“You’ll give me to him?” I ask my boyfriend.
“Only for a while, sweetheart. Don’t worry, I’ll get you back soon. He won’t do anything to you. Just don’t resist—otherwise…”
“Otherwise he’ll kill me, do you understand?”
“Denis, you can’t just lose me in a card game like that!”
“I already lost!”
***
“You’ll let me go? It was all just a game, right?” A nervous laugh bursts out of me.
“Denis said it was a game.”
“That’s what it was—a game,” he answers calmly. “And your boyfriend lost you to me. Put her in the car.”
I trusted my boyfriend and went into the closed club where he set me up on a bet—and… lost. With his own hands, he handed me to a monster that can’t tolerate refusal. And now I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get out of the cage he put me in.