Page 55 of Goldflame
Olivia is there to catch it with her finger. “My sister was quite enraptured with you,” she says, almost sounding sorry for me. She leans close to whisper so onlyI can hear, “Too bad you got wrapped up in Julian. He’s the only reason I’m doing this. Nothing personal, you know?”
The bitch jabs the cigar into my left breast, the only mark above my waist.
More tears leave my eyes and Olivia laughs. “Poor girl,” she says.
Fuck them. Fuck all of them!
My breath comes in ragged gasps; I’m drowning in a sea of pain. Lady Harrow looks on with detached satisfaction as they continue their vicious initiation.
Finally, mercifully, it ends. The last man flicks the cigar bud onto a table and joins the others in sitting back on their comfy couches and chairs.
I lie trembling—a canvas of raw burns and despair—as Lady Harrow steps closer.
To add insult to injury, she jabs my side with her high heel. Her gaze is triumphant. “You look just like your mother,” she says.
Her words pierce deeper than the dozens of red marks now dirtying my pale flesh. It’s a revelation: she tortured my mother too. Saw her at her weakest and probably smiled at Lucian’s doll experiencing pain.
The guards finally release me. The room spins violently—faces blurring—as consciousness slips away like smoke through clenched fists.
I fall into darkness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AURELIA
Iwake to cold marble against my cheek, the polished stone like ice on my burning skin. Every nerve ending screams for relief as I peel myself from the floor. Tiny bursts of pain flare around my body where they burned me. Someone has draped a blanket over me, though it doesn’t cover everything. It doesn’t hide what they did.
My gaze catches on my exposed skin where dozens of perfect, quarter-sized circles of scorched flesh glare back at me. A sick echo of what Victoria’s mother did to mine so many years ago. Though I know this is worse.
My mother had a few marks done with cigarettes. My body is now branded for life, all around my hips and thighs with one particularly nasty, swollen welt on my breast.
Anyone who ever sees me naked again will know my shame.
I trace the edge of one burn with shaky fingers, theskin around it an angry red. And I feel… I might be close… to fully breaking.
How long did it take my mother before she broke?
Her beginning diary entries are so different than the middle ones. She started out defiant, certain she would escape. Then she fell into depression. And next, she developed a love for Lucian. It was hard to read about how he’d abuse her and she’d find some twisted pleasure in it. She wrote like she felt she deserved it, like he was actually treating her kindly.
Toward the end of her diaries, she was pregnant with me, so she found a new motivation to escape.
Am I simply following the same path?
With more nights like these, I might finally surrender, seeing Julian as my perfect master and I’ll do everything he wants with a smile on my face.
I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, glancing at the pile of tattered clothing several feet away. My tank top is in shreds, so are my leggings. At least they left my underwear somewhat intact.
No one else is here, except for one guard near the entrance to the elevator. He’s looking at me as if daring me to try to escape.
But for the first time, I don’t plan to. I’m in too much physical pain because it’s like my entire body is on fire. The stinging from every burn… god, it hurts. And I want to take a shower to wipe the Consortium filth from my body, but I worry it’ll only make the marks sting more.
My fingers move to my neck instinctively, searching for the comfort of Adrian’s necklace before remembering it’s not there.
It’s a little funny, I hid Adrian’s last gift inside something Julian gave me. Like these two brothers will forever be entangled in my fate. And heart.
Regardless, I need that necklace now. I need to return to it. I won’t remove it from the diary, but I just need it close. It’s a reminder that at least one Harrow might have actually cared for me, even if I was too blind to see it until it was too late. It’s the only pure thing left in this nightmare; a tether to something better than this hollow existence.
With aching muscles and searing pain from every burn, I pull myself up. Standing takes more effort than it should, my body protesting each movement. I gather my shredded clothes, holding the pieces together to cover as much skin as possible. Looking down at my handiwork—half-dressed in torn fabric like some twisted paper doll—a hysterical laugh bubbles up.
