allergic to the winged creature.
If I pass gas, it’s over.
Francesca runs her hands through my cinnamon tresses, observing me
through the mirror. We're in the beauty room, the other girls putting on their makeup, already having gone through the same torture.
“You need to do something with this hair. It’s beautiful but hides that elegant
neck of yours. Don’t cover up your freckles when you put makeup on either.
They accentuate your unusual eyes.”
I force a smile, scared that if I do anything more, my stomach will blow through the corset.
“I can figure something out with my hair, pin it up perhaps,” I say agreeably.
“I can do it,” Sydney chirps from behind me.
My smile drops, along with my heart. I don’t want the bitch to come a mile
within my vicinity because I know damn well she’s going to pull something.
Just as I open my mouth to protest, Francesca turns to her and says dryly,
“Fine, but if you do anything to her hair, I will personally see that you lose your
hand.”
Sydney’s smile only grows, “Of course, I would never.”
Francesca scoffs as if she doesn’t believe her but walks away anyway.
If she doesn’t believe her… then why is she walking away?
Setting my jaw, I narrow my eyes and carefully watch Sydney approach me
from behind. She meets my gaze through the mirror, her cold eyes churning with
an indecipherable emotion.
A secretive smile pulls her red lips up higher as she begins to sift through my
hair. My shoulders are hiked up to my ears, and the tension between us thickens.
“How long have you been in this house?” I ask after a few moments of
silence.
Her deft fingers start separating pieces on the side of my head and then begins
French braiding a small section.
“Four years,” she responds.
I raise an eyebrow. “You've avoided the auctions that long?”
She smirks. “I've worked hard to be too unstable to be sold but too valuable to be killed. I'm good at what I do,” she finishes with a wink.
I swallow, not entirely sure how to respond to that.
She glances slyly at me, “Rio has been treating me so good lately, though. He
comes to my room every night now. Says my pussy is the tightest he’s ever had.”
I arch a brow. Rio has refused to touch us during lessons, and I've never seen
him show any interest otherwise. I’m not surprised that he's fucking one of the
girls if it's consensual, but I am surprised that she thinks I’d give a shit.
“If that makes you happy, then good for you,” I finally say in a monotone voice.
She pauses. “You don’t care?”
“Why would I care?”
“He likes you.”
I roll my eyes, annoyed by her school girl shit. She acts like we’re two girls
getting ready for prom, gossiping about boys. She plays the classic mean girl act
well. Pretends to be nice but all her sugary sweet words are laced with salty insults. Too bad for her, I'm not interested in playing this game.
“You have a man at home, right? Z is his name?” she asks, noting my
reaction. She pulls my hair particularly tight, and I hiss in response.
“Gentle,” I snap. She only smiles, waiting for a response to her question.
“Why do you care?” I ask, my anger heightening when she runs her hands
through the rest of my hair roughly, tearing through knots.
“A sexy Puerto Rican man has the hots for you, and you don't care." She shrugs. "And I guess I’m curious about the man that makes you so valuable. Is he looking for you?”
Rio does not have the hots for me, but I ignore that.
“Don’t we all have someone looking for us?”
She shrugs. “No,” she says simply, and I almost feel a pinch of sympathy.
“Do you really believe he’s going to be able to save you?”
I flatten my lips, debating on responding at all. If I say anything
incriminating, she will immediately use it against me. Twist my words and tell Francesca that I’m trying to escape or something.
“I think all of our loved ones would at least try. That’s what people do when
they love you.”
I hope that hurt.
She gathers my hair together, beginning to pull it into a ponytail in the middle
of my head.
“Do you think he would save me, too?” she asks quietly.
She keeps her eyes downcast, leaving me bereft of her expression.
Manipulative cunt.
“I think he would save everyone,” I say. And then kill her himself.
Finally, she looks up at me, a twinkle in her eye that has my muscles
tightening.
“If he does, I’d be happy to suck his cock for it. Let him fuck me in the ass,
too, if he really wants.”
I narrow my eyes, gritting my teeth so roughly, I’m close to cracking my molars.
“He would never touch you,” I snap. “Nor would he let you touch him.”
A gleeful smile stretches across her face, and I internally slap myself for giving her the reaction she wanted.
“I think he would once he sees how much better I am than you. I’ve been here
too long not to know how to make a man come in five seconds.”
She fashions my hair into a messy coif that I’d probably consider beautiful if
I knew that being anything but ugly is going to attract the wrong kinds of attention tonight.
The second her hands drop, I calmly stand and turn to face her. And then I take a page out of Zade’s handbook of being a psychopath, grab her by the neck, whip her around and slam her against the vanity. Bottles of perfume and makeup
brushes topple to the floor, and I hear a gasp from one of the girls behind me.
Surprise widens her dark eyes as I come nose-to-nose with her.
“Keep pushing my buttons, Sydney. If you perceived me as weak, then you’re
going to get quite the fucking reality check. I put up with your shit this long because I’m sympathetic that Mommy and Daddy don’t love you, nor does Francesca. But I will not be bullied by you and continue to stay quiet.”
She seethes at me, and her true face appears from behind that fragile,