Kneel For Me

Vittoria 

The sound of the shattering glass makes my heart stop. 

“You useless bitch!” I hear Cinzia shout as her hand connects with my cheek, sending me to the floor. 

My side hits the floor painfully, the hit on my ribs taking my breath away. 

“Clean it up!” She screams hysterically as I curl up into a ball, trying to shield my head. 

As I don’t move fast enough, being frozen by fear and her furious screaming, she loses it ultimately. 

“Move!” Her shrill scream pierces through my body just before she lands her first kick. 

Her feeble and uncoordinated blows wouldn’t do much damage if I weren’t chronically malnourished and bruised. I whimper, clenching my teeth and waiting for her to get out of breath. 

As it usually happens, the old dame doesn’t have enough stamina to hit me for longer than a minute. 

I prefer her to my masters on any day. 

While she catches her breath and continues to scream at me, I finally can move to pick up the shards with shaking hands. 

“I’m s-so so-sorry.” I stutter, trying to move as fast as my hurting body allows me to. “I’ll clean it up right away, my queen.” 

“You better hurry.” She shouts, spitting at me. As I halt a moment to clench my eyes closed at the disgusting feeling, she picks up again. 

With another deafening scream, she cusses me out because of my disrespectful behavior and stomps her feet onto my hand. 

I bite my tongue as a scream of pain bubbles up my throat, stopping it painfully. Feeling like my lung is going to burst, I inhale deeply.

My screaming would lead to even more pain as I always get punished severely for it. 

And I really can’t handle more pain, especially if I can avoid it.

A set of shards is stabbing into my palm, making me feel like I’m about to pass out. 

After having lifted her foot from my hand, she screams again. “You are too slow. Look at the mess you made.” 

“I’m sorry, my queen. I ap-apologize. Please forgive me.” I whimper, holding my hand. 

“Domenico!” She screams, making my heart stop. “Domenico!” 

I start moving again as if externally piloted, collecting the shards on the floor. As I swipe over the tiles, I mix my blood with the spilled coffee while I cut myself even more. 

“DOMENICO!” She shrieks as her son apparently is taking too long to get to the kitchen. 

His deep sigh reaches my ears before he speaks, entering the room. “What the fuck do you want, ma?” 

I barely have the courage to look at his feet as he steps into the kitchen to stand next to me. 

“She is being insolent again. Have her clean up this mess already.” She says in a bit calmer tone, even if her anger is still dominant in her voice. “Be careful, my love. The shards.” 

Her loving words have me gagging internally while Domenico clicks his tongue. 

“But look at the mess she made,” Cinzia says, her voice filled with indignation. “Teach her to be more careful!” 

My heart stops as Domenico crouches down to me. I freeze and keep my eyes glued to the ground as he finally speaks, his baritone making me shudder. “Why do you keep bothering my mother with your clumsiness? Can’t you pull yourself together once?”

His calm voice is a thousand times worse than her screaming. 

I shake my head, as I clasp my hand to my tattered dress to keep my blood from staining the floor more. 

“I- I’m sorry, master,” I whisper, hoping not to enrage him. 

But there is rarely anything that doesn’t anger him, not speaking of the fact that him being interrupted from something he was doing is quite the worst disrespect he is willing to take.

Grabbing my chin ungently, he gets me to look up at him. He leans closer, tilting his head as he snarls, “Your apology is worth nothing, toy. Hurry up and clean it up already.”

I remember exactly the first time he called me a toy. He said that I was as useless as a broken one, so that’s the nickname I got from there. His brothers loved it as it enhanced their sick pleasure of playing with me. And especially his sister got sadistic joy when she could break the toy even more. 

My greatest luck in being this unlucky was that Domenico had the ultimate power over me as he was the firstborn. He was the one who could call dibs on me every time he wanted, and they often had to stop their torture as he claimed they would damage me too much. 

I was always supposed to be fit enough for him to play. 

And it has saved my life multiple times, even if it didn’t exactly make my situation better. 

Letting go of me with an extra push, he gets up. 

“Let her lick it clean. Teach her a lesson.” His mother demands. 

“Stop it, ma. If she does that she would surely throw up, and I would have her useless all night. I can’t always take away from my time just because you all can handle the brat.” I try my best to not cry at his words, as I take a rag from the sink and start cleaning the mess up. 

His mother isn’t quite happy about this but she can’t really say much. Her self-satisfied scoffing is the last thing I hear as she leaves the room. 

“Hurry up, toy. I have not much time to waste watching you do your fucking job.” Domenico growls as I finish cleaning up as fast as possible. 

“Yes, master,” I whisper, disposing of the shards and washing out the rag. 

As I finish, I turn around, clasping the edge of the sink desperately. 

“Finished?” He asks as I keep my gaze glued to the ground. 

As soon as I have nodded, he steps up to me, grabbing my hair. 

“Took you long enough,” he hisses, dragging me out of the room by my hair. 

I hold onto his hand automatically, and I’m still surprised that he lets me actually do it as I’m usually not allowed to touch any of them. 

Pushing down another scream of pain, I let him pull me just until we reach his bedroom. My throat dries up as he opens the door and pushes me inside. Not being able to keep onto my feet, I stumble and fall, hitting the floor hard. 

I mewl as he grabs my arm, pulls me onto my feet, and moves to his desk. “I was studying. Why can’t you go through a day without causing problems for me?” 

Gasping, I get pushed down. 

“Move!” He growls, and I flinch, crawling under his desk. Sitting down with a groan, he risks crushing me as he pulls himself back to his desk on his chair. 

Pulling my legs to me, I hug them with my arms and bury my head between my knees. 

My breathing regulates itself slowly as I fight to sit still next to his legs. Despite the narrow space, it would be bad if I were to touch him. 

I barely get any punishments carried out by Domenico, but when I do, they are the worst. 

“Take this,” he growls, handing me a tissue. 

I take it with shaky hands while whispering a ‘thank you, master.’ and retreat into my corner. 

The cuts soon stop bleeding, and I push the tissue into my bra, not wanting to have him find it lying around.