Chapter One
Lying in the stillness of the dark room, I stare out into the stormy night sky. It’s humid tonight. The open window lets in a balmy breeze that tickles my skin, but it doesn’t warm me. Not when I can still feel the icy imprint of his hands on me. I take a deep breath, the scent of rain beckoning me outside with the promise of washing me clean. No more fingerprints or bruises or bite marks, all of them rinsed away by the downpour of crying skies, the heavens weeping for the girl who has no tears of her own left to cry.
I was naïve in thinking I would get a reprieve tonight. How silly to assume that burying my mother would grant me one night to grieve in solitude. I left the wake downstairs, walking up the staircase with heavy steps, hindered by the rustling fabric of the dress Clyde chose for me to wear. A fourteen-year-old walks into a funeral wearing a cocktail dress and a fake smile. It sounds like a bad joke, but this joke is my life.
I could hear the whispers as I sat in the hard-wooden chair, watching as they lowered my mother’s white, flower-adorned coffin into the ground. Each shovel of dirt thrown over her casket echoed the mud being thrown over me. Nasty words scoring marks into my skin, made by catty women and perverted men who should have tried to help me. Instead, they cast me in the role of temptress and waited with bated breath for me to take my mother’s place.
Not bothering to change after I made my escape, I kicked off my shoes and crawled onto my bed, the stupid dress billowing out around me as I grieved in private while hordes of fake mourners milled around downstairs drinking champagne and eating canapés.
It wasn’t until later, when the crowd had thinned out a little and the voices that floated up from downstairs seemed fewer, that I realized my mistake.
Dresses made for easy access. Not that jeans stopped him, but psychologically I felt safer wearing them.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t fight back, didn’t tell him no, or flinch when he told me with whiskey-laced breath how beautiful I was, because I knew it could be worse. He had crossed so many lines, but never the final one, the one I wasn’t sure I would survive. So, to keep my virginity intact, I stopped fighting.
Maybe that made me complicit. Perhaps it made me a whore like the catty women below said about me. The ones who passed their judgments as they blew their rich sugar daddies and fucked their gardeners on the side.
But they had no clue what it was like to be me. Clyde had pulled me out of school under the guise of being homeschooled. It was a ruse so there was someone home to take care of Mama and someone around for Clyde to amuse himself with whenever the moment arose. I had lost the few friends I had, my brother was long gone, and now my mother, my last tie to the little girl I once was, is dead.
A bolt of jagged lightning illuminates the night sky just as I hear the telltale creak of someone stepping on the loose floorboard outside my room.
I tense, biting my lip as I hear the door open behind me for the second time tonight. I close my eyes at their approach, feigning sleep, forcing my body not to react to the cold fingers on my arm.
Even with a house full of people, I know it’s him, his touch as familiar to me as my own, his icy, frigid skin mirroring the coldness of his heart. Fingertips tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, hovering for a moment before a cough from the doorway draws his attention.
“She’s asleep?” the lightly accented voice asks. Italian, perhaps.
“Yes, so keep your voice down,” Clyde replies, low and somber.
“And she is untouched?” the man persists, not lowering his voice at all.
I’d laugh at that if I weren’t so terrified. I’m many things, but untouched is not one of them.
“I told you she was and she will remain so until I hand her over to you in the morning, but tonight G, she is still mine, so do not overstep,” Clyde warns, his voice filled with anger.
“Maybe,” the other man concedes, “but I paid for a virgin, and that’s what I expect to receive. You can have your last night with her, but