Destined for Algeria Ch. 21

Chapter 21

Sofia smiled at the naivety of Tess's misunderstanding. "No silly." She laughed, "I mean Ally will be here soon." Sofia explained. "Ally phoned our boss for help tracking you two down as soon as he saw that you'd been kidnapped. Sami and Farooq were the ones who found you and brought you back here. Ally called Gus to say he'd found the van you were in and he's bringing it here to collect you. I've spoken to the boss just now on the phone and Ally was five hours behind you. So that means he'll be here soon."

"What time is it? Shit. Seven thirty. We got here at three AM. That means he could be here by eight." Tess panicked, understanding the situation a little clearer now.

Sofia took hold of Tess's shoulders and calmed her down a little. "Has he asked you to marry him yet?"

"We've discussed it in a roundabout way, yes. Why?"

"Because Gus has asked Sami if he would be willing to perform the ceremony and he seems more than happy." Sofia said, letting the cat out of the bag and steeling the surprise from her fiancé.

"Sami?" She repeated, "He's not a priest."

"What is a priest?" Sofia asked.

"You know. A priest. A man who performs a wedding ceremony." Tess explained.

"That maybe the case where you come from but not down here." Sofia corrected her. "A wedding ceremony in this country is known as Nikah and only requires a person to be religiously knowledgeable enough to carry out the proceedings. He will also need consent from you and Ally. Oh, and two witnesses."

Tess couldn't believe her ears. Surely the man she'd masturbated by means of a hand job only hours ago, couldn't then perform a marriage ceremony with her to someone else could he?

"He also needs a present for you." Sofia continued.

"Who needs a present?"

"Ally must give you a present." Sofia explained, "It's the tradition. Then Sami will have to register the marriage legally, but you will be together as an item immediately after Nikah."

"Why Sami?" Tess asked, feeling guilty about what she'd done.

"There are plenty of knowledgeable men around who could do it, but Sami was the first to be asked and he is obviously pleased."

"And it's as simple as that?" Tess asked.

"Well it sounds simple but there's a bit more to it. For a start, you'll have to look the part by wearing one of our traditional Kaftan wedding gowns. I have a gold, sapphire pendent head chain which will look great sitting just here." Touching the middle of Tess's forehead to demonstrate exactly where the jewel would hang, reminded Sofia, "I also need to do your hair."

Tess agreed and sat back in the comfortable, now upright chair where she had slept.

Wasting no time, Sofia applied the same procedure to platting Tess's hair as Ingrid had but instead of using an elastic band, she used a more decorative single pearl bobble design of hair tie. Starting at her temple, she worked towards the back of her head, stopping to duplicate her work at the other side, before joining the two braids together behind her head and platting all of her hair down her back.

Tess loved the feeling of her hair being played with but couldn't hide her distraction because of the words Sofia had let slip about the wedding.

Without knocking, a young girl entered the room carrying the food Sofia had ordered, then left after only saying one word to her.

The omelette and tomato style bread hadn't begun to touch the sides when the girl reappeared in a hurry.

A quick conversation took place between the two women before Sofia felt the need to involve Tess. "Ally's here."

Tess leapt to her feet, stuffing the remnants of food from her hands into her mouth, whilst hurrying out of the salon. She ran through the reception area and out of the glass front doors of the spa to see the back of Ally's motorhome disappearing from view into the courtyard of a carpark behind the spa. By the time she'd caught up with him, he'd climbed out of the driving seat and turned to see her running.

Sofia Followed Tess as far as the reception area where she stopped to call her boss, Gus and announce Ally's arrival. Gus told her to bring Tess and Ally to meet him at the mansion.

Knowing that this would take them time to walk over to him, he called one of his more trusted henchmen who went by the name of Omar, as well as the complex's maintenance guy, asking them both to meet him in the plant-room where Ingrid currently sat cuffed in the corner of her cell.

After their tight embrace, Ally held Tess away from him by placing his hands on the tops of her shoulders. He accepted that her wrists were unlocked from behind her but still wanted to give her the once over to check on her wellbeing. Looking at her missing ankle cuffs, he could see the occasional red marks on her calves where Ingrid's whip had wrapped itself around her leg and stung her like a box jellyfish.

