I almost fall over as I stand, but he doesn’t make a move to help. Grasping the pink satin bed covers, I right myself, and then I take in the full horrors of the room.
Fluffy neon pink heart pillows. Candy pink giant bear. Pale pink wall, the Barbie pink on the others. There’s a white vanity edged in bright pink with a big pink chair and a pink fur rug on the floor.
My stomach heaves. It makes me actually want to puke.
Then, I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror on the vanity.
I just stare.
I’m in a dress that goes to mid-calf. It’s loose fitting, but it flows along my curves. From the tiny puff sleeves to the layered frills trimmed with old fashioned lace-Irish lace, I think it’s called-the thing buttons all the way up to my throat like an old school vice.
Old school as in for elementary students from another era.
It’s demure, pure cotton, and nothing like I’d ever wear. It’s definitely not what Nikolai would put me in.
Put me in. I grit my teeth. These men…
I swing back around, hands in fists. If this is the future, me being manhandled, touched, looked at naked by man after man after man, dressed to suit them like some disgusting living doll, then I don’t want to play. I don’t want any of this.
“Don’t ever touch me again, or you’ll regret it.” I mean it.
It’s all fake bravado, but right now, I don’t know where I am or who this oaf in the crisp suit and blank face is. I’ve been kidnapped, drugged, locked up one too many times.
He’s completely unmoved, and his nonchalance only riles me more. “I mean it. I’m able to dress myself.”
“That isn’t your choice.”
“Nothing is,” I grit out, bitterness like poison in my mouth. “I won’t have you touching me like I’m your personal sex doll.”
My anger bubbles and spits and my eyes burn. Soft little Rose is how these people see me, a thing to use, even Nikolai. Desire and hate are tangled when it comes to him, but he’s not here, and someone drugged me to take me from him, like a low-level pawn in some bloody and terrible game of chess.
Took me and he didn’t stop them.
Unless…
Unless…
No. That path is too dark, and I can’t go down it. He’s alive. He has to be. I don’t even care that I’m veering wildly off course with my emotions. I might both want and hate him, but I don’t want him hurt, or…
I swallow and lift my chin. “So, you might as well kill me.”
He isn’t going to, I get that. He works for someone, probably the man who took me, and that means I’m worth something, alive. Killing me is above his paygrade right now.
I’m a bargaining chip.
So, I fucking push because that’s all I can do. “Kill me.” I spread my arms. “Go on.”
He looks at me and just shakes his head. “No one is going to kill you,
Miss Finnegan.”
The name makes me flinch. I’ve heard it before, haven’t I? From Nikolai? When talking about the man he wanted revenge on-the one he hated more than anything.
My father.
“Don’t call me that,” I say sharply. “It’s not my name.” His expression remains that smooth, cold granite. “It’s Germaine. And…where are we?” I try and keep my head high, my chin set to wobble-free mode, but it’s hard.
What I want to do is to scream, run, fight. Escape.
Yet again, I don’t know where I am, or who stole me, not beyond the slipping, sliding memories clouded in fuzz. Maybe I don’t want to remember? A kind of self-preservation.
Right now, I need to hold my ground however I can. Something has shifted in me. The well with nothing left seems to grow.
“You’re in my room, dressing me, undressing me, probably helping yourself to a feel when I’m unconscious, and now you’re just standing here, watching me. It’s creepy and disgusting and-”
“Enough.” His voice is dark and rough, laced with warning. “What I am is your protector. You can call me Rafe. I did what I’m ordered. I didn’t touch, and I tried not to look.”
“So-”
“I have a job, and that includes dressing you.” He pauses. “I’m also here to shadow you, protect you, keep you safe until your father finalizes the paperwork.”
A black shot of electricity shoots down through my stomach to my toes.
There’s that word again: Father.
“If you weren’t my bitch of a kid.”
He said that, didn’t he? The man at Nikolai’s with the bloodied sheet from when I lost my virginity. He said other things, disgusting things. Vile and ugly things about Mom, me…he- Paperwork?
“I don’t have a father. What paperwork?”
“Mr. Finnegan has a deal,” he says. “Ms. Finnegan.”
“Germaine,” I push out through clenched teeth. I refuse to think I have any relation to that monster of a man. Refuse. “Rosalind Germaine.” He doesn’t respond. I might be talking to an actual rock.
“I’m here as your protector while he finalizes paperwork for the deal.
You’re part of that deal. Soon, you’ll be married and away from here.”
I frown. “Nikolai?”
“Don’t mention that name,” he spits out. “For your own sake. Not Nikolai Wilder, no. You won’t be seeing him again. Mr. Finnegan considers him his number one enemy. I’ll report to him that you’re awake. Ms. Finnegan.”
Rafe nods and holds a card to the door, which clicks. Then he pulls it open and steps through. I rush at it, unsteady, and just touch the handle when a beeping comes from the other side and the little pad next to the handle glows red.
The sound of a key scraping in the lock follows. Locked up, locked in, and nothing of my own. Again.
As I raise my hand to my mouth to try and hold in the fear and anger and resentment, light catches something on my wrist.
The bracelet Nikolai gave me.
I close my fingers around it, hanging my head and closing my eyes a moment, a heaviness moving through me. I can’t just stand here and let things happen to me, not until I exhaust the possibilities.
I won’t be able to, not from this room, not if the security on the door is any indication. However, I’m not about to let that hinder me. There are windows, other means. I need to get out before they marry me off…or worse. Shuddering, I open my eyes and raise my head, starting to move around the creepy pink monstrosity I’m locked inside.
There’s a window to the right of the bed, shuttered by filmy pink and white drapes with white blinds beneath. I try to ignore the sink of my heart as I pull back the curtain and peer out into the daylight. I think I’m on the third floor, and there’s a huge wall past the gardens. Men roam beneath me, men with guns and headsets.
I let the curtain fall back into place.
A small ensuite is situated to the left of the vanity. It has an oval sink, a large shower, and a claw tub, all of it in pale pink marble. Christ. There are small bottles of perfumes and soaps on the sink, creams and moisturizers, and on a crystal tray, trinkets for my hair.
A white case sits next to them, and I open it. It’s full of a vast array of make-up, all still in their packaging, pinks and sweet girl colors I don’t use.
My stomach heaves as I wobble a little from whatever’s still in my system.
Even if I did use the colors in here, I never want to touch them. Not these ones. Not in this new pink prison.
I grip the edge of the marble sink and run a finger over the trinkets.
My heart starts to thud and slam as I pick up a piece. The hairpin is pure Nikolai. All the other things are ham fisted and childish. This? A tiny diamond in a white gold rose. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s him, and it sits with plain pins that he bought me to fix my hair.
I decide to take it with me to my prison cell of a room, setting in the drawer of the pink and white side table with the pink, gauzy lamp.
There’s nowhere I can go. Nothing I can do.
I can only sit and wait.
I hate it. I hate everything.
With a shaky breath, I trace the delicate stones and chain of my bracelet. White gold with pink diamonds: the only pink I think I’ll ever be able to stand. It’s as stunningly beautiful as it was when Nikolai first gave it to me. “It’s yours, Rose. To keep, or throw away if you want, but it’s yours.” Mine.
This is mine.
It means more than the hair pin because when he gave it to me…those words felt like love.
“You’re a fool, Rosalind.”
Even in this world of ugliness I’ve been thrust into, I’m so happy to have something for me, even if it was given by a beautiful devil.
I hope he comes for me.