Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,98
that sagged over wet black eyes, but he had unusually large hands and he liked to use them to deal cards, diddle women, and pound in the faces of those who reneged on debts, those like my father.
Seamus drew a hand over the lingering bruises on the right side of his jaw with fingers that were scabby and missing their nails. There was only one reason, in his mind, that I was being sold. And that was to pay off his incredible debt to the underground leaders of Napoli. For years, I wished that they would just finish him off, slice him up and drop him into an alley somewhere for someone to find and kick at, too afraid to report the murder to the police. A few times, when he had been missing for long enough, I thought my fantasy had come true only for him to show up the next day, bright eyed and bushy tailed as if he had been at the spa, and not on the run from men with wet eyes and bloody hands.
“You must speak English with him, carina, in case he does not speak Italian.”
I straightened at the information, not because I was uncomfortable speaking English. Seamus had made sure that all of us could speak it to some extent and I had studied rigorously for the past two years with Sebastian. If we were going to get out, English was going to be a thread in our lifeline. No, what had startled me was my own father’s lack of knowledge about who was waiting for us in a villa inside Rome.
“You don’t know who is buying me?” My grinding teeth made my words gravelly, but I knew he could still understand me.
My heart was in my stomach, and that was in my throat. I felt like one of Picasso’s strange imaginings, my body twisted up with tension and fear so that I couldn’t even recognize myself as human anymore. I was trying to focus on anything but the great and terrifying unknown of my future—the dust motes in our dirty car, the smell of alcohol leaking from my father’s pores, or the way the hot southern Italian sun burned through the windows like flames.
“I hope you aren’t going to question your new…” He paused. “…guardian like that, Cosima. Remember, respect. Have I taught you nothing?”
“Yes. You’ve taught me to distrust men, never blindly obey anyone, and to curse God for giving you the capacity to father children,” I said blandly.
I could focus on the hatred of my father that blazed like a dying star in my belly instead of that awful fear threatening to overwhelm me.
Hatred was more powerful than fear. One was a shield and an armament I could utilize while the other could only be weaponised against me.
“Be grateful someone is willing to pay for you.”
“How much?” I had refrained from asking so far, but my pride wouldn’t allow me to go on unknowing. How much was I worth? How much money could be found in the flare of my hip and the divot of my collarbone, in the meat of my tits and the folds of my sex?
It was his turn to grind his teeth, but I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t answer me. Honestly, I didn’t think even he knew. It was a perverted friend of a perverted friend of my father who had set up the interaction, some human trafficker that Seamus had played cards with one time when he was drunk enough to admit he needed money and give away the secret of his beautiful daughter, the virgin. His trump card, as he often, tenderly, referred to me as.
The news had gotten back to the Camorra, and the rest was history.
“For how long?” I asked, and it wasn’t the first time I’d done so. “He can’t possibly own me for the rest of my natural born life?”
“No,” he conceded. “A period of five years was promised… with the possibility of renewing the contract again for double the price.”
“And how much of this dirty money will Mama and my siblings see?” I demanded even as my mind whirred.
Five years.
Five.
I’d be twenty-three when all was said and done. If I was off the modelling track for that long, I would be too old to continue to any kind of fame and fortune. I could have done without both, but I wanted to be able to provide for my family until the end of their days.