Chapter 3: Bloodied Liberation
The gunshot’s echo was swallowed by the plush carpets and thick drapes, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. Leo writhed on the floor, clutching his shoulder, a steady stream of curses and pained groans leaking from his clenched teeth. The coppery scent of fresh blood—his blood—began to mix with the whiskey and perfume.
Effie didn’t holster the pistol. She kept it trained on Leo as she stepped over the glass, her boots crunching the shards with a sound that made Yaa flinch. She stopped a few feet from him, looking down with an expression of pure disdain.
“You greedy, sloppy fuck,” Effie said, her voice low and venomous. “Did you think this was a gift? You were supposed to look, not break the merchandise. Marcus loaned you a painting, and you decided to use it as a fucking drop cloth.”
Leo snarled up at her, his face pale with pain and fury. “You shot me! Do you know who I am? My brother—”
“Your brother isn’t here to clean up your mess, which is the only reason you’re still breathing out of your mouth instead of bleeding out through it,” Effie interrupted. She nudged a piece of glass near his leg with her toe. “I have a vested interest in this particular asset. You don’t get to paw at what’s mine before I do.”
Yaa lay perfectly still, terrified that any movement would drive the glass deeper. She watched this new Effie, the one with the gun and the gold tooth and the icy command, and felt the world tilt on its axis. The woman from the café was a phantom.
Effie finally turned her attention to Yaa. The professional coldness in her eyes softened, just a fraction, into something more clinical: assessment. She holstered the pistol inside her blazer and knelt beside the wreckage of the table. “Hello again, sweetness,” she said, her voice quieter now. “I did warn you about that hollow space.”
“You… you knew,” Yaa whispered, each word a scrape of pain. “You knew this would happen.”
“I knew he’d try. I didn’t know you’d have the spine to shove him. Stupid, but impressive.” Effie’s hands, surprisingly gentle, began to pluck the larger, protruding shards from Yaa’s back and thighs. Each withdrawal brought a fresh sting and a trickle of warmth. “This is going to hurt. Don’t move.”
Yaa squeezed her eyes shut, focusing on the pain to push back the shock. “How do you know Marcus?”
A low, humorless chuckle. “Marcus and I go way back. To Accra. Before the suits, before the New York empire. We were… competitors. In love and in business. Let’s just say our breakup wasn’t amicable.” She plucked a long, thin sliver from Yaa’s tricep. “He stole from me. So I’m stealing back. Starting with his favorite thing.”
The meaning sliced deeper than the glass. Yaa’s eyes flew open. “I’m not a thing.”
Effie paused, her gaze locking onto Yaa’s. “Aren’t you? You were dressed up and delivered, weren’t you? A bargaining chip. A sweet little pawn.” She resumed her work, her touch firm. “I know him so well, I found his most precious possession at her usual café, ordering her usual sickly-sweet frappe. He’s a creature of habit. So are you. It made you easy to find.”
The elevator at the far end of the suite pinged. Voices, shouts, the thud of running feet. The gunshot had been heard.
“Time’s up,” Effie muttered. She slid her hands under Yaa’s shoulders and knees, ignoring Yaa’s sharp cry of protest. “Hold on to my neck. The glass on the floor is the least of our problems.”
She lifted Yaa as if she weighed nothing. The world swung dizzyingly. Yaa clutched at Effie’s shoulders, her face pressed against the black tank top, breathing in the scent of gunpowder, jasmine, and clean sweat. Effie carried her past Leo, who was now slumped against a wall, his breathing ragged, and strode not toward the main elevator, but to a service door camouflaged in the wood paneling.
“Back staircase,” Effie grunted, shouldering it open. The concrete stairwell was cold, lit by buzzing fluorescent lights. The distant clamor from the suite grew fainter with each descending flight.
“They’ll follow,” Yaa breathed, pain jolting through her with every step Effie took.
“They’ll check the main elevator first. They’ll waste time with Leo. By the time they realize we’re gone, we’ll be a ghost.” Effie’s breathing was even, controlled. She reached a sub-basement, a labyrinth of pipes and humming electrical boxes. A pristine black sedan idled in a dark corner, a driver waiting silently.
The driver, a large man with a shaved head, opened the rear door without a word. Effie laid Yaa across the cool leather seats, then slid in beside her, pulling Yaa’s head into her lap. “Drive. The safe house. Now.”
The car glided out into an alley, then into the late-night traffic. The transition from violent chaos to insulated quiet was surreal. Yaa trembled, the adrenaline leaching away, leaving her cold and aching. She felt the sticky wetness of blood on her skin, the itchy trails it left.
