Chapter 51: Roxy

By then, I was thirteen years old, and it had been five long years since I'd been taken. I was the only kid in the room lying back against one of the overstuffed cushions they had strewn around on the floor as they got high. Maybe they forgot that I was there, or maybe they just didn't care since I was nothing to them anyway. I'd been so beaten down by then, at least in their eyes, that they saw me as nothing more than a mindless object, something that was there for their pleasure and enjoyment.

They started reminiscing, and that conversation led to Cierra Stone and how they'd missed that one. I have no idea why my mind decided to latch onto that, but it did. Someone had escaped them, not the same, but it was enough to spark a flame inside me. I listened to everything that day, sucking it all up as I imagined this person like me, who'd been lucky enough to escape their clutches. She became my obsession and my hope.

For the next five years, I played them for fools. Though schooling