A painful groan escaped Adolphine's lips when she woke up.
Holding her lower back, she struggled to sit, then massaged both sides of her head.
She closed her eyes and shook her head numerous times, but she could remember nothing of the previous night.
All she could remember was walking toward Dream, hoping to find herself a man who would help her forget her ex-boyfriend's embrance.
"Shit! Did I sleep with that man?" She thought loudly when she recalled approaching a man with a handsome back.
Adolphione felt something strange about the man when she got closer to him, but she was too drunk and heartbroken to act on that hunch.
Even when she agreed to go with him to his villa, she knew she was throwing herself into a dangerous trap, but she wanted to forget Adolph's embrance and thus continued with her plan.
A sting-like effect burned her wrists, and she raised both hands to see if she was having a rash.
She always caught a rash after touching cold water, and she wasn't sure if she had touched cold water the previous night or not.
"The hell happened?" She screamed silently when she saw cuff marks on her hands.
She trailed her gaze on her stomach, and all she saw were redish marks all over her.
There was even a bite mark on her right shoulder.
"Good Lord!" She swore, throwing the quilt over her side. Around her ankles, there were reddish marks as well that looked like they were about to bleed.
She ran to the bathroom across the room and gasped. Her whole body was painted with reddish and bluish marks.
Anyone looking at her would know what had really gone on.
"Why did I let him do that to me?" She asked no one in particular, feeling ashamed of herself.
She recalled the guy asking her if he could be violent, and she shamelessly admitted that he could get as violent as he wanted.
Without any hesitation, the guy cuffed her wrists on the bed and pulled a whip on top of the drawer beside the bed.
The guy even went to the extent of biting her, slapping her, and whatever, but she liked everything he did to her.
"Is this really the time to think about this? What if the guy comes back and continues from where he stopped?" Her conscience asked her.
Thinking of the possibility that the man would walk into the bathroom anytime, Adolphine ran back to the room and looked for her clothes.
She spotted them in a corner, washed, ironed, and placed neatly on the table.
Without caring to take a bath, she hurriedly put them on and stormed out of the room.
Outside, he met a man about to board a cab, but she pushed him aside, lying that she had an emergency, gave him some cash, and boarded the cab instead.
After the cab was far away from the vila and he couldn't see the building anymore, she sighed in relief, praying inwardly that she would never meet the man again.
"I think that's the best thing about night-stands. There is always a hundred percent chance that you'll never meet them again." She encouraged herself.
At her condo, Adolphine quickly took her clothes off and stood under the shower.
She sighed as the icy droplets of water dropped on her skin, washing away the remnants of alcohol in her body.
She tried rubbing on the marks, hoping to wash them away, but it only worsened the situation. Knowing that she wouldn't succeed in getting rid of them, she stepped out of the bath with a towel wrapped around her body.
It was a good thing that she had asked her manager to cancel her schedule for the entire week, or else she would have ended up in the hot gossip magazines with marks all over her body.
The last thing she always wanted as a model and actress was to give people the chance to gossip about her.
She had worked her ass off for six years, building her reputation and reaching the point where she was in her life, and she wasn't going to let a single night's desires ruin her whole career.
After she was done putting on simple clothes because she decided to spend the entire day indoors, Adolphine called her dermatologist, asking her what she would need to apply to her body to get rid of scars.
Her dermatologist wanted pictures in order to know what kind of scars she was talking about so that she could recommend the right cream for her, so she sent them, then lied that she was kidnapped.
"That's how I got them." She said to her when she asked how she got them.
"You must be the first person I've seen blushing over the fact that they got kidnapped, Adolphine." Her dermatologist observed.
Adolphine had no idea she was blushing; thus, she glanced on the other side of the video call and palmed her face.
She could feel a certain warmth rising over her cheeks and through the mirrior planted on the wall beside her bed, she saw a red blush creeping up her face.
"Call me daddy," a certain husky voice echoed on her head as a certain person pounded from behind her.
"Arrghh! Leave me alone." Adolphine screamed, forgetting that she was still on a video call with her dermatologist.
"Is the kidnapper haunting your memories?" Her dermatologist asked, pulling her back into the call.
"Anika," she called shyly, covering her face with her pillow.
"What? I'm just concerned about you, Adolphine. Is the kidnapper haunting your..."
"Bye. Talk to you later. Send the name of the cream I should use through text message." Adolphine said it in one breath and hung up the call.
She knew Anika like the back of her hand and the way she was looking at her, with a mischevious smile creeping on her face, she knew she would tease her until she was left on the verge of crying.
"On the thought of crying, did you cry yesterday, begging that stranger to let you cum?" Her conscience asked her.
"Damn you conscience, I'm trying to forget over here." She screamed, covering herself with a blanket and kicking her legs in the air.
"I'll go crazy if I stay in here. Where should I go in particular?" Adolphine asked herself while sitting on the bed.
She walked to the ceiling and floor windows and looked outside at the bustling city before her.
Her stomach grumpled, reminding her that she had yet to eat anything since the previous day's morning.
