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Alone, behind my locked bedroom door, I look out the window at the servants cleaning the garden, and I break down sobbing. Firing them would’ve been convenient. I’ll have no money to pay them. I’ll have no money to keep this house. It’ll all go toward saving my heart and still, it might not be enough. Still, he might end up killing her. Because all I have left is a measly five hundred pounds, and I have no idea where to get the rest of the money. Even if I got a job, thirty days wouldn’t be enough to earn two-thousand-five-hundred pounds. My baby might still… Oh, I can’t bring myself to imagine the brutal ways he’d kill her.
I have no other choice but to either rob someone and not get caught or use the thirty days to come up with a way to stop him.
Chapter Eleven
Olivia
Groaningattheknockon my door, I put the pillow over my head. I’ve spent the better part of the day staring out the window, watching my life pass me by. My feet beg to feel the grass beneath it and though I open the window to feel the soft breeze on my skin, it still doesn’t fill my lungs up enough. My chest is so tight. So heavy and constricted. I long for freedom.
The knock persists, and my body almost feels too heavy to move. But I drag myself to the door because I’m not free to do as I wish. Opening the door, I pause a bit, stunned as it appears no-one is there.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.” A tiny voice floats up from the floor, and I turn my eyes upon a small boy, about four years old. He wears army short green pants with a matching vest over his long-sleeved wool shirt. His cloth hat matches the rest of his attire. His cheeks are rosy, his hair is blond, and his hands and feet are so small. I take pause. Whose kid is this?
“Good afternoon,” I respond, crouching down to his height. “Are you lost?” I ask, looking up and down the halls.
He smiles, and it’s adorable. Looking at him is a mixture of joy and sadness. Sadness that he wandered into this hell. Joy because of his innocence. “No, ma’am. The boss has asked you to join him for dinner, half past six this evening, ma’am.”
The boss? I nearly faint. This poor child. He doesn’t deserve to grow up around the likes of this evil pig. It’s only a matter of time until he gets the child involved in his dirty work. This child should be in a safe environment with a family who loves him. Then again, the idea of a child working isn’t crazy. I’ve grown up around it. Kids working in the slums, stealing just to get by, being roped into all kinds of criminal activities because of their low income and where they’re doomed to be raised. What sickens me is the fact that the beast can clearly avoid exploiting child labour with his riches. My eyes fill with tears for the small boy who must have the worst role model I can think of for him.
But I blink back the tears and smile at him. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll be down at half past six.”
No, I won’t be. I would rather stare at the paint on the walls than endure a moment of that man’s company. I think back to the window and run toward it, pushing my head out and groaning as I stare at the grass. Of course, he wouldn’t have made it easy for me to escape. He put me on the highest floor so that if I try to leave, I might jump to my death, breaking my neck on the way down. My heart thumps forcefully as I try to gauge my chances. If I could ensure jumping and landing on my feet, all I’d end up with are broken legs.
And a broken spine. Where would I be going with broken legs and a broken spine? Nowhere, that’s where. I had an uncle who broke his legs and spine. Ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I wouldn’t last a second. It would be better to drop on my head instead. Because as soon as the beast or any of his staff found me, I’d be punished and killed.
It’s torturous how close freedom is. I can see it, and I can taste it. If I put my hand out the window, I might even graze it with the wind against my fingers. But that’s as far as I can go. I can’t live it. Not until the beast deems it so.
He and his power. He and his control. He and his ownership of my freedom, my life, and my body. With each day that passes in this fiery pit, he drives it home that I’m nothing. With my hopes of escape dashed, I stare at myself in the full-length mirror and swallow back tears. Taking a defeated, mournful breath, I’m tempted to break all the furniture in the room, rip the sheets to shreds, and tear the curtains off the windows.
And in a small window of time, I forget about the consequences, marching toward the chest of drawers next to my bed. I push on it with both hands, but it’s like moving a boulder. The thing won’t budge. It’s hurting me more to try to destroy it, and it mocks my weakness. Grunting, I kick at it, hurting my toes on the hard wood. Grabbing for my foot, I bump my knee into the drawer that just flew open. Ow!
Hopping around, I swear, before reaching into the drawer and pulling out everything, throwing them to the floor. I move onto the next drawers and do the same thing until I open a drawer filled with silks. Long silks to be put over the neck and shoulders, beneath dresses for modesty.
I bunch one in my hand but rather than throwing it, an idea strikes me. Pulling the fabric as hard as I can, waiting for it to rip, I smile when it doesn’t. I toss the lot of them on the bed, stretching them out to their full length. My cheeks move out of control, shaking and encouraging me to cry. This. This might be how I escape.
I tie the silks together and gasp a little too loudly at the length of it when completed. A knock on the door freezes the blood in my veins as I look around at the mess I’ve made of the floor. I hurry toward the door before it has enough time to be swung open by whoever is on the other side of it. Pressing my face right up to it, I open the door ever so slightly. It’s Gloria, and my stomach is in knots. I think I’m about to be sick.
“Hi,” she says, lowering her head. “I’m sorry about last night.”
I flash her a bright smile though my brows tremble, telling me I’m overdoing it, but my face is frozen in this smile at this point. If I changed it now, she’d be suspicious. “Hi. No worries. Already water under the bridge,” I respond. “I was feeling a little tender, that’s all.”
She sighs and smiles widely. I nod before attempting to push up the door. She places her hand against it, and I stop breathing. “Well, I’m here to get you dressed for dinner. The boss says I should um… dress you up.” She laughs nervously.
I’m guessing she doesn’t want to share with me what he said because surely, it would’ve been insulting.
“Thanks, Gloria. But I can dress myself up,” I say, attempting to close the door again.
“I’m sorry, Olivia. I know you don’t like this, and it makes me feel like a right arse forcing you to do something you don’t want to do but if you’re not dressed the way he asks for you to be dressed, I might be punished. I don’t want to be punished. So, please, make this easier on the both of us?” she asks.
I sigh, tapping my feet behind the door. Swallowing, I look her in the eyes. “It’s just that I’m feeling a bowel movement, and I’d feel so ashamed if you were in the room with me while I used my chamber pot.”
“Oh!” She gasps. “Oh.” She lowers her head. “Yes, you’re right. That would be smelly.” She nods. “I’ll come back in a half hour to um… dispose of it before getting you dressed.”
“Thank you so much, Gloria. Yes, that will be quite fine. And please, if the boss asks what’s taking me so long, please be sure to inform him of my bowel movements,” I say.
And she giggles, hard.
Closing the door, I sigh and get to untying the silks and stuffing everything back in the drawers. I don’t know if they’re in their proper drawers, and my breaths grow shorter. I rearrange the drawers a few more times according to the fragments of my memory and flop backward in the bed. My escape has been postponed.
