Xo Novel
Chapter 4 (Beggar)
Chapter 4 (Beggar)
Our child that I keep telling him didn't survive, a truth, a lie.
It wasn't that way initially. First he tried charm, and I admit that I considered falling for it and giving in.
But my survival instincts wouldn't let me be so stupid to think he of all people had an ounce of empathy
in his body.
It didn't take him long to get fed up with my bullshit, because that is exactly what it was 'bullshit'.
I took pride a few weeks after, in stabbing him in his sleep with a nail file he so eagerly handed me to
clean my nails with.
That led to me finally getting collard.
After that it was a few attempts here and there in the past months that eventually got me from living in a
fully furnished room with a warm bed, sleeping next to my monster, to an empty room, naked and cold
just like a stray dog.
Lucca insists every night, it is my fault.
He has convinced himself that he is teaching me a lesson and eventually one day I would smile and
look back on this time as a small wrinkle in our story.
That just tells me how fucked up he is, because I rather live in an empty room, sleeping on a cold floor.
Not only am I away from him for those hours but it reminds me everyday of why I keep my silence.
It reminds me that I need to live to finish what I have started.
An unfamiliar comfort is a worse torture than the familiar struggle I face.
“Amariya, vieni, e ora di andare a casa,” Amariya, come, it is time to go home.
I should argue with my husband, that is what normal married people do, but I don't.
Our marriage is not normal.
Lucca Sanati is the sworn enemy of the blood that runs through my veins.
It is why he turned around and showed me who he really was all those years ago while he pretended to
love me.
I once hated my family, the blood that was my own for this very reason.
Now I am glad for it, because I see him, I don't see the potential of what he could be.
I should make a scene now, it is what a kidnapped woman would do. But I am not kidnapped, I am a
prisoner, a willing one.
This is my life.
I had years running from this man, and months loving him.
I know Lucca.
The best thing I can do is bide my time.
His men that raped me are now all dead except three. He hunts them down, a way to try and redeem
himself for leaving me naked in a ditch, to the onslaught of his fucked up men, that claim to be made.
But a made man has honor, his men have none.
Lucca doesn't realize, he is worst than them.
Torture, rape it is all the same.
He raped me too, claiming I was his, and I lived with it because I never had anyone show me another
way.
It became my living hell.
Lucca knew who I was and he still made me love him, showing me a side to him that he knew a
homeless beggar like myself wouldn't even dream of.
Someone who cared.
I was fooled by the few nights I had in his bed where he showed me gentle. My mind believed he was
my savior, and my body believed he was my owner.
Only he wasn't.
Lucca was my rapist, my tormentor, and my abuser.
The worst of them all, because even knowing all that, I still loved him.
When I told him so, he spat on me, and choked me, screaming and laughing as he repeated,
“SCREAM BEGGAR, YOU FILTHY DIRTY BEGGAR I SAID SCREAM.”
Then he fucked me and threw me in a pit where he left me. I screamed and screamed until his men
came.
Now he barely touches me, besides for the occasional knuckles on my cheek, which is still too much
contact.
I say nothing to his touch, not wanting to push him.
He is so close to snapping.
But as long as his men stay away from me, I see it as a win.
Though, a few nights back he mentioned that 'skin privileges' as he calls it will be shared as soon as
'the biker' is dead.
He means Zero.
I know his reason is all bullshit and that there is more to his reason.
And I fear when that reason loses its appeal as everything else does.
I get up and go toward him, drop my eyes as he would want, and wait for the other six guards that are
supposed to be hidden.
I saw them long before I sat down on this cemented seat watching the waterfall.
“Still not talking I see, don't worry il mio sudicio mendican'te, soon I will have you screaming,” Lucca
whispers close to my ear as the guards surround us.
And it is now my body shuts down.
My thoughts of the idea of normalcy I once got to have with The Satan Snipers gone from my mind.
The walk to the Royals Royce Lucca always goes on about is silent as the words in my mind.
We drive back to my prison which is his home.
The bright yellow monstrosity of a house is almost as grand as the white house I'd managed to see
from the road a few times too many, promises happiness and a family environment.
It is as fake and misleading as its owner.
The white three meter high electric gates open up as the four guards stationed to the front walk to the
side allowing us entrance.
Their black suits and machine guns make me sick to my stomach. They remind me of the man next to
me.
Fake, a fraudster, mobster and my own personal monster.
Lucca's phone rings just as one of the guards opens my door and waits for me to get out.
I head toward the double white doors as the housekeeper, Magdelaine opens them. She is a thirty-five-
year-old woman. Married to one of Lucca's soldiers.
I say she is fucking lucky to be in this house and not raped or harmed continuously like the few women
I have seen in this place.
She shows me pity as she looks at my collar before dropping her blue sullen eyes to the floor.
Lucca doesn't like anyone staring at me.
Her husband once backhanded her when she first did it. It was a reminder that nobody in the outfit is
safe. Not even a fucking wife.
The navy-colored tiles that closely match her eyes and beige walls go well together.
The Sanati Palace is designed to attract even a dulled eye like my own with its sculptured art adorning
the walls.
Rich red fancy furniture that is handcrafted and shaped in designs I have never seen until I got here are
placed everywhere.
I don't waste a second longer staring at the decor that is designed as an advert for hell.
Knowing if Lucca found me downstairs it would only anger him, I rush up the stairs to my room.
If there is one thing that I know about Lucca is to placate him is to be obedient.
And until three weeks ago when my last attempt at killing him went to shit that is what I have done.
I don't hope for anything, I wait for the window, that split second when I know I have a good chance of
killing him and escaping.
It is how I hunted all my previous kills, except Lucca isn't just any one, and I know if I am not careful I
could very well die here before I got the chance to kill him.
Once I'm in the room, I strip out of these clothes. Lucca calls it the white room. As everything including
the tiles are all white.
There is no bed to sleep on, I am forced to take the cold floor. In the corner where there is a dog
blanket and small pillow.
There is no mirror or headboard, nothing in this room besides a gray t-shirt Magdelaine snuck in for me
and a jeans that are two sizes too big she stashed in the bathrooms ventilator that Lucca broke out of
anger a month after I got here.
It was the day he stabbed me three times in my thighs with the same tin opener I stabbed his arm with.
One of those wounds are just centimeters from my cunt. It was the day I lost it. The day I told him I
hated him, how I slept with Zero.
I said a lot of things that day.
It was my daughter's birthday.
A daughter I would never hold, or see because of him.
I once told him that she didn't even have a chance, I wasn't lying, my daughter never stood a chance
the day she was born.
Her life was over, before it ever really began.
It was a good thing when he broke the ventilator, because for the past few months Magdelaine has
snuck me other stuff, like knives, two grenades and a rope.
The woman was no fool. She knew the risk of helping me, but didn't care.
She was one of the few people that made me believe that maybe the world wasn't that fucked up after
all.
I walk to the bathroom, put on the plugin, and fill the bath.
The one good thing was that I had hot water and a bathtub.
He didn't keep that from me. My eyes shoot right to the camera knowing one of his sick men are
probably watching me right now.
I don't feel shame, that was raped and beaten out of me years ago. Lucca knows that and he uses it.
After my bath, I dry with the small hand towel and walk toward my small corner where I sit- knees to my
chest, hair falling over my face, hands-on my toes. Head to my knees but it doesn't touch, it mustn't. Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.
And then I begin the wait and with it, my mind wanders to the past.
The day I met Lucca, the day I fell in love with my monster.