calls, after yesterday's crash course in torture and assault—was pure catatonia.

Her eyelashes barely fluttered, she scarcely took a breath, when he entered her. He must not have found the jelly, because she was anything but slick, his large, clammy penis tugging at her skin, opening the wounds that were stitched together with blood and dried semen. Even that failed to pull her back from the halfway world she'd slipped into, where his words ("Not as tight as my Vaughny," "At least lift your hips a little") were a foreign language she didn't understand, his tongue in her mouth didn't gag her, and she felt nothing below the waist.

"Oh, kitty cat," he murmured, leaning back to look her in the face while he thrust. Occasionally he rotated his hips like he was trying to make it pleasurable for her too. The joke was on him—she didn't feel a damn thing. "Pretty little kitty."

The halfway world was nice, it was safe and far removed from the shipping container, with all its horrors and indignities, but Olivia knew eventually she would have to return to reality. Her children and Amanda weren't in this place, and she couldn't stay anywhere they were not. A world of misery and pain, of being bought and sold and raped daily, was still better than one without her family in it.

So she tethered herself. She let in some of the pain, some of Parker's disgusting grunts and moans ("Gonna fill you up with so much come, it'll be up to those pretty eyeballs"), and some of the despair that grounded her in the body she kept trying to leave behind. Whereas her mind had been sluggish and uncooperative before, she now became hyperalert and made a connection she hadn't even known she was aware of.

He was talking about Sondra Vaughn. While he fucked Olivia and groaned about her big, juicy titties, her just right cunt—he'd decided that her supposed elasticity, though lacking the snug fit of his Vaughny, was perfectly cock-sized—her gold-dust skin, he was waxing poetic about the woman she remembered from Amanda's mandatory reports.

Olivia had been far too pissed, and far too busy learning how to command a squad, to attend the trial. Because of Amanda's recklessness and addiction, Olivia had been forced to lie, something she loathed doing, and she'd looked incompetent in front of her new bosses for not being able to control one of her detectives. Of course she remembered that case. Not only had she almost fired Amanda over it—had wanted to, badly—a move that would have proved fatal, at least for their relationship, she clearly recalled that Vaughn was sentenced to Sealview.

Her stomach had dropped, upon reading the name of the prison. Images flooded back in a rush: a bone-colored mattress mottled with the stains of various bodily fluids; Harris' baton rattling across chain link, a black phallus, a godlike finger, pointing directly at her; the mole, the size of a 9mm bullet hole, at the base of his shaft; her neon orange uniform, blinding in her peripheral vision as his penis breached her lips.

That hellhole, though far behind her, even back then, was never quite out of her thoughts. She'd felt a bit sorry for Vaughn, who not only had to live there, but also give birth in such a godforsaken place. Then Olivia had remembered that Sondra Vaughn had orchestrated the rape of an innocent woman, just to prove a point, and her sympathy vanished.

She tried to resurrect a mental image of the woman she was being compared to, but all she could picture was an abundance of dark, curly hair and a vulpine expression that looked cold and calculating, even in mugshot. Was it just a coincidence that two random people from her past were apparently now lovers and somehow both involved in her current hell on earth? Was her exhausted and shell-shocked brain forming patterns that weren't actually there?

For the sake of argument, she concocted a theory: Parker met Sondra Vaughn at Sealview and they bonded over their mutual hatred of Olivia—Parker never did get over being rebuffed by her, denied a piece of her, or losing his partner-in-rape, Lowell Harris, because of her—putting together an elaborate revenge plot. Vaughn had executed them before, weaponizing rape just to make a point. She could use Parker as a go-between, God knew she'd have the contacts for something like this. The snake's head was rarely cut off a crime ring by tossing a few of its higher-ups into prison, and even if it was, those criminals always knew ten more who were willing to do their bidding on the outside.

In a perverted bit of poetic justice, they had even timed their plan so that Olivia was abducted on the same day she'd been taken by William Lewis, nine years earlier.

It was fucking brilliant.

And also too fucking crazy to be true. Olivia had never even met Vaughn in person, let alone angered her enough to warrant payback this extreme. And how would she or Parker know anything about Lewis? They would have had to follow the trial, and Olivia refused to believe that she'd unknowingly been tracked for years by someone other than Calvin Arliss. None of that explained the buyer, either. Who was it? Whom had she wronged so horribly that they wanted her to suffer like this? Someone with a million dollars to spare?

