LAYLA
The red dress felt smooth against my fingers, like a flowing stream. It was the most exquisite thing I had ever owned.
Cara wants me to wear this.
She wants me dead.
For a second I considered straight up rejecting the dress, I should offer to wear something of my own. One of those more modest gowns shIe had brought with me when I came into this house.
But that would raise Cara's suspicions and make her alert, I don't need that.
Let her think that she was the only one who had been reborn.
So instead, I choose to wear the dress without complaint.
The silk rested against my skin, cool and light, moulding to my frame.
A look at the mirror revealed a stranger. It was not just the dress, there was something new in my eyes.
An awareness that had not been there before.
I look like a lamb for sacrifice.
*
By the time I came out, the car was already waiting.
Black, polished till it shone, windows tinted dark and a sharp looking chaffered who held the door open.
It was obvious that the Barone family did not joke with appearances.
Cara stood at the steps of the Sinclair mansion, her gaze approving when she saw how I had dressed.
"Remember." Cara called out from behind me. "You represent the Sinclair family now."
I did not answer or turn, I feared that if she saw my face she would see the hatered.
I got into the back seat, the soft thud of the door a final goodbye.
*
The drive was exactly fourty seven minutes, I kept count of every minute.
The city fell behind us, we went from the townhouses with their neatly manicured lawns in a middle class neighbourhood, to the high rise buildings in the comercial district, through the surburbs with ranchstyle homes until we drove for miles without any houses in sight, only trees and chirping of birds.
I watched as green hills rolled past my window, there were no houses for miles.
After driving on a long winding road, the gates of the Barone estate appeared at if a spectre of evil.
They stood about twenty feet high, iron wrought, topped with shapes that looked like wolves or some other predator.
How fitting.
I shivered as we rolled in through the driveway. It felt as if I had just entered the devil's lair.
The house appeared from around the curve.
I could not even call it a house, this was a magnificent mansion.
With it's white limestone walls, it looked like a marriage between modern engineering and ancient architecture. It looked like it was at least a hundred years old but also very well maintained with towers that probably had snipers waiting on the ready.
The car pulled to a stop at last.
My heart started racing again and I gulped.
"Wolves certainly do not attack if they are well fed." I muttered under my breath.
"Did you say something miss?" The driver looked up at the mirror and I raised my head to look at him.
For the first time since the ride started, I really looked at him.
He was young. Perhaps in his mid-twenties, clean-shaven. His suit was charcoal, well-cut but not custom made. The uniform of hired staff, not family. His eyes were trained forward, professionally blank.
"What is your name?" I asked.
He blinked, surprised at being spoken to. "Emil, miss."
"Emil." I tested the weight of it on my tongue. "How long have you worked for the Barone family?"
An awkward pause. "Six years, miss."
"Do they treat you well?"
Another pause. Longer. "Yes, miss."
I believed him. Or at least, I wanted to. Either way, it made me feel slightly better about what I was about to get into.
"Emil, I need to ask you for a favour."
His professional blankness cracked, just slightly. "Miss?"
"Your blazer," I said. "How much did it cost?"
*
I was escorted through rug covered corridors and dark wood, past guards who stood as motionless as statues, past paintings of stone faced ancestors who seemed to track my movement with cold, unimpressed eyes.
The sound of my heels were muffled by the thick rugs, and as I walked, I knew what I looked like.
A petite woman in an oversized blazer rolled at the sleeves, bare long legs, high heels, hair tendrils escaping its careful braid.
I did not look like a prospective bride.
I did not look anything like the other elegant women waiting in the lounge, and they could see that I was different.
They were a gaggle of swans in silk and pearls and practiced smiles, arranged on settees like flowers in an overwatered garden not one of them smiled at me or even acknowledge me.
They turned as I entered. Their eyes traveled from my bare legs to my borrowed blazer to my bare face and they decided I was not competition enough.
Fine by me.
"Look at that, is that not the Sinclair's bastard?"
"She looks tacky and cheap, like a whore."
"Does she think she can seduce the boss by wearing something so skimpy?"
I ignored the whispers and took a seat by the window, as far from them as I could get. My legs crossed and exuding confidence that I did not feel.
A few minutes after I had settled in my seat, a young girl came into the lounge in a beautiful red dress.
It was like the entire room went still and the girls stared at her until their eyes looked like they were about to fall out their sockets.
"How dare you come here in that." A man in a well tailored suit and glasses sneered.
"Get her out of here," he ordered the guards who were standing around. "The Kim family will be punished for this oversight."
"Please." The girl screamed her perfect makeup ruined by streaks of tears running down her cheeks as she was dragged out of the room. "What have i done wrong?"
There was some more screaming but she was dragged out and the door shut so we could not hear anymore.
The hairs on my arms rose as i watched what would have been my fate.
The Barone family had a little known superstition, no women who had not been married into the family could come in a red dress as it was a bad omen.
Celine had made that same mistake before, she had been left in the Barone dungeon where she had fallen ill and died.
This was exactly what Cara had hoped for when she gave me that red dress. It cemented my belief that she had been reborn and she was trying to get rid of me.