Trafficked Abroad as Cargo, My Aunt's Whole Family Went Mad with Regret

After my parents died in a car crash, my aunt's family said they'd take me down to the Gulf Coast to clear my head.

But the moment we landed, they secretly moved me to the Cape District.

On the night of my twenty-second birthday, my cousin Phineas Baxter shoved me into an iron cage in the lower hold of a gambling ship.

"Joey, take my advice. Be good and you'll suffer less."

There were seven or eight other girls locked in the cage. The youngest looked about eighteen.

Three hundred buyers sat under the dim lights, waiting to inspect the goods.

To drive up my price, Phineas played a video for the crowd. Me at my parents' funeral, sobbing until I fainted.

My cousin Maggie smiled at the buyers. "My little cousin's always been a naive little thing. A few threats and she goes right along."

A major buyer came over and pinched my chin, complaining I was too thin, too timid.

Phineas quickly handed over my student ID.

"College junior, never had a boyfriend. Clean and obedient."

The buyer crouched down and stroked my face.

"She really is a pretty little thing. If it weren't for putting together a sincere apology gift for Mr. Stephens, I couldn't bear to let her go."

My heart skipped a beat.

Mr. Stephens?

The Finn Stephens who'd spent three years looking for me, who'd nearly torn half the Gulf Coast apart?

Phineas gripped the back of my neck and pushed me into the iron cage.

My knee cracked against the bars, and before I could steady myself the door had already locked behind me.

The cage wasn't even half a meter high, packed with seven or eight girls in rags.

All I could do was pull my legs up and grip the bars, looking out at him.

"Phin, let me out."

Phineas smiled, still that same gentle face.

At my parents' burial, he'd held the umbrella over me. When I was hospitalized with a fever, he'd told me that from now on he'd protect me.

But now he reached through the bars and patted my cheek.

"Joey, the second you got on this ship, you stopped being my cousin."

"Why?"

I stared at him.

"Pauline Baxter already took the house, the car, and the settlement money my parents left me. What else do you people need?"

The smile faded from his face.

"Who ever thinks they have too much money?"

"I'm nine hundred grand in gambling debt. You're pretty. Sell you once and it's covered."

Just then the hold door opened, and a guard came in carrying a bucket of water.

The iron door hadn't latched fully. I kept my eyes on the gap, and the moment he bent to set the bucket down, I slammed the door open and bolted.

I'd barely gotten two steps up the gangway barefoot when someone yanked me back by the hair.

Phineas dragged me down and pinned my shoulder with his elbow.

"You actually thought you could get away?"

The pain blacked out my vision, but I clung to the steps.

"I want to see Pauline. There's no way she'd agree to this."

Phineas was quiet for a moment, then suddenly let go.

"Fine. Ask her yourself."

He dialed Pauline, crouched down, and held the phone to my ear.

My voice was shaking hard.

"Aunt Pauline, Phin says he's going to sell me. Tell him to let me go and I promise I won't call the police."

There was no shock on the other end. Only a tired sigh.

"Joey, stop it. The money Phin owes isn't from ordinary people. If he can't pay it back, he'll die."

"So my life is what pays for it?"

She paused, and her tone hardened.

"After your parents were gone, who arranged the funeral and took you in? The family's in trouble now. What's so wrong with you helping out once?"

Slowly, my hand loosened on the steps.

Phineas took the phone back and laughed into it.

"Mom, told you she'd come around."

The call ended. He shoved me back into the cage and tossed in half a hardened piece of bread.

"Look pretty tomorrow. You're the first one up for inspection."

The hold went dark again.

Beside me, a small, thin girl quietly edged closer and pressed half a cracker into my palm.

"I'm Cara Ramsey."

"They patrol every forty minutes. Don't try anything reckless. You'll get caught."

I didn't take the cracker.

In the faint light leaking through the door, I saw a vent in the top of the cage, one of its screws already loose.

"Cara."

I looked up at it.

"Do you know where it leads?"

The next morning, the cage swung open.

Two of the guards hauled me out and threw a white dress into my arms.

"Put it on."

They shoved me into the bathroom.

The mirror was smeared with grime, showing nothing but a pale face.

