Chapter 10101
He lost all track of time, so when the trunk of the car was finally thrown open, he found himself in a small village so remote it didn’t even appear on a map.
The middle-aged woman wasn’t alone; a man was with her, clearly an accomplice. The two of them shoved him into a burlap sack and hauled him a little further. When they finally let him see again, he was standing in front of a rundown, single- story shack, surrounded by others just like it.trafficked.
The woman was grinning, chattering away in a thick, local dialect he couldn’t understand. A middle-aged man with a long scar across his face looked him up and down, then disappeared back inside the shack, re-emerging a moment later with a wad of cash.
In that instant, Aaron knew. He had been trafficked.
It was only later, after he’d learned to understand the local dialect, that he realized what the woman had said: “Look at this one, a fine, healthy boy. With him around, that woman of yours will probably start to settle down p>
In this village, a bought child was nothing out of the ordinary. The neighbors even offered the scarred man advice on how to keep him. If he disobeys, beat him. If he tries to run, beat him.
After enough beatings, they said, he wouldn’t dare try again. Besides, the paths leading out of this place were nearly impossible to find. Where could he possibly run to?
Aaron tried to escape many times, and he was beaten just as many times.
Eventually, it seemed as though the fight had truly gone out of him, and he began living obediently with the scarred man.
A few months later, convinced that Aaron had finally accepted his fate, the man said, “Tonight, I’ll take you to meet your mother p>
That evening, in a small woodshed behind the house, Aaron saw a woman with her ankles locked in chains.
Her hair was a matted mess, her clothes were filthy, and her eyes were completely devoid of light. When she saw them enter, her body flinched instinctively, her gaze filled with terror.
“Why is she chained up?” Aaron asked, confused.
The scarred man ignored him, his eyes fixed on the woman. “Jenny,” he said, “this is our son. From now on, let’s raise him together p>
Aaron would later learn that Jenny had also been trafficked. Her story was even more tragic; on a trip after her high school graduation, she’d seen a pregnant woman fall and helped her home, only to walk right into an ambush set by human traffickers who had preyed on her compassion.
The scarred man had raped her as soon as she arrived, and she had become pregnant.
But she refused to carry the child. She beat her own stomach with heavy objects until she miscarried. When he raped her and made her pregnant again, she did the same, but with more violence, causing a uterine hemorrhage that nearly killed her.
She would rather die than be used as a breeding machine.
But she didn’t die. They saved her, but she could never get pregnant again.
That was when the scarred man decided to buy a child. He reasoned that women were soft-hearted; force wouldn’t work forever, but if she bonded with a child, she’d surely resign herself to staying.
For a while, it seemed his plan was working.
Aaron was quiet and obedient, seemingly beaten into submission. He called the woman “Mom” and would chat with her while bringing her meals. Slowly, she began to talk again, and then to smile.
The scarred man was pleased,
though whenever he drank too
much, he would take his fists to both
of them. He was a destitute laborer
at the bottom of the food chain, and only at home, through violence, could he feel a sense of power.
But things would not continue to go as the scarred man had planned. Because Aaron had never given up.
His early, repeated escape attempts were a calculated deception to make the scarred man lower his guard. It would have been strange if he hadn’t tried torun. But the terrain in the mountains was genuinely treacherous, and it took him a very long time to finally map out a real path to freedom.
The day before his planned escape, he asked Jenny, “Do you want to leave with me p>
For the first time, a flicker of light appeared in her eyes. She nodded.
During the day, the village was full of prying eyes. The locals would band together at the first sign of unusual behavior from anyone who had been trafficked. Their only chance was at night. Follow current novᴇls on
Aaron stole the scarred man’s money, unlocked Jenny’s chains, and they crept out into the darkness.
But fate had other plans. A neighbor’s dog heard the movement and began to bark furiously.
Aaron, who had lost dozens of pounds, grabbed Jenny’s hand and pulled her along. But after being shackled for so long, her legs wouldn’t obey her. She couldn’t run fast enough.
They were caught.
The scarred man grabbed a shovel from the house and swung it wildly at Aaron.
Jenny threw herself in front of the boy, and the steel edge of the shovel crashed into her head.
Warm blood sprayed across Aaron, soaking him. For the first time, he wept with true, soul-crushing despair.
The scarred man, enraged by their betrayal, had no intention of getting Jenny medical help.
It was Aaron who fell to his knees and begged, pressing his forehead into the dirt. “Please, save her! Please p>
The scarred man ground Aaron’s head into the ground with his boot. “You ever going to run again p>
“No more… I’ll never run again Aaron sobbed, promising over and over.
The blow from the shovel left Jenny with permanent brain damage. She was prone to fits of madness.
But Aaron still didn’t give up. Two years later, he planned another escapez This time, he stole sleeping pills from the village’s unlicensed clinic and drugged both the scatted man and the dogs nearby
And he was still taking Jenny with him. After all, it was because she had protected
him that her mind had been broken.