Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
“Excuse me?” she said, her eyes widening in disbelief.
This was my chance to make an excuse, or backpedal like my life depended on it. I would still be punished, but maybe I wouldn’t have to cover bruises or try to get blood out of the new dress.
Then I looked behind her and saw the picture of our family. Mother smiling serenely. Father looking proud, but Amelia with sad eyes, like she knew she would never be happy, and Harrison standing a step apart.
I was there too, with a fake smile painted on my lips, and I remembered how she had pinched me, leaving a huge welt on the back of my arm, for wanting to wear the pink dress instead of the black one.
It was an oil painting, one where the artist was no doubt paid handsomely to make us look like the perfect family, but if you looked closely, you could still see the pain and the distance between us. If Mother had looked at anyone other than herself, she would have had the artist ruined.
At the time the painting was commissioned, we were in the Hampton house. I was barely fifteen, so Raul would have been sixteen and already being paid for sex. Maybe if Mother hadn’t turned him into a whore, things would have been different for him.
Fuck her.
I doubled down.
“Sorry, I must have misspoken. Let me be clear. Harrison did not bring shame to this family. You did, every time you opened your legs to fuck a man that wasn’t your husband. The world knows you are a slut, but what do you think will happen when they find out that you paid the gardener’s teenage son to fuck you? Does that make you a pimp or just a pathetic old bitch?”
I knew she was going to hit me. Violence was practically her love language. What I didn’t expect was for her to backhand me across the face using the hand wearing diamonds on every single finger.
She hit me hard enough that I fell to the floor, and she stood over me, digging her heel into the back of my hand, pinning me in place.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, and frankly, I don’t care. Here is what’s going to happen. You are going to show up at that church, you are going to do absolutely everything asked of you. You are going to be the shining jewel of the Astrid family, and you are going to catch the eye of a family that is actually worthy of marrying one of my daughters. I will not be embarrassed further. You’ll be the beacon of modesty, chastity, humility, charity, and every other fucking virtue. You will do nothing to bring more embarrassment to this family or so help me God, I will ruin you. Harrison is too public of a figure for me to destroy, and Amelia is under the Manwarrings’ protection. You are neither. No one will protect you from me. No one loves you, and no one cares. Be of use, or I will dispose of you.”
“No,” I argued, trying to pull my hand out from under her heel.
“I will not lose my place on the board because you are throwing a tantrum. Get yourself cleaned up now and take yourself to the church or so help me God, I will have you diagnosed as a psychopath and leave you to rot in a third-rate, locked psychiatric ward.”
She dug her heel in my hand for another moment, pressing harder until she finally walked away.
“I expect you at that church in less than an hour,” she said dismissively as she went back to her dresses.
She would do it, too. I wouldn’t be the first “misbehaving” upper-class girl who ended up in an institution. It didn’t happen nearly as often as it used to, but it still happened.
Tears burned behind my eyes as I ran upstairs to clean myself up, wondering why the hell I thought I could stand up to her.
The red mark on my hand throbbed, but it wasn’t bleeding and I could move my fingers without too much pain. It would swell, and was definitely bruised, but nothing was broken.
My face, however, did not fare as well. Her rings had left long bloody scratches along the top of my cheek, and my eye was already blackening.
What lie did she expect me to come up with for this? That I was attacked by a cougar? However, if what Raul said was true, I guessed that wasn’t far off.
Covering the marks as best I could, I changed again and made my way to the church, knowing that if I didn’t, Father Manwarring was just going to come collect me, anyway. My mother wouldn’t stop him; in fact, she would hit me again, or worse, for not following her orders.