Chapter 6 #2
“When did you first start sleeping around? When did you become the little slut standing in front of me?” he asks, amusement glinting in his brown eyes as he cocks his head. “Did your mom pimp you out as soon as you got old enough? Did she offer two for one deals to help make rent?”
It hits me like a slap in the face, and I can hear my heartbeat rushing in my ears.
It’s not true, of course, but I can think back to some of my mom’s clients touching me once they were done with her, or while they were waiting for her to be done with another client.
She never explicitly gave them permission to do any of that, but she never did enough to protect me from them either.
“No,” I say, biting the word out. “She didn’t offer two for one deals.”
“Pity,” Troy replies, grinning. “I bet you wanted her to. I bet you listened to her getting railed and wished it was you. Is that what happened the first time? How you popped your little cherry? You heard your mom getting fucked, and you wanted to know what it felt like, so you grabbed something and imitated it?”
His eyes are shining with some combination of fucked up entertainment and what I recognize as lust. He’s getting off on degrading me and trying to get me to say demeaning shit about myself. It’s just a game to him. A sick and twisted joke.
When I don’t respond to his question, Troy doesn’t seem bothered. He picks his inspection up again, grabbing my chin once more and pulling me in closer. He turns my face this way and that, then uses his fingers to pry my mouth open so he can look inside.
I’m so startled that I don’t even react, my heart lurching in my chest as I try to swallow.
“Not bad,” he murmurs. “Could be worse, considering where you’re from.”
My cheeks flood with heat from the humiliation of it all. He’s treating me like I’m some kind of horse, some piece of livestock he’s about to bring home.
He lifts one arm and then the other, running his fingers along them. “No track marks. Good. Unless you’re hiding them somewhere else?”
“I don’t do drugs,” I snap.
“I don’t doubt her about that,” Olivia says. “Whatever habits her mother engaged in, Willow seems to have been too bright to get involved with them.”
Before, I might’ve considered her words a compliment, but now all I hear in it is condescension.
Troy runs his fingers up my arm slowly, holding my gaze. “Good.” Then his gaze drops to my chest, and I have to fight the urge to cover it. “Nice tits. Could do with being a bit bigger, but they have surgeries to correct that. I like a girl I can hold on to.”
He winks and steps in even closer to me.
“So there’s one last thing to check,” he says, his voice dropping low. “Before I fully agree to this marriage.”
Before I can say anything, he’s shoving his hand down the front of my pants.
I gasp, caught off guard, and I can’t even move as he works his fingers past the lips of my pussy so he can thrust one deep into me.
It hurts, and I shudder in utter revulsion as he feels around, like he’s checking to make sure I really don’t have a hymen or wants to see how tight I am or… fuck, I don’t even know what.
My stomach rolls with nausea. It would serve him right if I threw up all over him, but I don’t want to deal with the fallout from that, so I swallow back the bile that tries to rise up. My cheeks burn, anger and humiliation battling for dominance in my gut.
Olivia just sits where she was when I walked in, calmly sipping her tea like this isn’t happening in front of her, or like she doesn’t care one way or another that it is.
After another long moment of prodding, Troy pulls his fingers out of me and then out of my pants and finally steps back, putting some much needed distance between us. He smirks at me, running his tongue over his lip, and then looks to Olivia.
“She doesn’t seem that damaged,” he says. “I’m surprised, honestly. I’ll take her.”
My grandmother smiles, setting aside her tea on a small tray. “Excellent. Then the deal is done.”
Those words are one push too far for me, and my stomach finally revolts, ignoring all my attempts to keep it down.
I spin on my heel and dash out of the room, gagging as I run down the hall toward the bathroom.
I make it just in time to fall to my knees in front of the toilet, throwing up in a rush.
Every part of me feels disgusting. It’s like I can feel the phantom traces of Troy’s touch on my skin and between my legs. I wish I could shower. I wish I could go back in time and make sure none of this could happen.
Tears well in my eyes, but I blink them back, shaking my head with a low groan. I don’t have time to fall apart here. If I take too long in the bathroom, then Olivia will likely send someone after me. Maybe even Troy, and he’s the last fucking person I want to see right now.
I also don’t want him to see me like this. Letting him see any weakness in me would probably be a bad idea.
So I drag in a deep breath and drag myself up, flushing away the evidence of how badly this has rattled me. I wash my hands and then rinse my mouth out in the sink, trying to pull myself together.
Reluctantly, I leave the bathroom, heading back down the hall toward the sitting room.
On the way, an open door on one side of the hallway catches my attention.
It’s cracked a few inches wide, and I push it a little wider and peer in.
The room is a bit more practical looking than the rest of the house, although it’s still decorated elaborately, with large paintings on the wall.
There’s an expensive looking wooden desk and a couple of chairs in one corner, several file cabinets, and bookshelves lining the walls.
This must be Olivia’s office. The door has always been closed when I’ve come to her house, so I’ve never seen the inside of it before.
A spark of hope lights in my chest, burning away some of the dread.
There must be dozens of papers and documents in that room.
Maybe there’s something in there that we can use.
Something that will link her to all the terrible shit she’s done, and the things she’s made the Voronin brothers do for her.