Effie looked down at her, one hand absently stroking the sweat-damp hair from Yaa’s forehead. With her other hand, she reached for the velvet collar around Yaa’s throat. Her fingers found the small, gold-plated lock at the back.
“This,” Effie said, her voice a mix of contempt and something like pity, “is an insult.”
She didn’t search for a key. She gave a sharp, forceful twist. The cheap metal clasp snapped with a definitive ping. Effie pulled the collar away and, without looking, lowered the window and tossed it out into the rushing night.
The sensation was immediate and profound. A constriction Yaa had grown so accustomed to she no longer felt it was suddenly gone. She drew a deeper, shuddering breath than she had in months. The skin of her throat felt naked, new.
“There,” Effie said, her thumb stroking the now-bare skin where the collar had been. “Now you’re mine.”
The safe house was a sleek, modern loft in a building with no doorman and discreet cameras. It smelled of citrus cleaner and new furniture. Effie carried Yaa inside, past a minimalist living space, straight into a large, white-tiled bathroom. She set Yaa on the closed toilet lid and turned on the shower, testing the temperature.
“The lace is ruined,” Effie said, her fingers finding the straps of the teddy. “Lift your arms.”
Yaa, moving like an automaton, obeyed. Effie peeled the torn, blood-stained garment off and let it fall to the floor like a shed skin. She did the same with her own tank top, now smeared with Yaa’s blood, and her jeans. Standing in just her underwear, her body was a map of lean muscle and old, faded scars. One, a nasty puckered line, ran along her lower ribcage.
She helped Yaa stand and guided her under the hot spray. Yaa hissed as the water hit her myriad of cuts, but Effie’s hands were there, steadying her. She took a washcloth and liquid soap, and with a meticulous, unsentimental care, began to wash the blood away. The water at their feet ran pink, then clear.
She washed Yaa’s back, her thighs, the curve of her ass, the bite mark on her neck. She was thorough, clinical, but her touch was not impersonal. Her fingers lingered on the softness of Yaa’s stomach, traced the line of her spine. Yaa, exhausted and vulnerable, leaned into the touches, her earlier defiance replaced by a deep, shuddering need for any kind of gentleness.
When the blood was gone, revealing a constellation of fine red cuts and darkening bruises, Effie turned her around under the spray. Water sluiced over Yaa’s face, her breasts. Effie’s gaze was heavy, possessive. She cupped Yaa’s breast, her thumb rubbing over the nipple until it pebbled tight. A sharp, clean bolt of desire, entirely separate from the night’s trauma, went through Yaa.
The bolt of desire felt like a betrayal of her own battered flesh, a sudden, alive spark in the dead field of her nerves. Effie saw it. Her dark eyes tracked the subtle shift in Yaa’s posture, the quickening of her breath that had nothing to do with pain.
Yaa watched Effie’s hands, so capable and deliberate as they smoothed soap over her skin, cleaning the last of Leo and the club from her. The touch was methodical, claiming every inch, and a old, weary anger bubbled up through the steam. “So,” Yaa said, her voice hollow against the tile. “You’re gonna have your fill, too? Now that I’m clean?”
Effie’s laugh was a genuine, rich sound that caught Yaa off guard. “There she is. The bitch from London. I like this spirit. It’s better than the scared rabbit.” Her hands didn’t stop moving, scrubbing Yaa’s calf with a firm, almost punishing pressure. “But you should understand something, sweetness. If I wanted to, I could do anything with you right now. Fuck you. Hurt you worse than he did. I could even kill you. Marcus has enough enemies; you’d just be another casualty in a stupid gang war.”
Yaa went very still, the hot water suddenly feeling like ice.
“But no,” Effie continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur as she rinsed Yaa’s back. “Where’s the entertainment in that? You’re far more valuable to me awake.” She turned Yaa to face her again, one hand resting on the curve of Yaa’s hip. “Collateral, yes. Maybe some company. But a warning: I’m the type who doesn’t just show a beautiful woman my strength. I make sure she finds out for herself how good a woman’s hands can feel on her skin. How a woman’s mouth can be a different kind of worship.”
Her other hand drifted down, fingers sliding through the wet curls between Yaa’s thighs. They ghosted over her core, a teasing, maddening pass that made Yaa’s entire body tense. Effie didn’t penetrate. She just hovered, letting Yaa feel the heat, the proximity, the terrifying promise. Then her hand was gone, turning off the water with a sharp click.
The silence was abrupt, filled only with the drip of the showerhead and their ragged breathing.
