Page 25 of Ruthless Chaos

The bathroom is huge and beautiful—it’s all marble and glass with golden fixtures—but now it feels cold and unforgiving.

I want to disappear, to fold myself so small nobody can find me again.

I hate this school. I hate my father for screwing my life up. I hate Uncle Laurent for thinking I could handle this. I hate that guy for kissing me so good then treating me like shit when he realized he wouldn’t get to fuck me.

I even hate Tara for dragging me to the party then abandoning me.

If only there was a guide to navigating this new life.

I’ve gone from being sequestered in a high-security house all day every day to having to survive in a cutthroat community of killers.

If what happened at the lake is any indication of how successful I’ll be at this, I might as well choose a casket.

As I walk to the sink, his voice appears in my head.

Pathetic.

He has no idea that he voiced my deepest fear at that moment.

Iampathetic when you think about it. I thought that being able to survive my father would make me good at surviving the world, but I’ve never felt this helpless before. That guy by the lake isn’t the first dangerous man to hurt me, so why does it feel like he is?

The girl staring back at me in the mirror makes me angry.

My dark hair is wet, the loosened curls sticking to my neck and shoulders. My eyes are still swollen from crying, and my usually warm brown skin is tinged with pink all over, rubbed raw from all the scrubbing.

There are angry bruises all over my neck, stretching from my jaw to my collarbone. They’re a deep purple and sensitive to the touch. Even my lips are bruised. I search my body for more, and sure enough, everywhere his hands were there’s a commensurate mark.

Tears well up in my eyes. I rummage through the cabinets in the bathroom.

The bruises are my breaking point.

How dare he leave marks on me? WhenIleave marks on my skin, they help me to remember thatI’m the one in control.Thesemarks are symbols of his dominance.

This is too much for me to bear on my own.

Now, in addition to the memories, I’ll have to live with these marks for the next few days. I’ll have to see them whenever I look in the mirror.

With harried hands, I search through the cabinets in the bathroom. After a few minutes, I finally find what I’m looking for—a box of razors.

I break the plastic encasing the razor with the heels Tara lent me. It takes a few stomps, but eventually it splits open. I pick my prize from the rubble. With the razor in one hand and some antiseptic wipes in the other, I start chasing away the pain.

The first cut is sweet reprieve.

The pain he inflicted on me was delicious at first, but it turned into something else, something sinister.Thispain, though, is familiar.

This pain, I can handle.

This pain, I can control.

I bask in the gentle waves of comfort that wash over me. When the pain has burnt away everything else, I use the antiseptic wipes to clean my wounds.

The pain pulses in my thighs as I clean up the mess I made, but it deepens my resolve.

I will make it through this.

I will get over that encounter I had by the lake.

Despite my conflicting feelings about it, I’m sure of one thing—he’s an asshole for the way he treated me.