Inner modelPov: MaddisonMy stomach dropped as I peered out of the window of the shiny luxury car as we rolled into a parking spot and caught sight of the building that was going to be my photoshoot studio for the day.Yes, you heard me. Photoshoot studio.Thanks to Mr Winston, Mighty persuasion from Olivia and Kat and my deep rooted love for money, I decided to do the shoot after all and abandon ship if I didn't like the end product.Really, it was a win win. I get to try out being a model and get paid. And if I flop trying out to be a model, I still get paid for the time and effort... Just a little less than I would have gotten paid if I had gone all the way.Mr Winston drove me himself and looked over to me as I struggled to get out of my seatbelts. "Have you ever done this before?" Came his kind, yet domineering voice."No." I admitted. "Not really.""It's going to be okay. I'll make sure you're comfortable in there," he assured me. He reached out to take my hand, but thinking be
Concussions and oraclesPov: WinstonIt was a long drive to the doctor's office with Maddison yowling and mewling like a frustrated kitten in the passenger seat. From her movements and speech, she was dizzy, unbalanced, and incoherent and kept crying about how I didn't have to do this for her. She was fine, it was just a fall, she just needed to go home and sleep it off and it will all be better.But she was downplaying how hard she had fallen. I had seen it and I swear, an earthquake ripped through my chest when I saw how her head had bounced against the floor and made a BANG sound.There was a large bump on her head, an actual swelling the size of a tennis ball.I had felt around her head to check if her skin was broken and she had shrugged me away insisting that she was fine... And tried to stand on her feet. She swayed and would have fallen again if I hadn't reached out to grab her.Dr Collins was a good friend of mine. He had been over the years and the only human so far that I h
MakeoversPov: Maddison"Madday!!!!!" Olivia yelled, pounding on the door of my room. "Hurry your ass out here! I booked an appointment with the hair stylist at YOUR request! And we're running late!""I'm coming! I'm coming!" I yelled back, not too loud so that I don't get another headache.I looked at myself one last time in the vanity and resisted the urge to look away.These days, I could look at myself without being uncomfortable with my reflection. Without finding things that I wanted to change about myself... However, these days, my embarrassment came from the memory of what Mr Winston and I did in the examining room of his personal doctor.My heart started racing. My cheeks flushed red. I was going to die of an embarrassment so potent, it was searing the skin off my bones.And the only thing that began running through my mind was Oh shit oh shit oh shit HOLY SHIT! WHAT DID I DO?! WHY DID I DO THAT?!The reality of what I had done didn't really set in until the next day when I w
Strangers and secretsPov: MaddisonI woke up to Kat shaking me awake."Maddie," she called me, her voice, a little too loud and a little too fearful for this time of the day. "The apartment landline was blowing up and I picked the call. There's someone on the line asking for you."I roused into consciousness and looked at her in annoyance for waking me up from a perfectly good dream.She was wearing a loose sweater, the collar stretched and falling down her left shoulder and she was wearing her reading glasses and a giant accounting textbook was stuck under her armpit, in between the side of her arm and the side of her torso and I remembered that she and Olivia took night and evening classes in NYU, three times a week, trying to get their master's degree.She was handing the phone to me and it was shaking in her grasp. The cold, unadulterated fear etched in her eyes made me sit up, albeit sleepily, and take the phone from her hand, groggy and sleepy eyed. I sat up, resting my back ag
Second chancesPov: MaddisonI believed in second chances and William did too and that was the only thing keeping us together at this point, because we should have broken up and gone our seperate ways a long time ago.But I was a lover. A weak one at that. All I knew how to do was love. And all I have ever done is love and remain loyal... but the universe is shitty to people like me, people,who all they know how to do is love and I had a history of repeated heartbreaks and relationship trauma to prove it."I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he kept hugging me close and whispering into my hair. "I'm so sorry, Maddie. I don't want you to leave. I never want you to leave. I'm working on myself and I want to be better for you. I want to be better for us. I want to be better for our future kids. I never want to lose you."I closed my eyes and sighed into his chest. He was saying all the right things... He had said all the right things before and I had let him back only to break m
LeakedPov: WinstonMaddie was avoiding my gaze and i didn't know why.It troubled me. It troubled me a whole lot than I was letting on.She was walking at my side as we walked from the building where I just had a meeting with my board of investors and we were making our way to the car."What's next on my schedule?" I asked her as we got seated in the backseat of my Sedan.I noticed that she pressed herself into a tiny little corner, leaving ample space between the both of us and pushed herself up against the door, her knees together, her fingers clenching her iPad in a tight grip.I almost felt sorry for the poor device.She sat up, almost as if she had been zapped by lightning, at the sound of my voice... Something she had been doing all day, sitting upright, standing straighter, clenching her stomach, fisting her hands... Almost like she was scared of me.But i didn't understand, why would she be scared of m–And then it all came coming back to me.The night I had dropped her off a