Effie wrapped her in a large, soft towel, drying her with the same efficient care. She led Yaa, naked and pliant, into a smaller adjacent room furnished as a sterile clinic. A bright light flickered on. Effie pressed a button and sat Yaa on a cold steel table. The air smelled of rubbing alcohol and dried herbs.
“This will sting,” Effie said, not unkindly, opening a professional medical kit.
She worked in silence now, her brow furrowed in concentration. A cotton pad soaked in antiseptic dabbed at the deeper cuts on Yaa’s back. Yaa flinched, hissing through her teeth. Effie’s free hand settled on Yaa’s good shoulder, a steadying weight. She applied butterfly closures to a nasty gash on Yaa’s thigh, her fingers expert and quick. The impersonal competence of it was its own bizarre intimacy.
When the last bandage was placed, Effie leaned in. She pressed her lips to Yaa’s uninjured shoulder, a kiss that was startling in its softness. Her mouth lingered for a heartbeat, warm against the damp skin.
“Rest now,” Effie murmured, her breath a caress against Yaa’s ear. “You’ve been through enough shit for one lifetime, let alone one night.”
She guided Yaa off the table and into a dim bedroom dominated by a large, low bed. She pulled back the covers. Yaa slid in, the sheets cool and crisp against her bandaged skin. Effie watched her for a moment from the doorway, her silhouette a powerful cutout against the hall light.
Then she was gone, closing the door with a quiet but definitive click.
Yaa lay in the unfamiliar dark, her body humming with residual adrenaline, pain, and that treacherous, unwanted spark of want. She replayed the ghost of Effie’s fingers between her legs, the possessive kiss, the ruthless efficiency with the gun and the bandages. She thought of Effie walking away—the powerful set of her shoulders, the sway of her thick thighs under the simple towel she’d tied around herself, the tall, commanding frame that now owned the space in Yaa’s mind as completely as it owned this safe house.
The gentleness had been given so suddenly, so violently intertwined with the threat. It was a different language from Marcus’s cold ownership, but it was still a dialect of control. Yaa touched the skin where the collar had been. It felt achingly bare. She wondered, trapped between exhaustion and a terrifying new kind of alertness, if this was what a cage with a view looked like, and if the keeper inside it was any safer than the one who had locked the door from the outside.
The question circled in the dark until exhaustion smothered it. She was asleep in minutes, a shallow, fever-dream sleep punctuated by the phantom sensation of shattering glass and the warm certainty of hands washing her clean.
Outside the door, Effie hovered. She listened to the breathing settle into a rhythm. Then, with deliberate care, she pushed the door until it sat open just a crack. A slice of hall light fell across Yaa’s bandaged shoulder. There, Effie thought. Mine. But let the little thing roam freely in her cage. For now.
She padded to her own room, a spartan space of gray linen and a wall of monitors showing silent feeds of the building’s exits. She picked up her phone, swiping past security reports to a hidden folder. Her men had been thorough. The file on Marcus’s girl was exhaustive.
Picture after picture loaded. Yaa leaving her old apartment in Bed-Stuy, a backpack slung over her shoulder, face determined. Yaa laughing with another dancer in a grim backstage hallway, a genuine, crinkled-eye smile that felt like a stolen artifact. Effie zoomed in on one: Yaa at an outdoor café table months ago, head thrown back in unfettered laughter, sunlight catching the gold hoops in her ears. She looked free. That was the woman Effie had seen traces of in the café that morning, buried under fear and performance.
That’s what I wanted for her, Effie mused, her thumb tracing the smiling pixelated face. Ever since I found out about her. A woman with that spirit, brought down to the will of a controlling, sick man. What a waste.
She swiped to a video. The timestamp was from three months prior. The angle was high, discreet, from a camera in the ceiling of Marcus’s VIP lounge. Below, Yaa straddled Marcus, who was sprawled in a booth. She moved on him, her sequined top shimmering, her face a masterpiece of manufactured ecstasy. Her mouth was open, her eyes squeezed shut. A low, throaty moan escaped the phone’s speaker.
Faked? Effie couldn’t tell. The performance was flawless. But the tension in Yaa’s jaw, the minute tremble in her shoulder as she braced her hands on Marcus’s chest—those spoke of a different reality. I’m gonna find out for myself soon, she thought, a slow heat coiling in her gut. She saved the video.
Finally, she drew Yaa’s phone from her pocket. The screen was cracked, a web of lines from the fall onto the table. She woke it up. No passcode. Predictable, Effie sighed. The messages from Marcus were a stack of cold, impatient demands.
MARCUS: Apollo says you’re with him. Do your job.
