Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 141385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Everything here is a choice. Everyone here cares because they choose to. I’m here because Finn chose me. Even now when this story could cause the Royal Family no end of problems, they’re all choosing me.
“Can I tell you what it was like? When I was younger?”
His breath hitches. “When you were kidnapped?”
I nod. “The stories are believable because while they aren’t true for me, it was the case for others. I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess you could say.”
“Are you sure? If it’s too hard for you…”
“No. I want to.”
“Okay.” He tilts his head and kisses my hair. “I’ll listen to whatever you feel like you can say, baby.”
I swallow. “The kidnappers were traffickers. I didn’t learn that until I was around twelve, and even then, it took another older girl on the island to tell me what that really meant. They were small fish in a huge operation. My memories aren’t complete, especially of during the actual kidnapping, but I remember being passed off to other people before we got to the island. Then we were sent to what they called a ‘safe house,’ but it was really just another pit stop.
“That was Sayana’s house. She was a bit like us—forced into a situation she had no control over. She owed a lot of people a lot of money, and being the safe house for the trafficked kids was how she was paying back some of her debts. The most dangerous ones, anyway. She was tasked with caring for us and making sure we were presentable for whenever they came back to get us. Nobody knew when that would be, and not all the kids made it.
“She had her own connections, though, and every now and then, she’d take a kid from a group and say they died. Nobody ever questioned it. We weren’t exactly well looked after on the road, and kids dying was more normal than it had any right to be. Sayana was good at telling the ‘value’ of a child based on their appearance, and that was what saved me, I guess. I remember being shoved in her secret basement with the other kids who weren’t supposed to be there whenever the group showed up. There was a lot of fighting about me—I think they’d already sold me to someone, so when I allegedly died, it was a huge issue.
“They gave up in the end, though, when we couldn’t be found. Living with her was pretty safe. I learnt from one of the older girls there that she tended to raise children until they reached around sixteen to eighteen then sold them as wives to local leaders. Everyone knew what was going on, but nobody wanted to get involved because of the money behind it all. The local people on the island benefitted from Sayana’s activities, so they turned a blind eye to her cheating the group. Ironically.
“That’s where I met Ryan. We watched hundreds, if not thousands, of kids pass through her house during the years we were there. He almost got sold by her a few times, but he was too good at making money for her to bear to part with him in the end. When I was around eleven, I realised that I stood a chance at making it longer if I proved myself just as useful. That’s when I learnt photography. One of Sayana’s creditors threw an old camera at me, showed me how to use it, and I started to make money by taking photos and selling postcards of them.
“It was hard. Outside of tourist season, there weren’t many ways to make money. She was an abusive drunk, and we were often left to look after the little kids. I can’t tell you how many terrified little ones we comforted over the years knowing their fate. There was nothing else we could do. We had no communication with anyone off the island, and even if we’d told anyone who we were and what was happening, there was no guarantee anything would happen. We learnt that the first time we tried. People just don’t care.”
Finn squeezes my hand tightly.
“Even Valentina’s family didn’t. I don’t know how her dad found her out there, but he had a chance to save us, and he didn’t. He could have stopped the whole thing and blown it apart, but he took her and ran. We knew she was rescued because Sayana taunted us with it—saying if our families really cared, they’d have done what Valentina’s father did. Found us at all costs. After a while, we just gave up hope of ever being saved, and decided our best chance was to save ourselves.
“It was impossible, though. We could barely speak the language, we had no way to hide money, and Sayana had people who kept an eye on us and reported our every move back to her. The only time we were ever given money was the weekly visit to the island shaman. Sayana would make us visit to get her blessings, get guidance for her, that sort of thing. The shaman was the only person on the island we had any kind of real relationship with, and she’d often sneak us food when we were there.