Unrequited (Books Like Fifty Shades of Grey) (5 page)

BOOK: Unrequited (Books Like Fifty Shades of Grey)
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Of course I can't help them. When I first returned to the US I tried to write an opinion piece for The London Guardian but I couldn't even beat the first paragraph. I just didn't know what to say. How can a person possibly boil it down to a thousand words? An experience like that, being torn from your comfortable home in the US to serve as a sex slave for a despotic psychopath. To not only survive the ordeal, but to fall in love with your captor. To marry him. To give him a child. To smile and wave beside him as he casually slaughtered his people. How can I explain that in a way any normal person could understand?

 

They - you, the media, my friends and family - forget that Alexei was never like Assad, at least not to me. As far as I knew he never put anyone to death other than murderers and rapists. I thought he was a good man. Rough and controlling, but good. Moral. Kind. Of course I was sheltered from it all. The stories emerging today paint a different picture, but while I was there I knew him as nothing but the man who loved me.

 

It's been two years now. Two years I've been back in New York, and I still need a security detail to protect me. There are a few refugees here, those who escaped before Alexei locked down the borders and sealed his people into that nightmare, and some of them surely want me dead. I understand why. To them I must seem a monster. In their eyes I fiddled while Rome burned, enjoying my relationship and all the physical comforts of the palace while around me their families were subjugated, imprisoned... even killed.

 

It was time, I decided, to explain myself. One day the bullet engraved with my name - my married name - will find me, and I'd like, at least, the opportunity to tell my story before it does.

 

We'll begin at the beginning.

 

My name is Sarah Romanov,
ne
é
Howard, and I was born in Albany, New York in 1984. In the fall of 2002 I enrolled at NYU to study International Politics, and it was just a week after classes started that I met Alexei Romanov, the ruler of a country I'd never even heard of.

 

Of course we all know it now, but at the time it was just another of the many small, inconsequential states somewhere
over there
, out near the Caspian Sea on the broken fringes of the old USSR. Not many Americans could have pointed it out on a map, but there was no reason anyone ever would. People have more pressing matters to worry about than the state of the former Soviet republics, and this was just one of many.

 

What we
did
know was that it was oil rich thanks to vast reserves in their waters beneath the Caspian. We knew it was ostensibly a democracy but in reality the elections were rigged. The monarchy was still firmly in charge. Alexei, a man you wouldn't recognize if you passed him in the street, had ruled since his father passed away in 1998, and
he'd
been in charge since the Russians left in '91.

 

Prince Alexei Romanov controlled everything from the oil rigs to the national media. Following his father's death he'd been 'elected' with 96% of the vote, and by all accounts he was well loved. The oil flowed, the media reported nothing but good, and everyone seemed happy.

 

Alexei was in New York to deliver a speech about the oil and gas pipeline that was being built beneath the Caspian. It would connect his supplies to Europe, bypassing Russia and releasing the continent from the choke hold the Russians had on it. Moscow had been hogging the natural gas reserves of Central Asia for years, and the US was ecstatic when Alexei proposed a direct pipeline. We were eager to do business, and Alexei was the guest of honor at the UN headquarters less than a month after he announced the pipeline.

 

When my bike was hit by his limo as his motorcade sped down 3rd Avenue I suspect my government would have happily brushed the incident under the rug if he'd decided not to stop. But he
did
stop. Alexei himself was first out of the car, beating his bodyguards by five paces. He rushed over to me, freed me from the mangled wreckage of my bike. I passed out. I don't remember him picking me up, carrying me to the limo and speeding to hospital. I don't remember his limo running red lights, even when the police escort he left behind began to chase and the sirens blared. 

 

I remember waking up as he carried me into the emergency room. I remember the confusion as the cops were held back by his security, their weapons drawn. I remember Alexei pushing his way through the waiting crowds straight into the ward, yelling out for a doctor while my blood dried on his white shirt.

 

I was sedated, and I slept for hours. When I finally awoke I found a fresh cast on my arm, but otherwise I seemed fine. No concussion. Miraculously my arm wasn't even seriously broken. My wrist had a hairline fracture, but other than that I escaped with just cuts and bruises.

