Born to die - Playing dangerous I

T W O

Adelaide's P.O.V.

“Ade!” Noemi shook me gently and immediately I snapped out of my shocked state.

I rushed closer to the guard, rolled him on his back with my foot, and pulled the letter-opener out of his neck. I wiped it on his shirt, cleaning it from the blood, and then put it back beneath my short negligee, securing it on my hip under the elastic of my panties. Noemi took the guard’s gun and shoved it inside her shorts. We moved the dead guard further in the grove, hiding his dead body behind a tree, just in case.

“Now what?” Noemi whispered as we went back to where we had been standing before the guard ran into us.

The guard, who was in the guard-house before, was now leaning by the guard-house’s door, staring at his phone, with a cigarette between his lips. The entrance was close by a few feet, but not close enough for me to jump on him with the letter-opener, without him noticing in time and manhandling me. He was double my size, so without the element of surprise, I stood no chance against him. I would have to try my luck with shooting him from afar, and only hope that I wouldn’t miss.

“Give me the gun.”

Noemi opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it and handed me the gun.

J'ai ça. Tu as ça. Nous avons ça.

I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’ve got this.

I raised the gun and without thinking twice, I aimed for his head and pulled the trigger. A loud growl echoed in the gardens as the guard dropped to the ground, holding his abdomen. Not ideal, but at least no one was close enough to hear... My shooting skills could use some practice however. Noemi and I ran towards him as fast as we could and I placed the gun on his temple.

I opened my mouth to demand the code to open the gates, but halted. I recognized him. He was the same guard who had raped Victoria. Had tried to rape me too. And was also the one who had told Rowan about Victoria and Ryan, the man that she loved, and with whom she had been planning our escape. He was the reason I lost Vic, and spent another year in this hell.

Chickens have come home to roost.

“The code.” I gritted. “Lie to me, and taking you down with me will be the last thing I do. And trust me, I will enjoy doing it!”

“f*****g b***h!” He groaned. “You’re f*****g crazy!”

“Oh you have no idea… The code, now !” I sneered.

He clenched his jaw and spat it out. I held the gun on his head as Noemi typed the code on the keyboard inside the guard-house. I held my breath, staring at the gate, as she pressed enter. Fortunately, the gate started opening.

Noemi got out of the guard-house and stood beside me. “Come on, Ade, we don’t have much time!”

But I wasn’t done yet.

I grabbed the guard’s d**k over his pants and squeezed as hard as I could. “Like this?”

He groaned in agony.

“No?” I pouted, feigning surprise and squeezing harder.

“Adelaide!” Noemi cried anxiously.

I pressed the gun on the guard’s d**k and pulled the trigger. “That’s for raping.”

Hot liquid covered my negligee and the guard screamed and cried in pain, but I wasn’t done yet.

I shoved the gun in the bullet-hole on his abdomen. “Remember Victoria? Tall, blonde, gorgeous… This is for her!” I turned the gun inside the hole.

“Ade, please, oh god!” Noemi’s pleads were hardly audible over the guard’s screams. Thankfully we were alone.

I quickly took the letter-opener out again and stabbed his balls with it. “That’s for Ryan. You won’t believe how much he wanted to do this after you raped Vic…” The guard begged me to stop, in between panting, screaming, cursing my existence and crying, but I only twisted the letter-opener inside his wound.

“Ade! I’m begging you, we won’t make it!” Noemi cried, pulling my arm.

I pulled the letter-opener from his balls and brushed my mouth to his ear “And this is for me, and for every other female you have ever hurt.” I shoved the letter-opener in his throat. “Au revoir, connard! Je te verrai en enfer."

(Goodbye, motherfucker! See you in hell.)

I killed him…

And I would do it again.

I got up to my feet and let Noemi pull me out of the gates, towards a disturbingly clean, silver Mercedes-Benz. It was so clean, not even a fingerprint stained the shiny surface. I almost felt bad that I would touch it with my blood-covered hands…

“Your shoelace. Remove it!”

Noemi shot me a confused look but quickly did as I said.

I grabbed the shoelace and worked on unlocking the car door with it. It took me more than usual, either because I hadn’t done this in years or because this wasn’t just a wreck of a car, but a high-priced Mercedes-Benz, but I finally managed to open the door. I stepped to the side and let Noemi get in first and sit on the passenger’s seat, before hopping into the driver’s seat myself and shutting the door closed.

I took the letter-opener out of my panties and placed it on Noemi’s lap. “When I tell you, put it in the ignition and turn, okay?”

She nodded and I bent to work on the car wires.

“Now!”

I sighed in relief when Noemi turned the letter-opener and the car started.

“How do you know all that?” She stared at me stunned, as I took a deep breath and placed my feet on the gas and brake pedals.

“My father worked in a garage.” I responded distantly, while trying to figure out driving.

I pressed my foot on the gas-pedal with a little bit more force than necessary and the car jolted forward.

Noemi’s hands shot in front of her on the dashboard and mine on the steering-wheel.

“Yeah, I suggest you put the seatbelt on…” I bit my bottom lip, staring ahead of me in concentration.

“You have a license?” Noemi asked cautiously, while we both secured our seatbelts.

“Nope.”

Unlike the US, you need to be an adult to get a license in most European countries. France is one of them. And I was only 15 when I was taken from there.

“But you do know how to drive?”

I pursed my lips. “I’ll figure it out.”

“f**k!” She muttered. “We’re going to die.”

I ignored her and pressed the gas-pedal again, this time gentler. The car came to an even start, and freedom tasted sweet and addictive in my tongue.

