The Marriage Swap

10 | 𝙵𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚜

They killed Sienna. They sexually harassed her and when she fought back, they killed her.

Kai Park can't stop crying. He's been crying so much, so hard, he can barely talk. He loved her. He sat there with Sienna Yun's lifeless body on his lap for hours before they snatched her away and dumped her into one of those large graves, where other bodies were already thrown in.

I wouldn't say Sienna was a sister, she wasn't as close to me as Kai is. But. . .there's this squeezing pain in my chest. I can't stop thinking of the times she used to braid my hair with care like how a mother would and those times she called me pretty, despite my face being a burnt mess and my limbs holding iron rod bruises. She didn't deserve to die. They did.

Something dark festers within me. I was always supposed to be the monster they created. But they never anticipated what would happen if I turned on them. I just know. . .one more misstep, and I'm going to unleash my demons, devouring everything in its wake. Even if it's myself.

~from the journal entries of Daisy

--------᪥-------

☘︎ Eᴠᴇ Kᴀᴠɪɴsᴋʏ ☘︎

There's a total of sixteen languages I've mastered speaking fluently, learning each of them for a variety of reasons.

Curse words in all of them slip through my vocabulary the instant I wake up, not very pleasantly. Because escaping slumber-land and appearing to the good old earth, happens by me falling off the bed with a loud thud. This is a common occurrence for a person who tosses and turns a lot in their sleep, such as yours truly here.

"Ugh!" I groan, the back of my head making impact with the hardwood flooring and elbows bumping the mahagony bedposts.

My vision spins, head pounding partially from hangover and partially from the fall. My brain tries hard to remember even a single detail after I drunk from the wine bottle I'd grabbed off the bar's counter, while the cops put me in handcuffs and dragged me to jail. I don't even get high on strong alcohol consumption, what in the chemical drug did they put in that wine?

As if embarrassing memories returning, of me acting like a drunken retard and clinging to Axel wasn't enough, a face looms in my blurry peripheral.

Light brown eyes stare down at me with suspicion, very near causing me a cardiac arrest. The girl accessing me is dressed in another one of those Celine hoodies, legs clad in jeans, feet in sneakers and a school bag hanging on her shoulder.

Victoria's curls frame her face, sunlight bathing her dark skin into an ethereal glossy shine, "Xel was right at breakfast, you really do fall a lot." The teenager's voice imitates her uncle's signature blank tone.

"For Newton's sake!" I shriek, sitting upright from my laying position on the floor. Only for my hip to bump the nightstand, shooting a sharp pain up my sides, "You scared me, Vicky!"

"Vicky?" She tests the nickname on her tongue with a tilt of her head, "That's a new variation to my name."

Rubbing the scorching ache on my waist, my other hand lifts in a wave, "A little help here, please? I'm old to get up on my own."

Victoria considers me with narrowed eyes, reluctantly holding out her hand. I take it, clasping her small, warm hand and rising on my feet like an old crone. She pulls her arm back instantly once I'm up.