“Aria, it’s been too long,” she says, settling into a chair in her sitting room while a maid comes out with cups of tea. I nod at her and she takes a sip of her drink while I leave mine on the table waiting for her to finish.
“Are the rules being followed?”
She places her drink softly on the table and smiles at me. “Oh yes. He’s a treat. Couldn’t have picked better.” She blushes and I know what she’s referring to.
“I’d like to see him now, please.” I stand and she nods her head to follow her to the back of her house. She walks down a set of stairs and opens the door. My first Thrall lies on the bed, watching a movie and eating popcorn. His sandy hair looks exactly the same, he’s been kept well.
He immediately stands at the sight of me. Looking me over, he then drops his eyes to the ground. Cindy chuckles and tells him to sit and I ask her to leave. She does with a backward glance to her Thrall. He stays seated as I walk closer. I step in front of him, but his eyes stay glued to the ground.
“I don’t want to go back, Master, I like it here,” he says just above a whisper. I reach my hand out and place it on his shoulder. He flinches, expecting pain, but I just tap him.
“Good.” I lean down and kiss his cheek. He stays still as a rock and I walk out, not saying goodbye to Cindy as I head to the next house.
Chapter 24
She was going to be harder, I knew this. She wasn’t impressed when we first told her I was going to do drop in visits. I’m expecting the worse when I knock on her door. When she answers, her face scrunches up in disdain. She eyes my clothes and shakes her head. Her hair is high, like she’s just walked out of the eighties, her clothes are pressed and perfect. Her hands are covered in jewels as if she has to wear it all or it’s all going to disappear.
“Aria, come back another day. I’m quite busy today.” She attempts to shut the door in my face and I reach up and push back, preventing her from doing so.
“No, this is our agreement. You signed up for this. Now, let me in before I force myself in,” I tell her as nice as I possibly can. She doesn’t move, she looks like she’s trying to come up with a good enough excuse to preventing me from entering.
“How did you know I was even here?” she finally asks. I don’t tell her, she doesn’t need to know how I know her every move if I choose to do so. I shake my head and take a step closer, making her take a step back. I do this until I’m in the doorway. It also prevents her from shutting it on me.
“Where is he?” I’ve wanted to see him since the moment I sold him. I liked him, he was probably my favorite. I still remember his lips, the way they tasted and felt against my skin.
“He’s indisposed,” she says, placing her hand on her hip.
“We can do this the hard way if you please. Or the easy way. The choice is yours.” She thinks about her options. I go to reach for the gun Dominic gave me when she huffs loudly and her heels start clicking on the tiles. I follow her and she stops at a small door. She grabs a key and unlocks it. When the door swings open, it’s completely dark. I can hardly see anything inside. Reaching in, I feel for a light switch and flick it on. What I see has me taking a step back. My gorgeous man is tied and covered in his own filth. His head is down and he’s lost a lot of weight. His once vibrant dark eyes are dull, his beautiful dark skin is bruised.
This time, I do reach for my gun pulling it up and shooting the bitch in the leg. She screams and drops to the floor. I pull out a pocket knife and slice his ties, he drops to the floor. I reach in to grab him and have to pull back to take a deep breath. It’s disgusting. The bitch is on the floor crying, screaming, and holding her leg to stop the flow of blood. I bend down to her and apply pressure on her sore leg.
“Where is the bathroom?” I sneer. She cries harder but manages to tell me to go to the next room. I stand and reach in again for my Thrall, who hasn’t moved from the floor after he fell. I take a deep breath and hoist his arm over my shoulder. He manages to stand, just barely, and I tell him to walk. We make our way very slowly to the bathroom.
We reach the shower and he leans against the wall trying to keep himself up while I turn it on. He looks ill, close to death. He climbs in, the shower washing away the filth that he’s covered in and he takes mouthfuls of water. He doesn’t last long, he can hardly stand. As soon as he’s done, I throw him a towel and he wraps it around himself. I offer him my support again as we walk out. The bitch has moved, she’s no longer on the floor where I left her, but her trail of blood leads us to the kitchen where she’s reaching for the phone.
“I wouldn’t,” I warn her and she drops her arm.
