The Gender Game by Bella Forrest (historical books to read txt) 📗

Viggo's jaw twitched in annoyance. Then he exhaled. "Okay. Violet, wait here. Don't go anywhere."

"I won't," I assured him.

He left the room with the man, shutting the door none too gently behind him.

I roamed around the room a second time, stooping to pick up a bottle of chilled water from the refreshment basket. Then I approached the window again and peered through the crack. We were on the ground floor, so I couldn't see the full extent of the crowd, but it had ballooned since the last time I'd looked out just a few minutes ago.

After finishing my water, I needed the bathroom. I locked myself inside, and realized I'd been sweating in spite of the air conditioning. It was the buzzing stadium, being surrounded by crowds of people, the atmosphere wrought with tension and excitement.

But the second I stepped out of the bathroom, a heavy fist flew at me from nowhere and caught me square in the face. I reeled, pain searing through my nose. Stars circled before my eyes. Before I could attempt to defend myself, a heavy weight was flung at me, knocking me from my feet and pinning me facedown against the floor. As I tried to yell, a hand clamped around my mouth, and then a second hand, lined with some kind of pungent-smelling tissue, folded around my nose.

My brain became foggy. I could no longer struggle. And then all went black.

26

I woke up to a splitting headache and a coppery taste in my mouth. Blood. My own blood. I was lying flat on my back, the floor hard and rough beneath me. And cold. Terribly cold. Prying my eyelids open, I sat upright. Metal clanked and I realized that my wrists and ankles were fastened with chains—chains that were fixed to the wall behind me, immovable, no matter how hard I strained against them. And my clothes were ripped, my hair a matted mess.

I sat in a small, windowless room, whose walls and floor were stone. The only light emanated from a dim gas lantern on the floor.

Where am I?

My heart pounding, I fixed my eyes on the opposite wall, where jagged words had been scrawled in red paint.

"WELCOME TO PORTEQUE."

I stopped breathing.

Attached to the wall, beneath the words were… photographs? I squinted in the gloom. Each depicted a woman, curled up in a fetal position on a floor that looked very much like the one I was currently sitting on. Behind, and looming over her was a man. His body was cut off at the waist, so all I could see were his legs and heavy boots. Just as every woman was different, so appeared to be every man; different leg heights and shoe sizes. Then, as my eyes fell to the lowest photograph on the wall… I recognized the clothes the girl was wearing.

That girl was me.

What is this?

Before I could consider yelling, I heard footsteps.

The heavy wooden door opened and in stepped a man whom I had seen before. He wore different clothes—unkempt, Porteque-style clothing—but I recognized that scratchy beard. It was the PFL attendant who had taken Viggo away and insisted that I stay behind in the changing room.

A second man entered behind him. He had a tattoo beneath his right eye. I recognized him too. He was the man who had seen me take down his friend in the road—the man who’d gotten away.

They moved toward me, their leering eyes raking me over.

Arriving in front of me, the tattooed man lowered and grabbed my throat. I attempted to fight him off, but there was only so much I could do while my hands and feet were bound. I’d never felt more vulnerable and powerless in my life.

He tilted my head upward and gestured to a shadowy corner in the room that I had not paid much attention to until now. Fixed to the wall was a camera, pointed directly at me. They had been watching me.

"What do you want?" I breathed. The men seemed to be deliberately keeping their backs to the camera.

"First," the tattooed man replied, his voice as scratchy as his companion's beard, "to teach you your place."

His right hand balled into a fist. Gripping my hair with his left hand, he dealt me a crushing blow in the gut. Once, twice, thrice. Winded, I coughed and spluttered, clutching at my sides. I collapsed as he kicked me in the kidney, curling myself up into as tight a ball as I could.

"Ada!" the second man shouted, his voice resounding in the chamber.

I dared glance up as more footsteps echoed.

A short woman entered the room; she was bone-thin, with lanky mousy-brown hair. I didn't think that she was any older than twenty-five, yet she had deep lines around her mouth and forehead. Beneath her right eye, she, too, sported a triangular tattoo.

The moment she laid her dark eyes on me, she lurched forward. Her fingers dug against my scalp and ripped at my hair, forcing me into an upright position.

She bent down to my level and spat in my face.

"You know that it was my husband you took down?" she hissed.

I tried to protect myself as she dealt me a stinging slap across the face. Her thinness was deceiving—she had muscles in those arms.

She struck me again and again, her bony fingers like whips against my skin. Then, reaching for a belt around her waist, she clasped at a handle and drew out a knife. Holding the back of my head, she pulled me closer to her.

"Stop," I wheezed.

She ran the tip of the blade against my upper cheek, beneath my right eye socket, in one sweeping crescent motion.

I cried out again, tears leaking from my eyes.

"Stop," I rasped. "Stop it!"

She came at me again with the knife, but before she could make a second contact with the blade, one of the men gripped her by the arm and snatched the weapon from her hand.

"Enough," he said gruffly. "We don't