ProfessionalPov: MaddisonTurns out that trying to be more professional with Mr Winston was harder than I thought. For starters, he was totally fine with my decision to do a complete one eighty on him.He kept his distance from me. He didn't even look my way. He didn't ask if I was fine or if I slept well. There were no covert looks. No warm smiles. No lasting gazes. No inside jokes. No more inviting me to his office to have lunch with him. There was none of that.I should love this. This was what I wanted, right? This was what I asked for... Right?I sighed as I walked into the building that morning. Olivia greeted me with a cheery wave and smile and I had smiled back tightly at her and kept on working, not wanting to strike a conversation with her...I wasn't in the mood. I walked into the elevator and pushed the button to take me to the suite reserved just for Mr Winston. I got off the elevator the moment I arrived and went to get those early reports printed, made his early morn
Decisions and RepercussionsPov: MaddisonWe finished up our lunch and were heading back to the office in Olivia's Mercedes, since she had carpooled all of us in her car."Speaking on this Mr Winston topic–" Olivia said, strapping herself to her seat and reapplying her lip gloss, whipping open her compact mirror she carried along with her all the time.A cold chill tickled my spine and my ribcage felt like it was constricting my lungs and heart until it became almost impossible to breath and my heart was skipping beats in my chest. "How're you two getting along?" She asked, touching up her mascara and wiping an inexistent smudge from the corner of her lips. "It's best you two maintain a good relationship so that I can get employee benefits for Mr Winston being hopelessly in love with you. String him along if you have to, until i get my money's worth, ya hear?" She said, snapping her compact mirror close and adjusting herself in her seat to key in the ignition.Kat turned around in he
It was a blur from then on.They whipped me with whips laced in silver, fed me Aurum and argentum and made me inhale wolfesbane, the grounded petals of a flower that attacked our cardio vascular system. They flogged me with silver studded sticks and kicked me with silver soled shoes and stabbed at me and poked fun at me and laughed at me.Maddie was struggling so hard in her seat, crying and begging in mumbles for them to stop.I was weak. My eyes were closing. I could have died any second...And then, i heard a growl so gutteral, so beast like, from the other side of the room, in the direction where Maddie was.At first, I thought that it was all in my head, because no no no... It cannot be.But the others fell silent and stopped their assault on me.Maddie was growling, deep in her throat, her eyes were flashing yellow with beast like slits as pupils. Fur sprouted out of her skin. She seemed to grow bigger and bigger on the seat and stood on her feet, still tied to the chair, and ke
daysPov: WinstonIt took me a while to rouse to consciousness. Gwyn had been the first one to wake and porge the sleeping pills out of her system, because she had the lightest weight and then, she made a disgustingly smelling potion and held it up at each of our noses, to wake us up too.And so, that was how I woke up to a pungent, egg smelling potion bomb, exploding in my nose.I looked up at the grim faces of my best friends, together with Cerulean and Lapis' worried gazes and wondered what the fuck their problems were.Why were they in my room, looking at me like that? I turned to my side to ask Maddie if she was seeing what I was seeing... And had the shock of my life.Maddie's side of the bed was empty. "Where is she?!" I had growled desperately."We don't know," Gwyn had whispered, "but from the looks of it, she had drugged us and ran away.""What?!" A tremor shook my spine. I was up and out of the bed immediately, tugging on a shirt and pants and grabbing my car keys, a mill
The ghost of a smile stayed on my lips but as I continued the story, my smile dropped and fell from my face. "I stayed with Mr Winston for a while, but one day, I decided to go back home to get the rest of my things and really leave for the last time... Or at least, the last time before I start the divorce process... My husband. He was a raging angry drunk that night. There was a party playing in the apartment and I had already packed my things but he cornered me and... And he..." my voice shook.Olivia looked at me worriedly, her beautiful face twisted into a concerned scowl.I took a deep breath. "He beat me up, Olivia."A shocked gasp escaped her lungs."Yeahhh... Winston kind of... Saved me that night, and took me away to one of his islands while I got healed up. He took care of me, Liv.""Like he should," she beamed at me. She suddenly froze,her eyes going wide. She snapped her fingers. "THAT'S why the two of you have not been at work lately!" She exclaimed, her eyes softening. "
