“Don’t touch me,” I say viciously but my words are better off being screamed into the void of a black hole than at this old broad. She just looks down at me with a surly expression that reads she’s so over my flavor of trouble.
Wads of black cotton mix with the white satin and mesh of my wedding dress to create my own personal tangled hell wrapped around my legs.
A gray-haired version of Christine Lahti stands back and straightens her leather skirt, her made-up eyes sharp and calculating.
Well, shit.
Clicking her tongue, she pulls out a phone from between her ample boobs and I look on as she shoots off a message. Something I noticed she did the whole time she sicced her men on me.
After working for hours, I finally managed to slip one hand free of the cuffs my captor failed to secure tightly enough. A little digging in the nightstand drawer and I found a key for the other hand.
I got three-quarters of the way downstairs when granny here found me heading for the front door at break-neck speeds.
Needless to say, I didn’t make it past the centurions standing guard by the entrance.
Siren red lips purse in thatdon’t tempt me little shitway grandmas use on heathen grandchildren they don’t want to be stuck babysitting. Or that’s what her expression looks like in my experience.
“Try that again and I’ll personally see you are knocked out until Ares gets back, young lady,” she huffs. “Maybe now you’ll see fighting isn’t the only way to get what you want.”
Bullshit.
Two men wearing leather vests with matching skulls engulfed in flames kneel over me and their grip on my arms is bruising.
Some days—most days—I wish I were the meek and soft cuddly type. I would have gotten by in this world a lot easier, I’m pretty sure. But nope. Not me. I’m the spitting image of my mother inside and out according to my piece-of-shit uncle. And I pay for it every day of my life.
I tell myself to get a grip, to calm down a little, but it’s not working. “Give me a fighting chance, old lady, and I’ll show you just how much fight I still have in me.”
I wiggle and dodge the cuffs, roll left and then right before they finally get a good hold on my wrists, and lock me back to the heavy wooden headboard.
A tangle of black sheets wraps around my legs tighter restricting my movement. Hair is everywhere and I’m breathing heavily. My heart feels like I’ve run a twenty-mile marathon and my palms begin to sweat.
“Move my hair. Please. Move my hair from my face.” I feel the edges of my vision begin to blur and when everyone freezes at my odd demand I start to jerk my head side to side to get the long-ass lengths off my face.
“I can’t breathe. Move the hair. Move the hair!”
Finally someone with enough brain cells to understand plain English brushes away my hair from my face and I begin to breathe a little easier.
“Devil, tighten that cuff a little more. That’s it.”
Brown eyes meet mine and I think I see a hint of remorse staring back at me before he moves off the bed and checks the work of the other man.
A river of debris litters the floor between me and the door. Nothing I can’t jump over or use to my advantage, I determine with a glance. The turned-over chair and lamp would serve to slow down these two brutes.
Granny lights up another Marlboro red and puffs on the end a few times until I see her visibly calm down through her cloud of cancer fumes.
She points the fiery end toward me and shakes it like a witch casting a spell. “Ares deserves the ass whopping you want to give him but when he comes back, you need to listen to him, little girl. We don’t have time for your petulant attitude.”
She works the ends of the wedding dress I’m still wearing until it’s no longer wrapped around my waist and leaves me in an empty room without another word.
I must have lost my fight against the adrenaline crash that hit me after everyone left the room and accidentally fell asleep.
Early evening light casts eerie shadows over the room. To my left a coat rack looks like a warped fanged monster; to my right a jacket hanging over the bedpost a longhaired hag.
I slam my eyes closed and shove away the nightmares that chased me into adulthood. No one my age should be afraid of the dark. Just another scar I carry with me. I breathe through the rush of adrenaline pumping into my veins and force my heart to settle into a steady beat I can count. It’s almost hypnotic. “What a real badass you are, Nova Masters.”
You changed your life. You no longer have to live in fear. You are in full control.
I say my mantra over and over, but who the hell am I kidding. I crack my eyes open and look around. There’s nothing I control anymore.