MARCUS: It’s been an hour. Finish up.
MARCUS: Answer your phone. Now.
MARCUS: Leo isn’t answering. What the fuck is happening.
MARCUS: If you’ve fucked this up…
Not a single call. Just texts that were like electronic slaps. Effie’s lips curled. She tapped his contact and put the phone to her ear.
It rang once.
“Where are you?” Marcus’s voice was a low, compressed detonation, all the more dangerous for its lack of volume. “You have three seconds to give me a location before I start peeling the skin off every person you’ve ever spoken to.”
Effie let the silence hang for a beat, letting his fury echo in the void. “Still charming as ever, Marcus,” she said, her voice a smooth, cool contralto.
The pause on the other end was absolute. When he spoke again, the anger was still there, but it had crystallized into something sharper, more personal. “Effie.” He breathed her name like a curse. “You.”
“Me. You stole from me in Accra. I’m collecting. Consider your prized possession repossessed.”
“You touch her, I will feed you your own intestines.” The line crackled with his rage.
Effie laughed, a soft, genuine sound. “Oh, I’ll touch her. I’ve already touched her. I washed his blood off her. I picked your cheap collar off the floor and threw it out the window. She’s breathing easier already.”
“You psychotic bitch. You have no idea what you’ve started. This isn’t some market stall rivalry. This is New York. You’re dead.”
“Promises, promises.” Effie examined her nails. “Leo’s bleeding in a suite at the Gemini. You should probably send a cleaner. And a doctor. Maybe. I wasn’t aiming to kill, just to make a point about handling my things with care.”
“She is not your thing!”
“She wasn’t yours either. She was a person you tried to turn into a fixture. You failed.” Effie’s tone shifted, losing its mockery for a blade-like seriousness. “Listen well. You won’t find this place. You won’t hear from her. If you send your apes looking, I will send you back pieces of them. If you approach anyone she knows, I will burn your remaining shipments from the inside out. You are going to sit in your penthouse and you are going to stew in the fact that I have what you value most. And you can’t do a goddamn thing about it.”
“I will tear this city apart.”
“Try.” The word was a period. “She’s not coming back anytime soon, Marcus. Get used to the quiet.”
She ended the call and turned the phone off. She set it aside and leaned back, the adrenaline a pleasant hum. She wasn’t giving Yaa back. This was just the opening move. The real game, the one where she discovered what sounds Yaa made when her pleasure wasn’t a performance, was yet to come. She looked toward the sliver of light from the slightly ajar door. Soon.
The sliver of light from the hallway vanished sometime before dawn, the door clicking shut with a finality that seeped into Yaa’s restless dreams. She woke to muted gray light filtering through vertical blinds, her body a symphony of sharp aches and deeper, throbbing bruises. The room was impersonal, a guest suite for someone who was never meant to stay long. For a few disorienting seconds, she thought she was in a hotel, maybe after a particularly rough night at the club. Then memory rushed in like cold water: the shattering glass, Leo’s bleeding shoulder, Effie’s arms carrying her, the snapped collar.
She sat up slowly, the bandages pulling at her skin. Silence. A heavy, waiting silence. She was alone. This was her chance.
She padded to the window first, her heart hammering against her ribs. It was a sheer drop, thirty floors at least, to a concrete service alley. No fire escape, no ledge. The glass was thick, likely ballistic. She tried the seam anyway, digging her nails into it, finding no purchase. A pretty birdcage, but a cage all the same.
The door to the bedroom was unlocked. She peered into the empty hallway. The loft was vast, all cool concrete and minimalist furniture. No sounds. No sign of Effie or the driver. Just the hum of a refrigerator and the distant pulse of the city far below.
A silk robe hung on a hook by the door. She slipped it on, the material whisper-soft against her cuts. It smelled of unfamiliar detergent. She moved into the main living space, her bare feet silent on the polished floor. The front door was a heavy slab of metal with a keypad. She pressed her ear to it, heard nothing. She tried the handle. It was unlocked.
Her breath caught. Unlocked. Was it a test? A mistake? She didn’t care. She pulled it open a fraction, wincing at the soft sigh of the seal breaking. The corridor beyond was empty, lined with identical doors. She slipped out, pulling the door closed until it sat just ajar, a barely perceptible gap. If it was a test, she’d fail it gloriously.
She moved left, away from the bank of elevators whose cameras would surely be monitored. A service stairwell at the end of the hall promised a more anonymous descent. Her small feet made no sound. She prayed to any god that might be listening, to the spirit of her grandmother, to the universe itself. Just let her reach the street, let her vanish into the crowds, let her be out of this fucking shitstorm between two monsters.
