Only the Strongest Survive (13 page)

*

That evening
John got very drunk and drove into town at great speed. He chose an
Asian woman with
large breasts. The
moment they entered the hotel room, he roughly pushed her onto the
bed, took off his pants, and began humping her like a
rabbit.

“Slowly!” the woman screamed. “I’m not ready
yet.” She wanted to push him away, but he slapped her hard
twice.

“Please, don’t,” she said loudly.

“
Shut
up!”
He was thrusting so hard that the
woman had a feeling the metal bed frame would give in. She lay
there motionless, afraid to make him angry again, and stared at the
ceiling hoping that he’d soon finish and leave her
alone.

“
I hate
wom
en,” he said, groaning, before his
body shuddered with a spasm.

While he was getting dressed five minutes
later, he threw a bundle of banknotes in her face. “And keep your
dirty mouth shut.”

“
Yes, of
course,” she said, nodding and quickly picking up the scattered
money.
It was much more than she had
expected.

*

The next day,
Emely began her new job. She stared at the computer screen, but it
was not numbers that attracted her. Those securities were the last
thing she was interested in. She wanted to check whether she
could
access another website, but without
success. John really had done what he said he’d do to deny her
access.

Staring into
space, she thought
about things and felt
sorry for herself. Her will for life was gone and all she wanted
was to die. After crying so much she thought she was bound to run
out of tears eventually.

John
also had installed a baby monitor in her room
through which he was able to hear her while he was watching
television upstairs. If Emely decided to buy or sell some shares,
he would call his own personal broker, who would do this on his
behalf. But instead, he had to listen to her moaning and
crying.

By midday he
had had enough. “Listen
, you stupid
woman. If you don’t intend to do some work, you’ll never get out of
here. I’m telling you again you should feel lucky to be alive at
all. If you don’t stop sniveling this very minute and start buying
shares, you won’t get any food, only bread and water. Have I made
myself clear?”

She nodded faintly.

“Good, then start already.” He slammed the
door loudly so that the bang reverberated around her head.

She
didn
’t care about food; she was not
hungry anyway. He would have scared her much more if he had tried
to rape her again.
It’ll
happen sooner or later,
she thought, and
started crying. Then she turned off the computer and said out loud,
“I’ll smash this damn box of his and then he’ll see.”

*

John kept his
promise and brought
his prisoner only a
few stale slices of bread and a bottle of water. He stayed in the
room only as long as it was necessary and then returned to his
armchair on the first floor. “If you want to use the bathroom, call
me,” he said in passing.

*

The next two
days were not much different. John
listened to Emely’s crying and had to turn off the baby
monitor several times when it got on his nerves.
She’ll come to her senses,
he thought.
I’ll leave her for a while. She can’t keep crying
forever.

*

On
the fourth day something changed. First thing in
the morning she decided that this could not go on.
I won’t get anywhere this way.
She thought hard about her position and again
decided to play the role he wanted her to play, only so that
gradually he’d become careless and then she’d strike.
Of course, you stupid woman, you’ve
lost three days with all the crying. And where has it gotten you?
Nowhere.

She jumped
out of bed, washed her face
, and brushed
her teeth. Then she began warming up.
I’ll tell him I need a few CDs and a CD player. I’ll go mad
in here without music.

With the help
of a chair
, she performed a few exercises
so that five minutes later she could feel her heart beating faster.
Then she did twenty pushups. After turning onto her back, she began
leg-lifts. The next fifteen minutes she dedicated to her stomach
muscles and then stood up and did a few squats. After turning the
computer screen off, she lifted it above her head a few times to
exercise her shoulders. Lastly, she sat down and crossed her legs
into a yoga position in order to do some breathing exercises. She
began to feel immense energy and felt pleased with
herself.

At nine
o’clock she turned on the computer screen and began following the
trading in specific shares. She was surprised to see that the value
of some had gone up considerably while others had gone down. She
then checked the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar against the Euro
and looked at the European stock markets. Before she knew it, it
was twelve o’clock, she had been so engrossed. She kept looking and
soon found the right opportunity.

“John,” she said into the monitor, “can you
hear me?”

He took his
time. Thinking that she was calling him because she wanted to use
the bathroom, he made her wait ten minutes
before opening her door.

“
Buy a
hundred and fifty
round lots of Sony
shares, now!” she said confidently.

He stared at her for a while as if he could
not recognize her.

She was
wearing
the elegant white linen pants and
pink silk shirt that he had bought her. She was sitting in the
chair demurely and her hair looked different. He also noticed that
she had put some blusher on her cheeks.

“
Yes, no
problem, I’ll do it immediately,” he said, overjoyed. He skipped
upstairs like a
child, glad that she had
finally started working.

But in spite
of this, there was still tension between them. They hated one
another and exchanged only
the words that
were necessary. They did not eat together. John brought her food
down to her room three times a day and then left quickly. When she
needed it, he accompanied her to the bathroom.

At first this
suited her
. She liked the fact that he
wasn’t bothering her anymore and left her alone. In the afternoons,
when she was not following the stock markets, she was deep in
thought, devising various ways of escaping. Soon she became
resigned to the fact that this would not be so easy.
Perhaps I really will have to stay in
this basement for two years or more,
she
thought in despair,
perhaps
even to the end of my life.

