Chapter 127

**Hadassah POV**

In the dim motel room, the air smells faintly of old cigarette smoke and musty fabric. The dusty overhead light flickers, casting murky shadows over the dingy wallpaper as she kneels beside me with steady hands over my wound that is jagged and angry.
“With the way you barely blinking, tells me you’ve been shot—a lot.”
The insinuation merits no response because it’s evident.
She probes further. “And yet when you saw those bodies… that broke you.”
“Butchered bodies don’t get you?” I ask flatly. “Those people were torn open with their insides hanging out. I think I had a rather natural response.”
“Not what I meant,” she whispers, her voice tight with worry, though she tries to mask it with a sense of formality or professionalism. I yield to a wince, lips pressed into a thin line, sweat beading on my forehead as I brace against the edge of the bed.
Her fingers work quickly, but carefully. Out of nowhere, the antiseptic stings as it touches the wound, and a pained squeal escapes me, fists clenching on the sheets beneath me.
“I know, I know,” she murmurs, her voice soft, almost apologetic, as if her words could somehow ease the pain.
I glance at her and accidentally our gaze collides—our eyes leap away immediately.
She works on and I keep looking away.
“You can’t let him in your head,” she blurts.
“Excuse me,” I snap, because I know exactly what she’s referring to.
“A lot depends on you—a lot of lives. And you can’t afford to lose focus or be emotionally compromised because—”
“I’m not having this conversation with you,” I shut down.
“Excuse you,” she retorts with an attitude that nearly makes me want to puncture her with the suturing needle in her possession.
“I’m not having this conversation with you,” I repeat remorselessly. “Not when you know the uncontrollable and overwhelming dread when you see the man or what is connected to him. The man that—that,” I stammer into seething anger as I even abandon the wrathful deluge.
The fraught silence that follows tells me she can fill out the blanks. Because she knows, quite intimately and horrifically.
“What I tell you is what I try to tell myself,” she whispers as if it’s a deadly secret. “Don’t let any of it overcome you. Because you’re stronger than that—stronger than any man who tried to hurt you.”
A beat of silence.
“That strength lives in us both,” I say finally.
Her hands move swiftly, wrapping the gauze around my shoulder, pulling it tight enough to bind but not too tight to hurt more than it has to. Blood still seeps through in places, the stark white of the bandage quickly turning crimson, but it’s better than before. She ties the final knot, making sure the binding is secure, then sits back. The room falls silent, save for the distant hum of a passing car outside, leaving us in a shared quiet, heavy with unspoken fear and a fragile sense of safety.
For now, it’s enough.
“I hope you’re okay with sharing a bed,” she says to break the silence.
I crack into a smile. “I am if you are.”
“Though I admit, it’s the first time that I slept with two best friends.”
My eyes jump back to her, and my brows merge with my hairline. “I beg your finest pardon.”
She frees a short and sharp laugh before covering it with her one hand.
“I meant it in a very literal sense of just sleeping.”
“Girl, have you seen your face?” I ask sarcastically, red heat blooming in her cheeks and forehead. “That tells me you guys did more than sleep.”
She tears her mouth open and snaps it shut when someone knocks on the door. I sprout to my feet and Emilia’s girly goofiness vanishes when she whips out her gun and holds it discreetly behind her back. I edge away from the door, moving more behind her and getting into an offensive position. She peeks into the hole and sighs exasperatedly before opening the door. Sasha stands outside in a cheap oversize t-shirt, one of all we bought at the giftshop for something comfortable for the girls to wear for what’s left of the night.
And Sasha makes a tacky, graphic-fading t-shirt look like a Givenchy dress. The ends reach the mid thigh, legs toned and her skin immaculate, with her golden goddess curls swept up in an effortless yet stunning style.
“Sasha?” I come closer out from behind Emilia. “Everything okay?”
She nods, smiling angelically. “Anya is fussing. She can’t sleep and asks if you can sleep with us, if that’s okay?”
Emilia turns her head slowly to look back at me, folding her lips inwards.
“*Stai zitto*,” I say in Italian, one of a few phrases I learn from Calum and I know she understood because she hides her face behind the slab of the door to contain her laugh. It was a gamble to guess if she would understand, but she's a decorated operative—at least she was. And they usually speak more than two languages.
“Em, you think you’ll be alright?”
With her face still angled away from us both, she says, “We’ll confer in the morning.”
I retreat to grab my tee off the bed and ease into it cautiously. With a final wince, I walk out wordlessly and she closes the door behind me. We put Sasha and Anya three doors down. And yet interspaced between them, I can see the other women peering out of the blinds in paranoia. I appear within the frame of the window to wave them away, meaning for them to go back and go to sleep. We shortly arrive at Sasha’s room and Anya is perfectly in the middle and it feels like I’m a mother when their kid comes into their parents' bedroom after a nightmare.
I don't give it much thought after that until I crawl to the side where Anya is facing. Her head shifts and she looks up at me with her head still on her pillow. And she beams warmly, like a midnight sun. Sasha watches me smiling at her as she slips in behind Anya.
“Try to get some sleep.”
Sasha strokes her head as she translates. Anya responds with a serene nod and closes her eyes, nestling deeper into the bed. Sasha plants a goodnight kiss on the back of her head before continuing to comb her fingers through hair to lull her to sleep.
“You should try to sleep, too.”
“My mind can’t fight off the nightmares,” she confesses quietly.
I nod slowly, with reserved comprehension. “Then I’ll fight them off for you.”
She smiles bashfully, then looks away for a microsecond. “We all have nightmares, Hadassah,” she says with a chide in her voice. “You’re going to fight them all?”
“Best believe, I’ll try.”
She fixes me with a look of mild scrutiny. “And why you do that for us? Why do any of it?”
“Atonement, empathy, broken moral compass, hero complex—take your pick. What does it even matter?”
“We know many people who claimed they would help us, then we ended up in a sex ring.”
“And we got you out,” I whisper with a confused smile. “You think we’d risk our lives like that for what? Sell you off?”
“Many women in trade.”
Disgust wipes the wavering smile on my face. “We’re not one of them. I know you all went through hell and have no true reason to trust anyone. You’ve been exploited and betrayed in the worst way possible—initially by people who you thought cared about you. And I couldn’t imagine.”
A tear spills from Sasha’s eye, and her gaze sinks to the mattress.
“I can’t promise safety,” I admit. “But we can give you a way out.”
Her shimmering eyes lift. “Just like any weapon—hope can kill.”