At the very least, it’s a good place to start my search, and that’s more than I was expecting to get out of this visit.
I close the door a little and head back to the sitting room where I left Troy and Olivia, but as I step inside, I realize that Olivia is gone now. It’s just Troy, leaning back in his chair as he finishes his drink.
He smirks when I enter, and I have the sudden urge to flee the room.
“You know, you should be grateful,” he drawls smugly. “I’m doing you a huge favor here.”
“I promise you, you’re not,” I bite out between clenched teeth, debating if I can leave now that he’s had his little moment, without being dismissed by Olivia first.
“Not many people would want to take on someone like you.” He gets up and comes closer to me, circling me again.
“But I like a challenge. I know what they say about you, all the whispers among the society women, but there’s something fun about the idea of turning a whore into a housewife.
Plus…” He reaches out, grabbing my ass and pulling me in tight against his body.
“I have some particular… appetites, let’s say.
And I think the daughter of a hooker might just be able to keep up.
Better than any of the frigid bitches in the country club set, at least.”
“Get off me,” I snarl, trying to push away from him. He’s surprisingly strong, and he doesn’t let up for a second.
“Maybe I’ll try you out right now,” he whispers, leaning in and dragging his tongue up the side of my neck. His breath smells like whiskey and something stale, and it makes my stomach heave all over again. “Give you a little spin, huh? Make sure I’m getting the best deal here.”
He shoves me backward, and when I stumble, he takes advantage of that, pushing me onto the couch.
I don’t have time to scramble away before he’s on top of me.
His weight is unpleasant and stifling, and when he grinds his crotch down against mine, adrenaline shoots through my veins like a flood of ice water.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shout, writhing beneath him. “I said get the fuck off me!”
I struggle hard, trying to find a way to get him off or to get out from under him. My heart races, and I reach up, about to slap him—but he’s quicker than me. In a flash, he grabs my wrist and pins it over my head.
His creepy grin never falters, and he stares down at me like it’s turning him on even more to see me fighting and struggling against him.
“Fuck, yes,” he mutters under his breath. “This is gonna be fun.”
Footsteps enter the room, and my heart skips a beat.
I turn my head to see Olivia coming back in, her heels tapping lightly on the floor.
I’m almost happy to see her, thinking that she’ll tell Troy off or something, but she doesn’t say anything.
She just lifts one eyebrow and stands there, making no move to stop him.
Hatred for both of them boils in my blood, tinged with a sick sort of despair.
Is she going to watch him assault me? How far will she let him go?
But luckily, Troy takes her appearance as his cue to get off me. He gives my wrist one more painful squeeze, then releases it, getting back to his feet and readjusting his well-tailored clothes. There’s a slight flush on his cheeks, his usually perfectly styled hair a little mussed.
“Well,” he says, turning back to Olivia as he smooths his hair. His tone is perfectly casual, as if he wasn’t just trying to force himself on her granddaughter in the sitting room. “Now that the deal is set, we’ll need to have an engagement party.”
Olivia nods. “Of course. It deserves to be celebrated. And I’ll be in touch to settle the guest list with you. It’s important that we invite all of the top families in Detroit. I want them to know about this deal.”
“Alright. We can hammer out the details soon,” Troy agrees.
He smirks at me one last time and then takes his leave. Once he’s gone, Olivia looks at me. I haven’t moved, and I can only imagine that I look like a mess, still half sprawled across the couch.
“You did well,” she says. “Or as well as can be expected.”
I don’t even know what to say to that, so I just pull myself up and try to breathe. “Can I go now?” I ask.
“You can go when you’re dismissed,” she replies curtly.
I grit my teeth. “I would have thought you had other things to do today, that’s all.”
“Oh, I do. I have big plans. For you and for those men of yours.”
“What?” My blood runs cold. “I thought you were done with them. I thought that was the point of this.”
Olivia smiles, cold and cruel. “No, the point of this is for you to finally do something to benefit your family. And to keep me from sending them to prison, I imagine. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let them off the hook that easily.
They’re quite useful, and I have many more things they can do for me.
They’re attached to you, which makes them very malleable. So why wouldn’t I use them?”
My stomach drops, my limbs feeling heavy and numb.
I stare at her, once again left breathless by how evil she is.
How was I so blind before? How did I not see how manipulative she is?
Was I really so blinded by my need for family, by the hope that I had finally found the connection I had craved for so long?
“Good help is so hard to find these days,” Olivia continues. “So I plan to get every last drop out of those brothers. And when they’re dead, I’ll find someone new to move on to.”
“You can’t do that,” I say thickly, shaking my head. “That wasn’t part of our agreement. It’s not—”
Olivia holds her hand up, cutting me off smoothly.
“Our agreement was about you getting married and keeping your men out of jail. There was no agreement that X would stop using their services.” She picks up her teacup again, raising to her lips as she tips her chin toward the door. “Now you are dismissed.”
My jaw snaps shut. My legs shake as I get to my feet and slip out of the room, my head spinning and my heart clenched with worry.
I agreed to marry a monster to protect the Voronin brothers.
But have I truly managed to protect them at all?