“You shot me!” she screams. I see a health bar on the counter and toss it to my Thrall where he sits barely keeping his head up. “Eat,” I order him. Then I walk closer to her as she tries to back away, but she isn’t fast enough.
“If you call anyone, I will leak the footage I have of you,” I threaten her and she gasps.
“You don’t have anything,” she hisses. I grab my phone and pull up the video. Her voice is recognizable as she commands the Thrall what to do to her sexually.
“You are incredibly lucky I only shot you in the leg,” I say helping my Thrall to stand and walking back out the door.
*****
Dominic and Mika are standing in the driveway when I pull up. My Thrall hasn’t said a word, he’s obviously too scared to talk. Dominic is pacing, his face scrunched and he’s clearly pissed off at me. He spots my car, stops and walks towards it. I manage to get out and make it to the passenger door before he starts in on me.
“Really, Aria? Really? You shot her?” He shakes his head and when I pull my Thrall from the car, he takes in a large gasp of air.
“He was worse than this, I had to shower him. He was covered in his own filth,” I tell him. Dominic immediately goes to his other side and hoists the Thrall up so we can both carry him. We walk past Mika on the way in. His eyes watching me, never saying a word.
The security guard comes and takes over, leaving me standing in the room with Mika. Him watching me, me watching him. It’s a face-off to see who will talk first.
“I like you…a lot, Aria.”
“That’s good.”
“You make it so hard.” He steps closer, just one step.
“I didn’t encourage your affection, Mika,” I defend myself. Why? I don’t know.
“No, you made it happen.”
“I did not.”
“You did. All I want to do right now is lock you up in my room and never let you go. Some women would love that, would love me wanting them like that. You? I think you’d try to kill me if I did that.” I nod my head, he certainly has assumed that right. He pushed his luck last time. Even though some of it was nice, I would never let him know that.
“Possibly,” I verbalize.
“I have a party tomorrow night, will you come? Your friends Zeke and Bexley will be there. I’d love it if you’d join me.”
“What’s the party for?”
“My birthday,” he says calmly.
“Why are you throwing yourself a party? Do you not see that that as weird?”
“It was a family tradition. My father did it for me every year till the day he died. I haven’t been able to stop.” He shrugs his shoulders, still looking powerful in doing so.
“Is it formal?”
“It is, but you’re welcome to wear whatever you like.” He smiles, eyeing me up and down.
“Stop eye fucking me.”
“Stop looking so eye-fuckable,” he retorts.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell him. Dominic calls my name and as I turn to go, Mika’s hand reaches out for my arm and spins me around, planting me on his chest and his lips touch mine. He kisses me softly, then bites my bottom lip pulling it between his and releasing. He steps back, looking smug while I stand there trying to work out what just happened.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he says, then walks straight out.
“Aria. Your ass. Up here
. Now!
” Dominic’s voice booms down to me.
C
hapter 25
A doctor has seen my Thrall and he’s doing much better, so Dominic has told me today. The bitch of a lady who held him is getting a visit from Dominic, he was not impressed, and he wanted to tear into her. He was now glad that I had shot her. He actually smiled about that, which made me laugh.
Tonight is Mika’s birthday party. I don’t know what to wear, so here I am in Sarena’s closet going through her clothes.
Not all of her clothes are hooker outfits like I thought they would be. She actually has a few gowns. I’ve only ever worn one once before and that was for Bexley. I’d never wear one freely. If I wear a dress, it’s loose, easy, one I can move around in, not one that has no use. Sarena seems to think otherwise. She’s shoving red dress after red dress in my face. She pushes me into the bathroom, insisting I try on at least two but handing me ten. I look through them and immediately throw five to the ground. The next is a dress so short and tight I wouldn’t be able to wear any kind of underwear, or even bend for that matter. You’d be able to see everything, so I throw that one too.
“You better not be throwing my designer dresses on the floor, Aria!” Sarena yells from the other side of the door. I locked it and thank God I did because she’s trying to open it right now to check.
“Seriously, you need to think about investing in colors other than red!” I yell at her. She just laughs at me.
