Chapter 2
KALINA
Wings flapped rapidly outside. On the ledge of the stairwell anchored to the exterior wall of the apartment building I was last moved to, the pigeons cooed in alarm. Others flew off.
It was no wonder that they were unsettled, disturbed by the ruckus of partiers and normal people celebrating the new year.
Normal people.
I sighed heavily as I stood slowly.
I wasn’t normal.
Nothing about my life could count as anything resembling normalcy.
Walking across the small, barren bedroom was an exercise I usually enjoyed. What I needed was to run.
To sprint away without any tethers. To dash into the open with only the wide sky watching over me.
But that’s not happening.
I reached the narrow window, a slit in the wall that gave me the only clearance to witness the outside world. The real one, full of normal people.
Not this imprisonment of an existence I was supposed to call life. Not this identity of a younger sister, shackled and sheltered by an older brother.
Pushing the curtain aside, I peeked at the limited view I was allowed at this location. The last place Erik had moved me to had a bigger window in the bedroom he'd locked me in. My brother constantly moved me around, with no rhyme or reason to the transportation.
After our parents died and he took over my life, assuming guardianship of me when I was twelve and he was nineteen, he considered himself my master.
My teacher. My ruler who could move me around as he pleased.
My captor who would keep me locked in a room without a single care for my mental health or need to be part of the real world. With the normal people.
You’re normal.
I peered at the bigger but duller pigeon strutting on the ledge. With her darker plumage and basic appearance, I knew she was the female. She had no need to attract a male, no concern to present herself and win over another for her future.
And that was normal. As far as a bird could be normal or not, she was exactly as expected.
You’re normal, too.
I considered her mate. The male pigeon didn’t let her stray too far, ever watchful with his quick eyes to track where she went.
That’s normal.
He wasn’t stalking her out of malice or for control, but because he was concerned about her, wanting her to be free of danger. That regard of well-being was normal. It was something I would never experience in my life again.
So long as my brother wanted to train me into a model, obedient, and subservient wife for the highest bidder, I would lack that kind of care.
And while he entrusted his friend, Yusef, to condition me into the locked, caged animal that I was, I would never have the opportunity to feel a man’s watchful eye on me—not out of control, not as a means of dominance and possession, but out of…
Love.
Another dreary sigh left my lips as I watched the pigeons, envying how the pair had it better than I did. Mere birds were more fortunate than I was. Mated for life and free to soar in the open sky, they had an envious life of such freedom that I could never dare to hope for.
“I told you, Marco.”
I froze internally, always alarmed when Erik’s voice came through the walls. My older brother had a loud yet whining tone that would likely set anyone’s teeth on edge. It chilled me. It infuriated me. Fourteen years, I dreaded him speaking and dictating how my life should be lived.
As a thing.
As a commodity.
As a means for him to reap the rewards of a get-rich-quick scheme in selling his sister to the highest bidder.
Even though I detested the sound of him speaking, I gave up on the pigeons.
They didn’t need an audience. They weren’t out on that ledge to entertain me.
Instead, I crossed the room again. Pacing back and forth was all the exercise I could ever look forward to.
No matter the location Erik brought me to, I could rely on the ability to pace in the small locked rooms I was stuck in.
It was a paltry excuse for how terribly I wanted to roam. To stretch and flee.
I didn’t cross the room for exercise. No. This was to listen and observe. To try to piece together some kind of an expectation of what would come next. If I were to be moved again so soon. If I were to be taken to Yusef for more obedience training. If I were to…
No. Don’t think it, Kali. Don’t.
I swallowed hard, forcing it past the emotions clogging my throat. The idea of finally being married off, of Erik and Yusef coming through on the threat that I’d be sold one day soon, was too much to stomach.
It was inevitable, the transfer of my imprisonment under my brother to the sentence of being married off.
Each morning that came, I prayed it wouldn’t be today. Every night that passed, I fell asleep with the worry that it would come tomorrow.
Pressing my ear to the thin walls to eavesdrop for clues about my future, I tensed up and waited for my brother to speak again.
“That’s not how I see this happening, Marco,” Erik said haughtily. “You think I don’t know what I’ve got here? You think I’m clueless and ignorant, huh?”
Rough chuckles followed before he jeered again, likely speaking on the phone because I would’ve felt the vibrations on the floor if someone else had entered the apartment.
“I may not be some sharp and rising star in the Rivera family, but I am well aware of the asset I have here.”
Asset.
Dread curdled in my stomach that he was talking about me.
“And we both know that you’ve been informed about the transaction I am expecting,” Erik added.
