Chapter 4- Please let me survive this

Aria's POV 

Julian Vance was still in New York when the second belt session happened.

Sienna had decided I was her new favorite toy, and she played with the focused cruelty of someone who had never once been told no in a way that stuck.

She “accidentally” spilled an entire glass of red wine across the white carpet in the formal living room while I was dusting the mantel. The stain spread like a wound. Then she called for her mother in a voice full of carefully performed distress and pointed at me as the culprit.

Evelyn didn’t ask questions. She simply pointed to the floor.

I knelt again on the same marble that still held the memory of the first beating. This time Sienna held the belt.

She swung with less precision than Evelyn but significantly more enthusiasm. The leather cracked against my upper arms, then my back, then once across the side of my thigh when I instinctively tried to curl away from the next strike. I bit my lip until I tasted blood to keep from making the kind of sound that would only encourage her.

When it was finally over, Sienna crouched in front of me, grabbed my chin with manicured fingers, and forced my face up so I had no choice but to meet her eyes.

“You’re nothing,” she said, and her voice was almost sweet. “A walking blood bag who got lucky once. Remember that every single time you look in a mirror. Remember it when you put on that ugly uniform. Remember it when you think anyone in this house will ever see you as more than the help.”

I didn’t answer. Answering only made the next session worse. I had learned that much already.

Lila found me later in the laundry room, sitting on the cold tile floor with my arms wrapped tightly around my knees because any other position hurt too much. She didn’t make a joke this time. She just sat down beside me and pulled out another stolen cigarette, lighting it with a practiced flick of her lighter even though smoking anywhere in the house was strictly forbidden.

“She’s a special kind of evil,” Lila said after a long silence, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. “Adopted when she was twelve. Evelyn treats her like a real daughter and somehow still managed to make her worse than if she’d been born into the money. Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

I stared at the front of the washing machine without really seeing it. “Why do you stay?”

Lila was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, some of the usual wild brightness had dimmed. “Because the money’s better than anything else I can get with my record. Because I like watching rich people slowly lose their minds from the inside. And because I stole a pair of Sienna’s diamond earrings last month and she still hasn’t noticed they’re missing. Small victories keep you breathing in a place like this.”

I almost smiled. Almost. The expression felt foreign on my face after so many days of carefully blank obedience.

That night I stood in the tiny bathroom attached to my room and examined the new welts in the mirror under the harsh fluorescent light. Purple. Red. Some already turning an ugly dark color at the edges where the leather had bitten deepest. I pressed a cold washcloth to them until my fingers went numb and whispered the only prayer I still remembered from the nights my mother used to sit by my bed when I was small and scared.

“Please let me survive this.”

Outside, Chicago rain tapped against the window like restless fingers trying to get in. I wondered if Julian Vance, with his cold blue eyes and his expensive coat, had any idea what his mother and adopted sister did to the people who kept their beautiful house running smoothly.

I wondered if he would care even if he knew.

The ointment Lila had left me was almost gone. I used the last of it carefully, then climbed into bed on my stomach and stared at the wall until exhaustion finally dragged me under.

In my dreams, the belt kept swinging long after my body had gone still.