28. Good Luck
Chapter twenty-eight
Good Luck
W aking up I gasp, inhaling through my nose hard as all the sensations hit me at once as I come to. Immediately feeling that I'm on a hard floor, I tense. Cracking my eyes open, I see the plain, dingy concrete wall. My lids are heavy as I work to flick my eyes around seeing I'm in a basement, a small one with no windows. Only lit by a singular, very dim florescent lightbulb. Thank God because my head is pounding.
Feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up for the second time, I'm cognizant enough to feel I'm not alone.
Raising my head weakly, my eyes widen in shock and I pale at the sight in front of me. A whimper escapes into the gag pressed tightly against my chapped, swollen lips. I blink, the vision in my right eye tinged pink with blood that has trickled into it.
I barely register the sting as he walks to me slowly. Lowering to his haunches and reaching forward, he plucks at the knot against the back of my head, loosening the gag. I cough, licking my cracked lips.
"Dad?" I whisper through the burn in my throat.
He looks back at me, just the same as I remember from vague memories, made even more foggy with all the time of two decades between the last time I saw him until now. But… it's him. His bright red hair has dulled with age, the features in his face made sharp and weathered with time. There are crinkles in the corners of his eyes, and a scar marks his left temple, curving down to his cheek in a white slash against pink skin.
He's lived hard, obviously.
"Why are you doing this?" I whisper. My arms move to wrap around my stomach, but my hands are bound behind my back.
"Oh darling, do you really have to ask that question?" He tilts his head as his gray eyes bore into mine. He has dead eyes. No emotion other than indifference reflects back at me, causing my own eyes to narrow as the haze of the drug begins to fade, and the awareness that my father is the one who has captured me fills me with hate and disbelief.
"I'm your daughter, you sick fuck."
He tsks, shaking his head. "You should know better than anyone that I care for no one but myself. You're just a means to an end, Calliope Isobel Sophia Maniotti."
Just like that, a memory from when I was five comes back to me.
"Calliope, get off that table before you crack your head open," dad yells, looking at me from his spot in the living room, having come around the corner and seeing me up on the table trying to reach for a flower in the vase.
A shuddering exhale leaves me. "What do you want from me?" I snap.
He's a mere foot away. The urge to bite him fills me, and the blood rushes to my face as anger quickly seeps into me, stealing my common sense. Rearing my head back I spit in his face, making him turn his head to the side to wipe it off.
I bite back a yelp as he slaps me across the face hard, making me topple to the side and squirm against the binding. "When I get out of this, I'm going to kill you!" I shout at him.
In my struggles I feel myself grinding into the filth of the dirty concrete, but still I persist. Squirming and scraping my raw wrists against the floor, hoping to loosen the rope.
"You won't because you will be indebted to me. You are to be married to Lucious Scogmigilio, brother to the head of the Balducci family." He stares at me like I'm nothing more than dirt at the bottom of his shoe. "You were betrothed to Joaquin Balducci, but he declined the proposal years ago, and it took me a long time to secure another husband for you." His eyes narrow as a sick look enters his eye. "And when I deliver you over, I'll be made advisor and the right hand man to the Scogmigilio family. Finally."
"I'm already married!" I spit out, however, common sense tells me to keep quiet about the baby in my womb.
"No, Isobel Brookes is married. But Calliope Maniotti is not. Your bitch mother had your name changed and illegal documents drawn up when she went on the run. It was by sheer dumb luck that I found you. Thanks to ties your 'husband's' brother's friend had, we are now back in business, and I'm headed up the rank. And it's about time. You were supposed to be married off about seven years ago."
His eyes flash, showing me just how pissed he is to have been made to wait that long.
"I will never marry this man," I hiss, staring up at him from the floor. "I will kick, scream, fight. Make his life a living hell until he decides I'm more trouble than I'm worth."
Claudio's eyes narrow. "Then I'll break you down until you're so docile you'll have no choice but to comply."
My own eyes narrow back. "Good luck to you then. I guess we're just going to have to find out the hard way who's more stubborn of the two of us." And with that I roll over, presenting my back to him.
Hearing the door slam shut I let out a tear, wanting to be free, missing my husband. And I'm scared, so scared.
But I won't let him break me. I'll die first.