Page 60 of Sinful Desires
Fine. Let him choke on both.
Outside, the night pressed close. The beach stretched dark and empty.
We used to come here every summer. Barefoot in the dunes. Castles that always collapsed. Marshmallows by the fire. Me in my father’s lap. Kiara giggling in my mother’s arms.
There was something cruel about growing up and realizing those moments are gone for good.
Tiny pockets of heaven, choked by the hell that followed.
I used to think my parents were gods. Untouchable. Unshakable. The kind of people I wanted to become. Even when their love came quiet, careful, or cold, I still took it like a gift.
And now, I was just a woman trying to figure out who the hell she even was, knowing that every choice I made ended in their disappointment.
It was a strange kind of grief, loving the same people you hated.
I loved them. I did.
But God, sometimes I wish I didn’t.
The first time my father hit me, I was ten. We had been in his office, back home in New York. Kiara and I were playing with Barbies near his desk while he was on the phone, pacing with that sharpness in his steps that meant he was annoyed. We were pretending to have a meeting. Barbie fights over fake deadlines, tiny shoes kicked across the floor.
I swung my doll forward and knocked over his coffee. It spilled across his desk, flooding the papers for whatever he was working on. He turned around so quickly I didn’t even have time to be scared.
And then his hand hit my face.
I remember falling. My cheek burned. My knees scraped the floor.
I didn’t even cry right away. I just stared at the underside of his desk, my Barbie somewhere in the dark, gone.
I remember apologizing over and over again. I apologized to the man who had cracked something sacred inside me, and had called it love with blood still on his palm.
And he’d apologized too. Kind of. Said it was the stress. That the papers were important. That he had gotten carried away. That it wouldn’t happen again.
But it had.
The second time, I knew not to say anything. The third time, I knew to expect it. By the fourth, I realized he didn’t hit me because he was angry. He hit me because he wanted to. Because it worked. Because it kept me in check.
And the older I got, the less he apologized. The more normal it became. The more I hated myself for how much I let slide.
Eventually, I had learned to stop flinching and to smile through it. Because that’s what daughters did, right?
They said thank you for pain dressed as discipline. They survived their parents.
And when the cameras came on, I smiled. Because if I looked perfect enough, maybe he wouldn’t hit me the next time.
In front of me, silver platters steamed with roasted meat, glazed carrots, and warm bread. Everything looked too perfect. I stared at the potatoes, trying to remember the last thing I’d eaten that hadn’t tasted like shame.
Across the room, Angelo finally made his entrance with Jade at his side. Her heels clicked like a warning, her expression unreadable.
“No,” I whispered back to Kiara, giggling against my wrist. “I wish, though.”
My father gave us a look, the kind that didn’t need words to make my spine go straight. Then Mister Lazzio stood, glass raised, launching into some tired speech about family and pride and whatever else rich men liked to hear themselves say.
The room quieted, but inside my head everything buzzed.
And right then, sitting at that perfect table in my perfect dress, I wanted nothing more than to grab another bottle, slip out the side door, and disappear into the sea.
“La famiglia,” Mister Lazzio cheered, raising his glass high.
