The Marriage Swap

22 | 𝙵𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚢 𝚖𝚎𝚜𝚜

They take me to the base, only to bring me back to the shady place with the hooded figures a few days later, repeating the tiresome process again and again.

They even put me on the alter once and I saw that golden-hairer boy again, watching from behind his hiding spot as if he wanted to keep reminding himself, torturing himself of the terror happening around him, only to end up helplessly crying for not being able to do anything. I was almost tempted to rat him out but there was a sickening satisfaction in knowing that while there were people who suffered, there were also people who bled over others suffering. And this boy was someone who the leaders in the hoods cherished. It gave me sadistic pleasure to know they were destroying their own prized possession while their delusions made them believe they were doing it all for him.

I wasn't an imbecile to not realize they were bringing me here repeatedly as a tactic to scare me, so I'd simply laughed hysterically when they'd put me on the altar. They were furious and they did not kill me, hoping to end me when I'd truly be terrified one day. But oh, do they know, by that time, they would be terrified of me.

~ from the journal entries of Daisy.

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☘︎ Axᴇʟ Hᴇʀɴᴀɴᴅᴇᴢ ☘︎

Morning routines aren't for everyone; specifically not for someone who loves sleep more than the entire human race.

Namely, my wife.

The runaway refused to wake up even after everyone else—including the jet crew—travelling to New York were ready with their suitcases. So, I'd simply lifted her up in her pajamas instead of disrupting her more, carried her to the car and placed her on the passenger seat, copied the same process with the jet once we were at the tarmac. She'd slept off for nearly the entire flight, only to wake up an hour prior to the horror of the realization that she was not dressed appropriately to land in New York. I told her it wasn't an issue but if she wished, she still had an hour to freshen up and get ready. However, from what I knew of my wife based on observing her routine in the past months is that; an hour wasn't enough. She took baths itself that ran more than an hour.

Which is why, when the jet had landed and the chopper taking us to the mansion in the middle of Manhattan waited for us at the tarmac, Eve was just out of shower in a soft-pink silk and lace corset-top and off-white skirt with wet hair sticking to her bare face. She'd hurriedly grabbed a glittery pouch and a pair of strappy heels from the suitcase I'd packed with her clothes from the closet and things she'd thrown around in our room back in Bali. The heels would've taken time to tie around her legs so she nearly ran to the waiting helicopter bare-feet. I'd sighed, picked her up again and put her in the backseat beside me. What was I going to do with this woman?

Though the hurry had been for vain, considering the boy who'd swapped with the pilot, taking over flying the aircraft because he was bored. I'd have strongly refused, were it not for the aviation certificate he'd shown me and the fact that if he crashed, it would provide me an appropriate excuse to leave him stranded at a remote island, away from my wife. The only reason Nikolai Romano is still around is because Eve said to let him stay with us until his sister arrived. On a better note, Victoria could handle a chopper effortlessly too, if things were to go wrong. They both sat in the front now.

Eve, on the other hand, has her mini-skirt clad legs on my lap, working on tying up the complicated straps of her heels with a scowl. The sole of her feet occasionally slides up and down my thigh—unintentionally or intentionally considering the vixen she is, I couldn't quite tell—and I curse myself internally the thousandth time for mindlessly grabbing her legs and putting them on my lap, telling her to tie them that way, because she'd bemoaned dramatically about backpain and old age, despite being just twenty-five. My fists clench and unclench, leashing the urge to tie up those straps for her, run my fingers up the smooth skin of her thighs—