AmbushPov: MaddisonIt was an entire month and half before I hatched my failproof plan. Before I got the motivation at all.I was able to sneak out of the Grand Mansion without Winston noticing that morning.It actually helped that I had taken charge of dinner and I may or may not have drugged everyone's food.I left the conservation at five in the morning, when Winston was still sleeping peacefully beside me, his arms around my waist, pulling me close and tugging him to his torso.I had made the call last night and the recipient was probably eagerly awaiting my return, back in the city... But I needed to do this right, and I didn't want any distracrions.I hadn't slept a wink last night, and we had talked and laughed and even made love and I swallowed a sigh of relief when the drugs began to take effect and his speech started slurring and he was mumbling and falling over his words.My eyes were wide open, i slid his arm away from my waist, slowly, quietly, just incase I had not give
see for yourself Pov: Winston "Drive me back to my mother's home," Maddie said, weak and exhausted as I held her quietly in the car. "But we just got back from there," i said confused. Nonetheless, I extracted myself from her body and strapped myself to the seat. She was quiet as I inputed the address information into the gps all over again and I understood why she would be so rattled. She had just lost her best friend. What I didn't understand was why she had suddenly stopped consoling Olivia, the moment she saw that thing on her phone. I was dying to know what it was. I was dying to let her let me in. But her end of the telepathic bond I shared with her had gone depressingly silent and cold. It took a while. Hours and hours and more frustrating hours on the road, but we finally got to her house. She stepped out of the car and looked at the stately brick house surrounded by a green lawn in front and green fields at the back. The front door had been smashed in, thanks to me,
The SetupPov: MaddisonSomething is wrong.Something is wrong.Something is terribly wrong.That was the sound track playing in my head when I roused from my sleep that night and checked my phone.It was almost eight o'clock.It was almost eight o'clock and I was still asleep.Any moment now, Ethan would knock on the door to inquire about why I wasn't down in the courtyard for the early morning jog.I never sleep this late in the mornings... Because, since the assault from William went down my mother always calls me up at seven in the mornings.But today, I didn't see her phone call."Winston!" I cried alarmed. "Winston, wake up," I begged, already sliding out of bed.He sat up, awake and alert immediately, searching my face frantically. "What happened, Maddie? Did anything happen to you?""Yes. I need you to drive me back to the city. I need to see my mother," I explained hurriedly as I slipped out of my nightdress and shimmied into a pair of jeans and tugged on a tank top.Winston
Heart to HeartPov: MaddisonAfter the study and books aspect was out of the way, I found out that I actually looked forward to Gwyn's lessons the most.I was currently sitting cross-legged, high up on a cliff, eyes closed, facing the setting sun.I felt her presence all around me, her voice was soft and delicate as she explained to me the basics of the technique she had used on Nathan that time."Chakra is a Sanskrit word and it means “disk” or “wheel” and it represents the various energy centers in your body. These wheels or disks of spinning energy each correspond to certain nerve bundles and major organs. To function at their best, your chakras need to stay open, or balanced. If they get blocked, you may experience physical or emotional symptoms related to a particular chakra."There are seven main chakras that run along your spine. They start at the base, of your spine and extend to the crown of your head. But these are only your main chakra points where energy is gathered in the
fighting stancePov: MaddisonEthan was a brutal taskmaster. Cold and calculating and belting out orders, pushing me to my max.I had changed my diet to contain more protein and carb contents as per Nathan's instructions and I had jogged and worked out and pushed my body to the extreme under Ethan's tutelage and Gwyn helped with my meditation and tutored me in basic human anatomy.The first day of my training with Ethan, I was a sweating, sobbing, puking, breathless mess on the floor of the sparring courtyard in the big house that was really the grandest mansion I had ever seen.On the fourth day, I wasn't doing much better, but at least, I had learned to throw a punch without causing much damage to myself, and I wasn't as breathless and winded after each early morning jog."You're punching all wrong," he told me in my first day. "When you hit your target, you want to strike with the first two knuckles, not that flat front part of your fist or the smaller knuckles on your ring or pink
Favourite fixPov: WinstonMy entire body freezed mid strike as I felt another presence join me in my private sparring room."I thought I would find you here," the very familiar voice said aptly.I exhaled the breath I had been holding and completed the punch–kick sequence I had been been doing on the sparring dummy, before I turned to him, grabbing my bottle of water and draining the contents thirstily."Who invited you in?" I asked my best friend now, raising an amused brow.He looked at me, shocked at first, and then he caught on to the fact that I was actually smiling at him, and his lips stretched into a conniving grin that was so Nate... That grin that made him look like you two were in on a private joke or something. Even if he had no idea what you were talking about, his goofy grins made you think he did."Thanks, man," he said now, his voice turning serious as he went to perch on the raised steps to the boxing ring. "I... I was actually going to leave today, immediately afte