The Hidden Toxin ✔(#6 in the Our Side of The Dice Series)

Chapter 30: Adventure is Addictive.

Two months later.

In as much as it hurt Ebun's pride, she had to admit that Viktoriya had been right all along. Still, it didn't mean that she'd forgiven her for what she'd done because Mrs. Mariyah had grounded her for real. Ebun could never forget that nightmarish afternoon when Mrs. Mariyah called for her presence from the first floor.

Her azure blue eyes burned with fire and brimstone, and her brunette hair was a tangled mess — as though it was her rage that had caused the strands of her hair to web together. Perhaps, it was Ebun's fear that had caused her to read a deep meaning into it.

"You!" Mrs. Mariyah's voice was thunder. "How could you be so dengerous? Vhen your seester ahsked me to keep ahn eye on you, I didn't think I vould have to keep my two literel eyes on you twenty-four-seven! How could you even tek e life?!" She sighed heavily.

"Ze only reason vhy I'm not going to report you to your seester ees because I understand you to e leetle ekstent. I understand zat you are hurt. Steell, you cen't go ahbout killing people in a foreign country. Your family von't be here to save you if you get arrested," she paused and eyed Ebun, who was biting her lip nervously. "But I von't let you get arrested. Not vhile I'm alive."

"Eboon," Mrs. Mariyah narrowed her eyes, ready to mete out her decree. "You are grounded! Henceforth, you vill go novhere else eksept for school, and I vill see to it vith ahll my power!"

Mrs. Mariyah kept strictly to her word. She wasn't bluffing when she said, "with all my power," because precisely a week after, Mrs. Mariyah purchased a car for Viktoriya on installments so that Viktoriya could drive Ebun to school to and fro every day. No more strange school buses showing up in the morning with a disguised school bus driver saying there was an educational excursion where he had to take Ebun.

Ebun thought she could be sneaky and still try to play smart. She tried to escape the school premises during school hours a few times, but it was always during those moments, such coincidence, that Viktoriya knew she had a biscuit wrapper to dispose of in the public trash bin outside or she had the pressing need to go to the toilet.

Other times, the security officers stopped her from moving outside the gate — as if Mrs. Mariyah had assigned them to keep a particular watch over her. Ebun's last hope was lunchtime. That was the only period Ebun was sure she could leave the school premises because most of the students always left the school to buy food to eat.

But Ebun was wrong and strangely naive to have thought she could escape at such an hour. Viktoriya was always right on time to press the car's honk and yell, 'Time for lunch, girl! Let's grab something to eat. Bills on me!'

Ebun tried to adjust the timing when she'd set to leave the school's surroundings. She figured that if she left a few minutes before noon — before most people left the school to buy lunch, she would be able to escape successfully. Still, Viktoriya always caught her. She was always ready. It got to the point that Ebun began to suspect that Viktoriya had a secret camera which she used to spy on Ebun's every movement.

The exactness of Viktoriya's appearance, whenever she'd made a move to run away, was no longer coincidental.

Ebun even dismantled her phone and checked throughly to see if Viktoriya had chipped in a tracking device, but she found nothing.

Ebun wished she could kill Viktoriya. She knew she could do it now that she was an assassin but knew that there would be too many unbearable consequences attached to that action. Besides, she didn't have a potent reason to kill Vik. Vik was no rapist. Instead, she was a rape victim, and Ebun's area of specialty in murder was solely towards rapists.