Page 14 of Tarnished Reign

5

ADRIANA

Not desiring to have this awful scratchy underwear plastered to me a moment longer, I strip it off and then with a growl of rage I rip the disgusting, cheap panties right in half. That feels so good, and I do the same to the bra. I pull and tug at it until the seams tear, the elastic gives way, and it shreds in my hands.

I let the tattered remnants of my captivity float to the floor and kick them away from me, disgusted.

Completely naked now, I stare at myself in the full-length mirror on the far wall. I look thin. More so than usual. I'm slim built anyway and without food these past few days, I’m getting scrawny.

There’s a gaunt look to my face. My hip bones are more pronounced than they were previously. I look unwell and could probably strut a runway right now, and isn’t that an indictment of our beauty standards? Hey, you too can look like you belong on a catwalk; just get kidnapped and go unfed for a few days.

The pounding of the water behind me is too enticing to waste any more time looking at myself and thinking stupid thoughts, so I turn away from my troubling reflection and step into the shower.

It is heaven. Water hits my skin like rain in a storm, washing away the dirt of the last few days and the touch of those awful men. It washes away the scratchy feeling of the cheap underwear against my skin. I even pretend that it washes away my stepmother's betrayal and my father's weakness.

A sudden, terrible deep pain fills my chest as the ache of losing my mother expands and threatens to overwhelm me. Cade had filled the hole a little in my heart with his innocence, his cute little face, and the way he so openly told me repeatedly that he loved me. “I love you, Dreenana,” he’d lisp.

“Love you too, bug,” I’d say right back, kissing his hair.

I miss him. I miss my mum. Why did she have to die?

“No,” I say firmly. “Not now. You can't go down that grief rabbit hole now, girl. You need to keep yourself together.”

I can hear my mother in my head telling me to be strong. Telling me that she's watching over me. I can hear her telling me that you can't trust men, and look how right she was.

Whatever the reasons for her distrust, my mother always told me to be wary of men. She told me they couldn’t be trusted and that they wanted only one thing. She once screamed at a man who was staring at me on the bus.

Later, as I grew up, the stares were more frequent, and the catcalls started.

I was a bookish kid, and my glasses and staid wardrobe meant the boys at school saw me as a geek, but that didn’t stop men twice my age from perving at me. It made me feel queasy. My mother witnessed it sometimes too, and she told me that a lot of men were sick. Driven by the need to sin.

Her worries went farther as time went on, and she begged me to keep my virginity until I met the man I wanted to spend my life with.

“Mum, if only you’d known that my virginity is the very reason I’m in this awful mess now.” I shake my head as I talk to her while I cleanse my hair.

After I've washed and conditioned my hair, I step out of the shower and dry myself. My skin is dry and itchy, so I look through the body lotions lined up on the marble shelf. They are all scented.

After slathering myself with lotion to combat my dry skin and scrunching my hair into soft curls, I wrap a robe around myself and sit on the bed, my feet tucked under me and my arms around my knees. I sit for a long time, not feeling safe enough to lie down and sleep but so tired I could cry. I don’t know why I’m so damn fatigued, as all I’ve done is sleep since I was taken, but my body aches with exhaustion.

The door opens, and I jump, as if a rocket has exploded. Dimitri walks in carrying paper bags, the expensive kind with ribbon handles.

I gawp at them. What the hell?

“Got your clothes,” he says.

“You could have saved yourself a lot of money and gone to Target.” I shake my head at the array of designer bags he’s holding.

“My sister got these clothes for you. She doesn’t shop in Target. She’s high maintenance.”

“You sent your sister to buy clothes for your kidnapped sex slave?”

His face darkens. “You aren’t my fucking sex slave.”

There’s real anger behind his words. “I’m sorry. Stupid comment. Still, you sent your sister?” What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I poking at the one person in this who so far hasn’t done anything to hurt me?

To test him maybe? That’s a dangerous game, and I need to stop right now.

“Yes, I did. The woman I was going to send, who works for us, is sick, and I needed someone to grab you some clothes. She knows how to shop.”

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