Transaction.
Anger burned my blood as he referenced how he planned to get rid of me, all for his own gain. At the cost of my freedom.
“I have spent too long preparing for this day,” he added to the Mafia leader who’d called him. “Too much time and money.”
I gritted my teeth, doing my best to stem the fury that simmered through me.
While I couldn’t argue about how long he’d invested in me, I would never, ever perceive it as a gift.
“Now if you want to renegotiate and reconsider the terms and price you’ve presented so far, then maybe we can still be in business, Marco.”
Silence followed. The slow beat of my heart proved that I still lived, but with each second that ticked by, I felt like I was slowly dying.
It can’t happen.
Not yet.
Please, no.
I never wanted to be sold off, married to some asshole who’d expect me to be a thing, a possession. Gulping hard as my pulse raced, I ignored the rise of anxiety.
I don’t want to be a transaction, given to some man who can breed me.
That was the fate Erik and Yusef had been educating me about for so long. That was the end-goal of what my future would consist of. Kept as an obedient vessel to bear children. Nothing more.
Tears burned behind my lids, but I inhaled deeply, staving them off for now.
Crying wouldn’t change a damn thing. I learned that in the first few months after my parents passed away.
I wasn’t sure what eavesdropping on Erik’s phone call would do either, but I refused to be completely helpless and do nothing.
“Yes, yes.” Erik hadn’t hung up yet. “A wedding in March would be ideal, but only with severe renegotiations on your end of the deal.”
March?
Panic replaced the anxiety that grew within me. My chest felt too tight. My skin was too taut and thin. Breathing harder and faster, I was helpless to how my body physically and viscerally reacted to the threat he’d mentioned.
March?
No.
That’s too soon.
Any month would be too soon because despite all the years of being trapped like a bird with clipped wings, a tiny thread of the woman I once was still survived deep down.
I never wanted my marriage to come.
It would always be too soon, too close, too horrible of a nightmare to come true.
I hadn’t had a chance to live.
To be myself.
To breathe the fresh air and explore without any constraints.
I wanted the freedom to move. To read. To speak my mind. To just be!
Without any more sounds from the other room, it seemed Erik had hung up. I’d heard enough for now, anyway. Suspended in terror and this stupidly stubborn refusal to accept that my life would be over in two months, I backed away from the wall.
Numb and weak, I staggered back toward the window.
Sucking in shallow breaths as my vision blurred, I felt so defenseless to the panic attack that was creeping over me.
Once my back hit the opposite wall, I sank down a bit. Too sluggish to stand straight, I leaned to the side.
The sliver of gray brightness beckoned me to focus out there. Through the window.
Yusef often beat me for staring out the windows, claiming I was letting my mind wander to places it shouldn’t. That I needed to concentrate on the present, on the man I would be given to so I could be his slave and whore to breed.
Nothing outside the window could matter to me, according to Yusef.
Yet, it was the one habit I couldn’t break.
Drawn to be a spectator of the real work out there, I couldn’t stop this compulsion to get a glimpse of the normal people out there.
It wasn’t only the open, dull sky that lured me to stare mindlessly this time. It wasn’t just the need to imagine such freedom and openness, the bite of fresh air to make me feel alive and not trapped.
But the bird’s eye.
The female pigeon had hopped closer. Standing on the edge of the windowsill, with her mate ever-present like the loving partner he was behind her, she ducked. Back and forth, she jerkily lowered her head to peer at me.
She blinked, then cocked her head to the side.
Something about her gaze locking on me jarred me from the panic.
Then she tapped her beak. It rapped against the windowpane.
Once, twice.
She stared again, as if beseeching me to see her.
As if summoning me to watch her. To heed her will.
Before I could move, beholden to stare back at the bird, she took off.
In a flurry of her dark wings lifting up and pushing the air down, she bent in her thin little legs and launched into the sky.
She was here one second, with her mate, then gone in the next.
Soaring through the sky, a blur of dark and gray feathers that contrasted the dull clouds that kissed the skyscrapers of the city, she was gone.
She took off.
Flying without any shackles.
Almost as if she were demonstrating what I knew I had to do.
Go.
Escape, Kali.
You need to go.
It was past time to envy a pigeon for her freedom and ability to choose her one mate for life.
It was time for me to escape this hellish imprisonment and get away before my brother could truly sell me off to a Mafia man.
Two months.
I stepped back from the window, stronger with this resolve that was a long-time coming.
I need to run.
Fisting my hands to vent the anger coiling inside me, I vowed that with all my might and until my last breath, I would.