The next one is tight but comes just above my knees. It’s low cut at the breast, but not so low you can see any nipple action. It’s a vibrant red and the back is strapped, showing enough skin. I slide it on and it fits perfectly. Opening the door to show Sarena, she claps her hands then walks to my back. Her hands go up the dress, she reaches in for my underwear which is only a G-string and pulls them down. I screech at her, but she gets them off.
“What on earth are you doing, you—?”
She swings my G-string around in her hand. “Now you have no lines. Let’s do your hair.” She pulls me back to the bathroom and sits me on the toilet.
“It’s like sending my daughter off to her very first prom,” she says, curling my hair.
“Lord help us if we ever had kids, imagine their fucked up lives,” I reply. She stops for a second and lets the curl drop.
“I wanted kids once. Well, actually I always did. A part of me still does.” She looks sad, which is very unlike Sarena.
“Why don’t you now? You could if you wanted to, Sarena. You have the money to stop working in this business. If that’s what you want, then do it.”
She shakes her head. “I couldn’t leave him. He means too much me, has done so much for me.” There’s a part of me that’s telling me to hug her, but that would be too awkward.
“He’d understand.” I know who she is talking about, it’s Dominic. The looks they give each other when no one is looking. I know something is there.
“I know he would, I just couldn’t do that to him.” She picks up a piece of my hair again and starts curling. She smiles when she finishes and lets them drop in perfectly curled ringlets.
“My very own evil Cinderella.” She claps.
“Thanks, Sarena,” I say kissing her cheek. “Talk to him, you might be surprised.”
She shakes her head.
Dominic is standing in the hallway when I leave her room. He looks up at me and smirks.
“You heard?” I ask, pointing my thumb behind me into Sarena’s room. I start walking down the stairs and he follows.
“All of it.”
“Do you plan on doing anything?”
“I plan to fire her.”
I stop walking and turn to face him. “Don’t do that.” I shake my head at him. “You can’t do that!”
“Why not? I know what she wants and she’s never going to get that here.”
“She won’t leave Dominic, you know that.”
He reaches up and scratches his head. “I’ll make her.”
“You won’t…”
“I will, she deserves it. She needs normalcy. She’s never going to get that here. All she knows is pain on top of more pain.” His face scrunches and he looks in agony himself.
“She
will
hate you if you do that to her.”
“I have to,” he says, then walks away leaving me standing there.
I don’t say any more to either of them. I pull on my heels as Jagger walks in, dressed in a tux and grinning like he’s just gotten laid.
“I get to see Bexley tonight.” He smiles brightly. Walking up to him once my shoes are on, I snatch the keys from his hand and smack him in the back of the head.
“You really want a bullet from Zeke, don’t you?” He laughs, following me outside to his car.
“Only if she’s worth it.”
I shake my head at him. “Be on your best behavior. And who invited you?”
“Your boyfriend did.” I turn to him, eyes narrowed.
“He’s not my fucking boyfriend.”
“Why else would you dress like that?” He waves his hand in the direction of my dress and hair. “‘Cause you sure as shit don’t dress like that for anyone else, even if it’s a formal party. You just come dressed as you!”
“Shut up and get in the car, Jagger.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He salutes me, laughing.
Chapter 26
I have a bag and in that bag is a gun. A gun I’m thinking of using on Zeke this very moment. I see him and Bexley first, she smiles brightly at me. He, well he tries to hide his laugh, but he’s not winning. Bexley hits his stomach to draw his attention away from me and he loses it, laughing hard and covering his face in Bexley’s shoulder.
“I hate you,” I spit.
“And I…I love red,” he laughs again…at my dress…again.
“I like seeing red, possibly coming from a main artery located on you somewhere.”
“Will you two knock it off, seriously? Have your tiffs another time,” Bexley chimes in with a smile.
“Of course, Pixie.” Zeke straightens up and leans down and kisses her lips. He looks back up at me and laughs again. I take two steps closer to him, reaching for my gun in my bag when a hand wraps around my waist stopping me.
“Zeke, must you? She was going to put a bullet in you,” Mika’s voice booms from behind me.
So close
. Zeke looks down to my hand in my bag, then back up again, trying to hold his laughter at bay.