"Squeeze my ass," Parker said, breathless and sweating so profusely it dripped onto Olivia's forehead, her lips, her neck. The salt of him permeated her mouth as, below, he drove in harder. When she didn't obey the order, he grabbed her nipple and twisted as if he meant to rend it from the breast. He caught the hand that shot out in reflex and clapped it to his buttock, then did the same to the other hand, the other cheek. "Squeeze."

What choice did she have? He was nearing the edge anyway, and maybe he would finish sooner if she complied. Olivia squeezed, digging her nails into coarse-haired flesh and proving at least one of her theories to be true: he came a second later. It didn't make it to her eyeballs, as promised, but she did feel it inside of her like a glob of phlegm, squirmy on her inner walls. Parker groaned and kept pumping as if he were in a porno.

And he probably was.

What did the girls do in those things, she couldn't remember. In the very minimal amount of legitimate porn Olivia had actually viewed, they always seemed to be screaming and wailing as if they were being hacked to pieces. Mouths open like baby birds waiting on worms, their bodies contorted into unnatural shapes. A series of holes from which men derived pleasure. That was what she'd been reduced to, so she might as well put it to good use.

As she squeezed him harder, sinking her nails into his ass cheeks as deeply as they would go, hands tightening with the steadiness of a blood pressure cuff, her mind was void of anything, even malice. She heard him bark at her to cut it out, bitch, but she held on the way she had clung to the iron bar after beating Lewis. They'd had to pry it from her hands, which retained its shape, her fists hollowed, fingers curved into talons like a hawk without a perch, until Amaro put her in the squad car.

She was that hawk again, its grip reflex triggered, and the more Parker struggled to pull her off, the harder she dug in her claws.

"Let go, stupid cunt," Parker snarled, flopping out of her like a slimy, dead fish. He clamped onto both of her wrists and shoved them toward her, dragging her nails across his skin so roughly they drew blood. She couldn't see it, but she knew that it was there. His DNA inside her, under her fingernails. A good cop always collected evidence. "Fuck!"

He hit her in the face for it, the blow snapping her head sharply to one side. It stunned but didn't surprise her. The only surprise was that it had taken one of them so long to finally go for her face. He had a decent right hook; she thought her cheekbone might be broken. Her brain felt loose in her skull, as if it were bouncing off the sides like the white dot in Pong. He loomed above her on all fours, an angry-looking blur she had to blink several times to bring into focus. The MAGA hat sharpened first. He hadn't taken it off for the rape.

"Ah, shit. Look what you went and made me do," Parker lamented, gazing down with something that resembled concern. He clicked his tongue, taking her by the chin and turning her face to inspect the damage. "I'm gonna get my ass chewed now. Buyer wanted your face spotless. Oh well, your eyes still show. I'll just tell— uh, him I had to get you under control somehow. In fact . . . "

Sitting back on his haunches, Parker tucked himself back into his slouched jeans, without bothering to zip or button them. Instead, he unthreaded his belt from the loops, the fake leather whispering
(warnings?)
secrets when he whisked it free. Run, it told her. Get up off of this goddamn mattress while you still can. You fought him off before, you can do it again. If you lie here much longer, you will die. Move, bitch!

Olivia's body wouldn't cooperate. She saw herself launching up from the dirty pallet, elbowing Parker in the face or perhaps planting her foot in his crotch, and making a run for the unlocked door. The others would be waiting on the outside, but maybe they would be preoccupied enough for her to sneak past. With any luck, the keys would still be in the van, and she could drive right out of this valley of death, find the main road, and go straight to the closest police station. She would walk it if she had to, though her gait was probably severely diminished from having her legs forced open for long periods of time, multiple penetrations in multiple locations, and the beatings.

But no matter how clearly she pictured each step of her escape, she couldn't make herself go through with it. She could barely even sit up on her own, let alone take down Parker and make a quick exit. Her best bet was to talk him out of whatever he had in mind for that belt—and it didn't take a genius to figure that part out, the way he halved the band, holding an end in both fists and snapping it taut.

