I hate that I’m no longer her daughter.
I’m his.
I hate that I’m gone to her, but I’m still here.
I’m still here, No One.
Fading, crumbling, decaying.
But still here.
*
DEAR NO ONE,
Today, he broke a bone for the first time. You’d think I would be more afraid, more in pain. But I’m not.
I expected this the moment Mr. Kewet killed me only metres away from my mother. The minute his fingers went around my throat and he stole my watch, I wasn’t living anymore—merely a corpse brought back to life to serve.
He might have given me CPR, No One, and saved a few years of heartbeats, but I died that day and didn’t get back up.
So what is a broken bone next to death?
It’s nothing.
I’m nothing.
I just want it all to stop.
*
“Stop the car.”
What the fuck am I doing?
That question was getting bloody old.
My fingers shook as I ripped through toilet paper scribbles, one after another. When I’d pushed my hands through the headboard last night, trying to get comfortable on Pimlico’s hard mattress, I’d found something soft sticking from a crack in the wood.
Pimlico had distracted me from that first touch, and I’d kept busy writing a note and folding her the small origami gift. However, once the butterfly was formed, I couldn’t stop my fingers trailing back to what they’d found.
I’d tugged.
And a fucking storybook spewed into my hands.
I should’ve stuffed it back where it belonged. I should’ve respected her privacy. But as the mute girl slept beside me, her breathing just as silent as everything else about her, I read a few lines.
And I couldn’t fucking stop.
I learned about her time in the trafficking hotel and a market-place called the QMB. I learned she’d lost her virginity to that raping bastard, Alrik. I learned about her hatred for her mother, her homesickness for her past, and just how desperate her world had become.
My heart (that’d long ago calcified to the hardship of others) thudded for the pain she’d endured. She’d lived through more than anyone ought to face.
However, it didn’t change facts.
I’d bartered for one night with her. That was all I wanted. All I could have.
So when she’d stirred, and guilt infested me for reading her private thoughts, I’d resumed stroking her skinny back. I’d shoved fistfuls of her pages into my blazer pocket because I had no other choice. It wasn’t right to take the only possession she had in a world where she had nothing—but that was who I was.
A thief.
With deeper issues I couldn’t control.
I stole because I loved it.
But also for another reason.
Her story was mine now.
I justified the robbery by tracing my fingers over the beads of her spine, following contusions and blurs, giving her sweetness after so long of none. I expected her to flinch and wake, but she’d burrowed into the sheets, murmuring unconsciously and giving me so much fucking trust.
I’d found such reward in that. That she sought comfort in my touch even though I’d borrowed her from a master who treated her like shit.
The partition between Selix and me slid down with a soft whir. “Sir? Did you just say turn around?”
My fingers tightened over the soft papyrus where Pim had spilled her darkest confessions. “Yes. Now.”
“But…you’ll miss—”
“I don’t fucking care. Do it.”
Every inch of me craved to go home. To feel the sea beneath my feet and put this shitty debacle, including the night I spent with Pim, in my wake. But I also couldn’t ignore that she would die because of me.
She might already be dead.
He could’ve shot her.
It would’ve been kinder than other things he might do.
I’d accepted her death, believing it was the best thing for everyone. But she’d paid too much. She was owed something better before dying so damn young.
She was worth more than a bloody grave.
So fucking what no one was there for me when I’d been at my lowest? So what no one had helped me?
I could help her.
I could do the right thing…for the first time in my godforsaken life.
Her imaginary friend, No One, had cared for her up till now. And if I couldn’t protect her better than a fucking fictional entity, what sort of man did that make me?
A coward?
Cold-hearted?
Honest about the fucked-up nature of the world?
You could have her for yourself.
The thought wasn’t new. She was a slave, after all. And I was a rich bloody bastard. I could buy her from him. I could keep her locked away to use whenever I wanted with no distractions from my company.
The idea was far too appealing.
She’d be a pet.
An unseen, unknown pet. I wouldn’t have to take her for walks or give special treats. As long as she had food and a place to rest, she would have a much better quality of life with me than she ever would with Alrik.