Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 108868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
“There is no father.” She wouldn’t look at me after saying this, but I was still no wiser as to what the fuck, so I couldn’t leave it there, I needed to know.
Something in me was unreasonably pissed that she’d let someone else give her a child. Which was the most fucked up thing ever since we obviously hadn’t known each other when the deed was done, and even if we had…
“What does that mean, you obviously let someone fu…” what the fuck are you doing Draco? You didn’t bring her here to treat her like this, take that shit down a notch; can’t you see she’s fucking scared?
“Sorry, please tell me what’s going on. Why were you about to sleep in my stables? Are you in some kind of trouble? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” And who the fuck is your man? Was, fucking was, not is.
She studied me for the longest time as if gauging my sincerity. “May I sit up?” I’d been leaning over her as she laid back on my bed. I shook myself out of my fog and grabbed the robe for her to put on. I didn’t want to see the evidence of her...whatever it was, for some reason that little bump pissed me the fuck off.
When she was sitting up and well covered I placed the tray across her lap. “Eat.” Even that she was skittish about until I threatened to feed her myself. When she’d eaten as much as she could and I was satisfied that she’d had enough, I put the tray back on the table.
Sitting on the bed beside her, I placed my hands next to her hips on either side of her, not touching but essentially caging her in. “I need to know what’s going on with you. I’m not going to hurt you, but I need to know.” She swallowed hard and looked down at herself before the tears started again.
“My papa, he is a very good man, well liked in our little village. Proud, my papa has lots of pride.” Here the tears got even worst and I was getting a very nasty feeling in my gut.
“There is this family, they are well to do, wealthy yes? But my papa he does not like them, no good he says, stay away little Sofia.”
She drifted away from me as she retold the story of her life. Being raised by a doting father after her mother had died, the wild and carefree childhood in the hill country, where she grew up in the old city. Her stories of picking wild flowers, and parties, and plays in the village square sounded so far removed from my reality as to not be believed.
I listened as she laid the foundation of the life she’d led before coming here. Then she got to the crux of it, the thing I wanted to know most. Her voice hitched and her body tensed as if expecting a blow.
“I had listened to papa like always. I stayed away from the Ricci, always avoiding them, especially the eldest as he seemed more of the troublemaker than the others.” She swallowed hard here and pulled at the blanket I’d thrown across her lap.
“He said these things whenever he would pass me by in his fancy car, but I paid no heed. After all there were prettier girls in our little village. Girls who would’ve gladly returned his affections, but always he seemed to be watching me…”
I was getting a pretty good idea where this shit was going and the anger was all but full blown. I wanted to cry for her, wanted to go back there to her village and stop what I was almost certain she was about to describe to me, but I couldn’t.
“Papa was late getting home, I don’t know why that day of all days. It wasn’t always that the Ricci were out and about in the village, they preferred the city, there was more there to do for the young wealthy men.” Her silent tears broke my heart as they fell from her eyes.
“But that evening he was there. He somehow knew I was alone in the cottage. I was at the stove, I thought it was papa when I heard the breathing behind me…”
She started to shake then and her eyes were no longer focused, she’d gone away in her head. I listened and died a little as she told of the brutal attack. Of being taken down to the stone floor there in her father’s kitchen and violated, of her father coming home to find her, his anger.
He’d sought justice for his only child but there was none, not for the poor farmer against the most powerful family in their little part of the world. When she told me about the fucker seeing her in the village a few weeks later and grinning, I almost lost my fucking mind.