Marriage For Convenience

CELESTINA

The Grecos were going to feel cheated. A sacrificial virgin was to be given to the monsters in Las Vegas for a promise of peace. I was never given the chance to be a virgin. That choice had been taken from me. Painfully ripped from me.

Fear, acute and raw, clawed at my chest as my husband led me into our room for the night and

closed the door to the grinning faces of his brothers. Salvatore released me, and I quickly created distance between us, moving toward the bed.

Six years had passed, but the memories still woke me at night. I was scared of being close to a

man, to any man, especially this man—my husband.

Standing a few steps in front of the bed, my eyes swept over the white sheets—sheets my

family expected to the see stained with my blood in the morning.

Blood that wouldn’t be there.

I crept closer to the bed. There had been blood the first time, the second time, and even the

third time. Lots of blood, pain, terror, and begging. There had been no presentation of the sheets back then. Our maid, who had never come to my aid, cleaned them.

I wouldn’t beg tonight. It hadn’t stopped my abuser many years ago.

It wouldn’t stop my husband.

I knew the stories. I had seen him in the cage.

My only consolation was that I doubted he could break me more than I already had been all

those years ago.