"And one day,
she discovered that
she was fierce and strong,
and full of fire
that not even she
could hold herself back
because the passion
burned brighter than
her fears."
On the outskirts of that town stood a small, two-storied mansion, richly decorated with the taste of an egotistical Victorian megalomaniac.
The house was up for renters to grab whenever it tickled their fancy to live the way the rich might have over a century ago, with a touch of modernity.
Upstairs, in one corner of the house, in a room where windows were barred and the door could be easily locked from the outside, Scarlett Ambrose slept anything, but soundly.
She was jolted awake and her shoulders sagged, already tired of the day even though it had barely begun.
The fact that she no longer awoke peacefully was a constant reminder that she no longer slept in Ace's arms.
She reached over and pressed a button on her phone to make it light up.
It told her that it was barely five in the morning.
In the two days that Scarlett had lived in the same house as Kai Wickham, his housemate Brad Windom and their frequent guest, Terrence Burke, she had barely gotten any sleep.
Each morning, she forced herself out of bed and sat on the floor, crying to herself, the same way she cried herself to sleep. She was getting so tired of crying.
She cried because she was heartbroken for the loss of Ace.
She cried because she was so angry at herself for losing Ace.
She cried because her life had just been getting good and she felt like she had ruined it for herself.
And now, she was stuck in a house with her nightmares and there was no one to save her.
The only person who could save her, the one who protected her, didn't seem very sympathetic towards her cause.
Scarlett looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, inspecting her red eyes with a hollow look and her paled skin. The marks that Ace had left on her skin as they kissed were fading away into nothing.
She felt zombie-like as she readied herself for the day, prepping and primping, dressing in clothing that they would approve of.
Scarlett spent extra time caring for her face, careful to put on enough makeup to hide her lack of sleep, something her new bosses didn't like seeing in her, as primitive as they were.
She sat at the vanity in her room, combing her hair, wondering how her life had become what she ran away from years before. Even when she escaped, it seemed that she could not escape.
She opened her case of earrings to select a pair and stopped, staring inside.
The ever-present, familiar lump rose to her throat as she reached inside and picked up the small, cool silver stud and turned it around in her fingers.
It was a cufflink with a rich, deep blue face set in sterling silver.
It was Ace's.
Scarlett closed her hand around it and held it to her chest, her eyes closing and tears falling. She inhaled deeply and opened her eyes to look at herself in the mirror.
"For Ace," she told herself, "To keep him safe."
She stayed in her room for as long as she could, knowing that it would be the only time during the day that she would get to herself, away from the hyenas she now had to work for.
She was nothing short of miserable.
A knock came at her door at eight-thirty in the morning.
Kai stood smiling at her when she opened the door. "Breakfast is ready," he informed her, "Come on. Wouldn't want to keep us waiting, now, would you?"
Scarlett, as usual, said nothing. She followed him downstairs into the dining room, where Brad was already seated.
"Scarlett," he said, leaning back and taking her in, "Always nice to see you in the morning. You know, if you want, we could see each other at night, too."
Scarlett continued her silence, taking her seat to Kai's left, her eyes focused on the toast in front of her.
The men exchanged a look.
They didn't find subdued Scarlett as fun as she was when she talked back or fought back. They still hadn't decided exactly what they wanted to do with her; they only knew that she needed to be under their control for them to be happy.
Throughout the day, Scarlett followed them around their offices, listening to them talk about the semi-annual launch, not knowing what to do for it. She listened to them talk about women in the most demeaning way possible and she listened to them speak to her in ways that Ace never would.
It was late at night and the three men were seated around a table playing cards, as Scarlett stood close, listening to them and playing croupier.
She dealt a hand and Brad picked up his cards to look at them.
"Say, Scarlett, you wouldn't happen to have an Ace up your sleeve, now, would you?" he asked and the men laughed uproariously, like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.
Scarlett rolled her eyes and sighed as she continued to deal.
"You're not being very fun, Scarlett," Kai commented, as he rifled through his hand.
