His fingers were entangled in her hair the day before she finally cut it to its shoulder length. While his fingers were around her throat and his nose was pressed to the back of her neck, he told her that he loved her hair.

The smell of it. The feel of it. The way it fell around her shoulders and resembled her dark chocolate brown eyes.

Then he used her hair as power to pull her closer to him. She felt him penetrating her but she couldn't feel pleasure or pain at this point. It just felt like he was touching her now.

He released inside of her and held her close for a minute before pushing her away.

"Don't burn dessert." He threatened as he buckled his pants and rejoined their neighbors in the foyer where they all sat talking animatedly in front of the roaring fire with tumblers of red wine.

Regina took a moment to pull herself together in the bathroom just across from the kitchen. She quickly crossed the arc threshold that led into the foyer without being noticed.

She locked the door behind herself and turned the faucet on; Regina sat on the edge of the tub with her face buried in her hands, sobbing as quietly enough not to be heard over the running tap.

"Regina?" Kathryn softly knocked on the door twice. "Are you in there?"

The brunette clenched her jaw for a moment, summoning enough courage to pull herself together before standing and adjusting her dress. She primped her hair in the mirror to appear somewhat put together.

"Just a second," she called and her voice sounded unfamiliar even to her. She cleared her throat, knowing arousing any suspicion could be more harmful than helpful to her.

"Honey, are you okay?" her friend's voice carried through the wooden door and she could sense the blonde's worry. It made her bones ache.

"I'm fine," she said scrubbing the smell of him off her hands until her hands turned red. "I just feel a little under the weather." She lied smoothly.

"Let me have a look at you." There were times Regina wondered why Kathryn had been in a childless marriage with David. She considered her friend simply just didn't want children or perhaps David couldn't have them. After a pregnancy scare in high school, she was sure Kathryn could conceive. The problem had to be David.

It was always David, she thought maliciously.

Once she was satisfied, Regina opened the door to a stricken with worry Kathryn. Her friend's hand was on her forehead immediately.

"You have a fever." She frowned and pulled Regina out of the bathroom. "Perhaps we all should go home."

"No, no." Regina pulled away and walked to the oven. "Stay for dessert. I'm fine. I'll just have Leo run out to the pharmacy tonight."

The Lawyer watched as Regina pulled out a delicious looking apple turnover but she still wasn't convinced they should stay. "Are you sure?" she eyed her friend skeptically.

Worried that Kathryn might bring this idea to her husband and the rest of their friends, Regina quickly brightened up as if she weren't just crying in her own bathroom. "I'm certain." She nodded and plastered an overzealous smile that displayed nearly all of her teeth.

Regina and her closest friend rejoined the rest of her dinner guests and her husband. Kathryn held a stack of small dessert plates and Regina carried the turnover.

She placed it on the coffee table with a fake smile that only Leo was suspicious of. He eyed her curiously before turning his attention to the Mayor of one of their neighboring towns.

"Mr. Whitwicky," he resumed a previous conversation from before. "I believe we can pool in our resources and help both of our towns with this awful homeless epidemic polluting both of our towns."

Regina divided the turnover and passed out a slice for each guest.

"Aren't you going to eat?" Kathryn whispered out the side of her mouth from behind her wineglass when Regina joined her on the couch. "You barely touched your dinner."

"As I said," the brunette whispered back. "I'm just feeling under the weather."

Her friend must have believed the excuse because she simply shrugged and joined conversation with her husband.

Regina was left alone while everyone discussed business plans. David was interested in opening another branch for his shelter in Kent, the town next to them. He discussed the possibility with the Mayor, taking his attention away from her husband.

Seemingly unaffected, Leo smiled at his wife happily. "I love you," he mouthed to her as if he hadn't just assaulted her ten minutes earlier in the kitchen.

"I love you too." She lied. It was as easy as breathing now.


It's her first time outside of the hotel in just a week and she's mostly healed from her last day in Storybrooke with her husband.