Tess looked down at her legs and immediately began to explain. "She thought we were going to kill her and dump her out in the desert somewhere. She put a hood over my head so that I didn't know you weren't there and drove us away without you." Tess said, showing little concern for her injuries down below.

"I know." Ally interjected, "I translated the messages she sent to her husband and found out that she was planning to kidnap you anyway to get revenge on us and get her money back. I imagine she knew that I would figure this out at the service station and fled through fear of how I'd react."

"Really?" Tess replied. "She chained my legs up and whipped me half to death, then tried to leave me on the roadside so she could get away. How was she going to get her money back?"

"Don't worry about that now." Ally said, wanting to stipulate the more important facts, "I don't know how, but Gus already has her partner-in-crime husband, Kristofer, so we don't have to worry about being chased by him. But we must get our stories straight. Right?"

"Yeah." Tess agreed, never looking so serious. "Definitely."

"When I came here last time, to find you, I told Gus that my brother knew where I was and that he was in the Algerian police, so Gus would think twice about simply making me disappear.

This time he thinks I asked my brother to be on the lookout for Ingrid and that he'd told me about a girl matching her description, hitchhiking at a service station where all this happened."

"I didn't know your brother was a cop."

"No. No, he isn't. Please, we don't have much time, just hear me out. I told him that we'd acted on my brother's information and went to pick her up, with the deception of taking her to the embassy, but I told Gus we were going to bring her here. I explained that Ingrid kidnapped you and that I could do with a little help finding you as I didn't really want the police involved."

"She's threatening to tell him if we don't get her out of here." Tess interrupted.

"What you talking about?"

"She's threatening to tell him about you receiving ransom money from her husband and how we've been keeping her safe at our place." Tess explained, "If her husband has said anything about this and she confirms it then he may begin to have doubts about our story."

"Shit." Ally said looking down to the ground, "We have to get to her before she opens her mouth."

"Why can't we just make a run for it?" Tess asked.

"Because we would be running for the rest of our lives. We need to get to her and find out what she might say and adapt our story to suit and make it convincing enough to keep Gus on our side."

Ingrid's nerves turned to adrenaline when she heard the door open and stood to meet whoever's footsteps she could hear descending the stairs into the swimming pool's plant-room at the basement level. A shaven headed man appeared from around the wall of the steps and continued towards the bars of her jail cell, tucked conveniently away in the corner.

"So you're Ingrid?" He said, speaking pretty good English. "We never met last time did we, when you were fucking my Boss over, to steal from him. Or should I say, from us."

"What's he going to do to me?" She asked, getting directly to the point without any bullshit formalities.

"Probably torture you and sell you on like he's done with your husband." He told her.

This revelation stunned Ingrid but her brain needed more time to comprehend what she'd just heard. "What do you mean?"

"Cristoff, wasn't it?" he said, attempting to pronounce her husband's name, "We weren't expecting you so soon. We've only just cleaned this place up after getting rid of him. To be honest, you are pretty unlucky because the Boss got his money out of your husband, and sold him on for a pretty little bonus I do believe. So he'd relaxed his concentration on finding you but then you just miraculously turn up. Caught by someone else you tried to fuck over was it?"

Standing with one wrist cuffed at waist height to the eyelet in the wall, Ingrid held her silence for a second and looked down at the floor. The plie of clothes with Kristofer's shoes on top could now be confirmed as his. "Where is my husband?" She asked.

The door opening at the top of the stairs interrupted them.

With the deep booming African voice of Gus, came the sound of two sets of footsteps descending the stairs, signalling the beginning of her nightmare. From around the wall concealing the stairs, his huge frame headed straight towards the helplessly shackled and caged, slight figure, of a true damsel in distress.

"Well well?" He said. "Look what the dogs have dragged back."

Nobody cared about the noise of the filter pumps fluctuating due to the skimmers at the edges of the pool recovering the water displaced by somebody swimming in it.

"Gus. I'm begging you." She pleaded, "Don't kill me. Please."

"Ha ha ha ha." He laughed, "Killing you would be a kind gesture. Not only am I going to make you sorry for stealing from me but I promise you're going to wish you'd never met me."

