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Lavinia
“Remember,” Anthony says, sweeping his thumb across my cheek, “as long as we’re together we can do anything.”
I absorb the final words and then toss the paperback on the bed, pushing my fingers into my eyes. I’ve been following the sexy exploits of Anthony and Beth, former enemies, eventual lovers, stuck in Victorian England. The books, much like these walls, are fucking killing me, but I’m not in the position to be picky.
I’ve lost count of how many days I’ve been here. A few weeks? A month? Two months? One minute bleeds into the next in an unstoppable march, a marriage of days, a chain of monotony that makes my muscles tense in anticipation of…
Nothing.
Absolutely fucking nothing.
It’s been more than enough time to read the stack of trashy romance novels Auggy brought me—I’d never admit this, but some more than once. I probably should have left scratch marks on the wall, noting the passing days the way they do in prison. I guess when they first brought me here, I didn’t realize I’d need to keep track. Now I’m just floating along like a restless, electric ghost, desperate for somewhere to put all this static that’s been building in my veins.
I take a few moments to indulge in the phosphenes exploding behind my eyelids. The flash of stars help me imagine being in space, a phantom among the cosmos, tracking an orbit around the sun. That’s all time is, anyway: an involuntary trip around a dying star.
God, I’d give my left tit for a soda.
Sighing, I ease the pressure on my eyes, letting them open. It’s evening, that much I know from the muted light beyond my sole window, and the build of the bustle outside the door of my living suite. The room was nicer when I first arrived, with plenty of room for a sofa and armchair, a large bathroom, and a walk-in closet that’s lost on someone with nothing but a few pairs of shorts and shirts. That, plus the artwork and mirrors on the walls, the lush furniture, and clean carpet are nice upgrades from the shitty hotel they had me in last year. Daniel Payne, the previous King of South Side and owner of this fine establishment, definitely knew how to treat his girls. I guess that’s what happens when you marry a former prostitute. You take her advice.
And then you take her bullet.
Yeah, it used to be fancy. A real fucking retreat. A prison with gold-colored frippery. They should have known better than to leave me here. My second night, I smashed one of the glass frames and hid a shard beneath my pillow. The waiting was the easy part—time, time, time—and the first time they sent in one of those whores to dress me up, I slashed her goddamn throat.
That was the hard part.
I sorely underestimated how hard it is to cut a throat. There are a lot of tendons and muscles up in there, and it didn’t even matter that I failed to hit anything vital enough to kill her. It was messy and excessively gross, and I probably wouldn’t try it again.
But it was enough to get the room cleared of anything that could be considered a weapon. Smart move on their part. If I had it my way, I’d carve a bloody goddamn swath through this place, gross or not.
The Velvet Hideaway. Real subtle branding there. I shouldn’t be surprised. Daniel Payne might have run South Side, but he never struck me as the creative type. Why play coy with the name of your brothel when you own this whole fucking town? Might as well have named it Whores R’ Us. Where a perv can be a perv!
Now, only Auggy will deal with me, always bitchy and cutting when she does. In another lifetime, maybe we would have even been friends, but since she’s the twat who locks my door, Augustine can go fuck herself. The looks she gives me are always a mixture of irritated and sympathetic. She may not have dreamed of being a Madam when she was a kid, but it’s sure as fuck a better position than slave.
Because that’s what I am.
I’m a slave.
There’s no dressing it up. I can’t leave. No access to a phone or computer. There are no visitors, no weapons, and no hopes of getting out. My room is in the basement, and as if the pathetic, squat little egress window above my dresser isn’t sad enough, it’s also barred, caging me in.
Unbidden, a menacing voice floats through my mind.
“Little bird.”
Shuddering, I spring from the bed and begin pacing, wall-to-wall, my four-hundred square feet of prison. If he were here—if Nick could see me—he’d make a joke out of it. Something real obnoxious about a panicked bird flinging herself against the bars of her cage. That’s what he calls me. His little bird. Wings clipped, thrown in a cage, trapped as I hurl myself around the confines of my prison…