Now as she sips a cup of coffee that's expertly brewed, she considers, Regina thinks that maybe she shouldn't have left. She could have sought help in Storybrooke.

Kathryn, now thinking about her friend she remembers she promised to call her when she found somewhere safe, would have fought for her marriage to be over. They could have gone public with the divorce, and all the reasons behind it, and she could have gone against Gold in the Mayoral election.

It's not that she's afraid of the repercussions for leaving; it's that settling in a new place with barely any experience in politics (aside from what her mother has been raising her for her entire childhood) Regina realizes she doesn't have a lot of options.

She went to college at Columbia in New York and it had been the most liberating time of her life. Mostly because she knew when she returned all of her friendships were to be ended and her relationship with Daniel was to be discontinued.

She knew when she returned home from college that she were to be married. But, had she known the suitor her mother had decided for her? No, she'd had no clue. If she had, she surely wouldn't have come home. If she'd known what lay ahead for her, she would have stayed in New York.

If she'd been aware of the years of abuse and borderline torture awaiting her, she would have found a career teaching horseback riding in a place her mother didn't even know existed.

Regina brings the hot cup of coffee to her lips and watches the downpour of heavy rain outside the window. She would have never agreed to marry Leo if she'd known what was in store for her.

But, she thinks for a moment, it wasn't all bad. The abuse wasn't always daily. It began with her being caught flirting with another man. Which, she supposes, could make any man angry enough to lose control of his actions.

It began with verbal abuse just a few months before their wedding; Leo had been running for Mayor once again. And of course, Gold had been running against him.

"I hear you're undecided," Regina said to Deputy Graham as she sat on his desk. Legs crossed in the only enticing way she knew how. "What could possibly have you doubting my fiancé?"

Graham shrugged, barely noticing the way she sat poised in a way that strikes fear and intimidation into the hearts of most men and women but also troubling seduced them to no end.

He dropped his holster next to her on the desk. "Don't get me wrong, your fiancé is a very nice guy."

She rolled her eyes but he didn't see.

"I just think he may not be as interested as previous Mayors in what's best for this town." He looked at her apologetically.

A twinge of pain shot through her chest at the thought of her late father but she ignored it. "Deputy,"

"Regina," He insisted, quietly. "It's me. Graham. You called me names up until high school then wouldn't let me kiss you unless I won my football games and dedicated my winning touchdown to you. We dated until college, Regina."

Her face fell to something resembling regret and misery for a moment at the memories but she quickly gathered herself and smirked. "I wouldn't consider what we had a relationship, Graham. After all you were too poor to take me out to dinner but you always could afford condoms."

"What I'm saying is I don't know what happened to you at college but the Regina I knew would be running against Mayor White not sexualizing herself to get him reelected. You could be as good as your dad, Regina. Hell, you would probably be better than him, with all due respect."

Something about what he said made her feel more confidence in herself than she had since returning home. He thought she could be better at caring for the town than Leo. He believed in her.

Graham stood next to her, palms down on his desk, and invaded her space.

Or maybe her thoughts drew him into it and she leaned closer to him. "Do you really think I should be running?" she whispered.

He smiled shyly but didn't pull away. "I do."

By the door, something heavy dropped on the floor and both of them pulled away quickly. Regina turned to the noise and saw said fiancé standing with a bag from Granny's and a look of betrayal on her face.

"Leo," she whispered almost breathlessly.

But he quickly left the station and in his haste, he kicked the bag over and out spilled Regina's favorite salad from the diner. She glanced at Graham and he looked just as shocked and guilty as her. Like a deer in the headlights.

His face softened to something apologetic and she hurried after her fiancé.

"Leo!" She called when she left the building. He was sitting in his car across the street. She looked both ways for traffic then crossed it and got into the small car.

