Page 154 of Sinful Desires
But my shame hung thicker than the smoke curling up from the fireplace.
I kept my eyes down until they hurt. When I finally looked up, my vision blurred.
His face swam into focus, red with anger.
“Christopher Dawson is a close friend,” he sneered. “And I won’t let your pathetic little circus ruin his final night on American soil. That performance was already humiliating. But vomiting in the hallway? Are you that desperate to be a disgrace?”
He let out a sharp laugh, stepping back to wipe his beard with the back of his hand. “Get up. Clean yourself. And act like someone worth our name. If you embarrass me again, you won’t like what happens next.”
He didn’t look at me when he left. He never did. The door closed behind him like he was erasing me.
Kiara ran to me. She dropped to her knees, hands shaky as she tried to help me up. Her eyes were glossy, red at the edges.
Our mother was crying in the corner, quiet, useless tears. She always cried after he hit me.
“God, Scar, what is wrong with you?” Kiara’s voice broke.
She wouldn’t understand. My father had never laid a finger on her. Not once.
I used to thank God for that.
I was glad for that. Even if a sick, buried part of me hated her for it.
Now I wasn’t sure if it was mercy or favoritism. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
I wore the bruises so she wouldn’t have to, and it had wrecked us both in different ways.
She got to be the version of a daughter he could show off.
I got to be the lesson he taught by example.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, wiping the warm blood off my lips with the back of my hand. “Drunk, that’s all.”
“Andhigh,” Kiara sighed.
My mother stepped closer, her silk dress rustling. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and began cleaning my face like I was still her little girl.
“You should’ve behaved,dolcezza,” she whispered. “You know how he gets when he’s angry. He doesn’t mean it. He’s just?…?overwhelmed. He’s doing this because he loves you.”
We both knew that line by heart. I was tired of pretending it ever made it easier.
I didn’t know which part left the deeper bruise: the slap, or the way no one ever stopped him from raising his hand.
I didn’t say anything. Not because I didn’t have words, but because I’d already said them all to myself. A thousand times. In the dark. In mirrors. In bathtubs with the faucet running to drown out the sound. And none of them ever made a difference.
He loves you.
That’s what they’d said.
That sentence had been used so many times in our house it had lost all meaning.
Every slap, every bruise, every time he looked at me like I was something rotting in the corner—all of it wrapped in that word like it made it holy.
And maybe it would’ve hurt less if they’d just said the truth out loud.
That he was mean. That he was cruel. That sometimes I thought he only remembered I was alive when he was yelling or throwing something or calling me a fucking disappointment.
But no. It was alwayslove.
