The Ithaden’s Slave Read online

  The Ithaden’s Slave

  Daniella Wright

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  More By Dany

  Auctioned To The Armitage Brothers

  Four Daddies’ Secret Twins

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  “Ma’am? Ma’am, could you please come with me?”

  The policewoman’s tone was gentle and kind, which made Kate even more confused. When she walked into that bodega a couple of minutes ago, she had a simple plan: to ask the owner (or someone, anyone, really) where the heck she was.

  Clearly, this was New York — no mistaking the distinct aroma of pretzels and kebab, overflowing garbage bins and exhaust fumes. But it wasn’t any part of New York she’d ever visited before. Kate couldn’t seem to find her phone to check her location on the map and knew she’d never hear the end of it from her dad, who always teased her mercilessly about never venturing north of 59th street. “My little Financial District girl”, he would call her, with an unmistakable hint of pride in his voice. She was his favorite after all, the daughter that most took after him, with a head for numbers and a disposition strong enough to survive the constant back stabbings of the other capital advisors at her firm. Her firm…

  Kate felt a surge of panic. Here she was in the middle of the day, at a part of the city she never had to visit for work. Add to this the fact that her usually immaculate dark grey suit looked oddly tattered, her stomach felt really weird and her phone was missing... It didn’t even take a Wall Street genius like her to put two and two together.

  She had probably been roofied and mugged, Kate concluded. She shuddered to think what else may have happened to her. But being the super sensible person she’d always prided herself for, Kate walked into the first store she could find to ask for directions in order to make her way downtown. Downtown, and to a police station. At least that was the plan. But as she entered the bodega and was about to approach the register, the newspaper stand caught her eye. This couldn’t be right, could it? Granted, she wasn’t sure about many things at this point (including where she woke up this morning, or how she found herself walking in that neighborhood), but she was certain she knew what the year was at least. And that year, the year printed on the top right corner of all the newspapers at the stand...That year was definitely not 2018.

  Kate felt the tears blurring her vision even before she realized she was actually crying. How was it possible that she’d lost a whole frigging year? Where had she been all this time? Where did her bosses think she’d been all this time? Did she even have a job still? And what about her family, her parents and sister must be going crazy…

  Kate’s mind was racing a thousand miles a minute at this point, her heart beating like a drum. Instinctively, she started running her fingers through her hair as she did every time she was stressed and needed to think, ever since she was little. But her usually sleek blond strands, cut into a neck length bob, did not provide any comfort this time — only more horror. Because if she had any hope that the whole thing was some weird mistake, a typo or a prank that every newspaper decided to pull at the same time for some reason, her hair told a different story. Now a good ten inches longer and thicker than ever before, Kate’s hair made the time she’d lost suddenly very real and very tangible.

  From what that kind policewoman told her later, that’s when Kate threw the newsstand down and started screaming.

  Kate had never seen the inside of a police vehicle before, let alone sit at the back of one. But officer Ramirez explained it was just a technicality: she wasn’t in any real trouble. The bodega owner would not be pressing charges for the newsstand she trashed. Like the officer (who was at the bodega by coincidence, just buying a sandwich at the time of Kate’s “episode”), the owner was more worried about the young woman’s mental and physical state. Having witnessed a couple of incidents of assault before in the neighborhood, it was clear to him that Kate had probably been abducted and most certainly drugged. He would be praying for the police to catch the cabrón who hurt her, he said.

  Officer Ramirez’s voice was calm and soothing, washing over Kate like a hot shower. Gee, she wondered how long had it been since she last had one of those… Flashes of her tiny Wall Street apartment, with her small shower and her narrow bed which now felt like the most comfortable place in the whole world, started coming to Kate’s mind. She found herself drifting, the view of traffic lights and the Hudson river at the distance doing their best to provide a relaxing wallpaper for her frazzled brain. Kate wasn’t even aware she fell asleep, until the car stopped at the station. But then she woke up for real. It was time to start asking questions — and she had a feeling she wouldn’t like the answers one bit.

  For starters, how was it that, whenever she tried to remember what happened in the last few days, weeks even, all she would get was some weird white flashes and nothing else? What made her hair, usually so thin and lifeless she had to visit a hair salon right before any important meetings, suddenly behaved like Rapunzel’s mane? And why, oh why, was it that suddenly she had such a craving for pastrami (or any kind of grilled meat, really), when she’d been a vegetarian all her life? By the time officer Ramirez gently took her inside the police station to get her “processed”, Kate was so frustrated by all these burning question marks inside her head, she would trash another newsstand if she could.

  Which was in itself very strange. Kate had always been the calmest person in the room, in any given situation. One of the reasons she was so beloved at her firm, was that she could always come up with super aggressive strategies to win over clients and turn stressful situations around, without ever having to raise her voice or so much as bat an eyelash. But her current emotional reactions ranged from sudden crying to the sudden urge to smash inanimate objects and a whole lotta frustration in between. Kate hadn’t watched many CSI shows, but she was willing to bet that sometimes kidnapped victims would appear more ‘scary angry’ instead of just scared. The fight or flight reaction is a real thing, she reasoned. Perhaps she was simply still fighting.

