Page 5 of Brutal Vows

The words blur together on the board, a mess of white streaks layered over themselves until they’re almost unreadable. My fingers tremble as I press the chalk to the surface again, but the line comes out jagged, my grip faltering. I can barely feel my hands anymore.

The air in the room is thick with chalk dust, clogging my throat, coating my lips, turning my breath into something dry and shallow. My nails bite into the stick of chalk, brittle and raw, blood threading through the fine white powder caked under my fingertips.

Meek. Quiet. Obedient.

Again.

And again.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Minutes? Hours? It doesn’t matter. Time is just another thing I’m no longer allowed to own. I keep going. Because I have to. Because stopping isn’t an option.

Because stopping would mean failure. And failure would mean?—

A sharp snap echoes in the silence. I flinch. My breath stutters.

The chalk is gone, shattered in my palm. A small, broken piece tumbles to the ground, joining the graveyard of discarded fragments at my feet, dusted with streaks of red.

I can’t stop. I can’t stop. My arm shakes as I reach for another piece, my fingers stiff and uncooperative, my nails a throbbing mess of split beds and exposed skin.

The moment my hand wraps around a fresh stick of chalk, the door behind me creaks open. The sound spears through the suffocating silence, but I don’t turn around. I won’t turn around.

I keep writing. I wait. Wait for him to end this. But it’s not him.

“Oh, mio Dio!”

The gasp comes from behind me—sharp, horrified, wrong. Not him. My governess.

She’s seen the mess at my feet. The blood, the broken chalk, the wreckage of what I’ve done.

“Stop,mia cara,” she pleads, her voice trembling. “You must stop.”

She doesn’t understand. I can’t.

If I stop now, it means I’ve lost. It means I’ve failed.

And if I fail?—

There won’t be anything left of me.

It’s quiet at first. Waking. But the remnants of my past cloy my senses, causing confusion and old memories to surface. Fear surges through me and my eyes pop open when my movement is met with resistance.

Where am I?

What the hell happened?

My pulse pounds behind my eyes which are heavy as if my body isn’t ready to wake from its slumber.

It’s so dark I wonder if I’m even awake. Panic swells within me when I realize that I can’t move much of my body. Have I been paralyzed?

No. There is something cold and heavy on my wrists as well as on my ankles. I open my mouth to scream, but the gag muffles the sound.

They found me.

My father’s men.

They are dragging me back to Italy to be sold tohim. The man who wants me in his bed. The one they all answer to.

Tears threaten to fall and my lower lip trembles against the gag at the thought of what he will do to me. What they both will do. My father isn’t one who likes to be defied, and neither does the man he sold me to. I’ve met him several times, and I’ve seen what he does to the women on his arm.

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