He grins and for the first time since I walked in here, his eyes skirt me.
While I’m secretly having an anxiety attack, Victor ponders it for a moment, making it seem as though he’s taking the offer into consideration.
Victor glances at me.
“No way,” I say right on cue. “He’s disgusting, Victor. I don’t agree to this.”
Victor stands up and casually takes me by the elbow.
“You’ll do what I tell you to do,” he says.
I shake my head back and forth, looking between them, trying not to break character, but finding it more and more difficult to achieve.
I can do this, I tell myself as the loud pounding of my heart rises over my voice in my head. Victor won’t hurt me. In any way. I have to believe that.
Why doesn’t he just kill the pig now? I don’t understand…
With my elbow still clenched in his hand, Victor turns to Arthur Hamburg and says, “Fifteen thousand,” and Hamburg’s face lights up. “And it’ll be another fifteen if I let you go down on me.”
I feel my eyes widening in my skull.
“It’s a deal.”
“No,” I say and try to wrench my arm free, but then Victor narrows his eyes at me and I give in.
“Bend over the table,” Victor says.
What?...
He looks at the heavy square marble table to my right, moving nothing but his eyes.
“Now, Izabel,” he demands.
Oh my God…
Hesitantly I step over to the table and lay my stomach and chest across it from the waist up. Already I feel the air in the room brushing against the fabric of my panties. I swallow hard.
Victor comes up behind me and raises my short dress the rest of the way over my butt, resting it on my lower back. One of his hands squeezes my cheeks.
“Make her cry,” Arthur Hamburg says from the chair behind me. “I have things you can use if you’d like.”
“I can make her cry without them,” Victor says, pulling my panties down and letting them fall around my ankles. I gasp uncomfortably as I’m exposed. “But I might use them still. It’s been a while since I really hurt her.”
Arthur Hamburg makes a strange noise I’ve never heard before. “Oh yes, I’d very much like to see that.” He smacks his hands together and adds with creepy delight, “How small is she? I have a rubber bat.”
I freeze against the table, his comment sucking the breath right out of my lungs.
Are you f**king kidding me?
I’m ready to kill him now. He could be my first kill. I’m ready to do it!
My hands begin to shake underneath my chest.
Stay in character, Sarai…no matter what.
Then suddenly, as if we’re no longer in the room with this sick f**king bastard, I feel Victor’s fingers slide into me and I’m instantly wet. I gasp sharply, the warm breath emanating from my lips coats the marble table inches from my face with moisture. I watch it appear and disappear with every rapid breath I take.
“Spread your legs,” Victor instructs.
At first I don’t, but when he wedges both hands between my thighs and forces them apart, exposing me fully, I don’t fight him, I just grapple the edge of the table with my fingertips and straighten my back.
My mind struggles with the wrong in this. I know it’s wrong and disgusting because that man is sitting there watching this happen. But the other part of me, the part that is starting to block Arthur Hamburg’s presence from my mind entirely, wants Victor to have his way with me. I try to shut my eyes and picture only Victor in the room and it works a minute or two until I hear Arthur Hamburg’s voice again.
“Yes, she’s very pink. Very small,” he says and I grit my teeth.
Victor begins to stall.
“You know,” he says, “maybe you could show me what you have. I’ll f**k for a little bit first, open her up some, and then—”
“Say no more,” Arthur Hamburg says with a sadistic smile in his voice.
I hear him get up from the chair and then his dress shoes tap against the floor as he walks by. I see his pants have already been unbuttoned, his shirt untucked sloppily about his grotesque stomach. He’s already been touching himself. As he approaches what looks like a large closet, he stops about mid-way and turns back to Victor. He seems to be contemplating intensely until he says, “Would it be OK if I allowed my wife to watch with me?”
After a momentary pause, Victor answers, “An extra person wasn’t part of the deal.” He mulls it over. “But I suppose that would be alright. Is she downstairs?”
“Oh good,” Arthur Hamburg says, rubbing his fat hands together. He continues onward toward the closet, opening both enormous doors to reveal a walk-in bigger than an average bedroom. “No, I keep her in here.”
Huh? You keep her in there?
Sensing that this has gotten more than just Victor’s attention, I look up just as he walks past me. Having no idea what he’s doing, I’m not sure if I should stay like I am, or do what I’d rather do and stand up to let my dress drop back over my ass. I wait it out a few more minutes.
“Don’t be too shocked when you see her,” Arthur Hamburg says. It looks like he’s punching in a series of numbers on a silver keypad in the wall on the inside of the closet. “In a way, my Mary is just like your Izabel.”
“Is that so?” Victor says stepping into the closet with him.
Another massive door breaks apart from the wall inside the closet to reveal another room.
“Yes,” Arthur Hamburg goes on. “Though she’s much more submissive than yours.”
Then I hear a loud thump and a bang as the two of them disappear somewhere inside the hidden room. I scramble to pull my panties up and run across the space to see what’s going on, nearly tripping on my way there because of the heels.
“Victor!”
The man can’t take his eyes off his wife. His flabby chin vibrates as he tries to hold in his tears. But I still don’t feel a shred of remorse for him. Not only because I’m still struggling to figure out why this has happened, but because I know he’s a sick man and doesn’t deserve remorse.
“Why are you here?” he asks, his husky voice shuddering.
Victor looks to me. “Give me the SD card,” he says.
I pull the tiny square card from the corner of the bottom of the envelope and place it into Victor’s free hand. He holds it up to Arthur Hamburg wedged between his thumb and index finger.
“All of the information on this card has already been transferred to my employer. The names on your extensive client list, the locations of your underground operations, the video evidence that your dear wife recorded that you knew nothing about. It’s all here.” He throws the SD card onto Arthur Hamburg’s chest. “If anyone comes looking for me or Izabel for the death of your wife and it’s not ruled a suicide, all of that information will be released to the FBI. We are to walk out of here unharmed and as welcomed as we were when we walked through your front doors. Is that understood?”