Deception by Selena Rico (list of ebook readers .TXT) 📕

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my close friend Sarina who unknowingly gave me the idea for this story and to all those people who had, in any way, contributed to this story. I know a lot of people say that they couldn’t do it without you, but I honestly mean it. Though there were problems it all turned out how it should have. So I’ll start my story with a quote I hold very close to my heart, “I may not have gone where I intended to go,
But I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”
~Douglas Adams


Prologue
Girls in the geisha house were all pretty much empty. Alia had said it was a tool of our trade. I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t allowed on the service floor. Alia used to say it was for the best. Then again, alia used to say a lot of things that weren’t true. Momma always said a geisha is the essence of beauty and passion, but I don’t think that’s true because whenever she said that alia would get upset. Alia was sixteen, the oldest of all the girls on the nursery floor. In two years she’d have gotten to enter the service floor. I was only eight. I had a long way to go from the service floor. At least that’s what I had thought.
“Stop staring into space mika. Don’t you want to go?” Kina asked. Kina was my best friend. We were born almost a whole day apart. Both of us would have one day reached the service floor together at eighteen. Or maybe eight?
“Momma said the service floor is off limits until we turn eighteen.” I replied. Kina pinched me hard. If kina wasn’t the only other girl in the nursery floor besides the babies and toddlers I believe I would have seen her for what she really was, a bully.
“Come on. Don’t you want to see where we’ll be in eight years?” she asked again. The only problem was no one said no to Kina. Not anyone on the nursery floor, not even alia, had the guts. There was no question of whether or not I’d comply. The question was how long it would take me.
“Yeah, but…” I trailed off. Kina had that look on her face again. She got it whenever she was seconds away from hitting someone. It was an ugly look, her eyebrow raised with her left cheek blown out, and it was frightening. It was a warning of what you’d get if you kept talking. I bit my lower lip and toyed with the ribbons tied in two symmetrical bows on the each side of my head. “Are you sure Kon said it’s okay?”
Kina laughed, flipping a handful of her long curly hair from her shoulder. I envied that hair.
“Kon won’t mind at all.” She assured grabbing my wrist tight, so tight I knew it would leave a mark, and pulling me down the hall and to the staircase.
I had always admired the grand staircase. It was shiny like metal, but alia had said it was stone. I didn’t know what stone was, but I knew one day I would want stone of my very own. It was beautiful. Alia said it would stay that way forever. I didn’t believe that either. If there was one thing we were taught here, it was beauty didn’t last forever. In fact in the geisha house, it disappeared very quickly.
Something struck me just then. “Where is Kon?” I asked. She shrugged her shoulders and continued walking. I skidded to a stop, causing kinas nails to dig into my flesh. She tugged hard, but I did not move. “Where is Kon?” I repeated.
“I don’t know!” she answered releasing me. “Let’s go before he comes back.” Kon was the only man I had ever met. He was a father to all of us and none of us. He sat at the top of the stairs, warning the toddlers, reprimanding kina who tried almost every day to go down. He was a constant force in the hall except for apparently, that day.
“I thought Kon knew we were going down?” I replied taking a step back from the stairs. Kina shook her head and took one defiant step down.
“I said Kon wouldn’t mind.” She countered. “Come on Mika. This is our future and since you are my best friend I want you to come with me. Please?” she extended her hand. Now I could have said no. I could have been the first to ever tell her no. I could have and I honestly would have. The trouble was… I didn’t want to. Bully or not, kina was my best friend. She wanted me to go with her and deep down I wanted to go with her too. She was kina and I was mika. In my young mind that was all it took to break a house law.
“Okay.” I replied placing my hand into hers. She clasped my hand like a hawk. I knew that id be in terrible pain if her palms weren’t so sweaty. With all the moisture her nails couldn’t dig too deep before her hand would start to slide.
I stumbled down the stairs. The uneven ground was so new to me. There were no stairs on the nursery floor. I tripped over my own feet on the last step. “Stop that Mika.” I frowned. As if I purposely tripped for my own enjoyment! “Come on.” Kina urged pulling me down a dark hall. I felt my bare foot make contact with kinas. She kicked me hard in the darkness of the hall.
