Command Performance Part One
875 Words
Cellie's POV
The clock on my nightstand blinked 7:15 PM in accusatory red numbers. Saturday night. DeLeon estate. My stomach churned like a washing machine full of rocks. Hair up or hair down. That was the question tormenting me as I stared at my reflection in the old, blurry mirror of my vanity, the cheap glass warping my features like a funhouse version of myself.
Thirty minutes. Thirty goddamn minutes I'd been debating this trivial decision while my life circled the drain. My brain usually operated with surgical precision, but tonight it had turned to soup. All organization, all logic had abandoned me, replaced by this restless energy crawling under my skin like fire ants.
The event. The one I'd been dreading all week. It lodged in my throat like a fish bone, sat heavy in my stomach like spoiled meat. Every time I imagined walking into that courtyard, my chest tightened until I could barely breathe. But defying my mother... well, that came with consequences far worse than a few excruciating hours surrounded by DeLeons and their blood money.
Fuck this.
I didn't want to see my mother's ghost-pale face, perpetually pinched with the effort of pretending she wasn't selling herself to the highest bidder. I didn't want to be near her husband, Manuel, a man I couldn't stand, whose hands I imagined stained red no matter how expensive his cufflinks were. And I sure as hell didn't want to be anywhere near her stepson, who might be even more dangerous than his father, if such a thing were possible.
Thinking about Demetrio made me groan out loud, the sound bouncing off my bedroom walls like a wounded animal.
I loathed the idea of being near him again, loathed it with the kind of intensity usually reserved for people who'd wronged me personally. Not that he'd been absent. God, no. He'd been an unshakable shadow all week, this looming presence I never actually saw but somehow felt everywhere, hovering at the edges of my life, following me through hallways I swore were empty, watching me from corners that held no one.
And the maddening part? I wasn't nearly as unsettled by that as I should've been. It burrowed under my skin, this feeling, foreign and infuriating.
Ever since that hallway, my mind had been a warzone. Anger. Embarrassment. My ego lying flat on the pavement like roadkill. No man had made me lose control like that, made my body betray my brain so completely, not since Dave in grade eleven, and even that comparison felt insulting to what happened with Demetrio.
But Demetrio DeLeon did exactly that, and I hated him for it with a passion that scared me a little.
I was the seductress. Always had been. Men wanted me, chased me, sometimes begged for scraps of my attention. I held the reins, and if I ever loosened my grip, it was because I chose to, because I allowed it. Control, either way. Always control.
But with Demetrio... God.
It had felt like the exact opposite of control. Like I was an instrument and he was the musician, playing my body to whatever aching, desperate tune he desired, and I let him. I actually let him.
I'd been so blinded by heat, by a lust so consuming it scorched every rational thought from my head, that I let him command my body, work it higher and higher until I didn't recognize the sounds coming out of my own mouth. And we hadn't even had s*x. Not technically.
I grabbed my brush and dragged it through my hair for what felt like the hundredth time, this time with more force than necessary, like I could brush the memory right out of my scalp.
He'd occupied my thoughts every single day since. Slowly bulldozed his way into my head, the same arrogant, unstoppable way he probably bulldozed his way through every room he walked into.
I hated men like him. Arrogant. Overbearing. Dangerous in ways that went beyond guns and blood money. Growing up in this world, surrounded by violence dressed up in tailored suits, I'd learned early to avoid men like Demetrio like a plague, like something that could kill you slow and pretty. But now I understood, infuriatingly, what my blushing classmates meant when they gushed about fictional bad boys. The thrill. The dangerous, delicious pull of it.
I felt that thrill too. Except I wasn't stupid like those fictional heroines. Nothing good could come from wanting my own stepbrother.
I'll be damned if I do.
I gave my hair one final brush, fluffed the ends, and studied my reflection one more time. Decision made.
"Hair down it is," I told the empty room.
I reached for my favorite lipstick, a red MAC cremesheen I'd scored at fifty percent off months ago and had been obsessed with ever since. The shade complemented my skin, made my lips look fuller than they were. I swiped it on with practiced precision, blotted, checked my teeth.
I inspected every inch of my reflection, searching for flaws, finding none. Green dress fitted right. Hair falling in soft waves down my back. Lips red as a warning sign.
I was ready. Or as ready as I'd ever be.
- Writer
