Naked Diaries

HER POSSESSIVE DON

CHAPTER 1

BELLA

I sat across from my father at the kitchen table that’d seen every cheap meal and every cheaper lie of my life, and he wouldn’t look at me when he said it. He just kept his eyes on the scratched wood.

“Tonight you’re gonna be sold,” he said. “A man’s coming for you this evening and you’re going with him and that’s the end of it.”

I stared at him and I felt the heat rise in my face. “Sold? You’re going to sell me? I’m your daughter, not a car you can’t pay for anymore.”

He finally lifted his head and his mouth tightened. “You’re the only thing I’ve got left that’s worth anything and I’ve got a debt that won’t wait.”

“What debt?” I asked, and I didn’t keep my voice down because the apartment was already thin-walled and miserable and I didn’t care who heard. “The gambling? The loans? The men who come to the door at night and you send me to my room like I’m still twelve?”

“Watch your mouth,” he said.

“No,” I said, and I stood up so fast the chair scraped. “You watch yours. You raised me in this dump and you drank and you lost and you borrowed and now you think you can hand me over like I’m payment. Why would you sell me? Tell me why. Look at me and tell me why a father does that.”

He stood too and his face had gone red. “Because I’ve got no choice and you won’t make this harder than it already is.”

“You’ve got a choice,” I said. “You always had a choice. You chose cards and bottles and whatever else you threw money at instead of choosing me. You’re selling your own blood because you’re a coward and you’re weak and you’d rather give me away than stand up like a man.”

“Enough,” he snapped.

“It’s not enough,” I said, and I was shaking now, not from fear yet but from rage. “You’re disgusting. You’re selling me to some stranger this evening like I’m furniture and you expect me to walk out the door smiling? I won’t. I’ll scream. I’ll fight. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen what kind of father you are.”

He took a step toward me and I thought he might hit me the way he used to when I was smaller, but he only pointed at the door. “You’ll do as you’re told.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I’m not going. You can’t make me.”

That was when the door opened without a knock and three men came in like they already owned the place, and my father stepped back like he’d been waiting for them the whole time. One of them looked at me the way you look at a package you’ve got to move, and he said, “Is this her?”

My father nodded once. “That’s her.”

I backed toward the counter. “Don’t touch me. Get out. Father, tell them to get out.”

He didn’t tell them anything. He looked at the floor again.

The first man came toward me and I swung at him and I shouted, “Stay away from me, you don’t get to take me, I’m not going anywhere with you,” and he caught my wrist like it was nothing and the second man was already behind me and I felt the sharp pinch in my arm before I understood what it was.

“No,” I said, and my voice went thin. “What did you put in me? Father, they’re drugging me. Stop them. You can’t let them do this.”

My father said nothing.

The room tilted and my legs went soft and I was still talking even as they held me up, still saying, “I hate you, I’ll never forgive you, you sold me, you sold your own daughter,” and then the words slipped and the light went narrow and I was gone.

The sedation didn’t last long. I came back in pieces, first the motion of being carried, then the smell of expensive furniture instead of our old ones, then the sound of elevator doors and then the drag of my own feet across marble that was too clean to belong to anyone I’d ever known. My head throbbed and my mouth was dry and my arms were held on both sides and I tried to pull away and my voice came out hoarse.

“Let go of me. Where am I? What did you do?”

They didn’t answer. They pulled me through a wide doorway into a penthouse that stretched out in glass and dark wood and city lights far below, and my knees almost gave because the floor felt too far away and too polished at the same time.

A man stood near the windows with his back half turned, and he didn’t rush and he didn’t raise his voice when he spoke. He turned only when they’d brought me far enough into the room that I couldn’t pretend I was still outside it.

“You can leave her,” he said, and the men let go and stepped back like the order had already been understood.

I stayed on my feet by stubbornness more than strength and I looked at him and I said, “Who are you? Why am I here? Those men drugged me and dragged me and my father—”

“I know what your father did,” he said, still quiet. “My name’s Dominic.”

He said it first, simply, like names were the only courtesy he intended to offer.

I swallowed and my throat hurt. “Dominic. Fine. Dominic, you need to let me go. I didn’t agree to this. I didn’t sign anything. My father had no right.”

He walked closer and he didn’t hurry and he didn’t shout and the lack of volume made the room feel smaller. “Your father had a debt,” he said. “He couldn’t pay it in money. He paid it with you.”

“That’s not payment,” I said. “That’s kidnapping. You can’t buy a person.”

“I already did,” he said.

I laughed once and it came out ugly. “You think that makes it true? You think because he was desperate and stupid I belong in this place with you?”

“Yes,” he said. “You belong to me now.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to him. I don’t belong to anyone in this room.”

He stopped a few feet away and his eyes moved over my face. “You can say that as many times as you want. It won’t change what happened tonight.”

“Send me back. Call this off. I’ll work. I’ll find money. I’ll do anything except stay here like I’m a thing you collected.”

“You’ll stay,” he said.

“I won’t stay quietly,” I said. “I’ll fight you. I’ll scream. I’ll try the doors. I’ll make this as ugly as it already is.”

“I expect you to try,” he said.

I took a step back and my shoulder hit the edge of a chair and I used it to keep myself upright. “Why me? There had to be other ways. Property. Time. Something that wasn’t a person.”

“There were other ways,” he said. “Your father chose this one.”

“And you accepted it,” I said. “That makes you the same as him.”

He considered that for a second and then he said, “No. He sold what he couldn’t protect. I took what was offered. Those aren’t the same thing.”

“They feel the same from where I’m standing.”

“I know,” he said.

I hated how calm he stayed. I wanted him to shout so I’d have something sharp to push against.

“I understand that my father’s a traitor and you’re a man who buys girls to settle accounts,” I said. “That’s what I understand.”

A muscle moved in his jaw and still he didn’t lift his volume. “You can hate him. You can hate me. Hate won’t open the door.”

“Then what will?” I asked.

“Nothing tonight,” he said.

I looked past him at the glass and the city and the drop and I said, “If you think I’m going to thank you or sit pretty or pretend this is some dark fairy tale, you picked the wrong girl.”

“I didn’t pick you for manners,” he said.

“Then why did you pick me at all?”

“Because the debt was large,” he said, “and you were the only thing he had that I wanted.”

I shook my head and my hair stuck to my cheek and I shoved it away with a hand that still trembled from the drug.

I looked at the men still waiting near the entrance and I said, “Tell them to take me back.”

“This is home now,” Dominic said.

I moved toward the door and one of the men shifted and Dominic lifted two fingers and the man stopped. Dominic’s voice stayed level. “Don’t make them put their hands on you again tonight. You already woke up on the floor of my penthouse. That’s enough for one evening.”

I wrapped my arms around myself because the air was cold against the thin clothes I’d been wearing when they took me and I said, “If you touch me I’ll bite. I’ll scratch. I’ll make you bleed.”

“I haven’t touched you,” he said.

“Yet.”

I stared at him and I hated that he wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of a raised voice, hated that every word of his came out even and certain while mine kept catching.

He took one more step and stopped, close enough that I could see he wasn’t performing anger, he was simply finished explaining.

“There’s a room ready for you. You’ll sleep. In the morning you’ll still be here and we’ll talk again.”

“I won’t sleep in your house.”

The men moved when he glanced their way, not grabbing me this time, only waiting to see if I’d walk or if they’d have to carry me the last stretch of the night.

I walked because I wouldn’t give them the pleasure of touching me.

Fucking creeps.