➷➷➷

In the past hour, I came to a rather unpleasant conclusion; I lacked orientation as much as Donald Trump lacked common sense… I had no idea where we were at this point, we could be on the other side of Florida or on the street above Rowan’s for all I knew. Hell, if we even still were in Florida…

“I think we have to stop.” Noemi sighed.

Too stubborn to admit that I had no idea where we were, I pursed my lips, not giving her an answer.

“Ade, we’re gonna run out of gas and we have no money to refuel…”

I hated that she was right.

I parked the car to the side of the road, taking a trash can down in the process and wincing with my poor driving skills.

“We should rest for the night and then continue in the morning. We’ll be fresh and able to actually see around us.”

I sighed, not liking this idea. A bad feeling dwelled in my gut and every fiber of my body rebelled against Noemi’s suggestion. But really, what other choice did we have?

“We escaped, Ade! We’re finally free, thanks to you. We can rest for tonight; you know we both need it. We can sit here and talk or sleep or whatever, and tomorrow it will be bright and we’ll do a better job on getting away. Plus, there’s also the gas thing...” Noemi tried to reason with me.

Everything she said was right and my brain knew it. But it was rationality or the annoying feeling in my gut. I liked to think that, despite my impulsiveness, I was one to listen to my mind, so eventually I gave in. It was probably just my anxiety mixed up with adrenaline that made me overthink so much. We were gone for about two hours and not even we knew where we were, so how would they find us anyway? Right?

“Fine. But one of us stays up at all costs, just in case anything happens and we leave with…” I paused and frowned in thought of how the saying went. “How do you call it? The first shine?”

Noemi laughed a little. “The first light, and okay, I agree. Now do you want to talk about… the two men that you just…killed? How do you feel? You scared me with the second guard. I’ve never seen you like this…” A serious expression settled on her face.

I turned to look out of the window. I didn’t want her to look at me, because what if she saw what I was starting to see about myself?

I killed two men… And, yes it was self-defense, yes, if anyone deserved it it was them, but…

I tortured one of them...

And now, I don’t feel anything about it. I could sleep right now if I wanted to, and I know that it would be the most peaceful I’ve slept in a while. I’m more bothered in this moment by the itching sensation of dried blood all over me, than I am about knowing how this blood got on me in the first place.

Shouldn’t I be traumatized? How am I not? Why am I not?

And why do I know with such certainty that I would do it again? Why, instead of crying about being a murderer, all I can think about is going back there, with the letter-opener in one hand and the gun in the other, and killing every last one of those…poor excuses of men? And why does not feeling remorse bother me more than what I did?

Who have I become? What did those men turn me into? Why, why do I not feel bad, even a little bit? Why am I just…numb? Was I too strong or too broken for them to brake? I used to believe the former, but I’m not sure anymore…

All this time, I thought that my difference with most of the other girls there, was the fact that I pretended to be broken, and I was f*****g good at it. I knew that one day I would walk out of there and somehow still manage to make a life for myself, a good one. I thought that my difference with the rest of them was the fact that I did as I was told to survive, but still dreamt and was my own person. The rest of the girls called Rowan ‘master’ without feeling anything about it, because they were so broken, they thought it was normal, or just didn’t care enough to think anything of it at all. Well, at least that’s what I think; it’s not that I know what was going on inside their heads. In my tongue, the word left a bitter aftertaste. I only ever said it to survive, and furthermore, to manipulate him, and I did just fine.

But… What if I was different than the rest of the girls for another reason? For a wrong reason. What if I was different than them, because I was more like those men than they would ever be? What if I too was broken, just not in the way the rest of those girls were, not in the way I thought being broken looked or felt like? What if they turned me into a monster? Isn’t that being broken too?

The only comforting thought at the moment was that I knew, I knew, that I would never do anything to hurt an innocent. Never. Those monsters got off on doing so.

I felt bad for leaving the rest of the girls back behind me. I felt so bad, I was seriously considering going back there to help them, but well, realistically, that wasn’t a possibility. Taking Noemi with me was risky enough already, but I knew I could never live with myself if I left her behind.

“So, you don’t want to talk about it, I suppose?” Noemi’s voice broke my train of thoughts and I turned to look at her.

“I prefer that I don’t right now, but don’t worry No, I’m not going to kill you in your sleep…”

She pursed her lips. “I didn’t mean you scared me for…me. If that makes sense. I’m worried for you.”

I gave her a small smile. “You don’t need to be. We are strong, remember? And now we are free too. No more beatings, no more s*x with men who make our stomachs turn… We’ll go to the police and free the rest of the girls too. And then we’ll be on witness-prospection or whatever you call it.”

“It’s protection.” She laughed and I grimaced.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“No, you said prospection. What you meant to say is protection.”

Okay, this was pretty stupid of me, for the reason that I somehow confused a word I knew with one I didn’t even know existed. I did this often and it aggravated me. What even is prospection?

“Whatever. You got my point.” I murmured in annoyance. I didn’t like being corrected, despite Noemi’s good intentions.

A long pause followed, during which my adrenaline and fear fought the lethargic feeling that made my eyelids struggle to remain open.

“Ade?”

“Mhm?”

“Do you think we will make it?”

My eyes opened and I turned to look at Noemi. Her head rested on the window and her eyes were half-lidded. Her voice had come off barely audible, as she too fought sleep.

Did I think we would make it?

I always considered myself an optimistic person, despite everything that had gone oh so wrong with my life. But now, all I felt was numb, as the optimist in me battled against the realist.

Will we make it?

“Of course…” I lied. Not because I thought we wouldn’t, but because I didn’t know if I believed we would either. But I always was Noemi’s hope, and I wasn’t about to change that now…