Page 4 of Heartless Heathens

“Romina, I do not take pleasure in scolding you, my child.” His long, sinister face grew somehow more villainous as the smile spread from ear to ear.

“I-I-I just mean that—” He struck again once more, the breath leaving me as pain exploded across my face from the sharp sting of his palm.

I was long used to the taste of my own blood.

“I won’t hear of this again, Romina. Be grateful I don’t throw you to the streets to live like your whore of a mother did. You’re an adult now. I may just force you to take responsibility for yourself if you becometoo muchof a burden.” He eyed me up and down viciously before turning back and walking out the iron door, turning the key from the other side on all three of the locks that kept me here.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that?

As brave as I’d grown, in reality, I’d never even gone outside the iron gates of this campus. Every chance I got, I used the architecture, scaling the walls of this old chapel to sneak my way to the library on my own to borrow books. There was nowhere else to go. The forest that surrounded the campus stretched out for miles. I once spent two days roaming the woods, lost and panicking that I would either starve to death or an animal would eat me before I’d miraculously navigated my way out and back into the bell tower.

After that, I decided it wasn’t worth trying to leave.

The fear of what Father Frollo would do if he caught me was almost as terrifying as the thought of someone else doing it. I was of legal age now, and it wouldn’t take much for a clueless girl with nothing but her name to get scooped up off the street and sent off to a poorhouse.

The odds were against me out there.

There was no denying it.

“Lookoldman,ifI have to wait ten minutes for you every time we have to meet, I’m going to start charging you for wasting my time.” Sonny didn’t bother to look up from his phone to acknowledge him.

“My apologies gentlemen, I was under the impression you’d be coming tomorrow. Sister Agnes had planned to be your guide.” From the tone in his voice I couldn’t tell whether he was annoyed or anxious.

Definitely amusing.

“No apologies. Just do better Frodo,” Sonny mocked, his deep voice enough to intimidate the bag of skeletons in front of us, but his tattooed face sealed the kill instead.

“Frollo,” he corrected.

“It doesn’t matter.” I laughed, raking my fingers through my wavy brown hair.

“Escura.” Frollo’s eyes went wide with recognition at my face once I finally looked up. “When Arlan Black said he was sponsoring students, he did not mention it would be…you.” Claüde Frollo’s hands were fidgeting nervously while he attempted to rein in his composure with the fake smile he plastered to his face.

We weren’t strangers, though we’d never been acquainted.

Claüde Frollo was the reason my mother was dead.

There were no fluffier words to try to paint the story any prettier.

But while he stood there looking up at me, I wasn’t sure that he seemed as domineering, as frightening as I had remembered as a child. Was he scared of us now? I hoped he was. He’d pushed us into a corner, and now here we were, teeth barred at his door.

We were playing his game but we were changing the rules for ourselves.

He thought we were here for the same reasons every other poor fucker on campus was. To jump through the hoops he’d created that kept all those other sorry assholes in line, kept them from being able to live well. Keep the cycle going. We were neither here to save them or know them. The reality was we were here for our own self-interests. That and to retrieve something Arlan Black lost.

Or rather, Frollo stole from him.

After the sickness hit and the U.S government collapsed, the Church spared no time, effort, or energy in forcing their way to becoming the governing sanctity of the country.

If you weren’t filthy fucking rich, you’d better have gotten on your knees for God and prayed for the church to bless you with better opportunities. Those who pleased Christ’s cocksuckers got a seal of approval from the Archbishop Claüde Frollo himself to attend a professional school after graduating from these parochial crapholes.

It was the only way to become a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, or any other white coat profession that remained important in this asscrack of a crumbling society we had left. Which meant it was the only way to guarantee you could make money, support your life, maybe have a family without ending up in the poorhouses.

And as of right now, it was the only way for us to receive our inheritance.

Arlan Black was desperate for something Frollo took from him years ago and he demanded we sniffed around here to find it. He gave us four years to do it, but promised we’d be done the minute we found his things. As our guardian, the asshole had drawn up every legal agreement to ensure that if we didn’t fulfill the end of our bargain before he died, we’d end up penniless.

If we came to the school, we could at least accesssomeof our money. And that was better than nothing. How long would it take to find some old box of documents? The school was big, but not that big.