Page 15 of Fragile Twisted Vows
“Get a hold of yourself, girl,” I hiss as I stand and hobble over to the counter to grab the roll of paper towels.
I clean my pants in disgust, wondering why I’ve even decided to go through with this plan to begin with.
Because the senator wants you behind bars. And you want to use his outcast daughter against him. Because you need to buy yourself some time before you can migrate this business to Mexico and stay the fuck away from America.
“Oh my god. You can’t actually be serious!” Lucille cries as she wipes the remaining bits of vomit from her mouth and rubs at her forehead with the other.
“I was serious a minute ago. Now I’m debating throwing you into one of my warehouses and forging your signature on the marriage license,” I growl in her direction, shooting an evil glance her way as her full, bottom lip wobbles in fear.
Has she always been this bratty? This much of a giant baby?
“I don’t know what you don’t get here, Damien.” She sighs, pushing through her fear even though her eyes are still filled with it as she stares at me in shock.
“They don’t want me. They banished me from the family and threw me out on the streets. They won’t care if you marry me. They don’t care about…me,” she says, those large, blue eyes filling with tears.
I don’t care about those tears, Lucille.
So, why do they hit something in me? Why do they make me pause?
“Why did they throw you out, Lucille? Did you steal from them or something?” I ask as I toss the paper towels into the trash can and scrub my hands in the sink.
She’s quiet. Too quiet actually. Her silence stretches on for minutes and I grow sick of it and bark at her.
“Lucille-” I start, and she stands abruptly when I spit her name at her.
“Because I got pregnant, okay? Is that what you wanted to know so badly? The heartless truth about why my family discarded me like trash?” she shouts, her small hands balled into fists at her sides.
For the first time in a while, I am stunned into silence.
But she doesn’t let up.
“Because that attackyousaved me from. That monster didn’t just defile and traumatize me, he ruined my entire life. My entire future. And my family resents me for it,” she cries, those tears that welled up in her brilliant eyes now spilling down her flushed cheeks.
When she mentions that night, mentions that man that I found her with in the alleyway, my vision turns red.
I try not to think about it much. It’s not the first time I’ve caught a piece of shit in an act of monstrosity and punished him for it. But it was the first time I…cared. Because it happened to an innocent. Because it happened toher.
“Lucille-” I try again, but she cuts me off once more.
I usually do not let a woman do that. Hell, I don’t let anyone do that.
But this woman is on the verge of hysteria and she’s unstoppable.
“Oh, but don’t worry. I don’t have a child, Damien. You don’t have to worry about a kidnapping on top of an abduction or trafficking situation.” She seethes, her full lips puffy from her anger and tears.
“I lost the baby shortly after I found out. I had a miscarriage in a cheap motel in Brooklyn,” she hisses, her eyes dropping to the floor as she tries to sniff back her sobs.
“I had no money. No job. I didn’t get to finish college. I had nothing. I didn’t even get to have my baby,” she says, her voice cracking when she mentions her child.
“Thankfully Jenni took me in. But now…now I don’t even have a random couch in a shitty downtown apartment because she still has a chance at a future. And it doesn’t involve me sitting in her living room. Now, I have nothing once more. After years of working my ass off, I still have nothing to show for myself.”
I think that if I were to have a heart, maybe some of it would break for this girl. This girl who had to become a woman way too quickly.
But I don’t. I lost that heart long ago when my father shred my life apart. When I watched my men die in war. When I watched innocent people get bombed and slaughtered.
I haven’t had a heart in a very long time.
Which is why instead of sympathizing for the broken woman before me, I hear her words as more of an opportunity.