"What are you doing?" she asked weakly, shrinking from his touch when he worked a hand under her back, the other under her ass, like spatulas about to flip a pancake. She made herself into deadweight as he struggled to turn her over. "What do you want?"

She had asked Lowell Harris that very same question, knowing perfectly well what the answer was. But you stalled in whatever way you could, asked whatever came to mind, when you were trying to prevent the inevitable. Part of the reason Lewis hadn't raped her at the beach house—at least not with his penis—was because she had kept him talking. He had loved a mindfuck just as much as the real kind, that Lewis.

Parker wasn't nearly as cerebral. "You and the wife aren't into BDSM, eh? I'm surprised, she keeps a pretty tight leash on you. Barely ever lets you out of her sight, always got a hand on you, leading you around. I thought for sure you were the sub. You should be used to getting spanked, kitty cat." He lifted in earnest then, easily rolling Olivia onto her belly, despite all efforts to remain on her back.

Truthfully, the few times she and Amanda toyed around with a Dom/sub dynamic in the bedroom, she had been the submissive partner. But they seldom took it further than some playfully given orders that may or may not be followed (they almost always were), depending on Olivia's preference and comfort level. The only time she'd been the aggressor during sex was with Cassidy, a few months after Lewis, when she forced herself to initiate intercourse as proof that she was fine. Would have happened sooner, if not for the sling.

"No, don't," she said, looking back at Parker pleadingly. He was standing now, slapping the looped belt into his other palm, observing her bare, aching backside, and grinning. She longed to pull her shirt down over her ass, but her arms wouldn't bend that way, especially the left. Just turning her head to see him was almost impossible. "Please. I'll . . . I'll be a good girl. Good kitty. You're— you're so strong, you'll hurt me."

The words tasted as vile as the come she had swallowed by the mouthful yesterday, a bitter, viscous whey that she'd been unable to prevent from sliding down her esophagus. She spat and vomited out as much of it as she could, but eventually her stomach and throat had refused to give up any more. The flavor of it was still on her tongue, mixed in with the donuts and whatever Parker had eaten for breakfast. Some kind of sausage. Olivia would never be able to stomach the meat links again.

Parker looked down at her with surprise, which gave way to curiosity and something that might have been sympathy. He lowered the belt to his side, where it hung against his leg, a headless noose. "You afraid of me, kitty?" he asked, as if the thought had never occurred to him. A woman frightened of the man who had just raped her, imagine that. "Afraid big, bad Parksy will forget his own strength and whip you to death like a stubborn horse?"

Oh, he was poking fun at her. That made more sense than his sudden contrition. Reading social cues was so difficult in these situations. Cruel men didn't play by the rules, and Olivia's mind, which knew how to navigate the breathtaking drops and corkscrew turns of cruelty if not emulate them, wasn't quite up to snuff at the moment. Helplessness and vulnerability were her safest options, the ones most readily available to her. No sense in not playing the victim when that's exactly what you were.

"Yes," she rasped, nodding against her scrunched up shoulder, the way her sweet Tilly did when she was feeling bashful. Olivia made herself small to match the smallness of her voice. It hadn't worked with Harris—with any of them, actually—but maybe Parker would be the exception. A rapist with a heart. "The others . . . so violent. You don't h-have to beat me, I'll do— I'll do whatever you want. Just please don't make it hurt."

Head tilted pityingly, Parker listened as if he were in fact considering the plight of a small, despondent child. The frightened voice on the phone, calling for help from some dirty basement with flowers and a picket fence painted on the wall. He hurts me a lot. And then his friends hurt me so he can take his pictures. Oh God, she really had come full circle. How long until they buried her alive, just like little Maria?

"Anything I want, huh?" Intrigued, Parker cropped himself lightly on the thigh with his belt. He had that velvety tone men always got right before they suggested you degrade yourself in some way for their pleasure. Take it in your mouth, up the ass. Their smooth, liquid words slickening the path, for when they slipped it in. "That's quite an offer. I mean, you'll do what I want, irregardless. But it's better if you're a willing participant. I had to force Vaughn at first, but now she gets off as much as I do."

Sure she does, Olivia thought. And it's regardless, you fucking idiot. Outwardly she nodded like it made perfect sense. But when he crouched down beside her to test her receptivity, tucking a scribble of dark hair behind her ear, she instinctively shrank from his touch. At the last second, she managed not to turn her face away, but the damage was already done. His expression went stony for one fleeting moment, then softened to saccharine the next. He stroked the back of her head with a heavy hand, gliding it down to her back in a repetitive petting motion.