I raised my hands to straighten the dress, and the old scar on the inside of my wrist slipped into view.

"Hiding what?"

Maggie Baxter clicked in on her heels and yanked my sleeve back.

She glanced at the scar, then, unbothered, pulled the fabric back over it.

"Whatever Jay asks later, you answer."

I watched her in the mirror.

"You're part of this too, Maggie?"

"Part of what? Bringing you out to clear your head. Didn't you agree to that yourself?"

Maggie smiled and smoothed my hair for me.

"Clearing my head means locking me in a cage?"

The smile vanished from her face.

"Joanna, don't put it so ugly."

"Phin owes money. We had to find a way. My family raised you all this time. There has to be some return on that."

When she finished, she fixed my collar again.

"So be smart later. Don't make me teach you a second time."

Nearly three hundred people filled the auction hall.

Jayden Weiss stood on the stage with a microphone, reading out my age, my school, my family situation.

"Twenty-two. College student. Both parents dead."

"No one will come looking."

The moment I stepped into the lights, a guard clamped down on my shoulders.

The next second, the big screen lit up.

On it, I was clutching my mother's funeral portrait, crying until I collapsed, guests scrambling around me to carry me into a car.

It was the security footage from my parents' funeral.

Phineas walked up onto the stage and took the microphone to prove to everyone that I was weak, that I wouldn't fight back.

Maggie sat in the front row, smiling along.

The crowd watched the worst day of my life like it was entertainment laid on for them.

A major buyer came up, gripped my chin, and looked me over from side to side.

I turned my head away, and Phineas immediately pressed the back of my head down.

"Don't move."

He pulled out my student ID and held it up with both hands.

The buyer gave it a glance, asked a few questions, then nodded, satisfied.

"Nice enough face."

"Perfect to hand over to Mr. Stephens as an apology."

At the words "Mr. Stephens," my heart lurched hard.

But Jayden gave me no chance to ask. He had them take me straight off the stage and bring on the next group of girls.

As I passed the corner backstage, a few threads of smoke drifted over.

Jayden was leaning against the wall, talking to someone.

"Mr. Stephens has gotten stranger and stranger these past few years."

"It's because he never found her. Three whole years. He's practically torn through the entire Southeast."

The other man dropped his voice.

"No idea what that woman's got, keeping Finn Stephens searching this long."

I stopped dead.

Finn Stephens.

It really was him.

I'd thought that after three years, he would have given up long ago.

But he'd been looking for me this whole time.

"What's the holdup?"

Phineas grabbed my arm and dragged me deep into the corridor.

"You'd better behave. It'll save you some suffering."

I didn't struggle anymore.

But the heartbeat I'd kept quiet for three years turned frantic again over that one name.

Once, seeing Finn Stephens again was the thing I feared most.

Now he'd become the only person on this ship who might save me.

Two in the morning. The guards had just changed shifts.

Crouched in the cage, I counted off forty minutes in silence.

The moment the footsteps in the corridor faded, Cara turned her back to me and crouched down.

"Step on my shoulder."

I used her shoulder to reach the vent, working the loosened screw free with a hairpin, one slow turn at a time.

When the last screw dropped, every girl around me held her breath at once.

I pushed the metal cover aside and crawled into the duct.

"Once I'm out, I'll call the police."

Cara's eyes went red.

"Crawl left. Turn right at the second fork. You'll hear the waves there. It should lead to the deck."

The duct was narrow and cold. All I could do was drag myself forward on my elbows.

I don't know how long I crawled before a thread of light finally seeped in ahead, the sound of the waves growing clearer with it.

I moved faster and pushed half my body out through the opening.

The next second, a hand clamped hard around my ankle.

"Caught myself a rat!"

The patrolman hauled me back out of the duct.

I hit the deck and screamed for help right away. But before I'd made it more than a few steps, several guards had me pinned.

Phineas came at the news.

He looked at the state of me and actually laughed.

"Little sister, didn't your big brother tell you to behave?"

"Phineas, you'll get what's coming to you."

"As long as the money lands in my hand, what do I care what's coming?"

He took a pair of electric clippers from one of the guards.

The switch clicked on, and the buzzing pressed close to my ear.

