Even with the physical reminder he’d just given me, it was surreal to me that I was back in this place. I hadn’t been gone very long in the grand scheme of things, and yet it felt like those years I’d spent living in this house—in this room—were a lifetime ago. Maybe because I’d worked so hard to forget them.
I worked my jaw to make sure it wasn’t broken. It hurt, but everything appeared to be in working order.
This was bullshit.
I didn’t have to stay here.
Fuck these men and their over-inflated egos. They didn’t have the right to tell me how I was going to live my life.
Without looking at my father, I started walking toward the bedroom door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he shouted after me.
I didn’t bother to answer him. I wasn’t going to stand here and argue about whether or not I had the right to decide what I was going to do with my own life.
“Fina! I’m talking to you!”
Reaching the door my father had slammed closed when we arrived, I turned the knob and yanked it open. I didn’t try to bring anything with me. There was nothing I wanted that would remind me of this life. I also didn’t have a car this time, and it wouldn’t be so easy to get through the gates. I’m sure my father had all of the guards on alert. But none of that stopped me. I had to get out of there.
The two men who’d pulled me out of the room above Luca’s club appeared in front of me, blocking my way. I tried to duck around one of them, but he grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me hard, sending me stumbling back into the room. As if they were one person, they stepped over the threshold and blocked the only exit.
I spun around and faced my father. “You can’t keep me here against my will.”
But he just laughed. “Yes. I can.”
“I’m a grown woman! I’m capable of making my own decisions for my life!”
“You are my daughter!” he yelled. “And you will do what I fucking tell you!” He stalked toward me, lowering his voice. And somehow that was more frightening than when he yelled. “And I’m telling you that you will stay here. You’re a pretty woman, Fina. There are men who will still want you, despite the fact that you’re used goods now.”
“But what if I don’t want them?”
“You will do what you have to do for the good of the family, and you’ll be fucking grateful. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not worth anything to you anymore!” I shouted, my temper getting the best of me. “And I don’t give a shit about you or this fucking family!” I tensed, waiting for the slap that was sure to come after that outburst. But it never did. Not from my father.
One thick hand reached up and grabbed the back of my hair, pulling it from its twist. He pulled until I was bent over backward and he was leaning over me. “You ungrateful bitch.”
I glared up at him. Let him kill me now. I was done sitting here meekly while he pawned me off like a piece of property rather than a child of his own flesh and blood.
After a moment, he released me, and I fell to the floor. He stepped over me like I was nothing but a piece of trash. “Do what you need to do to get her in line,” he told his men. “But she is not to be raped and she is not to leave this room. She might still be worth something.”
Scrambling up from the floor, I shoved my hair from my face and stared at them with a defiant expression.
The guard to my right smiled as he cracked the knuckles of his right hand, and my heart stuttered in my chest.
* * *
“Serafina!”
I jumped, hot tea sloshing over the cup I held and burning my fingers. Quickly, I set it down on the table before I dropped it and angered him more.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“I can’t hear you.”
I lifted my chin. My father sat across from me in the kitchen, a cloth napkin tucked into the front of his shirt and a knife and fork in his hands, paused over the steak he’d been cutting as he’d casually told me that he’d found me a husband.