"Purr for me," he said, leaning in to murmur the instruction near her exposed ear. He went on petting.

"What?" Olivia blinked at him stupidly. Of all the things she imagined him making her do, that hadn't even crossed her mind. It had to be a joke. She had heard of a case where the victim was forced to whinny like a horse for her attackers, and there were countless instances of men putting dog collars on the women they tortured, but purring was a new one. She hated George Huang for giving her that goddamn name; she hated Kat Tamin for carrying it on.

"You said you'd be a good kitty. Well, good kitties get their backs rubbed and scratched." Parker prodded around her shoulder blades, sawed his nails back and forth along her spine. He walked his fingers up and down, hitting every sore spot on the way. "And that makes them purr. I want to hear you do it. Purr for me like a good kitty, and I won't use the belt on you."

Olivia inwardly cringed each time he made contact with her skin, but she did her best not to let it show. Now, though, the bastard wanted her to purr for him as if she enjoyed his rough-skinned fingertips and calloused palms scraping her already tender flesh. She wouldn't. He'd asked the one thing of her that she couldn't do.

"I— I don't know how," she said lamely. Days ago, she had played dolls and stuffies with her middle daughters, entertaining them with animal noises for each species of plush toy they owned, including a fluffy white Persian cat. Jesse quickly caught on to blowing air over her tongue to vibrate it against the roof of her mouth, although much spittle was involved. But Matilda didn't yet have the dexterity and could only make the sound by flapping her little lips like a motorboat. I can do it, Mommy! I can do it!

She'd wanted to teach her children so many other things before she had to leave them. She thought she would at least see them all graduate, maybe watch the older two get married, start families of their own. She might even hold her grandchild one day. Strange how quickly your dreams changed. Now she could scarcely imagine a world outside of this one—The Box—or how she would fit back into it again. If she ever did return to her children, it would be as an Olivia they had never met.

"Oh, come on," Parker was saying, his dubious expression giving him a double chin. He wasn't overweight, but he had filled out since their last encounter, and the squatting stance was proving too much for his knees. They crackled like Styrofoam when he pushed to his feet, grunting. "Everybody knows how to purr. Especially kitty cats."

Olivia shrugged, her eyes following the belt that dangled at his side like a strop. She asked Amanda to take Noah to the barber for his haircuts these days, fearing what her own reaction might be if someone brought out a straight razor. But the tools of Calvin Arliss' trade found her no matter where she was, it seemed.

"Bet your pretty little wifey makes you do it all the time. You telling me, when she's down there eating you out like a blond piranha, it doesn't get you purring just a little bit?" Parker smiled to himself, enjoying the imagery he had conjured. When he noticed Olivia's distaste, he held the belt buckle to his crotch, waggling the strap suggestively. "Her tongue rough or soft? Must feel good dragging across your clit, over and over. She's kinda small, but those tiny girls pack a big punch, don't they? She ever make you squirt, or—"

"Stop." Olivia shuddered, her revulsion so strong it rippled beneath her skin, inside her stomach. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. If he said one more word about Amanda, about their lovemaking, which was as sacred to Olivia as any religion—it was her religion—she would lose her mind. They had already taken almost everything else from her; he didn't get to take the sweet, intimate memories she had made with her wife. Her little pretty. "Just stop. I'll do it."

The gash in Parker's face appeared and he gave an eager wave of invitation. Let's hear it. "Thatsa good kitty. Show me what that pretty pink tongue can do. Like this . . . " He demonstrated, lips parted, tongue trilling his palate, creating a sound like distant helicopter blades. The oddly soothing patter of heavy artillery hitting water, the hum of drones and military tanks. Inside of Parker's mouth, a war raged.

Olivia's first attempts produced little more than a puff of air, as if she were blowing on dandelion fluff or a bubble wand. Her children were forever putting things near her lips for her to blow on. What she wouldn't give to be at the park with them right now, laughing at the white fuzzies in Amanda's pale hair, almost indistinguishable from the blond, the dogs biting the bubbles midair. Not so much, they'll get the shits, Amanda would say. Language, love, Olivia reminded, pecking her lips, piecing floaties from fine golden strands. Love is the only language I speak, baby. And they were laughing again, the kids and the dogs joining in on Amanda's efforts to kiss Olivia silly.

