Chapter 7
She winced slightly as Camden gently blotted the makeup sponge over her face.
Reign had avoided the mirror for days unable to look at her face – her eyes.
She tried to drown out her regrets and traumas with sleep but there wasn’t any use.
The self-inflicted judgement and harsh words were worse than any hands and feet Javier could lay on her.
“You would think that by now I’d be used to that pain,” she muttered.
“You never get used to being beaten. The moment you get comfortable, you’re dead,” Camden replied, locking eyes with Reign. “Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.” Reign’s eyes dropped to her hands.
How’d she lived in a mansion with everything at her beck and call for the last six years and still managed to be a prisoner was beyond her.
There was no one else she could blame. Not her mother and the lack of nurturing skills she possessed.
Not her absentee father. Landing here was all of her doing.
A mind too young to understand how a man almost twice her age would use what she wanted most in the world against her.
She’d been played, hustled, beaten and led astray.
“Good. Listen to me,” Camden softly spoke, as if the two were surrounded by meddling ears.
Reign’s lightless eyes lifted from her hands to Camden’s intense orbs. Whatever she was going to say next was important and Reign needed to heed every syllable. “What?”
“The moment you can get away from KC, you run like your life depends on it,” Camden directed.
Reign croaked, the fear of the thought of running caused her to shake. “I can’t run, he’ll kill me. You know he will. He’ll have KC drag me back and beat me worse than he did before.”
Camden gripped her chin to silence her. “Be quiet. And listen to me. If you let him bring you back here, I’ll kill you myself, Reign.
You aren’t a slave to Javi. You aren’t indebted to Javi.
You’re only trapped in your mind. The moment you realize that, this place would look exactly like what it really is – a prison. He doesn’t own you.”
“Where am I supposed to go? I don’t know anyone in Majestic Heights. What if they-”
“You get to a hotel where they won’t look.
One that doesn’t bring too much attention.
You stay there. Get a burner phone, let me know you’re safe.
Find a JoyUnion and I will make sure I send you something every week until you’re on your feet.
Get a job where no one cares about your business.
This is five thousand, this will help, plus whatever I can send. ”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because I’ve watched him snatch lives and light from women left and right.
You have so much to do and be in life, you can’t do it here and you can’t do it from the grave,” Camden replied, folding the money she pulled out of the make-up bag and motioned to Reign’s bra.
“Lift it up and put it under so no one knows it’s there. ”
Reign nodded and obliged. “What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me, Reign. I’m here to guide you. I can at least do that before it’s too late,” Camden shared just as a knock sounded against the door. “Remember what I told you.”
Nodding in agreement, Reign straightened up.
“Come in,” Camden called over her shoulder from the bathroom.
KC opened up the main door to the bedroom, his voice coming through and sobering the moment. Making the reality of this burn a hole in her throat, the lump serving as searing coal. “Car’s here. Where are the bags?”
“We’ll be ready in just a moment,” Camden replied. “Finishing makeup.”
“Hurry up,” KC ordered gruffly, making Camden roll her eyes. The door shut and she returned to her instruction.
“I covered up all the bruises on your face. Did you put the leggings on?”
Reign nodded. “And I put the t-shirt over it.”
“Even if it’s not tonight, whenever you find the right moment, be prepared to run, okay?”
“Okay.” Reign reached out and hugged Camden. Whether she knew it or not, she’d given Reign the strength to at least try to run. Even if KC found her and dragged her back by her hair, at least she’d tried. For Reign, the power of trying was the first step to getting free.
“I’m going to be waiting for that call. Tell me my number again,” Camden requested, holding Reign closely.
“690-652-4580,” Reign recited.
“Good girl. It’s time to go. Run like hell and don’t look back.” Camden kissed her cheek and released her. “Make me proud.”
Reign gave her hand a squeeze. “I will.”
Releasing one another, the pair started toward the door.
Camden pulled it open, giving KC a tense look as he ogled over Reign.
There was never a question of her beauty.
No one ever missed that. It was her light that made her the flame moths danced around.
The light that Javier attempted to beat out of her.
Camden cleared her throat, snapped, and pointed to Reign’s designer bookbag and two suitcases. “The bags.”
KC recentered himself, took his lustful eyes off Reign, and picked up all the bags. “Let’s go, the car is ready. Javi wants us to keep our schedule.”
Reign, playing her role as the na?ve girl Javier bamboozled years ago, “Is he coming?”
“No, he’s in Cascadia Shores for the next week.”
Reign buzzed to herself. The other woman he would visit from time to time, playhouse with, giving her all the things he swore he’d give Reign.
Over the years, Reign went from resenting her to enjoying the time he’d spent with her.
Anytime he was with her, he wasn’t forcing himself on her or beating her.
It was telling that the week he’d send Reign up north to be his sex slave was the same week he’d disappeared to be an upstanding family man.
“We should get going,” Reign softly spoke, walking past KC.
The ride to the private airport was quiet, KC played with his phone.
Reign stared out the window, peering at the city she once swore she would rule.
A beauty empire, employing the women and men from the projects she and her mother bounced from.
Port Lucia was her home. Although sparkling and alluring from above, it was gritty and dangerous within.
When she ran and got away from KC, Javier, and all the pain The Port had brought her, it would be a memory.
As long as Javier had life in his body, she would never be able to return.
Part of her was sad about it. Sad that fleeing the place she called home was the only path to survival and freedom from his wickedness.
The blacked out SUV pulled to a stop at the bottom of the jet stairs. Like clockwork, the doors were opened, bags were removed and Reign held the hem of her gown as she started up the steps.
KC leaned down to assist, earning him a swat.
“I don’t need your help,” she softly hissed, receiving a sinister chuckle in return.
Settled into her seat on the plane, she crossed her legging-covered legs, being sure they didn’t show from the bottom and then folded her arms over one another. KC took a seat next to her and sighed. Reign did her best to ignore him but his need to have her attention would foil her attempt.
“What happened between you and I?” KC questioned behind the closed partition, privacy that KC requested upon stepping onto the aircraft.
“You and I were never friends,” Reign spoke, peering out of the window.
“No?”
“Never.” She scoffed. “You wanted to fuck me. I recall telling you no but you continued to press me. At a party full of people. You didn’t even speak up about it when Javi asked if I wanted you too. You just stood there.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“I’m not. That’s the first night he beat me.
Because of you. A jealous, coke-filled rage because the idea of another man having what was his sent him into a fury.
But never did he touch you or berate you.
I paid for it. The scar on my lip and my chin as proof.
I have no friends. No family. Nothing. So don’t ask me no shit like that again,” Reign responded, finally turning to face him.
“I never wanted that to happen to you.”
“But it did. And it kept happening. You think being held down and raped wasn’t enough? He had to beat me too and you watched.” Reign stopped herself before the tears could ruin the makeup and expose the ugliness underneath. “Stop talking to me.”
KC continued. “I did what I was told to do.”
Reign scoffed and stood up, she didn’t care if the plane was taking off or not. “And you’re a bitch for that.”
He grabbed her wrist. “Sit down.”
Yanking away, Reign moved across the aisle to the single seat, buckled, and swiveled toward the window. “Don’t say shit else to me.”
KC swiped a hand down his head and sighed. This was going to be the longest three-hour flight in history.