Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
“Go to sleep, Andrik,” Mommy whispers. “It’s your big day tomorrow, and I can’t wait to share it with you.”
Her hands are so gentle that not even the excitement that I’m about to turn five stops my eyelids from closing. They flutter shut just as a big booming voice asks to speak to Mommy.
“In a minute,” she replies, her voice as soft as her hands. “I promised Andrik that I would put him to bed.” She sounds distant even with her hands still in my hair. She must have turned to face the person. “When you make a promise, you keep it.” Her breaths tickle my ear more than the dark hairs curled around it. “Don’t you, Andrik?”
I nod for half a second before falling asleep.
I shouldn’t have skipped story time. I badly need to go to the bathroom. My tummy is making noises like the Angry Bear in my favorite bedtime story. I don’t think it liked my cake as much as my tastebuds did.
Mommy said I shouldn’t eat sweets before bed or they’ll give me a tummy ache.
Mommy was right.
After crawling out of bed, I go to the bathroom in the hallway. I don’t have a bathroom next to my desk like in my bedroom at home. Mommy said Grandpa’s houses are massive but old. She said when they were built, they had a stinky pan under all the beds for guests to do their business.
That’s another reason I’ll no longer hide under a bed.
People once put their poop down there.
That’s gross.
I’m about to enter the bathroom a few doors down from my room when I hear shouting. That happens a lot at Grandpa’s house, especially between my mommy and daddy. The mean voice doesn’t sound like Daddy this time. It is deeper and weird, like one of my brothers’ moms. She’s from another country, so she doesn’t talk like us.
I race for the stairwell when Mommy shouts, “No. I can’t leave him. He needs me. And you promised. You said if I married him, I could stay.”
Whatever the man with a big round tummy tells her makes her mad. She doesn’t keep her hands balled at her sides like she does when she shouts at Daddy. She slaps him hard across the face.
I can’t see his face since he’s so tall, but the crack sound makes it obvious that she hit him—as does the way he grabs my mommy’s arms. He digs his fat fingers in deep, and tears burst into my eyes.
He’s hurting my mommy, and it makes my chest ache so much that I forget I need to poop. I race down the stairwell with an angry roar and barge away the man with a hairy top lip from my mommy.
He doesn’t budge an inch.
I’m not so lucky. He hits me so hard that the red ring on his pinkie finger cracks my cheek and sends me sprawling backward.
I’m not exactly sure what happens next. A weird click sounds through my ears a second before my vision is blocked by the shirt Anoushka wears anytime we stay at Grandpa’s place. She has to wear it to make sure the secret service knows she is the help.
She isn’t the help to me.
She is family.
“It’s okay, Andrik,” Anoushka assures me when I try to check on my mommy.
Anoushka must have raced us up the stairwell, as the man who hit me is below me again, surrounded by people in black suits and shiny shoes. Only one pair of shoes look like my mommy’s.
“Mommy!” I shout when she walks away with the man who hurt me.
She wouldn’t do that.
She would never go with a person who hit me.
She once told Daddy she would kill him if he ever hurt me.
“Mommy! Don’t go with him. Come back!”
I fight and fight to get out of Anoushka’s hold. She never lets me go. She holds on tight until the wetness on my cheeks makes me so tired that I don’t care if I wake up with pajama pants just as messy.
1
ZOYA
Present day…
My focus should be on the almost restraint-like stirrups protruding from the end of the bed I’m seated on, or how my backside is clinging to the minute strip of material maintaining my modesty. The only thing that demands my attention when Dr. Hemway enters his examination room, however, is the location of my underwear.
Excluding a patient gown, I’m naked from the waist down, chilled from an AC set far too low for the icy conditions outside, yet my focus is fixed on whether I remembered to hide my panties when the nurse exited to give me privacy so I could switch my regular clothes for ones made from tissue paper.
Excluding the receptionist, everyone in this office has seen what I’m working with—inside and out—so why do I care if Dr. Hemway sees the skimpy material a fashion lover classified as panties?