Page 55 of Wanted

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“You give love a bad name!” Kamila and I belted out the song, windows down and speakers blasting. We didn’t have an escort of bodyguards because Aram believed that his citizens would never harm us. Up the hill we went, the stick shift up the mountain exhausted my hand and my legs.

“A BAD NAME!”

After Kamila’s shower, she’d brightened up. She joined me in the car, and I drove around the inner city for a while. Kamila enjoyed watching Katantians go about their day. She asked questions about them, the collars, the tattoos, the tears, the glory.

I answered as vaguely as I could.

She knew the concept of Katantia, but it still appeared like a bad joke to her. I’d taught her that way. Perhaps, I could change the practices of the land until she grew out of her teens. Perhaps, I could make this world a better place for my daughter.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

In the end, I couldn’t change anything.

Aram made sure of that when he impregnated me against my will. In my late teens, the trajectory of my life changed. My parents had moved to Katantia to live out their sex dreams when I was sixteen years old. They left me in California with a grandma that was busy attending Hollywood galas and premieres. While graduating from high school and applying to UCLA, I distracted myself from my loneliness. On and off, I visited my parents in Katantia. They paid for all of my expenses, and I was mesmerized by the exotic peninsula in the Arabian Ocean. I partied hard with the locals. I was used to it. The 80s in LA had prepared me for decadence.

One day, I stumbled upon Aram Wraith, not knowing who the fuck the tall man with the silver eyes was. He looked like the leader of the band, fucking groupies left and right.

Naturally, I fucked him, too. Not wanting to catch any of his sex island diseases, I only fucked him with a condom. It wasn’t a one-time thing either. He alerted my parents. They shipped me off to the palace to spend the rest of my family vacation with the Prince of Katantia. I was high as a kite throughout my stay there, courtesy of Aram Wraith. I wasn’t one to say no to a high, but he ruined drugs for me. My memories of my time at the palace were blurry. I never once met the king, the queen, or his younger brother.

Quite literally fucked into oblivion, I was trapped in a haze.

Eventually, it was time for me to go, and I spent my flight back home, puking my guts out. When I returned to LA, it took me a couple of weeks, but I found out I was pregnant.

After briefly considering abortion, I decided to raise the baby on my own.

That was until my grandma ratted me out to my parents.

They told the Katantian palace.

The palace sent the cavalry to pick me up, uprooting me from UCLA, a university I had studied hard to get into. I left behind my entire life, and I became the prince’s wife because I carried his baby.

The prince didn’t react well when we found out that the baby was a girl.

“Mom? We’re here,” Kamila commented. Worry didn’t look good on my daughter’s face. My sons never worried about a thing. The world was theirs. But this little girl? She had mountains to climb in her life, a horde of obligations to tackle. “Are you feeling fine? You seem sad. You didn’t even skip the ‘Bed of Roses’ song that you hate so much.”

I hadn’t even noticed that it had played.

“I’m fine, sweetie. It’s one of my headaches,” I lied to my baby. I should love my sons more than I loved my daughter. That was what everyone expected. But I couldn’t resist my daughter and her energy. She was a little version of me. She had the fire that Aram had extinguished in the 80s.

“Can I get a smoothie?” Kamila asked. We locked the car, and we hurried into the newly refurbished Euphoria. As soon as the staff noticed that we had arrived, their moves became more hectic.

Kamila and I sat at our usual table with the prettiest view of Katantia. The night sky was dark, and the city lights were blinding. She was enthralled by the lights and the splendor. I couldn’t stare at it for too long.

My gaze drifted towards the owner of Euphoria.

He was on his way to our table. At the age of Kamila’s father, he was more youthful than Aram. Kindness radiated from him like it was in the air he breathed.

“What do we have here?” he asked, and Kamila turned to face him. She knew the royal etiquette, and she was kind to everybody on this island. “How was your day, ladies? Any news from the palace?”

Kamila shook her head, glancing at me. I was the grown-up. I had to conversate with this man. “No news, I’m afraid.”

“I can never get anything out of your mother,” he commented, smiling at us like he was genuinely happy to see us. “The usual, I suppose?”

“I’d like a smoothie, please! The fruity one,” Kamila chirped.

“Do you still make your waffles at this time?” I asked.