But her mouth was too dry to make the noise. Her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth instead of vibrating with the air she pushed out. She tried saying the word purr and rolling the R's. She was good at that, had picked it up quickly in Spanish class. Now it caught in the back of her throat, a glottal stop that sounded more Arabic than Latin. "Can't," she whispered, failing even to clear her throat productively. "Need water."

Parker's shoulders sank, his animated expression settling to neutral, his crooked features like an off-center picture frame that threw off the whole wall. Only one nostril flared when he sniffed resignedly. He wiped the other with the back of his wrist, the belt a dead black adder in his hand. Oh, but it could still bite. Its fanged tooth glinted in the crook of his fist. "Well, that's too bad. I only give good, happy pussies something to drink. Great big saucers of cream for them to lap up while they purr and purr."

Olivia shook her head adamantly. His cream was already seeping out of her, puslike. "Water."

"Okay, fine. You don't want to play that game, how's about a new one?" Parker took the belt by the notched end, winding it around his hand a few times, as if preparing for a street brawl. He let the buckle and a good eighteen inches of the strap swing free. The adder had sprung to life, ready to strike. "You make it past five lashes without whining like a little bitch, and I'll get you some water. Deal?"

He didn't wait for an answer, the hammered silver buckle, shaped like the letter P, whistling as it hurtled skyward in a wide arc, then plunged downward at a sheer drop. The cracking sound it made against Olivia's back was so spectacular, it was as disorienting as a gong going off in her ears. In her whole body. It reverberated up her spine, ping-ponged around in her neurons, and finally exploded in fireworks of multicolored pain behind her eyelids.

"Oh," she cried, a scream in her head, though barely a gasp when it left her lips. Oh, dear Jesus. She had yet to catch her breath from the first lash when the second came down at the back of her shoulder, just as brutal. A third and a fourth landed near the base of her spine, her buttock. The fifth was a searing stripe across the backs of her thighs. Oh, she breathed again, thanking Jesus it was over, that no more flesh would be gouged from her body like paint chips by that silver prong at the center of the buckle. Every inch of her backside felt torn open and raw.

But Parker was not a man of his word. Not surprising, really, if you considered the source. He surpassed five strokes, going on to six, seven, eight. By the time he stopped hacking at her with the belt, like it was a machete and she a dense patch of rainforest, Olivia had counted eleven lashes. An odd number to end on. Why not twelve? Better yet, twenty? As she took inventory of her stinging, singing flesh, she realized he had probably just run out of places to hit her. Of course, he could turn her over and start on the front . . .

"Phew, think I worked up some thirst myself, with that one," he announced, winded. He stooped forward, hands on his knees, panting like those guys in the park who wanted you to know they had just jogged three miles, weren't they manly and oh-so-fit? From what Olivia could see through her tears and from the corner of her eye, he was a bit flush in the cheeks. Maybe he would have a heart attack and drop down right there beside her on the floor. She willed it to be so, eager to look into his eyes and watch him take his last breath.

But he didn't clutch his chest or drop to his knees. He didn't fall, reaching out to her for help, for pity. Things she would deny him. Instead, he droned on about needing a drink until the Crier—she recognized him by voice alone now—called out from the open doorway: "You slipped it to her yet, or what? Don't tell me you been in here talking her ear off this whole time."

Not the whole time, no. Olivia shook her head, or the closest thing to it she could manage, a twitch, a flicker, willing him to take a better look at her and see what Parker had done. She hated relying on one monster to protect her from another, but right then she didn't have much of a choice. At least Crier didn't say one thing and do something entirely different. As much as he enjoyed hurting her, she was still property in his eyes, and you didn't damage the property you were trying to sell. Not with a million dollars at stake.

"Nah, just a little pillow talk. She gave me a real sweet welcome, didn't you, Miss Kitty?" Parker trailed the tapered end of the belt up the inside of Olivia's thighs, making her jump when it grazed skin. He brought it higher, bobbing it like a feathered cat toy, teasing between her legs where there was so much pain. Though not as much as between her buttocks, where the faux leather slithered its tail next, catching on sticky blood and whatever else had congealed there. "Had me purring like a kitten right along with her."

