ᴀᴘʜʀᴏᴅɪᴛᴇ // $ᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇʙᴏʏ$

Chapter Nine

APHRODITE

The sky shimmered with a cloudy, grey dawn. Restless, dark, and full of sound, the city started to wake into the raw and bitter air. It was starting to get coooler out, autumn on its way. I had always preferred winter over the scorching summers, not caring much for sweating and the sun burning my sensitive skin. And of course, I thought, letting my inner girl come out, you got to wear cuter shoes in the fall and winter. Flip flops in the summer always made me stumble.

I stretched out on my bed with my hands behind my head, the covers off my body as the sun rose outside, and watched the ceiling fan circle and circle above me.

I'd slept poorly, tangled in dreams I blamed on thoughts of my ex-fiancé as much as my aching lower back. I didn't care much for dreaming. For me, dreams always brought me to the past. And the past always brought me to my anxiety medication. It was still dark when I'd given up on sleep, and thought about rising from the bed and making coffee before preparing breakfast for Aristos. Instead, I chose to lounge and get lost in my thoughts.

My mom used to lock me up in my room for hours, sometimes days. The first time she did that was the day I started to talk to my reflection in the mirror. It was just monologue, but I admired a good listener. I needed somebody who would listen without speaking back. I didn't need to hear meaningless phrases from people like I'm sorry. It's a tough life. I understand. Not too long after that was when I started to slit my wrists to feel something, anything. My reflection became my best friend because she was always there. The steak knives in the kitchen became the only things that could make me feel less numb.

Some people said that fate wasn't real. But maybe it was destiny that Scott Arceneaux was looking for somebody who will keep an eye on his schizophrenic cousin. Maybe it was fate that my mom overheard the conversation and marched over to him offering me to him. Of course, my mom thought that Scott would see me and fall for me. But he already had another woman in his heart, Sienna, which my mom didn't know.

I thought back to when my mom first told me about the cousins. "But I don't want to babysit for some crazy man!" I hissed at her.

"You will see, baby girl! You'll get out of his house in a few days because you will meet your Prince Charming, Scott, there! He will give us tons of money!"

I sat in the chair, watching myself in the mirror. "Everything is better than this life." I smiled sadly.

That is how I met Aristos Petrou, the rude, crazy criminal. Cigars, blunts, gold rings, drug dealing, blood, and eyes shooting daggers all day long. The second I met him I felt extreme fear because I saw his eyes staring murderously. But at the same time, something moved inside me. That is why I didn't look back, even though I had a feeling he would kill me with his glare.

Somehow this paranoid crazy man got inside my head, under my skin, and between my legs. And I didn't mind at all, even though it took me rivers of tears and one drama scene with a gun to throw him down from his pedestal and get him on his knees- literally. Never ever in my life did I think that my best sexual experience would be with someone like him. But he could bring me to heaven and he didn't even have to try hard. He just simply knew how.

I couldn't expect a nice, sweet, and tender man at all. But ever since I showed him that I was able to fight back and make him my bitch, he became calmer around me. Even when he was yelling and smashing things now, he would at least say he was sorry or ask for forgiveness. Sometimes he would even clean the mess. Never again did he yell at me or throw things at me.

"Baby girl." He would call me and I always gave him a smile when he was nice to me. I knew that it had to be difficult for him too. He couldn't control the voices in his head all the time. Sometimes I heard him mumbling and murmuring in his room. All I could do was give him pills and wait until the demons inside his head went quiet again. How hard it must have been for a human to live a life where you hear voices inside your head, and you're not sure to whom those voices belong? I tried to be patient with him because I knew I had to be the reasonable one.