  The date was April 14, 2019. According to the police records, Kate had been missing for exactly eight months and five days. Last time anyone had ever heard from her was in the afternoon of September 09, 2018, when she was expected at her parents’ home to celebrate her mom’s birthday and called at 19:39 from her office line to say she was still stuck at work. Apparently, not only did she never make it to her parents’ home, she also never showed up for work the next day either. That was when everyone started to worry, as Kate was famous for not taking sick days even when she needed them…

  Her family officially filed a missing person’s report after 48 hours but, as the weeks turned to months with no sign of Kate, her case unfortunately joined the pile of all the other unsolved cases of missing persons — a pile that, sometimes, can reach a four-digit number in the state of New York alone. At this point, as detective Bertson who was handling her case informed her (a burly man with a thick mustache and not even a third of officer Ramirez’s people skills), all they were hoping for was “a body to give the poor parents some closure”.

  Kate insisted in getting all the facts. She thought it might somehow help her piece together what had happened to her, jolt her brain into cooperating. But try as she might, her memory was still blank.

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” officer Ramirez said, as they were sitting at the station waiting for Katie’s family to come pick her up. “Maybe your brain is protecting you from the trauma, until you are strong enough to process it.” Kate was not so sure that was the case, but she didn
’t have it in her to disagree with the kind officer.

  She didn’t have it in her to talk much in general. She offered her name when they first arrived at the station, of course, but since she had neither her briefcase nor her phone with her, they had to run her prints in the system to verify it. Well, thank goodness for the comprehensive security measures at her firm which required regular fingerprint check of all employees, Kate thought. Once her identity was confirmed as one “Kate Stoltz, 28, former capital advisor at KCW Financial advisors, reported as missing back in September 2018”, it was time for her to undergo a forensic medical examination for any evidence of sexual assault and, hopefully, traces of DNA from the person who robbed her of eight months of her life. Just the very thought, made Kate’s blood boil again.

  Officer Ramirez who, at this point, had become her benevolent shadow, escorted her to the nearest sexual assault facility. Once there, Kate had to sit through several hours of admittedly very nice and sympathetic people asking all kinds of questions she could only respond to with an awkward “Sorry, I don’t know”, or an equally awkward, “Sorry, I don’t remember”.

  After a full physical examination, officer Ramirez drove her back to the precinct to wait for her test results… and her parents. What would she even say to them? “Sorry you thought I was dead?” Kate found herself almost chuckling at the absurdity of it all. She felt strangely detached, as if this whole thing was happening to someone else — perhaps a character in a crappy show like the ones she would mindlessly watch while eating her coconut yogurt muesli at nights.

  The thought of that yogurt muesli made her stomach gurgle. After trying to ignore it, half out of politeness and half because she didn’t have any money, Kate asked the policewoman to get her something to eat. She wasn’t loving her options: police station snack machines were infamously filled to the brim with all kinds of unhealthy stuff. But even one of those horrible chocolate-peanut butter bars her mother always warned her against as a child, sounded mighty fine right about now…

  Ironically, she was still munching on said chocolate bar when her mom arrived.

  The next few hours were a blur. Finally lying down at her old bed, in the room she used to share with her sister as teenagers, Kate tried once again to put the events that transpired that day into some semblance of order. She used to do that every evening before she went missing, back when her life made sense. Back then though, she had her laptop and smartphone to take and compare notes in. Now all she had was her brain which, admittedly, wasn’t worth much at its current state. But Kate was used to working against horrible odds, so she decided to treat her mind like she would any hostile client back at KWC. She would have to keep going at it, but eventually she would get results, as always.

  So let’s see: first, her mom arrived at the station, followed by that detective Bertson who looked like he’d just been hauled over the coals by someone — Kate’s mom, probably.

  Margot was such a tiny woman, barely five foot two and thin as a branch, yet she had an uncanny ability of making people twice her size very afraid of her. There was something about her eyes, bright green and brimming with intelligence, that made it clear this was not a person you’d ever want to cross. As she ran toward her daughter at the station, Kate once again realized how long she’d been actually gone: her mom’s deep auburn hair was now almost completely white at the roots, framing her tiny face like a very snowy halo. Kate didn’t have a lot of time to look for other differences though, as a few moments later she was in her mother’s arms.

  She and her mom were never really that close. Sure, they spoke on the phone often and had a good rapport, but Margot was always closer to Jennifer, Kate’s little sister. Kate didn’t really mind, as long as it was clear who daddy’s favorite girl was. Daddy… Kate remembered breaking Margot’s embrace to look for her dad, certain he would enter the police station at any minute.

