Page 68 of Unorthodox
His grip around my wrists tighten and he leans down close to me, his chest brushing mine, his mouth over my ear. “It’s nothing personal, baby girl.” His nose traces the line of my jaw and I want to kill him. “It’s just business.”
Max takesme back to my bedroom. Leaves me there and locks the door from the outside.
I huddle under the sheets of my bed, replaying the video in my head, over and over and over. The woman’s groans, the marks along the front of her body.
Max’s words,“Do you know that’s going to be your life?”
I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him what me and Dante did, because for now, Dante is alive. Maybe when he takes me away from here, maybe when he’s planning to give me up, maybe then I’ll ruin it for him, with Dante safe from his grasp.
And I can’t tell him it wasn’t Dante that was first. I can’t make myself that disposable.Not yet.
I toss and turn, stuff a pillow over my head.
I think of all the nightmares that have alreadybeenmy life. Cade, Danik, my father, his men.
Max.
I think of the night my father threw knives at me as I stood against the wall in our kitchen, wearing nothing but a slip that I’d thrown on, hoping to get Fernando into my room again. Hoping to get someone on my side. Hoping to feel something but fucking misery after a particularly long and torturous rape from my father.
One of the knives had grazed my ear.
Whenever I tried to move, my father had his men hold me, risking their own bodies in the process.
The third knife he threw sliced the satin material of my slip, cut the skin of my hip.
“Do you know that’s going to be your life?”
I sit up, reaching for the lamp on my nightstand, and I hurl it across the room, straight at the television.
The bulb shatters and the TV falls from the wall with a thud.
I fling my covers off, get out of bed and grab the base of the lamp, ripping the shade off. I head into my bathroom, banging the door against the wall, my heart pounding hard in my chest.
Flicking on the light, I stare at my angry reflection. I’m in black shorts, a black tank, and my eyes are bleary and red. The tank top cuts down low enough to see the burns on my chest, small circles in the shape of a cigarette, courtesy of my father.
I hold the base of the lamp like a bat and swing it as hard as I can into the mirror.
It splinters, the sound almost startling as shards of glass fall into the sink. My reflection is warped. Twisted. I swing at the mirror again, a guttural roar coming past my lips. It doesn’t even sound like me.
I like it.
I swing at the mirror again.
And again.
And again.
Glass is everywhere, shards skittering off the plain white sink down to the floor, at my bare feet.
I hit it again.
My arms ache on each impact, but I keep hitting it, over and over and over until I see the bare wall behind it. Panting, I lower the lamp, stare at what’s left of the mirror over the sink.
I can’t see my face anymore, the cracks and shattered edges distorting far too much to show a true reflection.
Or maybe that is my reflection now.
Ruination.
