I throw my hand up to try to snatch it away, and he’s quick enough to ensure that doesn’t happen.
“Sign.” He repeats.
“What is it?” I ask, though it doesn’t really matter what it is. My life is over now. My life was over the moment this man here decided to switch sides, to back Magnus over my father.
“It marks you as my property for life.”
Property. That’s what I am, what all the Brethren Ladies are. Whether we’re married off or simply sold to Oblivion, none of us are truly free. They give us the illusion of it. They speak of honour, and marriage, and duty, as if those few things can sustain a person.
I shake my head again.
Antonio grabs my hand, rams a pen into it and though I’m kicking out, fighting, doing everything to ensure this moment here doesn’t happen, he manages to force a scrawl that’s damning enough to make me feel like I’ve just sold my soul.
As he lets me go like discarded trash he holds it up high, showing it to all the men above us. “Grace Ratcliffe is henceforth mine.” He says in a voice that echoes.
I crumple more at those words, at the tone of them, at the way he’s laid claim to every piece of me now.
“We know.” Someone shouts back. “Get on with the fucking.”
I dare to raise my eyes and instantly regret it as they latch onto our dear new Chapter Lord who’s standing, watching with his stony-faced wife beside him.
If this had played out a different way, if my father had been the victor, then it would be her here. She’d be the one sold off, only no one would be paying for her virginity. They’d be paying to ruin her, to break her more than her brute of a husband already has.
A part of me should feel sorry for her given the rumours, given what I know she endured at his hands, and yet I don’t. Every night she sleeps beside him, every day she witnesses that same brutality metered out on others. Yet she doesn’t help, she doesn’t intervene, she does nothing but watch.
Antonio lays the paper safely on that cluttered table. I’m still sprawled on the floor, half shrinking into the side of the bed. He grabs a few items then puts them down on the mattress, close enough that I can see before he picks me up and dumps me down beside them. I know enough from my mother to know what they are, what their purpose is. Should I be grateful that he’s at least going to prep me properly before he fucks me?
I can’t help the scornful laugh that escapes me. No, he’ll get no gratitude from me. He’ll get nothing of the sort. He’s the reason I’m here, he’s the reason my mother is also here, in this place of horror. Is she being tormented in this moment, too? Is she also being watched as someone other than my father fucks her?
My hands find that robe I was wrapped in and I cover myself with it, shield myself with it.
Antonio slides his jacket off, starts undoing his shirt, then his belt. I don’t know when he kicked his immaculate oxfords off but I can see them, neatly lined up beside one of the table legs.
As he undoes his belt and removes his trousers, my body seems to tremble even harder. I’ve never seen a naked man before, and though I don’t want to look, I don’t want to see, my eyes drag over him anyway.
He’s big, muscular. Clearly he works out enough to ensure his body is in peak physical condition. I can see the way his biceps bulge, the way his six pack is emphasised more as he draws in one deep breath after another. It’s strange to look at a man I know is my father’s age and yet he doesn’t have that portly belly, or that double chin. No, Antonio is gorgeous, devastatingly so, and I think I hate that even more about him.
His cock is semi-hard. I look away quickly as I realise that fact, but my cheeks heat all the same. I can’t tell if he’s big or not - to me, he looks ginormous. How the fuck is he even going to get that inside me without doing serious damage? Above, someone makes a crude comment and our dear audience starts jeering more about how battered my pussy is about to be.
My hands grip the sheets so tightly my knuckles turn white, and the temptation to scream the word ‘ruby’ almost has me doing it.
Antonio takes one slow step towards me, then another, approaching me the way one does a beast now cornered but not totally defeated. I don’t know why but that gives me hope, that gives me something. He sees me as a threat, as something that could hurt him.
“Ditch the robe.” He orders.
I shake my head. It may not be covering me, it may not be doing anything at all really, but this flimsy piece of fabric is the last shred of modesty I have left.
A flicker of annoyance is all the warning I get before he pounces on me, flips me over, grabs me from behind with one hand twisting in my hair and the other wrapped around my throat so tightly I can’t get any oxygen in.
“Stop playing games, Grace.” He growls in my ear.
I buck back, trying to smash my skull into whatever part of his body I can find, and that clearly pisses him off more.
The hand half strangling me moves to grab a fistful of the robe. I hear the tear before I feel it. The pathetic fabric is ripped from my body and I try to curl up, to hide myself as best I can.
Only Antonio is pulling me up, pulling me off the bed, spinning me around and showing every inch of me off for all those leering eyes above.
One of his hands gropes my right breast, and the tiny bell there jingles in response.
