“You may let go of her wrists. The house is well-guarded: she has no means of escape.”
The two men, in their black uniforms, released their grip, pushing the girl towards me. She fell to her knees, pleading in broken English: “Please, sir. Mercy…”
Mercy? I stood up and walked over to her, lifting her face roughly with my left hand as I slapped it, hard, with my right. “Mercy? After your behaviour?”
She was pretty, of that there was no doubt. My contacts had done well when they’d chosen her: spied her in the street, introduced themselves, offered her a break and the chance to earn her fortune. Or so she would have been told. Just the sort of girl that our visitors like – those select few permitted to pass behind the velvet curtain, into the back rooms of the casino, to take their pick and their pleasure.
“Where did you find her, Oleg?”
“At the airport, sir. Trying to buy a ticket.”
“A ticket, indeed?” I threw him a bunch of keys, and pointed to the locked drawers at the back of the room. “Would you fetch me her file?”
The manila envelope was located quickly, and passed to me. I tipped its contents onto my desk: a sheet detailing where and when my local contacts back in her home town had first found her; the signed contract to work as a waitress for the summer in one of my ‘bars’. And her passport, which I flourished before her: “So quite how did you propose to leave the country?”
She shook her head: “I don’t know…”
I turned to consult one other piece of paper, neatly typed. “You see, you owe me rather a lot of money, Valentina. Your air fare here; the visa fee; your board and lodgings. And your earnings so far have come nowhere near repaying me.”
“Please, sir… Mercy…?” Still some hope yet to be extinguished.
Grigory, the other of my men to have recaptured her, spoke up. “Sir, she also had money with her at the airport.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred.”
“And do we know where that came from?”
“There had been some cash taken from the desk in the casino, sir, on the evening she disappeared.”
“Ah. I see. Her predicament worsens with every turn.” I looked at the girl, still sobbing on the floor. “I think it’s time to teach her a lesson. Oleg: fetch the wooden chair from the corner and place it in the middle of the room. Grigory: you’ll find some lengths of rope in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.”
As they turned, she ran. The door was firmly bolted. I smiled: she had character, this one. “Strip her, and tie her over the chair for her whipping.”
The girl struggled; Oleg grimaced as her teeth sank into his arm, but they were too strong for her – frail girl, ex-special forces soldiers. No contest, really.
They tore her dress as they removed it. She was naked underneath: one of my little rules at the casino. They bent her over the back of the chair, Grigory busying himself with the cords binding her ankles and wrists as his colleague held her down.
When they were done, I took the cane from the shelf on the wall. (Quite how an English gentleman came to be running a business like this, here, is a long story – but I do relish traditional methods for controlling my girls).
Her whimpers for mercy had given way to sobs by now – of fear, rather than the sobs of pain that would inevitably follow. I whisked the rattan through the air as I walked around her, then measured its length across her pale skin.
“I do not expect such conduct from my girls, and I assure you that you will be more compliant once I’ve dealt with you.” I lifted the cane high, cracked it down, and stepped back to watch the red stripe bursting into life. “So, we have some strokes for running away from the casino, when you had been clearly told that you were not to leave.”
The second stroke, low down. A loud cry; a second perfect red line. “And then there’s stealing money from me before you left.”
A pause, letting the pain sink in, before the third hard cut, followed quickly by the fourth. “And we need to consider the waste of my men’s time, trying to find you, and breaching your contract of employment with me, and the money you owe me for your expenses that you clearly had no intention of repaying.” Followed by a harsh fifth, a biting sixth.
I walked around her, and lifted her tearful face. “You see, there’s quite a lot we need to deal with. Never mind wanting to set an example to the other girls, when they see how you’ve been punished after you get back to the casino.”
And so, I continued. Six, delivered in quick succession, as she fought against her ties. Six, delivered slowly and purposefully, each given time to blaze its message home. And from then on, I stopped counting. Strokes fast, strokes slow. Strokes high then low, then tracing a repeating path along precisely the same line. Strokes gentle; mainly, strokes very, very hard.
Protests, pleas. Sobs. Silence, other than for her deep breathing as she tried to absorb the pain.
And then it was over, and I ordered the men to untie her and dress her, although the ripped dress offered her little protection. I returned the cane to the shelf, and her documents to the pack, before taking her jaw in my hand and lifting her eyes to meet mine.
“I doubt we’ll see you back here. I hope for your sake we won’t.”
She shook her head, and I turned to my men. “Take her back to the casino. Oh, and Oleg?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I did notice her bite you earlier.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you’d like to deal with that on the way back, do feel free to pull the van over somewhere quiet, and make use of her.”
“Thank you, sir.”
And with that, I sat back down at my desk and left them to take the girl back to work.
Well done, Abel! And now I’m off to fantasize about how Oleg dealt with her!