Only with Rosita did she dare try to talk. The woman had been hired about three months ago to help clean the mansion, but she did so much more than that. She always snuck in little trinkets for her. Never actual objects, things like that couldn’t be hidden. But cookies, and sweets, those could easily be hidden, and once eaten left no trace behind.
But it was often the little things that meant the most.
“Damn that man for starving you!” Rosita whispered fiercely. “He stopped buying apples after you snuck one last month.”
Ernesto liked her to fit an image, and no matter how much he restricted her diet, her curves remained.
Curves that she had once liked.
Curves that Ernesto hated.
“Women are meant to be slender and thin. I want my woman to be slender.”His words had broken something inside her that she didn’t even know still existed. They were the first mean words that he had uttered to her, but they hadn’t been the last.
He was slowly starving her to death, but there was little she could say or do to stop him. The scars on her body spoke of what happened when she defied him.
“We have to get you ready. Mr. Ernesto has a guest today and he requires your presence.” She simply nodded and got up off the floor, letting Rosita help her get ready.
After showering and after Rosita had blow dried her hair, she sat down to put on her shoes. Her hands trembled as she tried to do the buckles herself.
“You can’t pass out today!” Rosita hissed at her, grabbing her arm, and she jerked her head back. Rosita had never spoken to her like that before.
The woman looked over her shoulder, as if the closed door had eyes that were watching them. Taking one of the discarded orange peels out of her apron pocket Rosita stepped up and grasped her chin, running the peel against her skin. Along her neck and collar bone. Then down her arms.
“Listen to me. Today is going to be different. You must listen to me very carefully, okay? Do not faint. Do not do anything that will set Ernesto off. Do you understand?”
Even though she didn’t understand the woman in that moment she felt herself nodding anyways. In the last few months Rosita hadn’t done anything to harm her.
She could only pray that was still true.
The door opening had Rosita stepping back and slipping the orange peel into her pocket.
“You ready?” One of the guards asked, looking between them.
“Yes she’s ready.”
Winter stood, trying desperately not to let her trembling legs fail her.
If she was lucky she would be able to eat before Ernesto figured out what she had done.
Somehow, she didn’t think that she would be that lucky.
The three of them exited the room, and like always another guard followed them. Even here in the house she was surrounded by guards.
Once upon a time she had been a normal girl, with a mother, father, and two brothers.
Now she was a captive.
Living in hell.
A hell she had been sent to by her father, the day he sold her to Ernesto.
