Page 13 of Remorseless Sinner

I felt panic spike through me.

“Andyouonly got on the Pill to piss me off and keep me from taking you. But I’ll fuck up those pills again. And again. Every time. Because you belong to me. Every part of you. Your juicy, succulent womb was made for filling up with my babies. Don’t you think that’s what this fucking metal eyeball wants you to do?”

“No! No!”

Saul chuckled.

“You thought you got away with it, didn’t you, Gracie?” he asked me, his voice lowering to a deep rumble.

I shuddered to feel him so close to me, my hair plastered to my forehead and back, the waves now slapping at me, Saul’s big body churning up the water, the waves hitting me harder each time. Dragging me under each time.

“Get away from me,” I whispered.

I felt frozen with fear. I was not a brave person.

What I had done seven years ago was a desperate attempt to make this obsessive dangerous man leave me alone.

Seven years ago my rough, big stepbrother got caught tampering with the birth control pills my family doctor had prescribed. Instead of the hormonal birth control that was supposed to be there, he had substituted some kind of vitamins instead.

At first, our parents argued strongly for covering it up, but I was frightened.

There had always been somethingwrongwith the way Saul looked at me.

Something not brotherly at all.

It was forbidden, but I always had a fear that. . .he didn’t care.

That, even though he went to services. Even though he sung the hymns. Even though he read the texts.

That Saul was an Unbeliever.

And Dr. Meier supported me. This wasn’t some juvenile prank. We were 19 years old and Saul was charged as a man with medical tampering and sent to prison.

When Dad went to pick him up a few years later, though, he wasn’t there. And no one knew where he had gone.

And no one had seen or heard of him ever since.

Maybe I had hoped he wouldn’t come back.

But, deep down, I couldn’t shake that feeling that Iknew.He’dneverleave me in peace.

I should have known he would come looking for me.

“Did you think I’d forgotten? What you did?”

“What about whatyoudid to me?” I retorted.

His face hardened.

“Gracie, you are not andhave never been allowedto be on the Pill. You were made to be filled by me. You were made to bear my children. Now get out and get ready for the ceremony. You’ve been cleansed, baby.”

When I emerged from the pool, my teeth chattering, my feet and legs feeling so frozen I could barely fit one toe in front of the other, my mother was there, pulling me into a small room off the baptismal floor to put on my clothes again.

“I don’t want to marry him,” I whimpered, as she shoved my turtleneck shirt over my head again.

“It is the only way, Gracie,” my mother whispered.

“But he’s my brother!” I cried.

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