Page 172 of Filthy Love

“You didn’t have your father’s name?”

“No. What with him being a Catholic priest and raping women as his hobby of choice, he liked to keep a low profile on all the kids he truly had in the states.”

Gia visibly blanched, her shock was understandable. He wished that was that worst she’d hear.

“I didn’t know for a long time what he was. He was just a guy who stopped by now and then, hardly a father at all. We never stepped foot in his church. I didn’t know she’d been one of his mistresses for decades. She even helped him chose women.”

“Choose women for what?”

“To rape. To use and brainwash. To beat and abuse. To do whatever the fuck he wanted since he acted like he was God incarnate with his man-made cult farm.” It could have been a robot speaking for as much emotion as Hawk was showing.

He wished he had a blunt in his pocket. Something to take the edge off the twitching in the back of his skull.

“Did he … did he touch you? Hit you?”

“You’d assume, right? I suppose he’s the only priest who wasn’t a child molester. He preferred tits and forcing women. I saw him maybe once, sometimes twice a week if that. It tapered out over the years. We didn’t go places, but my home life was normal. As normal as I assumed every kid had back then.”

Bile kicked up into his throat. The fingers dangling between his spread legs began to twitch.

“She’d take me to these meetings. It was in someone’s basement in town, I think. I was Seb’s age. Maybe younger. I remember the place always smelled bad of cigarettes and sanctimonious bullshit and I would always ask if I could stay in the car. The answer was a hard no and I’d be dragged inside and made to sit in the middle of their circle. It started off with other kids there too, we could play in the corner with a few books. But over time it dwindled down to just me.”

“Do you know what happened to the kids?”

“Fuck knows.” He suspected those kids were dead. “She’d dress me in my best clothes, shined my shoes, made sure my hair was perfect. I was such a neat little kid. Never allowed to get dirty.” With his hands shaking, he began to crack his knuckles.

He couldn’t fully focus on Gia, though he felt her gaze. Her sympathy like a blanket shrouding him.

Yeah, good plan, dipshit.

“I presume it was an improvised church, that’s what I’d take it for nowadays, one of those cults that pop up for stupid assholes to join and think they’re being saved by a deity. Like minded crazy people who preached the bullshit bible and threw around words like evil and damnation to make their lives seem more important than it was.” If he let his eyes close, he could easily be back in that basement with the smell of patchouli oil and dripping pipes and holier-than-thou bullshit being spouted from all corners. And the way he was paraded around as though his mom had brought a platter of meat to a party.

Hands pulling at him.

Some slapped him around the head when he complained.

They called him an evil, wicked boy. Because why? He asked to go play outside.

He cried if they hit him and denied him water. Little boys who cried didn’t deserve water.

They said he had the devil in him. A terrified kid made those people behave in shocking ways because his mother told them he was possessed.

They said he was a cancer to the world and he should be grateful he had people who cared to cure him.

“I had no clue at the time, what kid of four would? That Lisette thought I was born with evil in me and her little coven group were exorcising me. Every. Fucking. Week. They made me recite the bible continuously, they blew smoke in my face, made me swallow it until I coughed up vomit and cried like a damn baby for them to stop. I hated that the most. They were getting me stoned. I was sick a lot. Soon, playing with the neighbor kids stopped. She told me they had germs that could hurt me. She’d give me medicine, and say it was to make me better. Most of the time it didn’t. You’d call itMunchausen syndrome by proxy these days.”

“Jesus. Hawk. She purposely made you ill?” Gia’s voice trembled and when he allowed himself to collide their gazes, not only were her eyes wet, but they were steaming mad. “Oh, my god! You were a baby. How could she do that?”

It hurt to look at her. Hearing sympathy ...sadness in her voice killed him.

And she hadn’t heard the worst of it yet.

With most people reading their facial expressions, and body language was usually confusing, or he just didn’t care to know. But with Gia, it was as though all his crossed wires unfurled. Either that or she was just that expressive even his dumbass self could understand what she was feeling.

Swallowing, he unclasped his hands and scrubbed one in his hair, lowered it, letting his torso sag, he continued. “This went on for years. I didn’t know any different, it was just my life. I’d ask why I couldn’t play outside with the other kids, she told me I was her big man and needed me close since my father was away a lot of the time. It was only when he was around she forgot about me completely and it was those times I began to feel good again. It was a never-ending cycle of abuse.”

Big blue watery pools looked across the table at him and Hawk got the feeling if he gave Gia any indication she’d be in his lap. For him to continue he had to keep his hands off her.

“Weren’t there any other family members who noticed what was going on? No social workers? Or neighbors?”

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