Sadiya |REWRITING

Chapter Sixteen

NOTE; Italics in double quotations are being said in Arabic.

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YEMEN.

"You look more repulsive with a busted lip."

Not even the faux disgorge elicited a reaction from her bait. But, the tick of his jaw could not have been mistaken, she saw it. She thought that if they were to use her as bait for whatever the case was, she might as well have the time of her life—a real life play out right before her, for which she splashed her whimsicality about the corners of the dark room she was held captive.

"I could mistake you for a panda with those eyes," But she was not done with the infuriating words as she lazily eyed the black eye by theirs, truly. "No, actually, a teddy bear. An ugly one though, one you'd find in a dumpster at an abandoned alley." Dazed, yet, rage-filled beady eyes stared back into her audacious ones.

Twenty-first chapter, seventy-sixth page, third book on the third row; an English version. Never show them fear, for emotion is key to information. Words strike a cord, use your information against them. Retrodict expressions, predict actions—first theory on the page Amira Imani had been made to read with her siblings, years of their lives. The particular chapter was titled simply, "CHIVY ON HEATH".

Twitching eyes, shaky fists, tensed jaw, hunched shoulders, stiff spine and lastly, tightened lips. All, noted in a span of eight seconds. Her father would call for an additional three hours of training, as punishment. She was slow. The minions watching Imani's every move stuck to their positions by far ends of the corners. She was taken by two men, brought in by four, heard a total of seven different footfalls excluding that of the men dragging her. Next, she was being observed by three, as a lab specimen would.

Imani was angry. Imani was hungry. Warranting the surged anger within her. An Amira getting kidnapped on the Palace grounds? It was obvious, someone she knew—one they all knew, was behind the whole scheme. It was way too obvious to ignore.

The haunting eyes that could be every child's nightmare continued to drill her blank orbs. It was rather, the other way round. She raised a defiant brow, he huffed like a kid and drifted his gaze to the dirty concrete. The captive did not know the unfamiliar man's name, did not mean she never gave him one. "Name?" She had asked in English, to which he was clearly dumber than she'd thought because he had confusion pasted all over his bruised face.

Her little work of art.

The pleasure she got each time she glanced at the bruises he was forming from her 'little' fight. Amira Imani rolled her eyes, muttering a string of cuss words before repeating. "What are you called?" Perhaps the chap was android, but her question drew nothing more than his biting the inside of his cheek. She repressed a smirk, an inrush of satisfaction propagating her, through and through.

"Quiet."

A short minion called Imani out. She turned her neck, tilting her head in feigned confusion. "Stuart, didn't your mama teach you to not interrupt others in the middle of a convo?" She went on, puzzlement clear on his expression, in lieu. She ignored it. Turning to her previous victim before the dwarf-y dude could utter a comeback, she was about continuing her torture when Stuart and the others seemed distracted by the earpiece on them. She observed them—their body languages, meticulously.