“Owww!” I cried. “Kina that hurt!”
“Shhhhh…Do you hear that?” she said ignoring my cry of pain. I stayed silent straining my ears, and then I heard it. It was almost a grunt like the hogs outside made, but it was mixed with a growl and something else I had never heard.
“What is it?” I whispered. Kina shushed me once again and inched slowly toward the light at the end of the dark hall. I hesitantly trailed behind her. “Kina I-“ before I could mutter out my plea to go back upstairs an arm encircled my waist and a hand came down firmly over my mouth.
“Be quiet Mika. We need to get back up the staircase now.” Alia whispered in my ear. Kina turned around hearing the small voice and immediately yanked me from my older sister’s grasp.
“No fair. Go away alia.” She snapped under her breath. Alia did something then, that I knew, no one else would ever have the guts to do. She pulled me away from Kina and slapped her directly across her face.
“You demon of a little girl, u let me take my sister and you upstairs, I swear I will leave you down here to burn.” She replied in hushed growls. I bit my lip. I knew it would take something oftly bad to make alia harm anyone, let alone a young girl. That’s how I knew this place was somewhere I shouldn’t have gone to. This place frightened the eldest of all the girls on the nursery floor, the only girl who had ever stood up to Kina.
“No.” Kina replied and did something I hadn’t expected. She lifted her leg and stomped down hard, with the force of any warrior I had ever heard of, onto my bare throbbing foot. Before I could realize Kinas true intentions, I had let out a scream so loud I was sure the devil himself had heard me. “I won’t leave.”
The light in the hall was flipped on. My eyes struggled to adjust to the new lighting. “What is going on here?” Auntie Camilla cried out. “Why aren’t you children on the nursery floor?” As my vision began to adapt I could make out all of my aunts and my mother. They stood very exposed…and the men. I had never seen so much of a man. In fact, the only man I had ever seen before that day was Kon, who always stood perfectly dressed in a black suit. After seeing so much, I knew, that men were clearly disgusting animals. “Lord Yamato. We are so sorry.” Kinas mom, aunt ami, cried bowing to a man that was old and wrinkled like a bedspread sheet. He looked to Kina, then to me with more distain than I had ever received and then to Alia. His face changed then, to almost a smirk but it was cold and I instinctively clutched to Alias hand. This man, somehow I knew this man, was extremely evil.
“You girls go upstairs right now!” mama ordered and I was pulled by Alia up the stairs. We didn’t stop when we reached the top though. She kept running, dragging me with her, until she had locked the door behind me in the restroom.
My sister clawed at the window sill. She appeared to try to be opening it. “Alia? Sister what are you doing?” I asked. She turned to me. Alia fell to her knees grabbing my shoulders and shaking me.
“Why Mika? I told you downstairs were forbidden! Why did you defy me?” she yelled. I shook my head, my mouth wouldn’t work. Alias face softened and she leaned her head on my shoulder. “We have to leave mika. We have to leave together.” She got up and with unbelievable ease, considering her struggles a moment ago, pulled the window up.
“Alia? Mika? Are you in there?” Mama called from outside the restroom door.
My sister extended her hand, “Let’s go Mika.” I took one long look back at the door that separated me from my mother, then turned and placed my hand in Alias. She smiled then. It was a large smile, as if she hadn’t been entirely sure that I would follow her. I found that incredibly silly and gave her a goofy smile.
The knob on the restroom door turned. I could see the color drain from alias face. She closed the window and pushed me into the shower. “We’re too late.” She whispered. Alia leaned toward me. “Mika the second no one is here you have to go.”
“Go where?” I asked, astounded.
“Outside, to the real world. You must run and promise that you will never look back.” Alia ordered in hushed but urgent whispers.
“What about you?” I asked slightly hysterical. Alia had often told me, in the privacy of our share club house, that she was planning our escape. I had never thought much of it. I had not known what we had to escape from, but now I knew. From men. We had to escape those animals, but without Alia I knew I would never make it. “What about you?” I repeated more urgently.
My sister gave me a sad amused smile. She sighed. The door of the restroom began