Page 43 of Arseni
Her jaw is dropped in shock as she peers up at me.“Arseni,please.”
“Get up.I’m taking you back downstairs.”I wave impatiently toward the kitchen entrance, my neck feeling tight.I roll it before meeting her tearful eyes.
“Now, whore,” I snap, making her wince.
She turns away with a cry, and all it does is annoy me more.
She’s fucking playing me.This whole night, I’ve let her spin bullshit and found myselfbelievingit.I feltsorryfor her.I felt…
I don’t know what I felt.But now I feel like a goddamn fool.
My jaw is clenched when she finally stands, my arms tense at my sides.I shove her when she trudges from the kitchen and yank her back by her shirt when she almost falls.
“Walk.Faster.”
“Arseni, please, you’re scaring me.”
I’m scaring her.
Now,I’m scaring her.
She whines as I take her by the back of the neck and stride toward the basement, regretting the idiotic decision to ever bring her up here.She wasn’t ready.Iwasn’t ready.
This was a mistake.
She stumbles down the last few steps of the basement, crashing hard on the concrete floor.She pulls her mangled body into a ball and cries without any indication of getting back up.I don’t even care.I storm back up the stairs and slam the door behind me, leaving her ankle unchained.
A minute passes while I pant, my forehead against the door, my eyes closed.I can still hear her cries.They’ve turned to wails, and the sound makes my skin crawl.
Shoving off the door, I head for the backyard for another smoke, but my feet glue to the tile as I pass a storage closet containing the cleaning products.I stare at it with narrowed eyes.
Something tugs at my chest, something that makes me nauseous.I don’t think about it long.I push thoughts from my mind before they can settle and force myself to walk away.
I don’t make it outside before I turn around and go back to the closet.
There’re gallons of cleaning shit, so it takes me multiple trips to pour it all down the drain.
When the last of it is gone, I slam the bottles in the trash and head outside, telling myself all my thoughts are settled.Knowing it’s a lie.
16
MARGOT
THREE DAYS LATER…
I’m in a crime lord’s house.
It makes no sense, but I’m just coming to terms with that reality, days after Arseni revealed it.I didn’t think it was a lie, but it didn’t feel real until now as I’m being led upstairs by a mystery person to meet another mystery person.It was hard to think of danger here beyond Arseni, and maybe that makes me naive.Or better yet, stupid.
“Faster,” the man behind me commands, shoving my back.I gasp and do as he says with more fear than I’ve ever given Arseni, and again, I’m struck by the difference.
But they’re the same.This degenerate has platinum blond hair and a lip ring, but he has the same merciless aura as Arseni.I wish he would’ve been my handler from the beginning.Maybe then I wouldn’t be so confused.
A delectable smell enters my senses as Lip Ring leads me into a dining hall, one newspaper-guarded person at the table among an abundance of food.Scones, eggs, bacon, fruit, pancakes, a whole feast that looks undisturbed.
The person,a man, lowers the newspaper as we approach and looks up at me with a blank expression.As soon as our eyes meet, he livens with a friendly smile that shifts a mole above his lip.Moles are strange things.On most people, they’re unfortunate marks of imperfection.On a lucky few, they’re mere accessories, adding to beauty uneasily marred by defects.This man falls into the latter category.
“Good morning, Margot,” he croons, folding up the newspaper.“How did you sleep?”
