The face in the mirror wasn’t a happy one. It was pretty, yes, but not happy. I didn’t want to do this, but I knew I couldn’t say no. Hell, I couldn’t even imagine what would happen if I said no and refused to do it. I’d never been asked to do something like this before, and as I thought about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if this wouldn’t be the last time.
Fifteen. I was fifteen years old. Just fifteen, and yet it didn’t matter. I’d been a woman for years now, after getting my first period, and my father had me on birth control since I turned thirteen. A part of me now wondered if something like this was always my father’s plan, if that’s why he’d been so particular about me never dating anyone and getting me on birth control so early on.
Use my virginity as a bargaining chip.
That… that didn’t feel right.
But it was too late. I couldn’t march to my father and tell him I wasn’t going to do this. Even if I did, I didn’t doubt the fact that he’d still force me to do it anyway, so it was better to just swallow it down and get it over with.
I could do this. I could do this. I had to do this.
Time passed slowly, and I could not focus on my schoolwork even if I tried. And, you know, I didn’t really try, because I was too busy pacing in my room, wondering what tonight would entail, if Rocco would be gentle, if he’d be kind, or if he’d simply do whatever it was he wanted to me and not care about how I felt during it.
Men with power, they didn’t often care about the pain they inflicted upon others.
I stayed in my room until my father returned to me. Night had fallen, so I’d flipped on the fluorescent ceiling light. My father looked at my dress, noticed how I’d dolled myself up, and nodded in approval. “Rocco is here. I have him in one of the lounges downstairs.” He offered me his arm, and I was slow to take it.
My movements were slow, mechanical. I didn’t say anything to him, and my eyes stared forward. An uneasy feeling had risen in my gut, but I did my best to swallow it down and push it away, pretend it wasn’t there. I could be upset tomorrow, hate myself in the morning. For now, I had to do this. For family.
We went down the stairs, step by step, and my father led me to the lounge he’d left Rocco Moretti in. We walked in together, and I noticed Rocco near a fireplace, a small fire recently started, licking at the logs nestled inside. He held a glass of what I instantly assumed was whiskey—my father hardly ever served anything else, at least not in this house.
Rocco was… an older man. Dark, tan skin, lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked to be near my father’s age, if perhaps a few years older. I stopped the moment I saw him, the uneasy feeling in my gut intensifying when my father slipped his arm out of mine.
My father looked at me, said nothing, and then he turned on his heel and walked out, shutting the door to the lounge and leaving me in there with a stranger. A stranger who did not seem like he was a kind man.
A sick, slick smile spread on Rocco’s lips as he scrutinized me, circling me like a vulture about to devour a dead animal it had just discovered. “You are beautiful, aren’t you?” He finished what was left of his drink, set it down on a small end table nearby, and returned to me. He stood behind me, his hands gripping my shoulders, and I closed my eyes.
I should’ve said no. I should’ve fought my father on this. This… it wasn’t right. I knew the Santos empire wasn’t all above board, but this? This was just wrong, and anyone who could look the other way and pretend it wasn’t happening was a bad person.
That was the first time I’d thought about my father as a bad person, but it wouldn’t be the last.
Rocco Moretti wasn’t gentle. His hands were rough, and they left marks, bruises on my skin, a reminder that lasted for days after the encounter.
And as for the encounter itself? It lasted damn near all night. What last bit of innocence I had had been washed away, stolen and tossed aside like trash. I was used, and as the hours wore on, I began to hate the feeling of those hands on me.
Those hands. Those hands were all I could think about, because if I started to think about other parts of his body, I knew I’d lose it. Needless to say, I couldn’t afford to lose it. I was Giselle Santos, so if I was going to lose my mind, I’d do it when I was alone.
Because, I now realized, I was. I was so alone in this world. I had no one. Nothing. I was just Miguel Santos’s daughter, nothing else, and that realization was perhaps the most depressing thing ever.
By the time Rocco was done with me, my dress was torn and in shreds, and my hands trembled—though I tried to hide that. He thanked me for my… my body, I guess, and then I was allowed to leave.
I wanted to run out of the house and scream into the night, but I couldn’t, so instead I went up to my bedroom and shut the door. I leaned my head on the wood, my eyes shutting. All of the emotions I’d pushed back came falling forward, washing over me in a wave I easily drowned in. Too much, it was too much.
I wasn’t a girl who cried. I thought crying was weak. And yet, right then, that’s exactly what I did. I cried like I’d never cried before. I cried as I tore off the dress, leaving it in a heap on my floor. I cried as I wiped at the makeup on my face, smearing it all over. The tears that left me were not enough, though.
No, I wanted to do more. I wanted to tear off my skin so I could get rid of the ghostly sensation of Rocco’s hands on me. I couldn’t do that, so instead I simply crawled into my bed and wished I’d been born to a normal, loving family.
Because a loving father did not send his only daughter to fuck a stranger as a business favor, especially when that daughter was only fifteen. A loving father would never force his daughter to do anything close to that.
My father wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t a loving father. He was a businessman, and until now, I’d never realized the two were mutually exclusive. He could not be both. He could be one or the other, but not both. Never both. And I knew, without a doubt, my father would never give up his business or his money for me.
And that only made me feel worse.
Life after that night had been… not the best, honestly. My father had suggested going to church, the same church my mother had frequented when she was alive. I never knew if he only suggested it because he knew he’d fucked up by giving me to Rocco that night or if he was just trying to get me out of his hair.
It didn’t matter.
After that night, I didn’t really have a will to live. The more I thought about it, the more I’d known it. I was just a body, someone my father would marry off whenever he wanted, use however he’d wanted. He didn’t love me. My father was not a man who loved. How was that for a role model?