Chapter 9 Chapter 9
I walked to the closet and opened it. New clothes, jeans, sweatpants, and t-shirts. Dresses. I sat on the bed. I had to do good. I had to do my best. I had to be good; there was no other option. Hopefully being the best would be some form of repayment to him.
The silence was heavy. For years, silence meant I was safe; it meant my adoptive family had forgotten I was in the basement, and I wouldn't be getting a fresh set of bruises that day. But this was different. This was the sound of a door closing on the only life I’d ever known and the start of something I didn't quite understand yet.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my fingers tracing the soft fabric of the duvet. Nikolai, or Mr. Ferro, as everyone here called him, had put me here. He looked at me with those cold eyes. I don't know what he saw, but I was grateful I was here and not sold to somewhere worse.
I didn't sleep much that first night. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought about that fifteen-foot fence outside with the barbed wire. It wasn't there to keep me in, though; it felt like it was there to keep the rest of the world out. I wasn't about to run. Where would I even go? Back to the people who treated me like garbage? No way. I’d stay, I’d learn, and I’d become whoever Nikolai needed me to be.
Monday morning came fast. A buzzer went off at 5:00 AM, and I bolted upright, my heart hammering against my ribs. I didn’t have time to be scared because my schedule was already waiting for me.
I thought I’d be the only girl there, but nope, there were a handful of other females scattered around the academy. We all had that same look in our eyes, though. Like we were all hiding from something or being prepped for something big. We didn't talk much; we were too busy trying to keep our heads above water.
My first class was Etiquette with a woman named Mrs. Gomes. She looked like she was made of stone and hadn't smiled since the nineties. We weren't in a ballroom; we were in a room full of mirrors that showed every single one of our flaws.
"Posture, Ms. Rhodes," she snapped. Her voice was sharp. "You move like you're still trying to hide. Shoulders back, chin up, walk like you belong in the room, not like you're apologizing for being in it," she said.
I stood there for hours. Just standing, my back ached and my legs felt like lead. Every time I slumped even a little bit, she was there with a wooden ruler, tapping my shoulders. It felt a bit silly, but then I remembered Nikolai’s face and his words. Don't stay down. I gritted my teeth and stared at myself in the mirror until my eyes blurred. I wasn't the basement girl anymore. I was becoming someone new. The other girls were no better.
By noon, I was moved over to the business wing. This was a whole different kind of stress. Mr. Rodney sat across from me with a stack of textbooks that looked impossible to finish.
"We expect you to be finished in three years, not four," he said, his face blank.
"You’re all going to learn how to read a balance sheet and how to spot a lie in a contract before the other person even finishes their sentence," he said.
My head was spinning with talk of corporate law and accounting. It felt like a foreign language. I looked at the numbers and felt like I was drowning. I wanted to tell him I wasn't smart enough for this, but I remembered his words; they were there in the back of my mind. “Don't stay down.” “I have no use for weak people,” so I gritted my teeth and forced myself to concentrate.
The nights were for "domestic" studies. We had to learn how to run a house, from managing staff to knowing exactly how to set a table for a huge event. How to pour drinks gracefully, it felt like I was being prepped to run an empire. I wasn't sure why I needed to know which fork was for fish, but if he wanted me to know, I was going to be the best at it.
By the end of the week, I was exhausted. My brain was fried from business law, and my body was sore from the posture drills. On Sunday night. i sat on my bed.
I didn't need to see Nikolia to know his presence was here; I felt it everywhere. He was the reason the guards were polite, the reason I had food on my plate, and the reason I felt safe for the first time in my life. I had to do my best. There was no other option.
By the second week, the phase of having a soft bed and three meals a day was well and truly over. My body felt like it had been run over by a semi-trailer, then backed over just for good measure. The daytime was all about the brain. Mrs. Gomes breathing down my neck about my "unacceptable" slouch and Mr. Rodney burying me in business contracts. But the nights? The nights were the real pain, behind that fifteen-foot steel wall.
The wall felt like a border between two different worlds. On one side, I was learning how to be a lady who knew her way around a boardroom and a house. On the other side, past that cold grey metal, I was learning how to survive.
Every night at 9:00 PM, I’d head to the gate. The guard would let me through without a word, and I’d step onto the tarmac. The floodlights were blinding, casting jagged shadows across the training grounds. Racks of knives, spears, and guns lined the perimeter under the sheds, but I wasn't allowed to touch those yet. First, I had to learn how to move.
My trainer for the week was a guy named Miller. He was a skinny guy who moved like a snake. He didn't care that I was a girl, and he definitely didn't care that I’d spent the last five hours studying trade law.
"Get on the mat, Rhodes," he said, not even looking up from his stopwatch.
The first part of the night was always hand-to-hand. It was brutal. Miller didn't start with fancy moves; he started with the basics of how to strike and, more importantly, how to take a hit.
"You’re too stiff," he’d bark, circling me like a predator. "You’re waiting for the blow to land. Don't wait. Absorb it. Pivot. If you stay rigid, you break. If you move, you live."
He’d come at me with lightning-fast jabs. The first few nights, I was a walking target. My jaw was constantly sore, and my ribs were turning a deep shade of purple. I had to learn how to keep my guard up even when my arms felt like they were made of lead.