"Yeah, well, Gus'll be back soon, so—" The Crier's voice had drawn closer, and when he came into Olivia's limited field of vision, it grew louder still, until he was almost shouting. "What the fuck did you do, Park?" he demanded, surveying her back, the side of her face not turned to the floor. "I leave you in here with her for half an hour, and now she looks like she went through a meat grinder. I told you not to fuck with her face, man. The boss is already getting antsy that he hasn't heard from the buyer yet. You better hope and pray that bruise don't depreciate her value any, otherwise you'll end up at the bottom of the Bay wearing cement shoes, buddy boy."

On the outskirts of conscious thought, where meaning and logic faded into the fog between the worlds—reality and not—Olivia heard him mention the Bay. She peered sidelong, willing him to be more specific. There were multiple bays throughout New York and New Jersey, if that was indeed where they had taken her. Were she to wager a guess, she would go with Newark Bay, based on the drive to get here and what she had (or hadn't) seen in her glimpse of the surroundings. But that didn't give her much hope. If it was Newark Bay, she might well be smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest, busiest container shipping facilities in the US.

They could ship her anywhere, at any moment, and Amanda would never be able to find her. Even if they didn't, looking for a particular shipping container in such a huge shipyard would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Then again, the area had seemed too remote to be Port Newark-Elizabeth. She hadn't heard enough activity outside for it to be a hub of that extent. Just that relentless pounding, whirring, and drilling from the construction site.

She focused on a spot on the floor when the Crier's gaze fell on her, as though he sensed her listening in, calculating. If she played dead long enough, her chances of overhearing something of value were much greater than if she stared him down, acting tough. They had beaten and fucked all the toughness out of her, anyway. For lack of a better simile, she felt as weak as a newborn kitten, lying there on her stomach, her back and insides seeping.

"Relax," Parker said to his friend, not nearly as blasé as he was attempting to sound. A nervous little giggle gave him away. "I'm here on behalf of the buyer, who is otherwise detained for the moment. There's nothing to worry about. Deal's still on, and it's not like I gave her a black eye or anything. I had to get her under control. And she— well, the buyer isn't going to see this part anyway. I doubt they'll even notice, when they do get back."

"Hope not, for your sake." The Crier didn't come across all that sincere, but he did crouch down to examine the wounds on Olivia's back, from the buckle. He gave an appreciative hum, reminding her of a medical examiner who enjoyed his job a little too much. "And it's your lucky day, 'cause I turned the camera off when you were first dicking around with her. I guess you can convince Gus that she hurt herself there. Ran into your elbow or something. But there's no explaining away these—what are they, P shapes? What the hell'd you hit her with, you sick fuck?"

Olivia tuned out the men as Parker proudly displayed his belt buckle and they went on laughing, talking about what a great piece of ass she was, and trading verbal slaps on the back as congratulations for tearing up that pussy with a capital P. She floated in the hazy gray place that was Reality But Not, their voices a buzz somewhere beneath her, like the electric drills across the water. She thought of Amanda, how the poor thing was probably going out of her mind with worry. If their roles were reversed—well, Olivia couldn't even imagine. Her one consolation was that she'd been the target, not her wife.

Not until she heard Parker mention tag teaming did she reluctantly drift back down into the body that wasn't hers anymore. (Had it ever been? Over the years, she had often wondered.) They were looking at her with grim, hungry eyes, like coyotes watching a slab of meat before setting upon it. They couldn't possibly still want her, the shape she was in.

Could they?

"I did promise you an hour," said the Crier. He clicked his tongue piercing against his front teeth a few times, debating with himself. Maybe he would have given a different answer if Olivia hadn't glanced up at him then, pleading, hoping the ripening bruise on her cheek would discourage him from giving Parker another turn with her. From taking another for himself.

But the second she caught his eye, she saw him decide. It cinched like a padlock behind his flat, colorless irises, no key to open it up again. "All right, but let's do her someplace besides the mattress. It smells like the ass-end of a menstruating skunk. Tell you what, these bitches start to get nasty in a day or two. Worse than leftover shrimp. Probably have to turn the hose on this one after today's regimen."