I understood what he was about to do and started to struggle on instinct.

Phineas held my head down and ran the clippers straight through the hair above my right ear. A thick fall of it dropped onto the deck, and laughter went up around us almost at once.

He tossed the clippers aside and bent down to warn me.

"Run again, and I'll break the legs of whoever helps you."

Jayden walked over and signaled the guards to drag me off.

"Mr. Stephens is arriving early tomorrow."

"If he doesn't want you, I'll hand you off to the men on the ship."

Someone in the crowd suddenly spoke, low.

"That girl looks kind of familiar."

"Especially the scar on her wrist. Looks a lot like the one Mr. Stephens is hunting for."

"Don't talk nonsense. If it were really her, who'd dare keep her locked up in here?"

My breath caught.

But Phineas already had a hand over my mouth, dragging me into the lockup at the bottom of the ship.

Once the iron door shut, there was nothing left around me but darkness.

I felt along the wall, and my fingertips brushed a stiff piece of paper.

A gilded invitation someone had thrown away.

It read:

"In honor of Mr. Stephens's arrival, the twenty-third."

There was no signature beneath it, only a single gold embossed motif.

I traced it slowly with the pad of my finger.

A stylized letter S.

Three years ago, Finn Stephens had a pair of black cufflinks made.

One was engraved with a J, the other with an S.

Joanna. Stephens.

And that cufflink with the S was sewn, right now, into the lining of the clothing against my skin.

I clutched the invitation, and the heat rose slowly behind my eyes.

He really had come.

At dusk the next day, the door of the lockup opened.

Jayden stood in the doorway.

"Up. Mr. Stephens wants to see the last batch of goods."

Two of the guards hauled me up and dragged me down the long corridor.

Passing the washroom, they wiped my face down carelessly and made me change back into yesterday's white dress.

Jayden looked at the half-shaved head and frowned.

"Keep her head down. No point letting anyone have to look at that."

The carved wooden door was pushed open.

The lavish room was full of people.

Finn Stephens sat in the very center, the cuffs of his black shirt turned up a little.

Three years, and the cold in his face had settled deeper than before.

Jayden waved a hand toward the door.

Two other girls and I were shoved into the room and forced to kneel in a row.

"Mr. Stephens, this is the last of them."

"Take your pick, anything you like."

Finn's gaze moved slowly across us and came to rest on me.

I kept my head down.

Half my hair shaved off, my cheek swollen and red, dried blood still on the hem of the dress.

When he said nothing for a long moment, Jayden tried again, feeling his way.

"This one had the best looks, honestly. Just doesn't listen. Made a scene trying to run last night, so the men downstairs had to teach her a lesson."

"That business on the shipping route a while back, that was us not knowing the rules."

"If you'll only let it go, anything on this ship you take a liking to, it's yours to take."

Finn tapped one finger lightly on the table.

"Who told you I take this kind of thing?"

"Filthy."

"Throw her out."

My whole body went rigid.

Jayden bent at once, smiling to smooth it over.

"If she's not to your taste, then never mind. I'll deal with it right away."

The guards yanked me up off the floor.

As they pulled me past Finn, I tried with everything I had to call his name, but my throat, dry and raw from a night locked up, gave out only a blurred scrap of breath.

"Finn"

No one caught it.

In the struggle the cufflink slipped from my palm and rolled to the edge of Finn's shoe.

He bent and picked it up.

When he saw the stitched "S" on it, his hand stopped dead.

But the door had already closed behind me.

I was dragged to the end of the corridor.

A door opened. Inside sat several men, drunk out of their heads.

The guards shoved me forward and I clung to the doorframe with everything I had.

"Let go of me!"

Phineas leaned against the wall, lighting a cigarette.

"Stop screaming. No one's saving you today."

They wrenched my arms up behind my back, and in the struggle the sleeve was torn open.

The inside of my wrist, that scar left three years ago, lay fully exposed under the light.

Just then a low voice came from the other end of the corridor.

"Wait."

Everyone went silent at once.

Finn stood at the end of the corridor, the black cufflink in his hand.

His gaze passed over all of them and landed on my wrist.

After a moment, he started toward me, one step at a time.

"Lift her face."