Chapter 15 #3
My father was a sick man, dragging out the torment in a slow and cruel kind of way. He was tracking her cycle, too, waiting for the time to finally plant his wretched seed.
The goal was to put extra sleeping medication in his brandy and pray that he passed out before his plan would see its way through. We'd buy ourselves a few hours to make it look like things happened, and we'd figure out how to move forward.
But I didn't find out until much later that my paranoid father had bugged nearly everything I owned, giving him access to every private detail about my life.
So, when I casually tried to slip the medicine into his drink, he barged in, calling me out with his hand wrapped around my throat.
Madison begged him that she had nothing to do with it, throwing me completely under the bus.
My father grabbed the nearest sharp object, a corkscrew wine bottle opener, and drove it into my stomach.
I remember gasping for breath, my eyes wide, my mouth gaping. I couldn't believe it. He had hit me, punched me, kicked me, thrown me into things, but my father had never done something so…damaging.
I slid down the wall, my hands cupped around the thing sticking out of my stomach, blood pooling all around me, and watched him turn to Madison.
At first, I thought he was going to fuck her right there, make me witness him defiling her, and in retrospect, that wouldn’t have been the worst thing that could have happened.
Instead of that, my father fisted her hair and forcefully rammed her head against the wall.
She screamed, the sound burning into my memory so vividly I could still hear her cries haunting me now, as I lay there, unmoving, unable to do anything other than suffer.
He ripped her shirt, exposing her breasts, and shoved her hard onto the floor of his study.
With great force, he kicked her in the gut, tossing her frail body more. Lazily, he waltzed over to the table next to his chair he smoked cigars and drank dark liquor on, and pulled out a revolver.
"Please, please, I'm so…" Madison cried out. "I'm sorry." She had found her hands, palming the floor and scooting back, unable to do much else other than inch away from him.
He flipped open the thing that held the bullets, my heart pounding harder with each passing second until he slammed it shut and pointed it at her.
"You are nothing more than a fucking common whore, you're a dime a dozen." His voice was thick and phlegmy like he had something caught in his throat.
"I'm sorry," she spat out again, her gaze meeting mine this time.
I still wonder to this day if that last apology was meant for me, or if it was her attempt to forgive herself for her sins. I'll never know.
Because the next thing I knew the gun went off, the reverberation settling over me, my ears ringing.
Her body thudded hard on the floor, red covering the space around her.
Madison gurgled for a solid minute as my father watched, but he gave up halfway through, my sights never leaving her, not until he turned his fury on me.
He stepped around the blood coating the floor like it was spilled milk, careful not to get his loafers dirty. My father didn't even look at me bleeding out, slumped against the cabinet on his way over.
I sucked in a breath, everything numb and lit on fire at the same time, my hands still around the wine opener jammed in my stomach.
He rifled through his liquor cabinet, knocking things about in his search for something I'd soon discover. A knife, meant for cutting the lime wedges he sometimes used in cocktails.
My father knelt down, something that took him great effort, and ran his gaze over me.
"You have disobeyed me for the last time, London girl.
" He clicked his tongue before latching onto the wine opener and yanking it out.
"Now, I'm going to fucking gut you. Maybe then you'll realize the error of your ways. "
He didn't even give me a chance to process his words before driving the knife in, my lungs letting out a blood-curdling scream. Everything turned white, my vision betraying me. Maybe I shouldn't see this anyway.
He dragged the blade along my flesh like a child coloring outside the lines, tearing me open wider, and I screamed, wanting it to stop, wanting it all to stop.
I'd never wanted death more than I had in that moment.
But for the life of me, I couldn't give up, not yet. I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I didn't let him finish me for good right there, because living another day under his thumb would be reliving this day over and over.
Still, I was weak, and I couldn't take any more of the pain, I couldn't fathom the idea that this was the way I would die. I had barely lived, why did he get to take that away from me?
That was the day I learned to think like him—saying the only thing I could think of to save my life. "Sell me," I sputtered. "Sell me to someone," I begged. "I have to be worth more alive than dead."
This made him pause, my idea somehow intriguing him enough to think about it.
He thought long and hard, so long I started to black out from the pain, but I clung to that silence, hoping like hell it might mean something other than my demise.
And so, he removed his hand from the knife, brought himself to his feet, and towered over me. "If you live, I'll consider it."
He spat on the floor and left me there, somehow with a sense of thankfulness that he chose the floor instead of me.
I wasn't sure if I'd have the strength to overcome what he did to me that day, but I wore that scar as a constant reminder that nothing could ever hurt me as much as he did.
I trace my fingers along the jagged edge and shiver the memory away, one I hate reliving but find myself facing every time I look at my naked body. Once I'm dressed, I return to the clerk with the dress in my hand.
"I'll get that bagged up for you," she says.
I ignore the condescending tone in her voice and nod stiffly. "Sure."
"Everything okay?" Drew asks me, his hand resting on my back.
"Mmhm," I mumble and shift away from him. He hasn't done anything wrong, but I find no comfort in his touch, and right now, all I desire is to be tucked away in Archer's room.