“Don’t,” says Lilian, who immediately noticed and put a hand on my chest to stop me, but it’s too late.
I walk over to them.
“Everything alright here?” I ask.
“None of your business,” he says.
“Actually, it is. This is our wedding, not yours, so whatever it is, be done with it.”
I grasp the girl's shoulder and turn her to me. She must be barely eighteen.
“Tell me what’s up,” I order her, but she shakes her head.
It’s Lilian’s father. Don’t freak out on our wedding,I tell myself, because I am close to snapping. I have watched him two years fucking through girls like others change their underwear, and there is only so much I can tolerate.
“She’s just stupid,” Mr Knightley says. My mind quiets down, as always, before I’ve had enough. It focuses.
“Maybe you should get yourself a drink for a moment,” I say coldly.
If looks could kill, I would drop dead, not that I care. I stare back at him until he removes himself. Men like him can’t handle women like me.
I turn to the girl.
“Did he make you come here? Force you? Shake your head if he did.”
It’s a tactic I have used for many other girls I met over the years. This way, it looks like they never told.
She shakes her head.
“Kat,” says Lilian, her voice almost pleading, because she knows what is about to happen.
Without another word, I stride over to him, where he’s watching us from the bar.
“She is underage, isn't she?” I ask him when I lean onto the bar, to where he is sipping a whiskey like a fat, untouchable spider in his net.
“And what if?” he says. He’s drunk and angry.
“Kat, please,” Lilian says, trying to keep me away.
“He’s one of them,” I hiss at her.
“He’s also my father.”
“Yes, a father who makes you jump through his hoops like a puppet and uses you like a prize he can show off,” I snap. I know she hates to hear it and would never acknowledge it, but someone had to say it.
“Don’t you dare talk about me like that,” her father roars and gets up, attempting to be more impressive and intimidating. I know all the tricks men use. “You filthy little whore, pulling my daughter into that lifestyle.”
“Father!” Lilian says, shocked and yet pleading. “It is my life, not a lifestyle. I never liked men, and if you can’t see that?—“
He interrupts her. At this point, the other guests are an audience to our little encounter.
“You don’t talk back to me like a bratty bitch?—“
The last sentence was one too many, and I see something that pushes me over the edge: A tear running down her cheek.
No one makes her cry, no one.
“Out!” I shout at him as I get between them.