Scarlett slammed the pack down on the table. "If I'm not entertaining you enough, you're welcome to let me leave."
Kai raised his eyes to hers. "Don't be difficult."
Scarlett stood up so fast that her chair toppled over and clattered to the floor with a bang. She glared at him Kai who looked up at her.
"The three of you have kidnapped me and I'm the one who's being difficult?" she demanded.
Kai flipped his cards into place, airily. "You came here on your own volition, remember?"
"Because you blackmailed me." She picked up the pack and flung it across the table, cards scattering everywhere. "Deal your cards yourself, you babies."
She turned on her hell and stormed away in the direction of her room.
She slammed her door shut behind her, fuming.
She crossed the room and picked up the cushions that lay on her bed and threw them across the room, savagely, trying to let out her anger and frustration.
The door to her room opened and Kai walked in, closing the door behind him.
With an aggravated yell, Scarlett threw the cushion that she was holding at him.
Kai ducked, holding his hand out and swatted the cushion to the ground. He looked at Scarlett who stood in the middle of the room, her legs planted shoulder-width apart, breathing heavily, staring daggers at him.
Kai was never a patient man, nor did he have his anger in check. With one glare at her, he turned and locked the door before walking towards her.
"You're not being very nice, are you?" he asked, as he advanced on her, staring her down.
Scarlett glared back, and squared her shoulders, getting ready. She wasn't sure what Kai would do. She was never sure what Kai would do. In the two years that she had known him, she never knew what he would do to her.
"You know I don't like it when you behave like this," he told her, like he was reprimanding a child.
Scarlett scoffed. "I don't care about what you like or don't like."
Kai smirked, sinisterly. He took one more step so that he stood right in front of Scarlett. "You'll pay for this." He leaned in to whisper in her ear. "Vanessa."
Scarlett glared.
Kai took a strand of her hair in his fingers. "I missed you, Vanessa. You ran away from me."
His hand began to slip around her waist, but Scarlett slapped it away and stepped back. "Don't touch me!" she commanded, savagely.
Kai raised his eyebrows. "My, my! We've become so brave, haven't we, Vanessa?"
He moved to touch her again.
Scarlett took another step back, holding her hands up in front of her. "I said don't touch me."
Kai kept moving forward, forcing Scarlett to step back in an effort not to touch him. "You didn't complain much when I used to," he said. He reached up and wrapped her fingers tightly around her neck, pushing her against the wall that she backed up into and pressed himself into her so that she couldn't move.
Holding her back against the wall, he put his lips against her ear. "I'll do with you whatever the hell I please, Vanessa."
He said her name in the hopes of intimidating her, but it didn't work
Scarlett threw her head violently in his direction, headbutting him. He groaned in pain, but pushed her against the wall. "You don't own me," she spat, "Get off of me, you oaf."
She pushed against him and Kai pushed back.
"Don't anger me, Vanessa," he cautioned. "You know what I'm like when I'm angry."
"And you wonder why I ran away," she retorted.
Kai roamed across her face, and down her neck, inspecting her. His eyes fell on the disappearing hickey on her neck and he laughed.
"Did a certain lover-boy give you that?" he asked.
Scarlett struggled against him.
"I could give you one, too," he volunteered.
"Don't touch me," Scarlett ordered again, kicking his shin.
Growling deeply and maniacally, Kai pushed down the sleeve of Scarlett's dress and viciously bit down on her shoulder, making her exclaim in pain.
Scarlett knew the move. She had endured so many of his bite marks over the years that she worked for him. As the pain spread through her, she wondered how she had put up with it for so long.
Yelling in pain, Scarlett roughly bent her leg, kneeing him in the groin.
She exclaimed again as Kai's teeth, clamped down on her skin, was dragged away as he jerked back, crying out in agony.
"You bitch!" he grunted, his hands covering his groin.
"Get out of my room!" Scarlett snarled, through gritted teeth.
Groaning, Kai straightened. He glowered at Scarlett.
"When that storm hits tonight, Vanessa, I better not hear a sound from you," he spat, before turning and walking out of the room, unsteadily.