"Just remember, there was a time when we had something. Remember?" she negotiated. If it's money you want, then I can get it for you."

Gus laughed again at her squirming. "I have my money back thanks. I tortured the shit out of your so-called husband for that. He couldn't give it to me quick enough."

"Where is he? What have you done to him?" She asked.

"Abu Dhabi I believe he went. Some wealthy Sheikh who prefers the company of men if you see what I mean." He said, now standing at the entrance gate to her jail cell.

Ingrid shivered at the thought of what she'd got her husband into.

"The same place you might be going when I'm finished with you."

The architecture of the plant-room had left a partition in one corner where three solid walls made a short, dead-ended corridor, leading to a drain at one side. Gus had seen its potential and instructed his guys to create a holding cell by barricading this area off from the rest of the room with metal bars. His request for tethering points gave him a mid-height eyelet protruding from the wall, by the drain and a second, less noticeable one fixed into the centre of the concrete roof structure.

At the front of the cell, each of the cemented, floor to ceiling vertical bars, periodically pierced through thick strips of flat metal saddle bars, which crossed horizontally, spanning the width of the opening, at three, evenly spaced height intervals. Roughly around knee, waist and shoulder height, they added stability to the security of the hardened steel lattice structure.

With the key in hand, he unlocked the sliding gate and spoke to the other two men, signalling for them to enter her prison before locking the gate behind them. The maintenance guy unfastened the cuff from the wall eyelet and dragged her wrist over to the front of the cell where Gus stood tapping his hand on the bars just in front of his face.

The maintenance guy passed the open cuff, over the uppermost horizontal bar to Gus as Omar lifted her other arm up for it to be locked around the upright bar almost touching her nose, serving as an insulting reminder of what lay ahead.

She watched as the man she'd once had an affair with, took the open cuff and locked it to her free wrist, tightening it with delight until it would click no more. Giving equal treatment to the other cuff, he checked its security by applying the same pressure to tighten it fully closed.

"Ow!" She pointlessly protested.

"Strip her." Gus ordered, speaking English so that she could understand his command.

The maintenance guy reached around to undo her shorts whilst the bald headed man, Omar lifted her pale, powder yellow short sleeved top, up to her shoulders where he bunched it up, stretched it over her head and tucked the whole thing around the front of her neck, under her chin.

To eliminate need for them to remove the trainers from her feet, she stepped out of her shorts voluntarily, allowing the maintenance guy to cast them aside against the wall of the cell.

"Good move." Gus said, "That will make it easier to clean up once I've whipped the shit out of you."

Ingrid wanted to spit in the man's face but knew it would do her no good at all.

The maintenance guy pulled a tape from his pocket and wrapped his arms around her waist to size her up for a metal belt like the one which had been riveted around Tess's body by mistake. An unprovoked slap to her naked backside seemed to spark a reaction from Gus who unlocked the gate and slid it open, ordering the two men to get out. Once out of the cell, the maintenance man took a quick measurement of her right wrist and headed off to his workshop with Omar, leaving Gus and Ingrid dangerously alone.

Even though Ingrid managed to fend off having an immediate meltdown, she remained terrified of her threatening future.

"What's going to happen to me?"

Gus entered the cell and stood behind Ingrid's trembling body. He gently kicked at her feet and told her to spread her legs out to the side.

"I'm going to enjoy myself with you." He said tweaking her nipple painfully hard enough to make her body flinch to one side. "That is what's going to happen to you."

"Look I'm sorry for what I did but you have your money back, so let's work something out." She pleaded.

"Whores like you who commit crimes like you, need to be punished." He stipulated. "You will be put in chains and sold to the first man who can satisfy me that he'll be able to train you as his bitch." Gus exited the cell and turned to face her through the bars. "From then on I wish you all the bad luck in the world." With a smile, his hand pushed the sliding gate which created a gentle rumble from the wheels before the clang of the spring loaded catches held it fast against the sidewall of the cell.

The oscillating sound of the pool's filter pumps were now the only noise to be heard in the plant-room as Gus walked quietly away and disappeared out of sight around the corner of the wall to use the stairs.

Ingrid looked at the cuffs holding her wrists around the sturdy bar in front of her face and tested just how impossible it was to slip one of the closed restraining hoops over her hand. She gave up with a sigh, knowing this would also be a pointless exercise as she looked to her side at the locked sliding gate imprisoning her.