 

Alexei sat by my bed all day, waiting to apologize when I woke up. He missed his appointment at the UN. There was uproar in the media in the following days, at least until the story came out about what he was doing while the Assembly waited. Suddenly he was a hero; he was an everyman, someone the people could relate to. A good guy in a world of shady politicians.

 

So that was how I found myself in Ashambe three weeks later. When I was discharged from the hospital I was met at the door by Alexei's Ambassador to the US. He handed me a check for $10,000 - to pay for a new bike, he said (Alexei never did understand the value of money) - along with a plane ticket to the capital via Istanbul, Turkey.

 

Hidden in the envelope was a note, handwritten by Alexei himself, offering his heartfelt apologies for the accident and explaining that in his culture there was only one way to make things right. He'd have me in his home, an honored guest for as long as I pleased until the debt had been repaid.

 

I was shocked. Over the moon, really. I'd never left the States, and the idea of visiting a country far from the tourist trail excited me. What's more, I'd get to stay in a palace. Me! I grew up in a two bedroom house in the suburbs, and at that time I was sharing a cheap studio with a fellow student who had a bad habit of bringing a different guy home every night.

 

I was so excited that I didn't really notice the warning look in the eyes of the Ambassador. His words didn't seem to match his expression. He told me it was a great honor to be invited to the home of the Romanovs, but there was something not quite right about his expression, almost as if he was trying to discourage me with his eyes.

 

The flight to Istanbul was incredible. First class. I was plied with champagne and fed dishes I'd never even heard of (my usual diet was ramen noodles and Diet Coke). I felt a little out of place in my sneakers and jeans, but the flight attendants treated me like royalty.

 

It wasn't until we reached Istanbul that things started to go awry. I was led from the plane by a couple of security guys, all black suits, Aviators and bulges where they obviously carried pistols, just like in the movies. They led me out through a few fire escapes down to their car, a beat up old Toyota, and drove me out to a private hangar far away from the terminal.

 

The plane waiting for me was... well, it wasn't first class. I don't know airplanes, but it was some kind of military model. A huge panel in the ass of the plane was lowered down to make a ramp wide enough to fit a tank, and the guys drove right in.

 

As soon as we were on board the back of the plane closed and I heard the engines begin to run. The guys climbed out and left me in the back seat with the child locks on. I was worried now, getting angrier by the minute, wondering what was going on. I really needed to pee but there was nobody to shout to. Just me, in a car, in the middle of a huge cargo deck.

 

A little after take off I climbed to the front seat to try the doors, but they were also locked. The horn worked, though. I blasted that thing for ten minutes until someone heard me. The man who finally arrived wasn't one of the men who'd driven me onto the plane, but a military looking guy in fatigues and a red beret. By that point I was screaming bloody murder, banging on the windscreen with my palm, and when he finally sauntered over to the car I was ready to kick the door off its hinges.

 

That was the moment I realized something was seriously wrong. The guy calmly drew his firearm, a mean looking pistol, and tapped the barrel against the driver's side window. He raised a finger to his lips and shushed me, and then just turned and walked away. I shut up right away. I just couldn't believe this was happening.

 

I don't remember much after that. I know I cried the whole flight and at one point, whether it was through desperation or just fear, I wet myself. I just sat there staring at the growing dark patch on my jeans, watching it as if it wasn't really me. As if it was just a movie.

 

The last thing I remember was a few hours into the fight when the military guy returned wearing a gas mask. He grabbed a long, thick hose attached to something that looked like a diesel generator by the car and held it against the air intake below the windscreen. Smoke began to pour through the vents. I remember it smelled like fruit, just like the gas I was given when I had my wisdom teeth extracted. That was that. I wasn't awake when we touched down.

 

 

If you've enjoyed this story you can find many more by Aya Fukunishi at her
author page
at Amazon.

BOOK: Unrequited (Books Like Fifty Shades of Grey)
12.33Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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