Nix. (Den of Mercenaries Book 3)(6)

There was a den, of sorts, on one end of the building where she, and the other girls kept there, could congregate. A television was mounted on the wall, big enough that it was the first thing anyone could see when they entered the space. Scantily clad women were sprawled across the couch and chairs, some watching the program playing, others just staring at nothing.

But it was to the girl that was only a few years older than Luna that she directed her attention.

Cat was sitting alone in a corner, a bottle of nail polish resting on the floor beside her as she carefully painted her toenails a brilliant azure.

Despite the noise around her, and the constant movement of others, Cat’s concentration never broke. Everyone had their own thing, something that kept their minds from breaking in a place like this.

For Cat, it was nail polish. It was the only thing she hoarded. At this point, though she couldn’t be sure, Luna thought her collection was up to fifty-six bottles—one for each month she had been in this place—bottles she got to keep because she didn’t complain or fight against them.

For Luna, it wasn’t just the moments she got to spend alone, but also when she got to be with Cat, and the sea of information she possessed. Of course, there was no way for her to know if what Cat told her was true, but she still wanted to hear it all, no matter how far fetched.

There was also a bookcase in the corner of the room, the shelves lined with mostly fiction books missing a number of pages, but there were a few textbooks as well, though Luna still didn’t know how they had come to be there.

Those were her favorite though.

It was always funny when she thought back to when she had been home, how much she had hated school. The work hadn’t been terribly difficult, but she had never fully enjoyed it.

Now? She wished she was stuck at a desk in a classroom for seven hours.

Luna also took advantage because it wasn’t often that she was allowed to even leave the room where she was kept. Usually, Lawrence kept her chained until he came to entertain himself—one too many times of her trying to run away. But she had learned her lesson the last time when he had shown her the error of her ways over the course of several hours.

There were some women here that embraced their fate, refusing to wallow in the shit hand they’d been dealt in life. Their compliance allowed them the opportunity to venture into this room and others like it.

And what had surprised Luna the most was the fact that no one had tried to run once they were granted this tiny bit of freedom.

No.

There had been one.

Jessica, her name had been.

She had played the part, pretending to go along with what Emmett—the real boss of this organization—had wanted of her, and she was given the chance to work for freedom that would never come.

Jessica had been one of the first girls Luna had befriended during one of the short bouts when Lawrence had let her be free. They had been close in age, and it was easy to bond over that and more.

The girl hadn’t made it more than a week once her slice of freedom before she had attempted to escape, and for one very long hour, Luna had thought she’d made it—until Lawrence and Emmett returned with images of her mutilated corpse, warning anyone else that had thought to run.

Luna hadn’t tried again after that day.

But she wasn’t broken.

She hadn’t submitted.

She hadn’t lost hope that she would one day make it out of this place—start over somewhere far, far away and try to find her family.

It was hope that both kept her going everyday, and weighed heavily on her.

“Remy brought me this,” Cat said as Luna dropped down beside her after grabbing the Anatomy textbook from the bookcase, gesturing to the bottle she was using while careful not to mess up her work.

“I like this one better than the yellow,” Luna said with a smile, flipping the book open to the page she had dog-eared the last time she’d been in this room.

Had that been a week ago? More?

“You know when I was in school, I hated this f*cking subject,” Cat said with a shake of her head. “How you enjoy that is beyond me.”

Cat was only twenty-two, but she had a habit of making herself sound older, as though they were decades apart as opposed to a few years.

Every other Wednesday, Jason, a regular customer of hers, brought gifts and whatever else she asked for that Emmett allowed, showering her with affection that most of the men that frequented this place didn’t possess. He was one of those older, lonely men that sought the company of women that could pretend to care when he talked.

Cat was very good at pretending.

Luna didn’t know much about the man, or Cat even considering the amount of time she spent separate from everyone else, but they had become instant friends one night when Cat had found her sobbing on the floor of the bathroom trying to scrub herself clean.

That night haunted her the most.

Instead of telling her to suck it up as someone else had, Cat helped her as best she could, then dressed her and offered a shoulder to cry on until the tears stopped. They had talked for hours that night, Luna telling her stories about her home so that she could remember that there was something else out there besides pain and misery.

That night, she had also told Cat how much she missed school. The next morning, it had been Cat that told her about the textbooks, helping her learn from them as best she could.

“But you hated most of your classes, right?” Luna asked, recalling Cat having said something of that nature. “Was this worse than chemistry?”