In the passenger seat, she turned to him to explain but in his eyes she saw collected tears he wouldn't let fall and she fell short of an excuse. He looked broken and she felt guilt swell inside her chest. She yearned to make it better, to make understand she would never do anything to hurt him. The flirting…it was a ruse. She knew Graham still had a soft spot for her in his heart. She wanted to use him for it. She would never dare cheat.

Regina Mills was a lot of things, selfish, proud, mistrustful, conniving, meticulous, manipulative, but she was not a cheater. She promised to marry him and love him and deep down she knew it was hard to do but she would do it. Out of respect. Regina was true to her word.

"I should have known," he said in the silence. "He's younger and you dated him for three years. I thought you were over him after…"

Daniel, she finished in thought. She was over Graham.

"Your mother never warned me he might still be a problem. Is he a problem, Regina?" he looked at her with storm green eyes and she numbly shook her head in the negative. Her heart was beating erratically in her chest. She could barely hear him over her quick pulse.

"He said something to me." She tried to explain. "He compared me to my father and it was an unexpected compliment."

Leo nodded in understanding then started the car.

They drove in silence back to the Mayoral Manor. Regina entered the house behind him quietly clutching her purse in her hands.

He turned around suddenly and she lifted her gaze from the floor to him. "He doesn't still love you," Leo said with a hand on her wrist to keep her in place.

"You've changed. You're not the same Regina that used to love him out of pity. He knows you're a shark and you'd do anything for me, including seduce him like some cheap political whore."

"I'm not a whore," she said with defiance.She felt like a girl again, when her mother caught her kissing Graham in her bedroom. She'd dragged Regina down the stairs and laid her before her father. Defiled and reduced to her body.


"Whore," her mother had called her. "Your daughter is a whore." She'd told her father.

He looked over his newspaper at her on the floor with pity but went back to reading. Regina, in her nightgown, exploded with tears and sobbed that she would never see Graham outside of school again.

But the next night he'd snuck into her room again and they'd kissed again, even after she'd protested against him. Her mother didn't catch them this time and when he'd left, she felt some semblance of humanity in her. Her father snuck into her room after Graham and he promised he would talk to Cora.

But he didn't. If he had, it'd done nothing for her.


"You are a whore, Regina." Leo pulled at her wrist, yanking her to him until she was standing before him. She could smell a hint of alcohol on his breath. "Do I have to remind you of what you've done for me to win the first election? What your mother asked you to do for me when you were seventeen? You were still dating Graham, weren't you? Do you think he could look at you knowing what you did for me?"

She shook her head, shamefully.

He continued bitterly. "He can't love you like I love you, Regina. I know everything about you and I still want to marry you. That orphan Deputy? He knows nothing about you. His ignorance is his love. But I know all the dark secrets you keep from this town and I love you."

His bruising hold on her wrist tightened.

"Say it," he demanded in a whisper.

Regina looked at him. Chin up and eyes as black as coal. "You love me."

"That's right, Regina. I love you." He released her, almost pushing her away as if he were disgusted with her. "I'm done with you. Go make yourself presentable for dinner. I want to fuck you in ways Deputy Graham couldn't even imagine."

She left quietly, yet in a hurry to get away from him.

In the shower, she didn't cry. She felt numb. Empty.

But that night, Leo did fuck her. And at first it felt good. But then it became about him and his pleasure and he'd forgotten she was human.

Regina's pulled out of her reverie when she sees a face that reminds her of Graham staring back at her across the street. She tenses then blinks. Regina searches the crowd of faces once more but the familiar one is gone.

Leo sent him after her.


A/N: I forgot about NaNoWriMo and so I decided to use this story. I'm looking for a Beta. Someone readily available at any time of the day. Someone not interested in telling me which direction to take my story but can give some ideas if I ask. Someone that is only interested in correcting my grammatical, punctual, and spelling errors. If that's you then PM if you're interested.

Anyways, reviews encourage me to write and I'm willing to post multiple chapters a day if I had the inspiration.