Adria and fat man Ricky were intimately acquainted, in that they made each other's life as miserable as possible. They had a love hate thing – simply put, Adria loved to hate him.
She had been premium goods when they nabbed her, an exotic beauty, a virgin to boot. She would have sold at a steep price to the highest bidder – she had sold to the highest bidder at a steep price, but the sucker had taken about half back after she chewed his ear off, stabbed him in the eye with his own brooch and attempted to strangle him with his stripped tie. Then, they used the other half as compensation. Fat Rick had not been happy. In fact, he had been so furious he had turned into a lovely purplish colour. He did intend to punish her, but the rabid dog she had turned into scared even Ricky boy, the head honcho who was several hundred pounds overweight and had bulging biceps.
The men feared her.
The women feared her too.
They were terrified, stuck with a crazy dog that couldn't be used, couldn't be disposed of, and certainly couldn't be triggered. She knew fatty Rick had decided to wait her out to mellow. The joke had been on him, Adria had not mellowed out, instead she adopted an animalistic behaviour that made her question her own sanity. Now, the guards merely left her to her own devices in that abandoned part of the building, sneakily left food outside the huge iron doors, and never ever came inside.
Only Fatty Rick did.
It was a ritual of sorts. She would hide in the shadows, stalking from corner to corner until the right moment dropped in her lap. Adria would lunge at him, wrap her arms around his meaty, short neck and attempt to strangle him. Normally, he would wheeze, turn a bluish purple, and eventually collapse to the floor. Adria would roll away, tuck herself on all fours in a corner and growl menacingly until he finished his empty platitudes.
For once, fatty Rick did not have to step inside cautiously because Adria had done him the honour of rearing her crazier ideas in – she was curled on the floor, blankly staring at the battered wall.
Ricky paused, carefully stepped around her and crouched down to peer at her face. He grunted, his muscles straining under the weight of his bulging stomach. Adria stopped her scowl, biting sharply on the inside of her cheek. He prodded her slowly, quickly retracting his finger.
"You finally broke or something?"
Adria stared past his shoulder. She had to play the part of a broken doll. She had to. Dammit. Ricky boy scratched the overzealous 5'oclock shadow he pretended a stylist had cut for him; it was rough, all wrinkly bushy hair with a patch of missing hair on his left cheek.
"Huh, who knew."
"I want to see my nephew."
She spoke softly. Fat Rick took one look at her and grinned sleazily. She knew he thought he won, thought Adria had given in. Timidly, he lifted her chin and seeing her blank reaction he attempted to grope her – Adria snapped her teeth at his hand.
"Still bite do ya?"
He sighed. Put out and weary as if he were the innocent bystander that had been dragged into a human trafficking ring. The bloody bastard.
"Tell you what, sweetheart, you do something for me, I'll let you see the brat. If you do well, I might send him back home to his mommy."
That was a lie. His eyes averted, sweat built up on his forehead. The dirtbag was lying straight to her face. He grunted again, shoving himself up on his feet. Groaning, he stretched his legs.
"What?"
His lips stretched widely showcasing the yellow rotting teeth and the gap where two had been knocked loose by the big ass honcho of everything when he had messed up – the guards liked to gossip.
"There's a showcase, big client. You wear what I give you, dance a little, keep him entertained and if you whisper the right words in his ear, you might get that brat a ticket out."
And those were the words fat man Ricky would regret for the rest of his life. After all, they had been the seed that pushed Adria to do the very stupid thing only a heroine in a novel did.