They crutch-carried her to the desk that listed to one side in the beam from the tripod light, and started raping her there. Oral, vaginal. Intermixed so she eventually lost track of who was inside her, where. She complied with each order—"Balls too, suck 'em, bitch," "Push your ass into me, keep them hips up, oh fuck yeah, I bet you were one prime cunt in your day"—hoping it would be over sooner that way. It went on for years, eons. An eternity of bitches and cunts, of penises hurting her, gagging her, hammering, drilling.

At least she didn't have to take it up the ass this time. Or so she believed, until they started a game called Pussy in the Middle, their version of Monkey in the Middle. As far as Olivia could tell, it simply involved her crawling on all fours, mewing like a cat, and being mounted from behind when one of the men "caught" her. She did not like the game. It made her want to die.

Parker must have won, because it was he who turned Olivia over, straddled her legs, and shinnied up her body like an arborist. She was merely the diseased oak he worked to fell, hacking off dead limbs, stripping away bark like leprous skin. Her t-shirt, no longer white but speckled in dirt and veined with blood, lay in a whipped-cream dollop on the floor, inches from her head. She reached for it, thinking of the ice cream sundaes the kids loved to make at home—Jesse's strange concoctions of Oreo crumbs and strawberry syrup, Noah's snowy peaks of Reddi-wip that practically touched the sky—and got her hand snatched away by Crier. He pinned it above her head with the other.

Holding her for Parker, though she didn't resist. A knee between her legs, knocking them apart. It rammed into her genitals, stars exploding there and in her vision. Among them was her mother's face, bright as the sun in its fury, a spittle of comets and asteroids spewing from her lips. Destructive, burning things that pelted Olivia like stones, tearing at flesh and bone.

The memory had been resurrected in therapy not that long ago, but she wondered if this reenactment—Parker battering her with his knee, to make way for his cock—would have reawakened it anyway. Every time she thought she'd recovered from a past trauma, another popped up to take its place, whether a forgotten incident from childhood or a new violation such as this. A vicious cycle, an infinite loop of violence. Begetting and begetting and begetting.

How had Serena put it, simulating her own rape on her eight-year-old daughter? This is what happens when you walk home late at night. This is what your precious daddy would do to you. This is what I went through to get you. This is what they do to women who think they're invincible.

Turned out, she hadn't been wrong or crazy after all. Olivia had been born of this, for this, and her mother had just been preparing her to fulfill her destiny. The way royals trained their offspring to ascend the throne. Spread your legs and accept the crown. And so she did, because there was nothing easier in the world than giving in to your fate when it came for you. You either fought like hell or accepted it, and all of Olivia's fight was gone. Too exhausted and dried out to cry or speak, she turned her face away and waited for the men to be done.

. . .

Twenty or thirty minutes later, Olivia realized the Crier was gone, her wrists no longer pinned above her head. At first, it frightened her that she couldn't remember when he'd left, when Parker had dragged her back to the mattress to hold her like a lover after an evening of passionate sex, or what had been done to her in the meantime. But then again, it was probably better that way—not knowing.

She used to think it would be torturous not being able to remember your own assault, but after Lewis and Calvin, she knew the real torture was obsessing over the memories you did retain. If she had her preference now, she'd rather be drugged to the gills and oblivious to every word, every touch, every sight and smell. All those women who were raped while they were unconscious didn't know how lucky they had it.

"Hey, I think it's only fair that I let you know," said Parker, tracing patterns on Olivia's upper arm, so gentle it was almost loving. He turned to look at her, their heads close together, hers cushioned in the crook of his arm. It was the most comfortable she'd been since yesterday morning, despite being tucked naked against the side of her most recent rapist. "'Cause you've been real sweet to me this afternoon. Me and Vaughn are gonna take real good care of the kid. She wants the baby now, but the redhead—what's her name, Madeline? She'd probably be easiest to grab. Either way, you don't have to worry. I'll treat whichever one we end up with like my own."

Olivia stared at him for several seconds, trying to make sense of the sounds coming from his mouth. She was mostly picking up on tones, sometimes every other word, but he gave her a moment to let it fall into place, to let it sink in and percolate, and she finally understood: he was talking about her children. Threatening to take them away, as Gus had done upon their introduction. Why couldn't these monsters leave her babies alone? She would submit to being raped a thousand times over, if it meant protecting them.

