STOLEN || 18+ (Monsters #3)

.6. Wall

"Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember. All I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you. You were me."

-Franz Kafka

. . .

Leyla

California

I was a fairly positive person but it was hard to be rainbows and sunshine when you could feel the doom coming. My father was an evil man. I was not surprised he did this.

There were problems between Leona and him for a few days after the wedding, but they ended up with Leona having bruises all over her which I saw one day coming back early from the library. She didn't speak after that.

I wasn't speaking either. My sisters were unaware of the whole situation, even though I knew Gabriella was suspecting something but her time was occupied by some musical happening at her school.

Me? I worked at a library. I had a few friends but almost all of them were at colleges - Yale, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard. I was surrounded by successful people.

I had gotten into every college I applied for. I wanted to go to Yale but I knew my father would make me study at Stanford instead. Which school I would have gone to after my one-year break from studies did not matter now. Neither did my plan with Gabriella.

It felt like someone had dumped a large wall between me and happiness as soon as I was born. I had spent my whole life trying to climb the damn wall but every time, things were there to pull me back. My mother's death, father, my high school boyfriend, some stupid article on the internet, and many more.

After the wedding, it felt like if the wall had grown taller and thicker and now, I wasn't even trying to climb it. I spent my time pitying myself and writing bad poetry about having no control. I didn't know when they were going to come for me. I half hoped this was a sick joke.

I walked around the park, my bag on my shoulder and my feet already aching in my heeled boots.

My eyes were on my phone. One of my friends was at Yale, getting there with her perfect grades. She was the second in our batch.

I was the first.

I did get selected.

I sighed, looking at her picture. She was grinning into the camera, surrounded by guys who were probably seniors.

I was happy for her. And yes, I did want to be at Yale. But my father would have never let me go. The plan was to get some evidence against him, escape, and do whatever Gabriella and I wanted, with our little sister by our side, and threaten to send the evidence to some news company if father bothered us.

A not so detailed plan but Gabriella was working on it. She was going to escape on her own without me, she just didn't know that yet.

I scrolled down and then looked at another picture. Olivia. She posted like once in a year. It was a picture of her smiling into the camera, wearing aviator shades and a bikini.

Perfect life. Everyone was finding love, going to their dream colleges and I was here, waiting to be plucked like a flower.

I sat down at a bench, crossing my legs, glaring down at the grass. What if we escaped before they came for me?

I knew there was nothing I could get against Fabiano and Giovanni which could guarantee them staying away. They could kill me.

They'd kill my sisters if I didn't cooperate.

A chill set in my body, goosebumps rising as dread settled in. What would they do to me? That was not even something I had to think about. I knew what they'd do. Whatever they did, they'd suffer no consequences. Maybe they'd tire of me and then kill me.

Maybe.

They didn't feel safe. Nothing in this world did.

I could hear my mom's voice in my head. You'll be okay. She had whispered those words to me on her death bed, smile wrinkled, hair completely gone yet her grip on my hand was reassuring. Everything will be okay, baby. Just hold on.

Hold on. I tried to do that, I really did. But every day it felt like my sanity was slipping away from my fingers and all I could do was stare as it did.

. . .

"I will write a book one day," Gabby said to me, her feet on my lap, her back rested against the armrest as she read whatever porn she was reading this time. "About a guy loving a girl but then she killed him."

"Why would she kill him?"

She shrugged. "I can make him a drug lord or some shit. I wanna kill a dude, let me do it in my imagination."

"You should not be imagining murdering people."

"Everyone has their flaws, Leyla."

Leona entered the room. Not knocking. She never knocked. It got on my nerves.

She looked at me and then at Gabriella. "Guess tonight. Fabiano and Giovanni Valentino. Mr Cameron. Dress up. In a dress," she added the last part firmly to Gabriella who gave her a sharp smile.

After a few more instructions on the table manners that were already drilled in our heads, she walked out gracefully.

"One day I will rip those blond extensions out."

I sighed. "She is scared of father."

"And she is an idiot." Gabriella rolled her eyes. "She voluntarily married the bastard."

"She obviously didn't know."

"Hm." She slumped back down on the couch. "Remind me to get ready ten minutes before the dinner."

"It takes you at least half an hour to get ready."

"I know." She smirked.

I sighed. "Pissing him off is not worth the pain."

"But it is." Her skin fingers tripled the book tighter. "You don't sit still if someone has you in a cell, Leyla. You try to get out and if you can't, you claw at your captor from behind the bars. Sitting still is accepting defeat."

I had accepted defeat years ago.

I did not have the strength to fight.

. . .

I kinda imagine Leona as Adele.