  “I haven’t told your dad about this, he’s at work,” Margot said as if she could read her mind. “I just wanted to make sure first honey, you understand. It would break his heart otherwise and his heart has been through enough already.”

  As Kate would soon find out, her dad suffered a heart attack a few months ago, when detective Bertson (who presently excused himself and left the two women “to catch up” as fast as he could) declared Kate’s case officially “cold”. And that wasn’t all the unpleasant news.

  After paying the rent at her apartment for the first three months in the hope she would return, her parents had to terminate her lease and store all her stuff in boxes, currently gathering dust in their basement. Her firm of course, had to replace her right away, as Kate unfortunately disappeared in the middle of a very important negotiation with a big client. It really doesn’t pay well being a kidnap victim these days, Kate thought bitterly. But while she was still mulling over the fact that she was currently unemployed and homeless (“You’ll have to come stay with us, of course,” Margot said), officer Ramirez appeared. Apparently Kate’s test results were ready and well, perhaps she would like to speak to the station’s resident psychologist who would tell her more?

  It took a lot of yelling from her mom at poor officer Ramirez, but soon they had the test results in their hands. And then the real horror started. Back in her bed, Kate placed her hand in her belly gingerly, as if she was afraid that thing inside her could bite her. Because yeah, of course she was pregnant — she should have known from her weird cravings and the odd emotional responses. Then again, being abducted for eight months was not something that comes with an instruction manual, so Kate had dismissed these symptoms as part of the general craziness of the day. To make matters worse, the police were not able to identify any DNA that could point them towards her abductor and, quite possibly, the father of her child. A sudden wave of nausea that had nothing to do with morning sickness overcame her.

  Kate dragged herself up from bed and into the bathroom. She turned on the tap and simply stood there, the sound of running water somehow calming her nerves. After a couple of long breaths, she felt confident enough not to puke her guts out. If anything, it would be a disservice to the lovely vegan casserole her mom made to celebrate her return. Sitting at the dinner table with her family, her dad clasping her hand as if to make sure she was really there (“George, do let go of your daughter’s hand and have some food please”) and Jennifer talking even more incessantly than usual, Kate couldn’t find it in her heart to discuss anything unpleasant with them. She was just happy to be home.

  But now, with dinner done and her folks long asleep, it was time to face these unpleasantries head on. Kate turned the water off and took a good look at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look pregnant. She looked like she was wearing hair extensions, but she didn’t look pregnant. Opening the mirror cabinet, Kate took out a pair of scissors and fixed the only problem that was currently easy to fix: she grabbed her hair with one hand and chopped off her locks at the base of her neck. There. Now she looked like herself again. And the pregnancy problem could be handled too. Thankfully this was New York, where abortions were legal until 24 weeks in life threatening situations. Kate was only 12 weeks pregnant according to her test results, but her life had been threatened enough already.

  The days that followed after her operation were really gloomy. Spending most of her time on her parents’ sofa watching shows (“recuperating”, as Margot called it) certainly wasn’t doing wonders for Kate’s mood. Her idleness was a constant reminder that she was robbed not only of her time and the agency of her body, but also of a very promising Wall Street career — a career that she had worked super hard for, every single day since she graduated from Cornell University. And her “recommended” sessions with the psychologist who stopped by once a week to check on her, weren’t very helpful either. Kate really disliked the idea of opening up to strangers (perhaps that’s why she had so few friends). And it wasn’t like she had anything worthwhile to say during those sessions either: she still couldn’t remember how she was taken, or
what happened to her during those eight months that she was gone.

  It wasn’t for lack of trying though, that’s for sure. Every night, when she would find herself yet again unable to sleep, Kate would read up on memory recall techniques on her new laptop (she felt bad accepting it as a gift from her parents on top of everything else they were doing for her, but boy, was it good to be able to browse again!). She would try to practice anything from transcendental meditation, to self-hypnosis, to building memory palaces… To no avail. The only thing was these weird white flashes she would get, like the ones she had at the back of the police car. They were more frequent now, but she didn’t dare tell her family about them. What would be the point anyway? They were worried enough about her as it was.

  Truth be told, Kate too was a bit worried about herself. She never was the type of woman who was obsessed with having children. She wasn’t even able to hold a relationship for more than a couple of months. Her career always came first. And yet, she couldn’t stop thinking about her pregnancy and how it all played out.

  Something that many women viewed as “the most important time of their lives”, literally happened to her in absentia. She had no idea who the father of her child was, only that he was clearly deranged besides being a monster. Because what sane villain would keep a woman captive for almost a year and get her pregnant? What was he planning on doing with her when it would be time for her to give birth? This line of thinking always brought Kate to the verge of panic, as she then had to face the really scary questions: how did she get away? And, more importantly, was her captor still looking for her? Sometimes, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her from out the window — but whenever she turned to look, there was nobody at the street. That always felt weird to her anyway, being used to the frantic pace of New York, but it certainly wasn’t weird for the sleepy, Long Island suburb her parents called home.