She had woken up late and went for the photoshoot without eating anything. The shoot went on until seven hours later, when it had turned six in the evening.
After that, she didn't head home to take a rest; instead, she went straight to the bar, got herself drunk, and found herself that weirdo for the night.
"Should I head downstairs and have something to eat? Should I order a takeaway? Should I cook?" She asked herself while biting her nails.
"Or shoot, I left my car at Elisha Bar." Her eyes widened when she recalled that.
Forgetting about her rumbling stomach, she grabbed her purse, and confirming that her keys were in there, she dashed out of the house.
She had no time to hail a cab, thus repeating the same action she took when running away from that stranger's villa.
This time it was a student, but after offering her some cash, she agreed to let her ride her cab.
Thirty minutes late, Adolphine arrived at Elisha Bar. After disgusing herself with a hoddie over her head and black glasses, she thanked the driver and headed to the gate.
It was good that the bar didn't require a pass, like Dream Bar. After the guard was done searching her, she was given permission to walk in.
Adolphine found her car parked where she had left it the previous night.
Adolphine was about to drive away from there when a farmilar man walked by, followed by a group of men wearing black suits.
"Mafia's exist?" She asked herself, rolling down her car window so that she could see clearly.
"What the heck!" She gasped, pressing the side button repeatedly so that the window would roll upward.
Luck seemed to evade her because, no matter how hard she pressed the button, the window remained the same. She opted to duck her head below the steering wheel to hide herself from the man.
"Call me Alaric." The man's voice echoed back in her head when he asked her to moan in his name.
Alaric...
She bit her nails under the steering wheel, wondering where she had heard that name.
The name Alaric didn't sound like a new name. "If only he had told me his second name, I would have been able to find out exactly who he is and why he carries the aura of both a mafia and an alpha."
She thought, then raised her head to see if he was gone.
"Heavens save me!" she prayed inwardly while glancing over to the man and his guards talking in hush tones.
The guy, Alaric, seemed like he was pissed about something, judging from his clenched jaws, fists, and narrowed eyes.
His eyes had turned red and glowed dangerously under the weak sun.
The men whom Adolphine assumed to be his bodyguards trembled as fear was evident in their eyes.
Alaric glanced in her direction, but she was quick to dunk her head this time, hitting the steering wheel with her forehead.
She pulled out a pocket mirror from her purse that lay on the empty seat beside her and raised it facing the window.
Through it, she could see the reflection of Alaric and his men. After staying there for a time that felt like eternity, Adolphine sighed in relief when she watched as they walked away.
"That was close." She told herself, looking at her reflection through the rearview mirror. It was suddenly getting hot in there, and she quickly turned on the AC, planning to drive away from there.
"Who is calling me?" She asked when her phone buzzed from her pocket. A huge smile flashed across her face when she saw the caller's ID.
"Mother!" She beamed, her eyes twinkling in happiness.
"How is my pumkin?" Amanda asked her daughter from the other end.
"Mother!" She graoned. It was her father who gave her the nickname Pumkin when she was just a little baby because of her love for Pumkins.
Before she knew it, the name became hers. She didn't mind being called Pumkin, but she now felt weird when someone called her by that name.
"What? Didn't you like the name?" Her father's voice echoed as well.
She imagined them standing over the kitchen counter, making lunch, with her mother's phone placed in the middle on a loud speaker.
"I was a baby, dad." She reminded him.
Her dad had shown her a video of her when she was two years old, doing a weird baby dance where she was bouncing over her butt when they called her pumkin.
"Whatever! No matter how old you get, you'll always be my pumkin." Her dad laughed from the other end.
"We wanted to know how you were doing. Are you still crying over that asshole?" Amanda asked.
"Asshole? Oh, right, I remember, Adolph, right?" She asked.
"Don't tell me you are already over him and you've forgotten him as well. Proud of you, my daughter?" Amanda responded proudly from the other end.
"Our daughter." Arnos, her father, reminded Amanda.
"Yes, our daughter. But that was quick. How did you do it?" Amanda wanted to know.
"How did I do it? I guess it just happened. I realized there was no need to cry over a man who has obviously forgotten about me, and he is having fun out there."
"It's nice hearing you say that. Our daughter is grown, isn't that cute?" Adolphine heard her dad asking her mother from the other end.
"Yeah, I guess I've grown," she admitted, even though she was not sure about that.
"There was this man I met the other night. He promised to make me forget about Adolph, and I can't believe he was true." She wanted to tell them but swalowed those words.
She was never raised that way, and her parents would be mad at her if she were to tell them about her nightstand.
They had always been against sex before marriage, and when with Adoplh, even though they knew he was her mate, she had to lie to them every time they asked if they ever get intimate.
"Promise us that you won't cry over that son of a bitch again." Her mother's serious voice rose, jarring her from her half-conscious state of mind.
"Speaking of the devil," she responded instead, looking at the approaching Adolph through the window.
"What do you mean?" Her mother was confused.
"A minute, mom, I'll call you back." She hanged up, putting on a sour, dissatisfied face at the approaching Adolph.