They Poisoned My Voice So She Could Steal My Future, Not Knowing I Already Chose a Different One Chapter 03

They Poisoned My Voice So She Could Steal My Future, Not Knowing I Already Chose a Different One Chapter 03

Cletus saw the slap in the rearview mirror and frowned. “Hey Buck, don’t bruise her face. Makes her harder to sell.”

Buck grumbled and sat back, cursing under his breath.

The sky darkened. My hands had gone completely numb from being tied for so long.

It had been eight hours since the injection.

Sophia would take the early train to the city tomorrow morning. The day after that, she would stand in front of that million-dollar iris scanner.

Cletus yawned. “Buck, I’m beat. Let me pull over at a crossroads up here and catch a thirty-minute nap.”

Buck nodded, looking sleepy himself. “Fine. Lock the doors. There’s nowhere for her to run anyway.”

The van stopped at an abandoned weigh station. Soon, both men were snoring.

Listening to their heavy breathing, a small smile touched my lips. I pressed the metal button hard. A faint vibration pulsed against my fingertip. Code Black emergency ping activated.

When the van started moving again, dawn was breaking. The mountain air was thick with fog, and condensation dotted the windows.

I was curled in the corner, exhausted but clear-headed. The signal had been active for four hours. They should have locked onto this vehicle by now.

“Wake up! We’re here!”

Buck roughly shoved me awake and yanked the rope binding my wrists.

The door slid open, and cold air smelling of woodsmoke rushed in.

He pulled me out, and my legs, cramped from being bent for so long, gave out, dropping me to my knees in the mud.

A deeply wrinkled old woman, Maude Higgins, came out and looked me over. “This is the one you spent eighteen grand on?”

The next second, she raised a sewing awl and stabbed me hard in the arm.

I gasped in pain, but the sound was barely a whisper because of the drug.

Maude smiled, satisfied. “A mute is good. She can’t gossip or scream for help.”

“Strong looking, though. Good for work. Lock her in the cellar for two days, break that pride.”

I was dragged and thrown into a damp, dark root cellar. The metal door slammed shut above me, the sound of the padlock echoing in the blackness.

I curled up on a pile of musty hay, blood seeping from the wound in my arm.

Less than thirty minutes later, the door cracked open. Buck’s face appeared in the gap. “That sweet sister of yours sure knows how to live.”

He held his phone into the cellar and played a video.

It was Sophia, in the city, filming herself in front of the campus, bragging about spending the next four years there.

The comments were a flood of emojis and praise from relatives and friends.

[So amazing, Sophia!]

[Study hard, make us proud!]

[That’s our girl!]

Buck laughed. “Same face, different lives, huh?”

“You just stay put right here. No use trying to run. Tomorrow night, I’ll come down and show you what it feels like to be a real woman.”

The door slammed shut.

I had heard that phrase my whole life.