Maria Anna Branson is whom I used to be until the day my stepfather, Thomas Jones, sold me to Sully Vrennikov, the head of a human trafficking organization. Now, I am Anna Smith, and I am sure Thomas did not expect me to survive, or that I would come back to be his worst nightmare.
Weakness is not something I’ve allowed myself to feel since before I was sixteen. The vision of standing in my family home covered in blood crashes into my mind buckling my knees. I couldn’t save them no matter how many years we begged her to leave; we were just little kids. None of us expected it to turn out like this. Our lot in life was not of our choosing, but we were forced to be a product of our environment-my mom and brother a casualty.
Jim’s voice snaps me out of my head and back into real-time. The thought of women locked in a house having their rights violated is giving me flashbacks of my childhood.
“Snake, do you think they’re going to make it?”
