THE BILLIONIARE DON WANTS ME DEAD

Lyra’s POV I don’t like smoking. I don’t like when men smoke. But I had this rich brat puff a smoke right in my face. It smells disgusting but there was this specific smell that hung with it—him. Charcoal, blood and mint. I want to reach out and… do what Lyra? You can’t do anything. I turn my head downwards, looking at the flat wooden ground, trying to act like it didn’t affect me, trying to act like the doll I was supposed to be, like the doll I was trained to be. I take a breath in, the smoke is still in the air. The blood still irks me but the mint, the mint is different. I stand in line with fifty other women dressed in maid outfits. I am the seventeenth, and when he reached where I stood, he just had the nice idea to blow his smoke on me specifically. He dropped his cigarette on the ground, it’s between our feet. The particles scattered in a triangular shape. He stays in front of me longer than he does with every woman before me. He’s meant to move forward. He’s meant to see the rest of the women, then choose whoever he sees fit. But he turns back and walks away. The manager walks faster to get to him. Chasing after him. “Three, eleven and seventeen,” the man said with this cold cadence. Seventeen. I was seventeen. The billionaire, who I don’t know the name of, leaves the room, then the building and he drives off. I was not meant to be in the room, I was not meant to be part of the fifty women in the room. Maybe, two months ago I was. That was when I was assigned here, but I should be done with this mission. I should be on break, I should be with my younger sister. I have lost any form of communication and if I blow my cover here… let’s just say the manager is only sweet to billionaires. The manager walks back into the room with a frown plastered across his face, I’m not looking up to see it, nor is any other woman, they know better, they’re used to him. “Three, eleven and seventeen,” the manager said. His eyes were on me. “There’s a van out. Get inside it, now.” Three and eleven hurdle out, I follow after. The van is plain white, some areas being off white. The door is open and the women in front of me climb in. They sit on the chairs with their hands on their lap. They sit the way they had been taught to. I’ve never had a conversation with them, but that isn’t because I don’t want to. The manager made sure to give us all different tasks, so it was weird being bought with two women I didn’t know personally. “Three” was Clara. Nineteen, brown hair, brown eyes, defined jaw along with plump lips. “Eleven” was called Adora. Eighteen, black hair, striking blue eyes, slightly more round face than Clara and some stark lips. She held my attention. Adora. The women in this organization aren’t necessarily “women”. Most are girls who grew and are sold off after. I tried to get into the girls branch but I was already twenty-one and I look nothing like an eighteen year old. Least of all a sixteen or twelve year old. Both Clara and Adora stay quiet as the van hits brakes, turns sideways, and drives over pot holes. They don’t say anything till it's driving up a hill, till it reaches stark coated gates. The gates open and we’re driven in. There’s a mine field of grass, and when we finally reach the front of the mansion, it’s bigger than I expected. I haven’t heard of this place. I haven’t seen it anywhere before, and I’m not quite sure how we got there. The van is open and we’re told to “Get out,” by the driver. I step out first, both women follow behind me. The driver gets back into the van, turns the van on, reverses and drives off. There’s another woman in front of us. The van hides her but after it’s gone, she is standing there like she was waiting for our arrival. “Ladies,” she started. “Follow me in.” She was also wearing a maid uniform similar to ours. Black and white in proportionate areas. We followed her in, then she said. “We’re currently short on staff. Mr. Adrick recently had a purge.” “A purge?” I ask, since silence has become their best friend . “Yes,” the woman said. “We had a staff of 156 people.” “Women?” I ask. The woman looks at me like I wasn’t meant to ask that. “Yes,” she said. “They all had their roles.” Oh. So Mr. Billionaire, Adrick as she said, was a w***e. “What roles?” I ask again. “We can’t handle the roles of 156 people.” “The daily roster has been added to facilitate better organization of roles.” I nodded to that. She walked us around. The kitchen, mostly because there were a lot of “restricted areas.” I want to ask the woman why we were “bought”. With the amount of fragile glass and relics I’ve seen, I know Adrick is something else. And maybe, just maybe if I discover who he was and why he was part of my manager’s clients, I’ll be able to get a loop hole and enough information to be able to retreat. I was in the mansion of a man I’d never heard of as an option between two other women. We were the replacement to 156 women and I just can’t help but wonder what happened to them. I just can’t help but wonder who Mr. Adrick really is