𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐌𝐞

20|| Teammates

Celeste // February 11
•••

I wake up in cold sweat after yet another nightmare.

I lay in the hole shaped like my body on the mattress I hadn't left for more than fifteen minutes in two weeks.

I don't mean to be so dramatic about everything, but my mind and body had been working against me ever since I found out the truth about Lester.

It's like everything I thought and knew about my past has been playing out in front of me through a new perspective. One belonging to someone with a clearer, more developed mind instead of the clueless girl who thought she could trust anyone and everyone as long as they were smiling at her.

Truth is that the weight of the situation only sunk in the day after I'd spend all those hours in Dante's office. Because when I woke up alone in a bed I didn't recognize, in a room with none of my belongings and my soul trapped in the same body that had been manipulated and abused.

That's when I fully realized that I gave my virginity to a then 45 year old man.

I remember how he told me it was a normal thing to do, a normal price to pay for a ticket to America. He said I could even stay in his home after, because he liked me so much.

Lester knew what to say, how to smile, how to reassure me.

I used to appreciate that about him.

And now I want to inflict a damage so big and hurtful that he would be on his knees begging me for death.

I'd laid there starring at my bedroom ceiling as my mind spiraled back to every time he'd fucked me. From 16 to 23, every time I'd been convinced I was the initiator. That I was the one holding power over him.

But that wasn't the reality.

That had never been the reality.

I'd spend two weeks sulking and throwing up, all while staying between the walls that formed my appointed bedroom and its attached bathroom. It certainly was an upgrade from my cellar situation, but all that mattered to me was that I was alone in silence.

Everyday a maid would step by with food and occasionally give me a pack of cigarettes I'd request, and that would be the only sense of the outside world I'd get.

Dante did step by the day after, because we needed to have a conversation, but I didn't open the door and just told him I didn't feel well.

What I didn't tell him was that my skin felt like it was floating around my bones, like there was nothing underneath anymore.

It was a lot. Seeing Josette's wedding pictures, realizing I'd trusted the wrong person yet again and all the reminders of Tobias's disgusting body walking the same grounds as mine.

But today, I decided that enough was enough. I had things to do, money to steal and people to kill.

So I had a cigarette for breakfast and threw on the first clothes I could find. I settled on a simple black shirt with long sleeves and trousers that allowed me to kick high enough for my foot to reach someone's face.

I ignore the dark circles underneath my eyes and the hollowness of my cheeks. It doesn't matter that I look like shit to everyone else, because today is the beginning of starting to feel better.

I walk through the hallway, down the stairs, into the living room I'd been fucked in two weeks ago-

No.

Just the living room. It's just a living room.

Dante is sitting on the couch with his back to me, two big black dogs sitting at his feet while he makes a phone call. Thanks to the sunken seating arrangement I make direct eye contact with one of the dogs and I raise a brow, daring it to bark at me.