The punishment- I

Protect her… He was going to protect her? He was the one who was staying in a small dingy cell, unaware of what was going on and constantly depended on her to get him food and medicines. How in the world was he ever going to protect her?

Every step that she took seemed heavier than the previous one. Not only was she tired and broken, she was fearing for her life because there was no limit that she could think of the woman not crossing.

"She's upstairs." Said the man who had stopped Mark from hitting her downstairs.

Giving him a polite nod as reply, which she ignored, she went up the stairs at an alarmingly slow Speed.

She found the woman standing behind the poor, chipping wood away from the Vanity. She pointed up at Victoria to sit on the stool and silently the girl did it.

What more could she do anyway? Resisting would lead to Mark coming up and touching her again.

"Why would you do that, Leah Adams?" The woman murmured in a breathtaking voice, almost like a fairy. "Did you not learn how selfish the entire world is?"

Victoria gulped. "I was jus—"

"Helping him?" The woman completed it for her, merely quaking an eyebrow before shaking her head in disappointment. "Does it look like he deserved your help? He could have easily told you to run upstairs but he did not and he did not even defend you when Mark assaulted you three times."

She started to caress Victoria's hair. "You two could have overpowered Mark, but it was his selfishness that cost you lifelong trauma."

"You could have told him not to touch me." The words slipped out of her mouth before she realised it. Victoria's eyes immediately went up to look at the woman, who as usual, was having a blank face.

"I did," the woman admitted, "that is why this time, all he did was hold on to your collar and not skin."

She smiled to herself, and for a moment if Victoria could forget how evil she was, she looks like a beautiful princess. "See? Even evil can be kind sometimes."

Sure, Victoria would agree there. If she had asked Mark, or told him, to not touch Victoria, then Victoria would readily agree that evil at times could be kind as well.

"Now I have to punish you, teaching you a lesson is going to be more important than anything at the moment. You must learn." She sighed tiredly.

"Open the drawer, Victoria."

Victoria? The woman actually knew her name?

That made the situation more dangerous than it was previously. With the shaking hands, she opened the drawer only to find a nail cutter in it.

"Pass it on to me."

She raised in the hand that had the nail cutter above her head as the woman took it from her.

"Your punishment has to be something severe. That will be something you will be receiving after you leave the facility but until then I will give you something to remember this."

Until then? Why was she acting like it was a happy surprise to be punished?

She felt the cold pointy thing on her neck and somehow Victoria knew that it was the nail cutter. That straight shop, similar to a nice kind of thing that the nail cutter had to clean the inside of the nail, that was what was being held against her throat.

Slowly, the woman raised it up to her face and Victoria closed her eyes. Her entire body shook out of control, no matter how hard she tried to stop the shivering it seemed an involuntary reaction of a body.

What was she going to do?

She was hyper aware of her reactions. The cold tip of the sharp object was at the moment on her cheek, right below her nostrils as she moved it up by pressing it into the skin but not enough to cause a cut.

Why was this woman playing with her?

"You have to remember this Victoria," she whispered in the ear of a little girl, "next time you try to help someone out without permission, worse will come to you."

And that's when the knife dug into her skin and Victoria screamed.