Page 4 of Bound to Him

“I’ll do what I can to help you put it off as long as possible, but just… don’t do anything drastic, okay?”

“I’m not you, Olivia.”

Her words stung me, not because she said them, but because it was true. I’d made the mistake, and I would be paying for it for the rest of my life.

I couldn’t help but remember the unthinkable scene unfolding in my head, it was my own personal nightmare, a never-ending horror movie.

“No, Papà please!”

“This is your own fault, Olivia! So help me God, you will learn from your actions!”

My father held me by the arm and nodded at his nephew, who lifted his handgun to Steven’s head. We were in the same hotel room where I’d lost my virginity to Steven the previous night, where I’d felt free for the first time in my life. Where I’d finally felt the loving touch of a man who truly cared for me and not just my position in the family.

I’d been chatting to Steven online for three months before my father informed me of my duty to the Moretti’s. It only took another two weeks for me to beg Steven to meet me in the city and whisk me away from this horrid life.

Fast forward to me, looking into his terrified green eyes and watching the life slip away as his head jerked sideways from the force of the bullet that ripped through his skull. The moment was eerie, too fucking quiet for the storm raging inside me. My cousin had put a silencer on his gun, so all I heard signaling Steven’s death was the sickening thump of his lifeless body dropping onto the carpeted floor. Next, my agonizing cry. My father put his hand across my mouth and turned me into him. I sobbed into his chest, like the little girl I was. The stupid, reckless, little girl who cost an innocent man his life.

So, now the time had come for Viola to step up and take responsibility, and it was all my fault that she was in this position to begin with. The regret I felt inside threatened to consume me, so all I could do was try to save her from the same emotional torture. I couldn’t see a way out of it for her, and the mental image of sticky clumps of bloody remains on a white wall reminded me of what could happen if I even tried.

Viola surprised me out of my daydream when she continued her muffled rant against her pillow. “Besides, even if it was somebody else, I don’t want to get married! I’m too young!”

I agreed with her there. It seemed my father believed we started running out of shelf time at the age of 21, because he gave me the same news at the same age. God, it felt like just the other day. Then there’s the fact that he felt I was no longer worthy of the Moretti marriage because I’d lost my virtue. I’d spoiled myself, he said. If there hadn’t been such dire consequences, I’d have thought myself lucky. Saved by the bell of my virtue! Only to find that it would cost a grown man his life.

After another hour of comforting and near-mothering, I left my sister in her room and closed the door softly.

“I heard the news!” a very loud, boisterous voice sounded behind me.

“Oh, hello Zio Danny,” I greeted my uncle, who was headed back to the main lobby after using the guest toilet. I could still hear the water filling the stern. Ew. “What news?”

He stopped and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. “That Viola is to marry that Moretti boy.”

“Oh, yeah…” I smiled awkwardly.

“I just wish it wasn’tthatMoretti boy!” he said with a husky laugh, tapping his cigarette on his knuckle. I raised my eyebrow in question, and he shrugged. “He might be a grown man, but he acts like a boy. A real playboy, you know, going with all the girls and lighting up his own nose like the war ended this morning.”

“What?”

“Nothing, hun. Just know, you dodged that bullet, huh?” He winked at me, laughed louder, and disappeared around the corner of the hallway.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t need to; I knew that this Huxley guy wasn’t good news. I felt empathy toward my sister, but mostly regret. It should have been me crying on my bed; I should have been the one to take the burden.

I closed my bedroom door behind me and leaned back against it. I could be angry at myself all I wanted, but deep down I knew that none of this was right. My father wasn’t right, Huxley Moretti wasn’t right, and arranged marriages were not right! Yet, that haunting image of blood splattered on the wall flashed involuntarily through my mind. It’s unbelievable the kind of damage a person can do for love, whether it’s real or not.

3

Huxley

“That’s it, baby!” my cousin hollered over the booming bass of the music that vibrated through my chest with every beat.

Jewel, one of the newer dancers at Boulevard XXX—the strip club I managed, owned by the Moretti family—dropped her ass and opened her knees before sliding her hands over her thighs and jiggling her own ass cheeks for the guys surrounding her circular podium.

My eyes struggled to focus on her pert nipples as her tits wobbled with every movement she made, although it was probably more due to the drugs in my system that blurred everything I looked at.

I was as high as ever, trying to forget the realism of my life by using drugs that ironically seemed to make me hyper fixate on my reality at the same time. I know, a fucked-up coping mechanism, but it was all I had at the moment.

You could say I’ve led quite the eventful life up until this point, having a blast with the boys here at the club most nights. But this new marriage was something that had to be done in the name of the family, and I just needed one night of being fucked-up to process that.

The guys with me, my cousins and friends of the Moretti family, were enraptured by Jewel’s performance, yet her eyes were stuck on me. She crawled forward across the stage and rested on her elbows with her ass in the air, as if to keep the boys behind her busy while she focused on me. My cousin shoved a 20 under the strap of her thong, she winked at him, then turned back to me.

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