Page 6 of Lesson on Depravity
I wince. It’s best for me to be honest and frank. Daddy hates it when I lie. That is something I have learned on the first day he took me in. I couldn’t stand the indifference he had shown me when he found out I had lied about my name, and it was only when he found out why I don’t want to go by my real name anymore is when he has forgiven me with a new name.
A name he had chosen for me, I would treasure “Coco” for the rest of my life.
“I—” my voice cracks. “Can I still work at Mrs. Curtis’?”
His eyebrow jumps, a calculated tone in his voice sends shivers down my spine. “Why would you assume I would disapprove of that?”
Because he’s a sadist. Because he’s possessive, and because Daddy has waning control over me when I work at Mrs. Curtis’ shop. She’s is an elderly woman who had practically raised Alistair when he was a child, but that’s all I know about his past.
Her shop and everything around Mrs. Curtis is off-limits to everyone, and it’s her influence on Alistair that makes his smothering hold on me loosen until I return home to him at the end of the say.
He may not act like it, but Mrs. Curtis is a soft spot in his heart, and he sees her as his mother despite not being blood-related. I had seen the way they interacted when I had requested to work, and he had introduced me to her.
They say a strong man always has a stronger woman behind him.
“I don’t know,” I mumble under my breath.
He sees through my lie like a sheer piece of paper. His ability to read me is terrifying as I have no more privacy, but I never really had them in the first place. Alistair has me in his hands, weaving my fate with those strong fingers, and trapping my freedom in his iron fists.
Oddly enough, I don’t mind being under his wings. While I was still on the streets, I craved for freedom and a way out of the dirt hole. Nothing means more to me than my independence and survival, but now that I’m used to being taken care of, I realize that I’m falling deeper and deeper into the role of a princess for him.
Am I spoiled? I don’t have the guts to admit it to myself because some part of me still has a spark of hope to be someone someday. Maybe not now or in ten years, but I want to work towards the goal of being able to support myself.
“You aren’t thinking of anything dangerous, are you?”
My shoulders jerk in surprise, unable to hold back a gasp of shock. Daddy gazes into my eyes, the darkness in them practically steals the green lights from my eyes. Supernatural abilities are a fable, but Daddy’s ability to understand every emotion on my expressive face is a force to be reckoned with.
“I hope you are not thinking of leaving again,” he muses, eyes curving with a touch of sadism.
He wraps his hand around my jaw; my skin digs into my bone as he tightens his grip. “I thought we have been through this phase. You came running back to Daddy for a reason, remember?”
At his words, the face of Javier clouds my mind. Javier is the man that got my mother hooked on heroin, and my father isn’t any better with his tendencies to mix alcohol with drugs. He put my mother in a brothel after she had stolen some heroin from him because she didn’t have the money to pay for it.
My father would look at me with disgust and hate, and I was too young to understand why he had pretended I didn’t exist in the house only for the sole purpose of government aid.
Soon, I began to grow up in that smelly house and wondered if he was truly my father. My mother had worked in a brothel before she had me and a part of me doesn’t want to know who my real father is.
Every day I saw arguments and fighting between them until they just left. No word, no explanation—they just left with whatever little belongings they had in the house. I was left to fend for myself, and I guess the only silver lining in this is that no one came to bother me.
I was a scrawny little dirty girl with disgusting hair. Eating stuff from the leftovers that people have discarded, sleeping in wet and rotten alleys to avoid people, and trying to make myself clean so I can find a job to get away from that life.
My savior comes in the form of the territory’s boss. Alistair didn’t care that I stink, nor did he care that I was nothing but a useless girl, his hand had been strong, warm, and powerful when he threw me over his shoulder and stalked off.
That day on, I was given a home, warm food, and antibiotics and medical checkups—courtesy of the doctor who lost his practice license and now works for Alistair.
“I saw him,” I say, a shudder running down my spine. “I saw Javier.”
A flash of wicked humor crosses his eyes, and I don’t have the time to figure out what that had meant before he brings my face closer to his. His breath fans over my lips, eyes gleaming with cruelty and strange tenderness.
“That is precisely why Daddy didn’t want you to leave. It’s still not safe for you to go wandering around.”
He has a point. Javier has declared that he would kill everyone in my family if my mother didn’t pay off the debt that she owed after taking his drugs. I didn’t think Javier would have the guts to come into Daddy’s territory, but criminal enterprises are as dark and deep as a black hole in space.
“We wouldn’t want you to get hurt or worst, get taken away, do you?” he remarks, voice lowering and silky vicious.
Without Daddy’s protection, Javier would have gotten to me a long time ago if I had been wandering in Alistair’s territory. However, I haven’t heard any talk on the street of what’s happening on the other territory.
Someone mentioned that Javier was gone, but no details have been confirmed, and now there is a new boss. Until the day Javier is in prison, I will never be safe, and it was foolish of me to think that I can live by myself.