Pennies (Dollar #1)(5)

This wasn’t a simple cleansing or preparation.

This was a baptism into Hell.





TO NO ONE,



My mother always told me that bullies are people, too.

She warned me never to judge first impressions or be superficial like others. She said it wasn’t my place to critique—not knowing if they were hurting or living a terrible life while picking on others.

Well, I would disagree based on my current predicament, but then again, these men aren’t bullies, they’re monsters. So I guess my mother’s rule is safe.

Don’t judge. Listen.

She promised me it would keep me in good stead, and I’d make friends, not enemies. What she didn’t tell me was nobody liked to be watched like a specimen, and everyone hated a compassionate know-it-all.

And that was why I was targeted.

Or at least…I believe it was.

You see, No One, it all started as a normal evening. I dressed in my bedroom opposite my mother’s. I slipped into the low heels she’d chosen, into the off-the-shoulder gown she’d selected, and hopped into the taxi she’d arranged.

I was thankful to be included because normally I wasn’t.

I was proud of my mother. Respectful, wary…but not adoring. She loved me but didn’t have time for silly children, even if that silly child was her own. She made sure I was old and wise so I could fend for myself while she dealt with adult bullies on a daily basis. She sold her services to the State to ease the burdens of psychopaths and paedophiles.

She treated us all like guinea pigs, wanting into our minds—asking why I did something instead of reprimanding. Demanding articulated words rather than messy displays of emotion.

My friends called me crazy for trusting my mother’s guidance. But I was a good girl, a kind daughter, a child guided by a woman who earned her living by lifting the veil in which humans hide. She made me believe I had the same magic, and it was my duty to help those without such a gift.

She made me what I was.

I suppose I have to be grateful for that because, without her strict upbringing, I would be like the girls snivelling even now in the corner while we wait to be collected for whatever comes next. I’m thankful to the woman who birthed me for giving me these life skills, but it doesn’t mean I’ll ever forgive her.

From the hours of 9:00 p.m. to midnight, I was safe. I mingled with suits and entertained in whispers, representing my mother and her business with the poise she demanded.

Only, around that witching hour when rules relax and tiredness creeps beneath fun obscurity, I met a man. While my mother intoxicated benefactors with her wit and hard-edged charm, earning generous donations for her charity for the mental well-being of people on death row (why anyone would want to donate, I had no idea), a mystery man called Mr. Kewet flirted with me.

He laughed at my teenage jokes. He indulged my childish whims. And I fell for every goddamn trick in his dastardly arsenal.

While others skirted this man, instinctually noticing something evil, I made it my mission to make him feel welcome. I didn’t let the voice inside my head warn me away; instead, I believed in the firm and fast rule of ‘Don’t judge. Listen.’

My mother taught me wrong.

She made me sympathise rather than fear.

She made me believe in good rather than recognise the bad.

I danced with my murderer.

I smiled when he corralled me outside.

I tried to soothe while he threatened.

And when his hands went around my throat and strangled me, I still believed I could redeem him.

He killed me on the balcony of the ballroom only metres away from my mother.

And the entire time he did it, I still thought he was the one who needed saving, not me.



“Time’s up. You’d better be ready to go.”

My pencil stopped hacking at my toilet vellum. I needed to write what happened after I fell unconscious into Mr. Kewet’s killer embrace. How he’d brought me back to life in a world I no longer recognised. How everything I’d known and everything that’d made sense was suddenly scrambled and utterly foreign.

But Venetian Mask had returned, crossing his arms over his huge untoned bulk. Even his voice was nondescript with no accent or hint. Without facial features or racial clues, I had no idea where I’d been transported and what country I would belong.

Scrunching up my handful of pencil-scribbled paragraphs, I stuffed the tissue down my pearl-beaded bodice. My fingers trailed up the decorative dress to whisper over my throat. Even now, the shadows of finger-bruises marked me. Being strangled was a painful death. And one that left remnants in both aches and contusions, always there to remind when glimpsed in a mirror.

He’d killed me. I hadn’t been able to stop him.

So why couldn’t he have left me dead?

Why couldn’t this have been over rather than just beginning?

Because you’re worth far more alive.

I straightened my back.

I’d blow-dried my hair and applied the mascara and lipstick provided. I didn’t know why I bothered. However, prettiness might be a curse that could grant me a kinder fate. In my unsettling rationale, I figured the more someone paid for me, the better my overall treatment might be.

Unless that backfires and a psychotic billionaire buys me for marksman practice.

My throat closed as my heart did its best to find a stepladder and climb its way out of my chest. I swallowed it down again. As much as I didn’t want to face this, I needed my heart beating if I stood any chance of surviving.