She passed an open-plan kitchen, a stark island of pale stone. She didn’t look in. Her focus was the red exit sign above the steel door at the hall’s end. Thirty feet. Twenty.
The air whistled.
Something silver and blindingly fast flashed across her peripheral vision. It kissed the air an inch from her cheek and thunked, vibrating, into the wall ahead. A chef’s knife, buried to its hilt in the drywall.
Yaa froze. Her breath hitched, a raw scrape in her throat. Her stomach plunged. Slowly, she turned.
Effie stood at the kitchen island, another plum in her hand, a paring knife poised above it. She wasn’t even looking at Yaa. She sliced the fruit in a clean, practiced arc. The flesh was a vivid, wet purple.
“You’re not going anywhere, sweetness,” Effie said, her voice calm, almost conversational. She nudged the cutting board with her hip. “Bring me the knife, would you? I need the big one for these peaches.”
Yaa’s entire body was wire-tight. She stared at the embedded knife, its steel gleaming under the track lights. Her mind raced, calculating the distance to the stairwell door, the futility of it. Effie had thrown that without even looking. She’d put it exactly where she wanted it.
“Are you…” Yaa’s voice was a dry rasp. “Aren’t you scared I’ll use it on you?”
Effie finally glanced up, a slow, gap-toothed smile spreading. It held no warmth, only a dark amusement. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t think about it. Now bring it here. Don’t make me ask again.”
The command slithered through the air, leaving no room for debate. Yaa’s fingers, cold and clumsy, closed around the knife’s handle. It took a firm tug to wrench it from the wall. The weight of it was substantial, lethal. She held it at her side, point toward the floor, as she walked back toward the kitchen. Her heart was a wild animal throwing itself against her ribs.
She stopped a few feet from Effie, who was now rinsing a peach under the tap. “Here,” Yaa muttered, extending the handle.
Effie shook water from her hands and turned, reaching for it. Their eyes met. In that split second, Yaa saw not a threat, but an opportunity. A stupid, desperate, final one.
She didn’t thrust. She swung. A wide, panicked arc aimed at Effie’s torso.
It was pathetic. Effie’s body was a lesson in kinetic efficiency. She didn’t flinch. She simply stepped inside the swing, her left hand snapping out to catch Yaa’s wrist in a vise-grip. With her right, she caught Yaa’s other wrist as it flew up in a useless guard. She twisted both arms with a fluid, brutal motion, forcing them behind Yaa’s back.
Yaa cried out, the big knife clattering to the floor. Effie used the momentum to shove her forward, bending her over the cold stone counter. The edge dug painfully into Yaa’s diaphragm, knocking the wind from her lungs. Effie’s body pressed against her from behind, pinning her completely.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Effie chided softly, her lips close to Yaa’s ear. Her breath was sweet with plum. “You’ll have to do much better than that.” She shifted her grip, keeping both of Yaa’s slender wrists locked in one of her large hands. With her now-free hand, she reached down and picked up the fallen chef’s knife.
Yaa heard the scrape of metal on concrete. She felt the cool, flat side of the blade slide against her throat, just under her jawline. It wasn’t the edge, but the implied promise was absolute.
“This is your first and last free lesson,” Effie murmured, the words vibrating against Yaa’s back. “I am not Marcus. I don’t punish potential. I cultivate it. But try to cut me again, and I will show you the difference between a man who hits to dominate and a woman who cuts to dismantle. Do you understand the difference?”
Yaa couldn’t nod. She managed a strangled, “Yes.”
“Good.” The knife retreated. Effie released her wrists and stepped back. “Now sit.” She pointed to a stool at the island with the tip of the knife.
Yaa straightened, rubbing her wrists, her whole body trembling with adrenaline and humiliation. She slid onto the stool, her robe gaping. Effie placed a bowl in front of her. It was full of sliced peaches and plums, a riot of gold and purple, drizzled with honey.
“Eat,” Effie said, washing the big knife at the sink as if nothing had happened.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask.” Effie didn’t turn around. The water ran. “Your body needs sugar. For the shock. For healing. Eat the fucking fruit, Yaa.”
Yaa stared at the beautiful, vibrant bowl. It looked obscene. She picked up a fork, her hand shaking so badly the tines chimed against the ceramic. She speared a slice of peach, brought it to her lips. The flavor was intensely sweet, bursting. It made her want to cry. She ate another piece, then another, mechanically, under Effie’s silent, watchful gaze. She was seated. She was eating. She was, for now, utterly and completely stuck.