Uncovering You 10: The Finale by Scarlett Edwards Page B

working hard. A tentative smile spreads across my lips as I start to see the faintest glimmer of a rescue plan.
    I open my right-hand drawer and take out my most precious possession. A photograph of the only woman I’ve ever loved.
    “I’ll get you out of this, my sweet Lilly-Flower,” I promise, tracing my fingertips over her lips. “Come hell or high water, you’re coming home alive. That, I stake my life on.”

     

Chapter Twenty-One
     

     
    Day three of my protest.
    I’m awakened from a thin sleep by the sound of men storming the room.
    Before I can blink, I’m being hauled up and carried out through the doors. My feet drag on the floor, limp and heavy.
    We pass the operating room and return to the dank concrete bunker that was my first prison.
    I’m forced into a chair. A bright light blinds me. I can see only enough to make out the familiar shape of the tripod and the camera.
    And the flashing red light. Always, the flashing red light.
    “Did you take the pills?” a voice demands. It’s that of the scar-faced leader.
    I angle my face toward him as best I can and spit in response.
    “Whore!” he screams. He hits me. I cry out and fall to the floor.
    “Pick her up,” he snarls.
    I am lifted. As soon as I’m upright, I’m hit again, on the other side of the face. I tumble the opposite way.
    “Again,” he repeats, and I’m picked up and plopped in the seat. I cower in anticipation of the strike and pain.
    The slap blindsides me. I collapse and see stars.
    “Three times for three pills,” he tells me. “You see the camera?” He turns it away, so it faces an empty corner. “It caught all that. Now, all it will hear are the screams of a whore.”
    Two men pin my shoulders to the ground as their leader lifts my robe, drops his pants, and begins to rape me.
     

     
    In the dark, I lose all sense of time.
    My sleep is thin. My wakefulness is misery.
    A vague longing grows deep inside me. The need for submission. The need to give in. A natural willingness ground into me by the madness taking hold of my mind, I feel it rising. The demonic form consumes me from the womb, sapping my strength, and breaking my resolve.
    A cry—no, a scream—rings out in the cold furnace of the night. My cry. My scream.
    They’ve been looping the audio of my rape over and over for endless nights.
    Is it even night? I don’t know .
    I am so tired. I am so lonely. I am breaking, and madness is taking hold.
    It’s times like these that the animalistic urge to give in becomes nigh insatiable.
     

     
    Day ten .
    The final day of my protest. The last day I am given a choice.
    Hugh, Rose, and Esteban all enter my room. I cower from the light on the other side of the doorway.
    They leave the door open. Through it, I see three guards. Scar face. Big Man. And the nameless, silent third one.
    Rose comes to me first. She kneels downs and strokes my arm. “My, my, my,” she murmurs. “Look how far you’ve fallen.”
    “I’m never going to take your drugs,” I spit, glaring at her, at Hugh, at Esteban. Hatred fills me.
    Rose looks amused. “No?” she asks. “I think I can find a way to persuade you. You are, after all, very much alone.”
    “Go to hell.”
    “Not me, my dear,” she says. “But you . Soon enough. Soon enough.” She rises. “Bring the camera,” she says.
    Big Man carries the tripod inside. Scar Face, the rapist, operates it.
    Esteban giggles in the background
    Rose sits down beside me and puts my head in her lap. I’m too weak to fight. Through blurry eyes, I watch her address the camera.
    “Hello, Mr. Stonehart,” she says sweetly, calmly. “Look who I have here. It’s your precious Lilly-Flower. Isn’t it? Oh…” She makes a face. “but she isn’t so pretty now. Is she? Poor thing.”
    She brushes my cheek. I hiss and flinch away.
    Rose smiles. “Sensitive, she is, it seems,” she says. “Imagine that. The girl whom you trained to come for you on demand not wanting to be