Time stood still for Ingrid, holding onto the singular bar immediately in front of her face, which she had to do, to take the weight of her arms away from her cutting wrist cuffs. The fluctuating pumps steadied and returned to their monotone mind-bending, continual drone, suggesting that the occupant of the pool had finished their swim and climbed out.

Shortly after Gus had disappeared, voices speaking English could just about be heard through the door at the top of the stairs but Ingrid couldn't string enough words together to make out what they were saying.

Gus greeted Ally with a handshake the moment he saw him but treaded carefully when he turned to Tess, because of their previous encounter where he'd accused her of conspiring to help Ingrid escape his capture.

"It's so good to see you again." He said, taking her fingers in his hand and kissing the backs of them like a true gentleman. Tess remained silent, frozen with fear of how much this man may already know. His act of lifting her arm to kiss the back of her hand had disturbed her shirt sleeve enough to expose the shiny manacle he and his colleague had fitted around her wrist. "I believe this isn't just a business visit and that congratulations are in order."

Tess cracked to his charm and smiled at the thought. "Thank you." She replied, "Seems like things are turning out for the better after all."

"Yes. And I hope my reward will be enough to express how sorry I am for what you've gone through for me." Gus said.

"Apology accepted." Tess thanked him politely, still concerned about the consequences if Ingrid blabbed the truth of their situation to him. "You have made a significant difference to our lives already." She said, taking hold of the metal waist belt through her chequered shirt and waggling it up and down to prove its existence.

"Does it hurt?" Gus asked, "It was originally made for Ingrid but it seemed to fit you nicely at the time. Do you want me to have it removed?"

"Tess looked shyly at Ally. "No. That's fine thanks. We can work with it."

"My guys are making another set of restraints for that worthless slut as we speak." He announced.

"An understatement." Ally agreed, referring to his description of Ingrid as a slut. "Is she getting the full treatment with the belt, collar and cuffs?"

"Oh yes." Gus smirked.

"I think a chastity belt would be more appropriate for a whore like that." Ally pointed out. "So she won't be able to use her seductive lure to tempt anybody ever again."

"I'll hold onto that thought." Gus replied.

"Where is she?" Tess asked, "Is she downstairs in that horrible cell?"

"Yes she's down there all alone, stewing in self-pity." Gus told her.

"Good." Tess said, "I'd like to be first to give her the whipping of her life after what she did to me."

Gus laughed momentarily but stopped when Tess turned to show him her marks, making him realise that she must be serious.

"I have a special horse whip in mind, gifted to me by Amal Bint Faisal, Saudi's first ever female jockey. I'll let you try it out on her." Gus offered.

He looked at Ally and asked, "She behaving?"

"Absolutely." Ally kissed Tess on the head to back up his assurance.

"She sounds a bit feisty with her hands free to brandish a riding crop."

Ally laughed. "I had to cut her free so she could do her chores." Gus joined in with the laughter before Ally continued. "But don't worry." He said, hugging Tess with one arm around the back of her shoulders.

"I'll be getting locked up again just a soon as we're married." Tess interrupted. "Won't I babe?"

Gus nodded in approval at the way her proud obedience overtook his ruling authority. Before he could pass comment, a beautiful black haired woman approached along the corridor, wearing a robe, towel drying her wet hair from the pool as she walked.

"Monica." Gus announced. The girl gave off the brightest smile which lifted the hearts of all three observers. "These are our guests who have come here to get married."

"Magnifico." She said, declaring her Italian upbringing. "I'm Monica. You must be Tessa." She extended her arm to shake that of Tess's.

"Tess." She replied, reaching out to shake the damp hand in front of her. "And this is Ally."

Assuming it to be an innocent solitary band of jewellery, Monica thought nothing of the shine from the bracelet peeping out beneath the cloth cuff of Tess's shirt sleeve, so passed it off as normal.

"Ally." She said, letting go of Tess and reaching across to shake his hand. "Congratulations to the both of you."

Her strong Italian accent left no questions of the supermodel's European origins, giving off a friendly, warm vibe of being pleasant company to be with.