Page 59 of The Freedom in Captivity

Regardless, their attitude never shattered hers, and that’s what I became most curious about. It was obvious from her behaviour, her clothing, and the expensive black town car that dropped her off and picked her up from school each day, that she came from a world most could only dream about.

When I spoke to her, the second most compelling fact about her was that while shewashigh-class, her self-perception wasn’t.

“Something wrong, princess?”

“I’m not a princess.”

“You look like one.”

“Doesn’t make me one.”

“Whatever, princess.”

“That’s not my name.”

She did look like a princess. Someone I shouldn’t have been worthy of gazing at, let alone touching. Kissing. Fucking. Clearly, her father thought so too.

If it wasn’t her self-perception, it was her determination to embrace what everyone already believed her to be that won me over.

“Maybe I haven’t gotten the chance to be an asshole yet.”

“Then let me give you that chance and we’ll see who’s right.”

She took my hand. Small compared to my large one. Soft compared to the roughness of mine. Manicured nails strikingly different than my stubby, chipped ones.

I claimed her then, even if she didn’t realize it at the time.

If I never approached her on the bench, we never would have been friends, and then more. Maybe she would have eventually given up on the public school system and returned to her fancy, private school. I would have continued going through the motions and faking my way to a high school diploma, exactly how I’d been doing for years prior.

We wouldn’t have lived through the heartache and wouldn’t be in our current scenario. Rozelyn De Falco would be exactly what her name deems her as: De Falco’s daughter. She’d be my prisoner and I’d have no prior knowledge or feelings toward her. I’d hate her because she’s the organization’s enemy and that’s all there’d be to it.

But if I never met Rozelyn, I would never have given up on school that day. Doing so led me to escape home for good and survive on the streets. Which means Caterina and Lorenzo wouldn’t have found me, and I wouldn’t be here. I’d be someone else. Somethingelse. Dead perhaps.

No matter the pain Rozelyn brought me that day, I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for my current life.

A car driving by the high school snaps me from my thoughts. It’s a cop’s cruiser, which slows, the officer poking his head out of his rolled-down window to study me. I know what he sees. The jeans and leather jacket. The rumbling bike.

Nodding respectfully, I kick off the ground and speed away from the past.

Rozelyn

Days pass but I don’t know how many. I try to count the visits as I’m provided food and allowed out for the bathroom, but they seem to happen at different times, making tracking difficult.

Either way, it’s not Flynn who comes down anymore. Instead, two other soldiers alternate, and they barely glance at me, and they don’t speak to me other than to command me up the stairs and position a gun at my back as they walk me to a bathroom in the main hall, which makes me wonder why Flynn’s always brought me to his from the very first instance.

I’ve asked about Flynn’s whereabouts, but they pretend not to hear me. This is a daily activity now.

Other than during their visits, the basement’s lights are kept off, but thankfully, I never return to that dark place I went to the last time I was alone for an extended length of time.

In the silence, my mind travels a lot. It relives everything Dad ever did to me. His malicious means of training me for this. His cruel ways of raising me to be his soldier rather than his daughter.

“Fight him.” Dad flicks his fingers to one of the soldiers he’s brought to the training room. A mountain-sized man with biceps as wide as my head, height that towers two feet above me, and a menacing snarl that says he’d eat me for breakfast if given the chance.

“You’re kidding me?” I look from Dad to the solider and back. At twenty-four, this isn’t the first soldier he’s had me train against, but no one likethis. “I’ll lose. More so, he’ll break me.”

“Attack,” Dad commands. “Before he does.”

I didn’t move for almost a week afterwards. His soldier took me down in less than a minute, bruising my back.

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