*

Mornings went
quickly with all the tension involved in the buying and selling of
shares. At first John watch
ed television
calmly, but after a few days he often went to Emely’s room in
excitement and together they followed the movements in the value of
shares, without speaking. The value of his capital depended on the
shares he owned at each moment and this fluctuated from one second
to another. He kept doing calculations in his head while biting his
nails.

*

Emely
knew that speculating with securities was a
risky business and that you could expect anything, from high
profits to shocking losses. She kept looking at her wristwatch,
sitting calmly in front of the screen as if John was not
there.

Chapter
8

_______________________

The value of
John’s capital was slowly growing.
Three
weeks had passed since Emely had started trading and if John were
to sell everything now, he would get two million, one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, quite a profit, so he was more than
pleased. Although he didn’t talk to Emely more than necessary and
had to keep watching her to see whether she had any more violent
thoughts, silently he was admiring her intelligence.
What can she see in those
charts?
he often wondered.

Every day
when
trading closed, he left the room
without a word, as if Emely was not there. And he never forgot to
lock the door.

When he
realized how easy it was to make money, he bought a few luxuries.
To begin with, ten new
items of clothing.
He no longer went to shabby bars, but looked for more exclusive
restaurants for the more discerning customer. In addition, he no
longer picked prostitutes from the road but ordered them from a
handy catalogue in his hotel. While he was thrusting into one of
them, another caressed and kissed him, cooling him down with
champagne. Perfectly satiated and drunk he returned home at two in
the morning. Emely was always woken by the alarm announcing his
arrival.

One day John
suddenly thought in fear that this dream would one day stop. He had
promised Emely to let her go and this thought horrified him. He
waved it off and smiled
, thinking,
I’ll never let her go.
He poured himself a glass of champagne and took
a bite of toast with caviar.
I
saved her life and now she’s my property.

*

While John
was spending his money and enjoying life, Emely was terribly bored
in the late afternoons and evenings and missed human company,
anyone. Sometimes she even wished at least John would talk to her.
Even though she hated him, he was the only person she had contact
with. She no longer feared him and sensed that he would leave her
alone. Clearly that last failed sexual attempt
had left deep scars in him.

*

When one day
the trading had
finished, she said,
“John, whose idea was it to kidnap me, yours or
Ronald’s?”

He looked at
her, surprised at her direct question. “Ronald
’s,” he said quietly.

“And you helped him without hesitation?” she
asked.

With
difficulty he took
his eyes off the
screen and stared into space. “Ronald is my older brother. I always
thought he was much smarter and more capable than me. When I was a
child he protected me against others and helped me in various
ways.”

Emely listened with interest.

“
He was nice
to me,
but at the same time humiliated
me. ‘You may not be intelligent, but you’re lucky to have a smart
older brother,’ he would often say. After graduation he went on to
study economics while I got a job. I somehow resigned myself to the
fact that college was not for me and that I wouldn’t be able to
pass exams.”

Emely was surprised at this.

“
After our
father died, there was no doubt that Ronald was more than suitable
to take over. I never envied him, I wa
s
pleased just to be able to help.”

“You should have been more persistent,” Emely
told him.

“
I can see
that now, but then I thought differently. All my life I was never
the clever one, he was. Irrespective of what he decided to do, I
always followed and was loyal to him. Never ever did I doubt how
smart he was.” Looking left, he quickly checked the last changes in
the value of shares.

“And what do you think about him now?”

“
It’s hard to
say, but recently he has been annoying me. Whatever he does bothers
me.”

The
screen
showed that trading hours were
over. John leaned back on his chair and stretched. “It’s time for a
nap.”

Chapter
9

_______________________

“
What can I
do for you?” Blake
asked. It was 6:00
p.m. and Robert Miles, the journalist, was sitting in front of him.
“What can I tell you today?” Blake was tired, but he knew that
meetings with Miles were important.

The
journalist ha
d already helped Donnovan
Corporation a great deal. While many newspapers were wondering in
their articles about whether the company would survive at all,
Robert Miles kept emphasizing the capabilities of the company’s
executives and saying that Emely Donnovan had not been running
things for some time. This was a lie, but a necessary one in such
difficult times. All these articles were good promotion that would
be stupid to reject. A month had passed since Emely’s disappearance
and hopes about her return were gradually diminishing.

“
I’d like to
write a story about Emely
Donnovan.”

“
What,
exactly?”

“A kind of a life story.”

Blake
thought
,
It’s as if she is dead already.

Miles knew he
had to ch
ange the theme of his articles
or he’d lose the readers’ interest. Instead of continuing to write
about the company, he’d start describing Emely Donnovan and perhaps
even turn her into a star. Yes, that was exactly what he wanted to
do. Write a story about her success, in installments. In his dreams
he could already see readers hardly able to wait for every new
edition and buying up all the copies within a few hours. If her
life happened not to have been interesting, he would make it such.
After all, he was a capable journalist and writing was his
job.