Page 2 of Do It For Me
“She ran away one day and got hooked on drugs,” he says whenever someone asks about me. “She’s been in rehab ever since we found her. Imagine how desperate she was, selling her body to pay for them.”
No one has shown interest since. I don’t understand why he keeps spreading that lie if he wants me gone so badly.
If someone earned money from selling my body, it wasn’t me. I just wanted them to stop. I begged day and night until mythroat ached so much I thought I’d never speak again. In some ways, I was right. I barely talk anymore.
There were drugs, yes. But to my surprise, there wasn’t an addiction... or at least, none that I recognised. I don’t know if the sweating, the shakiness, the nausea, and everything else I endured in the hospital were symptoms of withdrawal or just my body’s reaction to the trauma. Even the doctors weren’t sure.
But to him, it’s easier to blame me. Easier to say I chose this than to admit I was kidnapped, sold, and used in ways no one should.
The sound of an engine pulls me from my thoughts. I peek through the white curtains as a car stops in the parking lot.
A man steps out, dressed in a sharp suit. His back is to me. Black hair slicked back. No grey hairs; that’s a plus. Unless, of course, he dyes it. Maybe he’s some old psycho waiting for his very young bride.
A bride he’ll want to impregnate. To fuck. To control. To break.
My future husband won’t be any better than my father. I made peace with that thought years ago, when I was supposed to marry Declan Byrne, but he chose my younger sister instead, after I was kidnapped.
Now, I’m not the same girl, and I’m certainly not ready for this. Not for marriage. Not for being a wife, a mother, or a man’s sex toy.
I’m not ready to be used again…
Will I ever be?
My heart races as my father greets him with a fake smile. He’s talking, nodding, probably telling the same story again.
Does this man even know what happened? How could he accept someone like me—a woman broken and impure? Why? What does he want?
I can’t stop picturing the old man who bought me when I was seventeen. I think his name was Roger. Is my future husband as repulsive as he was? As old? Older?
My stomach churns, and nausea grips me. I bolt to the bathroom and empty my breakfast into the toilet.
I can’t do this.Hecan’t do this. How can he care about nothing but himself? I’m his daughter! How can he not love his own children?
If it were up to him, I could die tomorrow, and my mother would be the only one to mourn me.
Why can’t he love me? Just a little?
I look at myself in the mirror for the twentieth time.
Mum found me crying a few minutes ago and had to redo my makeup. She also helped with my hair, styling it into a cascading braid adorned with tiny white pins. The makeup hides my under-eye circles and freckles, but it doesn’t hide how much I hate all of this. After wiping off the lipstick she put on me, I replaced it with a simple gloss. At least if the jerk tries to kiss me, he’ll be disgusted.
The dress I’m wearing is red, and I despise it. The cleavage is lower than anything I’ve worn since the rescue. It’s sleeveless, and because it has nothing on the back, I can’t even wear a bra with it. To make it worse, there’s a slit running up one leg.
I hate it.
Not even Mum’s attempt to soften my mood—bribing me with her pearl necklace—makes this tolerable. My father only knows terrible people, and now I’m destined to spend my life with someone who’ll see me as nothing more than a hole to fill.
My gaze returns to the mirror. I’m thankful I inherited Mum’s green eyes. If I’d taken after my father and ended up with his icy blue stare, it would haunt me every day of my life.
But even if I look like her, I don’t like what I see.
I’m beautiful, but it’s not me.
I’m not happy with the body I own because it has never belonged to me. It’s a dirty, ruined body, abused in countless ways. A body meant only for pleasing men. A body built to give birth.
The door creaks open. My father steps inside, speaking German. “Are you ready,püppchen? Dante is waiting for you.”
“I don’t want to do this, Dad—Daddy,” I correct myself as soon as he glares at me.
