Darkmore Penitentiary 2 - Caroline Peckham Page 0,22

as uncomfortable as possible, and began scraping at my skin.

The longer I stood there, the harder the shivers wracked my body, but I refused to get out until I was fully clean. Leaving us filthy half the time was just another form of torture they offered the residents of the hole and I refused to make it any easier on them. I'd survived far worse than a cold shower in my lifetime.

"Why the roses?" Cain asked from behind me and I gritted my teeth as I moved on to scrubbing the soap into my hair. My beautiful, waist length black hair which was now so full of knots and tangles that I feared it would all have to be cut off if I ever did make it back to gen pop. They didn’t even let me brush it, let alone have shampoo and conditioner and I’d never realised before now how important such small luxuries had been to me.

I chose to ignore the stronzo watching me shower and kept scrubbing my hair, but of course he wouldn’t just leave it alone, pushing the issue of my tattoos as if he actually cared.

"Are they just because your name is Rosalie and you thought it would be a cute thing to get inked on your body?" he taunted.

I looked over my shoulder at him, knowing he was looking at the vines which curled over my ass and back from the tattoo which ran up the entire left side of my body.

"Every bloom on the vine represents someone I would gladly die for," I growled. "A morte e ritorno." My family's motto rolled off my tongue like an old friend. To death and back.

"So it's just gang bullshit then?" he asked and I tsked as the shivers in my body made it hard for me to even form a coherent response.

"When I was fourteen, something happened to me that left me scarred in every way a Fae can be, inside and out. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking at the evidence of what had happened to me and re-living it over and over again. So a man who had lived through just as much agony as I had taught me how to take my pain and turn it into strength.”

I never spoke about that. Ever. But something about this smug stronzo just made me want to prove him wrong in all things. And as much as I shouldn’t have given a shit what he thought of me, I wasn’t going to let him make light of my darkness. Fuck him. Besides, this wasn’t some deep and meaningful chat, just me informing the bastardo that I was never going to be afraid of him because I’d known true fear in my life and nothing he did to me could ever come close to that. “So I don't care if some prissy little stronzo like you wants to sneer down his nose at me and pass off everything about me like you know me. Because you have no fucking idea what it is to live my life or walk in my shoes. Becoming one of the Oscura Clan Alphas took more sacrifices and pain than you could ever comprehend with your idiota brain. So why don't you go back to lording it over me and enjoying the way this perceived power of yours gets you all kinds of hard, because I have nothing to say to you."

I began washing the soap from my ruined hair as best I could considering the tangles and I jolted as the water crashing over me warmed suddenly.

The suds spilled down my body and for one, long glorious moment, I bathed in the utterly amazing sensation of warm water caressing my skin. It was a damn shame that I couldn't enjoy it.

I blew out a breath of frustration and whirled around to face Cain, stalking out of the shower towards him and baring my teeth.

"I don't want your pity, stronzo. I don't want a single fucking thing from you," I snarled, grabbing the scratchy towel from the hook on the wall and scrubbing at my now pink skin.

"It's my responsibility to make sure you don't get sick and die on us, Twelve," Cain replied in a dark tone. "That wasn't pity, it was me making sure you don't get hypothermia and make me drag your peachy ass off to medical."

"Fuck you."

"And just for the record, I didn't grow up in some suburban daydream like you