Scarlett turned to look out the window.
Sure enough, the moon was nowhere to be seen in the starless sky and it seemed dark, even for the night. She realized that he was right. A storm was brewing.
Backing up against her bed, Scarlett sank down into it, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as she bit down on her lip.
Then, more than ever, she wished that she was safely snuggled in bed with Ace, who would protect her from the terrors of the storm.
She reached under her pillow and took out Ace's handkerchief. It barely smelled of him anymore, but it was still his, soft and comforting like his touch.
She clutched it and closed her eyes tightly. "For Ace," she told herself, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, "To keep him safe."
* * *
The man in question, Ace Hardwood, wasn't having much better a day than Scarlett, herself.
While he wasn't plagued by vicious maniacal vultures living with him, his heart was in turmoil. Whenever he stepped out of his room, he looked directly at the closed door to Scarlett's room.
The door was closed as it had been for the week and two days since she had left.
He couldn't bear to open it and inhale the smell of Scarlett that lingered. In fact, one of the first things Ace had done was strip the sheets off of his bed and replace them with fresh ones to get rid of her smell in the hopes that his heart wouldn't call out for her as much.
He was wrong.
His heart didn't need smell.
His heart still wanted her badly.
His brain manifested her everywhere.
She was there when his newspaper was still on his doorstep, untouched.
She was there when the coffee was never brewed when Ace came down in the morning.
She was there when the house was deadly silent because Ace didn't feel like listening to jazz anymore.
She was there in his kitchen, eating snacks right out of their boxes or cartons or cans.
She was there, seated on the balcony, humming the tune of the music that played on the stereo.
She was there sprawled across his bed, telling him that it was a piece of heaven.
She was there descending the staircase, heels clattering across the tiles as she approached him.
She was everywhere.
She was in everything he looked.
Ace could barely get any work done in his home office without seeing her, standing at his bookshelves, sniffing the books.
So, Ace stayed at Woods Towers, cooped up in his office, not that it made much of a difference.
He hadn't ventured into Scarlett's office since she left. She almost seemed like a ghost at that point. He could see her everywhere, but nowhere at the same time.
Even on the pages of the document Michael had brought him, Ace could see her face as she encouraged him to go on and helped him as much as she could.
As much as his brain told his heart that she had been lying to him, it refused to listen, loving her despite it all, knowing that she wasn't Eve.
Ace picked up the loose papers of the document and flung them across the room, paper scattering everywhere and fluttering to the floor.
He was angry.
He didn't want to use any of it, thinking that Scarlett must have told Terrence about his plans, despite assuring him that she hadn't. He wasn't inclined to believe her.
He brashly opened his drawer and pulled out the draft documents that had been drawn up for the launch.
As he rifled through the papers, he found a piece of note paper attached, mentioning the various ideas that Scarlett had randomly thrown at him over the days of them planning for the semi-annual launch together. He sat, reading through the paper.
Slowly, as the words made sense, an idea blossomed in his mind.
Scarlett's words had given him an even better launch plan than the one he had been working on.
A small smile played at his lips.
He felt almost triumphant as he tried to drown out the voice in his head that reminded him of who had given him the idea.
He leaned back in his chair and realized that it was almost eleven in the night.
Closing his laptop, he turned in his chair and looked out his glass-paned windows into the night sky.
A crack of lightning streaked across the city and he heard the faint sound of thunder outside.
A storm was brewing.
Ace stood and walked over to the glass to look out.
He knew she was somewhere out there.
He just didn't know where.
He wanted to be there for her and hold her until the storm passed.
He just wanted to hold her.
He couldn't.
So, he turned, ready to go home.
Deep in his heart, he hoped that she would be alright.
How do you think this will all end?
Should I just upload everything and put you guys out of your misery?
I wonder.
First chapter of 'The Billionaire's Playmate' will drop this week. Stay tuned for it. It'll just be a starter and the rest of the story will come subsequently.
If you want a sneak peak at it, drop me a message to my inbox. ;)
Much love!