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“Mama, are you well?” I asked, surprising almost everyone in the room, because I usually didn’t have it in me to speak, thanks to the sedatives in the tonic. But I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today.
Perhaps it was because I had slept all night long and well into the late morning.
Which was usually never allowed of me, but when I finally did wake up and forced my tender body from the bed, I opened the door to the hallway and found two giant men standing guard outside.
The bigger of the two guards, Saul, as he introduced himself, told me that they were under strict orders to keep anyone from disturbing me while I slept. Even after I woke up, they stood guard inside of my room when anyone else was inside with me.
“Fine, dear,” My mother said with a glare, “Your father and I enjoyed ourselves a little too much last night and realize we are not as young as we once were.” She drank the mimosa down and held the glass up for another one.
A maid stepped forward from the wall and took her glass and headed out of the room to get another one made.
“Well, what am I supposed to wear then?” Anita pouted and flopped backward on my bed. “I don’t want to wear the plain dress you and Papa picked out for me,” she wined, “It looks like a shapeless potato sack.”
“It’s about protecting your modesty, dear,” Mother droned, sounding less than interested in the conversation, especially since Anita had argued the same point for every event she’d attended in the last year.
Which was also her first year in the marriage market, as Amelia and I called it. It was sick really, given that Anita was only twelve and my parents were parading her around at events in the hopes that a family may see her and desire to join in alliance with ours through marriage. But it was exactly what happened to myself and my middle sister.
It was how I landed here.
In a mansion tucked away in the mountains, on the day of my wedding to a man I’d never met before, simply because his father had desired to make a deal with my father eight years ago at some soiree.
It was archaic and barbaric and I couldn’t believe there weren’t laws out there to stop people like my father from doing such things.
But I guess when you’re one of the richest men in the world, you can get away with more than your average Joe.
So I sat back in my seat and allowed the team to continue to prep me to get pimped out for the rest of my life to a man that was rumored to be the worst villain in any story.
“Ari,” my mother called from her slumped-over seat, “do get up and get yourself a glass of tonic dear, I don’t remember getting you one yet today since you slept in like a lazy-boned dog.”
“Give her a break, Mama.” Amelia argued for me, “After enduring the ceremony last night with no major hiccups, I think she was due a bit of rest on the day of her wedding.” My sister winked at me, and I felt my face bloom red.
Did she know?
That I…enjoyedmyself last night.
No, there was no way.
Not unless she heard my cries of pleasure.
“Ari!” my mother yelled, “Tonic. Now.” Cutting through my internal worries. I stood up out of the seat, brushed off the glam squad, and walked to the dresser.
But the glass decanter of tonic was gone, as was the glass. “Mama, it’s not here.”
“What do you mean it’s not there?” my mother snapped in irritation, “Where did you put it?”
“I didn’t move it,” I stared at her with wide eyes.
I tried to outsmart my mother a few times when the tonic was involved in the past. Once I poured half of it down the drain and filled it the rest of the way with lemonade to dilute the drugs, but she’d smelled the difference the instant she took the lid off. Another time, I’d poured the entire bottle down the drain and broke the glass decanter into a million pieces inside of a pillowcase and flushed them all down the toilet in defiance.
She locked me in my room for twelve days for that one and I was only given three meals that entire time.
I knew better than to mess with the precious mind-control drink anymore. I was never going to win the war against her and my father as long as they had that in their arsenal.
My mother stood up from her chair and the room fell silent as my sisters watched the scene unfold in front of them. She walked across the room slowly, with the gentle power of a female lion stalking her prey and I fought the fight or flight coursing through my veins, screaming at me to run.
This was going to hurt.
“I didn’t move it, I swear.” I tried once more, as she neared with menace in her dark brown eyes. “I didn’t.”