"Tilly," she said, her voice a husk, like the shed skin of a snake or an insect. Fragile and easy to crush if handled too roughly. "Tilly. She's— she's a baby too. Don't take her. Please. Stay away from my family."

Parker put on a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. He stroked Olivia's forehead too roughly, pushing back her hair and kissing her there so soundly it made a loud smacking noise in the small, boxy room. "You don't have a family anymore," he murmured, too intimate, too warm. It felt like being suffocated, those words and his heavy hands holding her down, his eyes. God, she couldn't breathe, the way he looked at her. "Forget about them, it'll be easier if you do. You're no good to them now, anyway. I give it six months before you check out. Normal rape fucks you up enough as it is, but this gang bang shit? Being trafficked? Seen it time and again at the prison. You broads never get over things like that.

"Even if you make it out alive, you'll have too much psychological damage to be a good mom to your kids. The baby'll be better off with me and Vaughn." He stroked Olivia's forehead idly with his thumb, a dreamy note in his voice. He wasn't speaking to her anymore. "She'll have two stable parents, and a daddy, instead of two lesbos. No offense. It's just . . . little girl needs a father, y'know?"

He had a point. Olivia had spent the better part of her childhood wishing for a daddy to come whisk her away from the abuse, the name-calling, the neglect, the fear. She would rather be dead than to pass that on to her children. Her little girls weren't going to grow up searching for men to fill that void, and falling for the first guy who made them feel special. Who proposed so he could have sex with them whenever he wanted. Who promised to be there, always, then left without so much as a goodbye. If Parker could prevent that from happening . . .

The thought was such a shock to Olivia's system, she almost sat bolt upright. Or would have, if she wasn't pinned by his hands. Those hands were never going to touch her daughters—or her son—as long as she was breathing. She would kill this man, in his stupid MAGA hat with his stupid sleazy smile, if she had to. His belt had gone by the wayside when he and the Crier hauled her over to the desk, and she gazed at it intently, willing it to slither the last few inches into her outstretched palm.

She pictured grabbing it up like a real adder, by the tail like on Animal Planet, and wrapping it around Parker's thick neck. It would only take a minute or two, less if she placed it properly and found the strength to pull it tight. But the image of herself, legs wrapped around his waist, belt noosed around his neck from behind, barely had time to solidify in her mind before Parker was getting to his feet and zipping his jeans. He did it the cavalier way guy's zipped up in front of urinals, after draining the snake.

"I gotta get back," he said with some reluctance. His gaze held a hint of longing when he looked down at her, as if she were the lover he must depart from because his wife called. It shamed Olivia just to think it, even though there was no wife as far as she knew, and she had not willingly participated in the affair. "Your people have been interrogating Vaughn since yesterday, and she's probably getting real anxious about what she's missing. Better go see if I can help her out. Maybe I'll come visit you again, kitty cat. You were definitely worth the wait."

She kept expecting him to remember the belt and put it back on, but she almost forgot it herself at the mention of her people. If her squad was questioning Vaughn at the prison, that meant they were on the right track. Cracking perps was difficult and the ones who were already in prison were sometimes the hardest to draw out—they already had nothing to lose. But she was also confident in her team's ability to find answers and bring the vic home. Parker was probably right, it was probably too late for her. The next woman might be more lucky, though.

She waited until he was gone to reach for the belt he'd left behind, inching it toward the mattress by the P-shaped buckle, tucking it underneath. He may not have held up his end of the deal about getting her some water, but he'd unknowingly left her with another way out besides dying of thirst. If the moment came when she was sure she would not be reunited with Amanda and their children, she would drag herself to the desk, loop the belt through the top drawer handle, latch the ends around her neck, and lean into the arms of sweet oblivion.

For now, it felt good to have a plan. She was a captain, a mother, and she knew how to prepare ahead.

Carefully she gathered her dirty, crumpled t-shirt to her, wincing with the effort of stretching out her arm. It took a good fifteen or twenty seconds to get the shirt over her head and down her chest. She didn't bother with the panties; they were somewhere amid the garbage and she didn't have the energy to look, let alone put them on. Perhaps later, when she woke up.

She slept hard on the thin mattress, the belt a serpentine lump underneath her, comforting, and she didn't dream.

. . .