My brother ends his spiteful comment by throwing me in the direction of my father, and I land before his feet, slammed down onto my knees by losing my balance. I have no time to recover. My father’s the one who grabs my hair and roughly pulls my head back. I look up at him, and I don’t see my doting father. He’s transformed into a truly humanized Satan. There are no sharp talons or horns, or fire billowing around him from his portal up from hell. He’s still my father. He’s still the man who raised me, loved me, and created me into enough of a monster to do his deadly deeds. He’s supposed to love me, but he’s willing to do this to me. He’s shaped my entire life into something I never wanted, and I still expect him to love me.
He never fucking loved me. I was just another worker for him. My genetics never were my saving grace from any of this. I’m granted no penitence or leeway. I was always a target for my father to get his own way. Now he’s willing to sell me to a gang of sick, perverse men who will defile me and destroy every last shard of my being just so he can say he taught me a lesson.
“You want to argue with me, I’ll show you how expendable you are, Princess.” He leers down at me as he speaks, and I’m quaked with fear. “You want to question me and defy me over and over again, and I will show you how I play. I am the one who runs this house, this family, and you.” He grips my hair tighter, lifting me up some, and forces my body to twist behind the horde of disgusting men vying for a piece of me. “We’ll start bidding, at least, at one hundred and fifty grand,” my father announces, his hand still on me as he looks away and at the men before us. “She is Italian royalty, after all.”
The moment seizes at that point. My heart explodes with rapid terror, and I’m in no mood to submit to whatever cruel punishment my father has planned when it’s this. I begin to shake my head, not caring at how my roots scream in protest at the gesture. He can’t possibly do this to me, can he?
“Papà,” I feebly beg. My vision blurs as I look up at him, wishing for a better outcome than the one he’s presenting me to. “Please, Papà, don’t do this. You don’t want to. I’m sorry. Papà, please. Anything but this.”
He lifts me entirely to my feet as I plead. He only loosens my hair to put his face into mine, and I’m met with eyes filled with fire. He’s in no mood to bargain and let me go. He’s really doing this and no one in the room will save me. I feel my sheer silk dress lift and I imagine it only pleases the men before us.
“You have got away much too lightly,” my father alerts me, all his intention oozes out of him, highlighting that he means business. “It’s time you learned the way we Abbiatis really work.”
“Papà!” I scream as he throws me into one of the men’s arms, and he’s immediately touching me. I feel the dirt scar across every trail he leaves and implement itself for life. I close my eyes, force myself back into a distant memory, and conjure a new world where I’m nowhere near this danger. I whimper as more hands grab onto me, all trying to get their piece of what could be theirs.
When a gun goes off, I jump and feel the warmth of blood splatter across my face. All of the strangers’ hands fall away quickly followed by a resonating thud directly in front of me, and I feel free. I open my eyes to find the space he occupied empty and everyone horrified around me. I look down and see a hole in the man’s forehead, his cold eyes staring unblinking. I look over my shoulder and see my father with a gun. He places it back into the back of his pants and steps forward, pulling me out from the perverts who he almost sold me to. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. I stand before him numb as he begins to clear the blood from my face, but I feel myself repulsed by him. He’s so gentle with me, I barely have time to register that it was he who threw me for the dogs. He did this and rendered me a begging mess, and now he’s being soft and kind.
Slowly, I raise my eyes to meet my fathers. The devil has reverted back to his lair and left my father’s body. He stands before me, the dutiful father. He’s the father who loves his own and would never do what he just did to prove a point. I’ve known for years about his hand in trafficking girls, but I just never imagined that I would be his latest.
“Now are you aware of why you don’t defy my plans for you?” he asks me gently. There’s a certain calmness to him that was lost before. He’s snapped back to his stoic fatherly ways, but I can’t forget how he became only moments ago. He might be able to switch it off, but I know all the sides to my father’s personality, and I have yet to forget one. This one is one I will have nightmares over for life. “Never let me get that far again.”
“Don’t blame this on me,” I whisper to him, unable to raise my voice higher than it is. “You’re nothing more than a murdering monster. You’re poison to all of us.” I shake my head in dismay as I finally find some sort of voice to speak up to him with. “You’re going to destroy us all.”
“I am your father,” he asserts sternly, the power begging to become unbidden in his tone. “You will obey me.”
“You’re nothing to me,” I tell him, my tone tainted by my dying proximity to breaking.
I leave no room to be stopped. I flee from the room and only stop to grab my car keys before I escape from the confines of my own home in nothing but my pyjamas. I don’t look back. With a pounding heart, I allow fear let me run from my home.
I run to my only sanctum – Bruno.
CHAPTER FIVE