Page 113 of My Vows Are Sealed

“Dar, donotopen that door,” he choked out, sounding more terrified than I’d ever heard him. “Do you hear me? I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

A knot twisted in my stomach and my heart leapt into my throat.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, barely audible. “No.”

Jesus, help me,I prayed, my hand shaking as I put it back on the deadbolt.What have I done?

Before I’d even gotten to lock the door halfway, it was forced open and my father was barging into the room.

“Did you fucking think you could hide from me forever, you deceitful harlot?!” he roared. “You’remychild! And you’re coming with me!”

He grabbed the arm that was holding my cell phone, and I immediately let the phone fall and kicked it away as he started pulling me toward the door.

“Brendan, call the police!” I screamed, hoping like hell that it was loud enough to hear through the phone, then turned in the opposite direction that my father was trying to pull me in. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Dad!”

My father continued to pull me in the direction of the still-open door, but I braced myself and refused to let him move me. After about thirty seconds, searing, white-hot pain radiated up and down my whole arm and I felt bile rising in my stomach from the sheer agony. And that was all he needed to gain the upper hand. Once again, he pulled me toward the door, and the pain in my arm was so intense that I thought I was going to pass out. I knew what a dislocated shoulder felt like, and this was so much worse than that.

“Help! Someone!” I screamed as tears started to stream down my face, praying that someone would hear me.

“You’ve turned from the ways of the Lord and you’ve dishonored your father!” my father growled. “There’s no help for a fucking delinquent like you! You will accept your discipline and submit!”

“No!” I yelled. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

He shoved me into the wall and then slapped me across the face so hard that I saw stars.

“Howdareyou fucking talk back to me?!” he roared. “You’remychild, and you fuckingleft my house! You turned your back on me and made me look weak to this entire fucking city!”

“You tried to rape me!” I exclaimed.

His eyes went as dark as the sky on a pitch-black night and as hard as stone, and he threw me across the room into the coffee table, making me lose my balance and fall to the floor, directly on top of my hurt arm. I screamed in agony, and he stalked toward me, so I curled myself into as tight of a ball as I could, trying to protect the fragile life growing inside me.

Please, God, protect me. Protect my baby,I pleaded silently.

The steel-toed end of his boot made direct contact with my shin, and I cried out in pain.

“Jezebel,” he hissed as he pulled me up to my feet. “You fucking asked for it. You made yourself unclean by whoring yourself out, and then you couldn’t get enough and you wanted it so fucking bad that you tried to seduce your own father.”

He threw me backward again, and this time the fall was hard enough that I broke the flimsy wooden coffee table on my way down.

I’d thought I’d seen the absolute worst, ugliest parts of my father that day when he’d come an inch away from sexually assaulting me, but that was nothing compared to the heart-stopping terror I felt right now. I had no idea how far he’d go right now in his attempts to make me pay for leaving his house.

“Dad, stop! Please! I’m pregnant!” I sobbed.

I didn’t care if I ended up in a body cast from head to toe, but if he made me lose this baby, I didn’t know what I’d do. As scared as I was of how Brendan and I were going to provide for this child, I was even more terrified of losing it. I already loved it more than anything else in the whole world. And my father had to believe at least some of what he preached every week, right? He wouldn’t want to harm a completely innocent unborn child, would he?

“I knew you were a little fucking whore!” he cackled as he raised his foot again.

On instinct, I rolled onto my side, and he stomped down right on my rib cage. More unbearable pain sliced through me, telling me that at least one rib was broken, but my need to protect my child overrode it, and I continued to roll until I was able to start crawling, using my one good arm to pull myself forward.

My leg was yanked backward, and before I could react, I was being pulled back toward my father and he was flipping me over. I brought my free leg up to shield my stomach and held it against me with my good arm in a feeble attempt to shield my baby.

“Trying to save your fucking demon spawn?” he spat. “A child born in sin is the Devil’s child!”

He kicked at my stomach, and he was partially successful in landing a blow there, but while he was raising his leg again, I rolled over once more. I was expecting another blow to land square on my spine, but instead I heard my fiancé’s voice.

“Get the hell away from her!” Brendan yelled, and I heard the sound of someone landing a punch.

More tears spilled over my cheeks as I realized that my father had just hurt the man I loved.

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