A Toy Called Envy - Prologue. Prologue

I died, then I was born.

They brought me back to life with so much electricity, the room stank of burnt flesh and feces. Such a tiny little body next to my bigger twin, such tiny little paddles to shock me. The stench still sticks to me, to my hair, my breath, it's unbearable. This is how my mother tells the story of my first moments on earth. She always kept two feet of distance to me, had a nursing help, a nanny, then another, then a chauffeur. So close, still so far away. I always thought if I just got clean enough, prim enough, showed my good manners, my good blood, that she would one day take a liking to me and come closer.

She didn't.

The hard school of earning her love primed me for another path, though. My looks are out of this world. I make perfection look easy, I give new meaning to "tailored to the body". Where I walk, jaws drop. It's my parents' blood, their mixture of pale skin, a well proportioned nose, long fingers, tapered hips, full lips, and those light green eyes, all infused into one slim package, that made me the star of all the glamorous runways.

I was fourteen.

Glamour ended when they started to paw at me. They complimented me, said I looked older, that 'the business' worked this way and that I would have to get used to people wanting to be close to me, wanting to feel me against them. I didn't like being touched, didn't like being mussed up and crinkled, so I left. I think my brother looked for me for a while, but I shook him by leaving the country. I was lost without my credit cards, my drivers, my managers and assistants, but I was free. And I hadn't a clue what to do with my freedom, where to go, what to conquer next.

I was sixteen.

I met him a few weeks later, on the verge of breaking my vow not to debase myself for some rich fucker, already on my knees and despising the thick, champagne carpet that ruined the perfect flow of my last good pair of Armani pants.

He saved me. He threw the fat lecher sitting before me through the bar and against the bulletproof glass windows, cracking them to the point of breaking. At first I thought it would create more of a ruckus. After all, there stood this short, fragile teen, smiling after he'd just thrown a man thrice his weight a good fifteen feet and almost out of a window on the fourteenth floor. Then I saw his fangs, that flickering violet tint in his eyes. In all their eyes. I was frozen in fear, astonishment, wonder, unable to move when he turned his attention towards me.

Siccu and his blue, blue eyes.

"You look lost, little lamb," he said over the renewed clatter and chatter of the other guests. "Will you be mine?"

His fingers were like mine. Perfect, elegant, manicured, tidy, held out towards me in a perfect arch, ready to grab if I wanted to. His eyes were testy, flickering and unpredictable. Something cold and aloof lurked behind them, behind his boyish smile, a trap he was setting up for me, ready to stumble into like the lamb I was.

I didn't take his hand, I got up on my own, righting my pants and snarling over the crinkles on my knees until I had them straightened out. Siccu smiled up at me, almost half a foot beneath my five foot ten, but still so much bigger than me by sheer presence. Something about my choice had made him even happier, gleeful enough that he didn't bother to repeat his question. We both knew the answer, it would have been silly to ask again.

He still grabbed my wrist, shuddering lustfully at the tension his touch sent through my body, tugging me after him like an unruly child. To him, I probably was nothing but a child, would never be anything but. I followed him, not just because I didn't have much of a choice, but also because I wanted to. I was lost. I wanted to be his. He had something I hadn't known I wanted, but lusted after now: immortality. Eternal beauty. Eternal perfection. He was a finger digging into my inner pain, and I wanted more. I wanted everything.

When we reached the elevator, he turned and took stock of my less-than-perfect presence. "What is your name?" he asked, and again that shivering, lurking frost flickered through his eyes. A test, another test in his game.

I thought about the question, about what I had seen. About what he probably wanted me to unsee, never mention again. About what kind of person I would have to be to please Siccu LaBrocha, so he'd never let me go.

I put everything I got in my voice, every ounce of training, every ounce of greed my little heart had to offer. "Envy," I said.

Siccu smiled, nodded his approval, and pressed the penthouse button. A rite of passage, an aced test, a step back from the teetering edge. I've been with him ever since.

I love him. I hate him.