My eyes follow him, fearing that this will be the last time I’ll ever see him.
It will be the last time I ever lay eyes on him. I have to stand up, pull some sneakers on, shove a few things into an overnight bag, and run for it. Mom isn’t going to convince Andreas that he didn’t just see what he saw, which means I’m a dead woman. I have to walk away from the only man who means home, and my heart is shattering. If I don’t, I’ll be given to Dad’s men to be raped and beaten, begging for mercy until they finally slit my throat. What they will do to me will destroy Damiano, and I can’t let that happen to him.
My eyes drift to my closet. Running will only delay the inevitable. There’s a surer, swifter way out of this.
Feeling numb, I pull myself slowly to my feet. My gun is hidden in the bottom of the shoe rack in my wardrobe, inside a shoebox. Better to die swiftly by my own hand, to spare Damiano from all that suffering. It will hurt him when he finds out what I’ve done, and he won’t ever forgive me, but I am sparing us both from an even worse fate. Maybe he’ll take some comfort from knowing that I went out on my own terms, and I’ll live on in his heart forever. It’s the only place I want to be.
If Damiano can’t have me, no one can.
My hand is on the wardrobe door when I hear determined, masculine footsteps sounding along the corridor and getting louder. My bedroom door bursts open, and I turn toward it with a sigh. Why does Damiano have to make this so much harder than it is? We’ll both end up dead at this rate.
“Damiano, I told you…”
But it’s not Damiano who’s come into my room. Andreas slams the door behind him, and turns to me with an angry, petulant expression. “What were you doing with your brother?”
I draw the robe tighter around me. “Get out.”
He crosses the room toward me, and I sense violence radiating from him. Gone is the deferential, overeager man who’s been desperate to impress my father and his cousin. Damiano has just humiliated him, and he’s furious. “Everyone in Malus says that Damiano fucks his sister. It’s true, isn’t it? You do fuck him.”
He crowds me, and I step back, and with the wardrobe suddenly pressing against my spine, I have nowhere to run.
“Damiano,” I shout at the top of my lungs, but there’s no reply.
Apprehension skitters through me as I realize how silent the house is. Where’s Damiano? Right now, I’ll even settle for Mom. My gun is stacked under several shoeboxes, and Andreas won’t stand there patiently while I dig it out.
“Go and tell Mom and Dad the wedding is off,” I say in a shaky voice. “I don’t care. Just get out of my room.”
Andreas’s eyes narrow. “You’re too important. I can’t call off the wedding.”
By important, he doesn’t mean that he cares about me. I’m a useful tool for his ambitions.
“You crave your brother’s dick and that’s sick and twisted, but I can work with that. You just need to be corrected, and that’s a husband’s duty.”
My mouth drops open. “I need to bewhat?”
Andreas’s eyes light up in a disturbing way. Before I can react, he seizes my shoulder, throws me face down on the bed, and strips off my robe in one violent tug. My cry of surprise and pain is muffled by the blanket. I lift my head to scream for help, but before I can, Andreas plants a hand on the back of my head and forces my face into the mattress. He clambers on top of me, pinning me down. He’s not very athletic, but he is heavy, and that’s all it takes to keep me trapped beneath him.
I can’t process what’s happening to me. It doesn’t feel real. I don’t even feel scared, just shocked, until I feel Andreas trying to unfasten my lingerie. “Sick and twisted. That’s what you are. A nasty little slut who needs to be taught a lesson.”
As I struggle ineffectually, I try to scream or make any noise at all, but the only thing that comes out is a muffled buzzing noise.
Over my struggling, I hear the sound of a car engine outside. I instantly recognize Damiano’s car. The engine races and then grows quieter as he drives out the gates. I sob in despair. He can’t have known that Andreas was still in the house. I picture the red taillights disappearing, and a desperate, smothered cry rises up my throat.
Damiano, please.
Don’t leave me.
But he’s not coming to save me. Andreas’s fingers are ripping viciously at the fastenings on my lingerie, and any second now, they’re all going to come free. He’s manhandling me like this in my own house, in my own bed. I feel my corset come off first, and then he yanks at my suspender belt. I need to stop panicking andthink. What did my kickboxing trainer teach me in the several self-defense classes he gave me? If I’m pinned face down, I can’t kick or scratch or bite. I can’t thrust my fingers up my attacker’s nose, or gouge his eyes, or knee him in the balls. But I can roll to one side beneath him and try to tip him off me.
Using my right elbow and knee as leverage, I fling myself to the left as hard as I can. Nothing happens. I try again, but still I barely move him. Andreas swears and shifts his weight so he can get a better grip on me. At the same time, I screw up my eyes and twist to the left a third time, and Andreas is momentarily off-balance.
I feel his weight shift off me for a fraction of a second, and it’s all the chance I need. I fling myself off the mattress and stumble across the room, tears blurring my vision. I wrench open the door and run down the corridor, screaming at the top of my lungs.
“Help me.Someone help me.”
Mom and Dad’s bedroom door opens, and Mom appears, staring at me in shock. My hair is sticking to my tearstained face, and I’m crying so hard I can barely get any words out. I’m so grateful that there’s someone in the house that I fling myself into her arms. “H-he was trying to hurt me. He’s in m-my room. He was going to force himself on me.”
“Lucy, what on earth?” She puts her hand on my shoulder and pushes me away from her so she can get a better look at me. I’m wearing only the thong and the suspender belt. The little clips have all been ripped off the stockings, which are now laddered, and one is falling down to my knee.
