Page 44 of Dimitri
“That isn’t what I said.” Her words are as icy as the color of my eyes and just as lifeless.
With anger clutching my throat, every word I speak is delivered with a gravelly growl. “You didn’t deny it either, Roxanne. So what is it? Did they touch you? Or did your sweet ole Pa treat his daughter like a dirty little whore?”
“It was neither of those things!”
When she attempts to race by me, I grab the tops of her arms and drag her to within an inch of my face. “Then… What. Was. It?” My voice is as loud as hers, my anger just as palpable. I’m not angry at her. I’m fighting the urge not to track down her father and slit his pedophile throat.
This kills me to admit, even more so since Ophelia’s life was cut short right around the age Roxanne is now, but Roxanne’s eyes hold the same dark, gleaming secrets Ophelia’s did any time our father returned home after a long stint of absence. They were badly stained, but not enough to have you believing they were wholly broken. They could be fixed if the right person was willing to put in the hard yards.
I thought Isaac Holt was that person for Ophelia. I was wrong then just like I could be now, but I can’t stop pushing. I need to know who hurt Roxanne. I need to know more than my lungs need their next breath.
“Did he touch you, Roxanne? Is that why you were sent to live with your grandparents? Did your mother try to protect youafteryour father already fucking hurt you?”
“No,” she denies again, even with her eyes screaming the opposite. “He didn’t touch me!”
“Then what did he do? Why do you act as if he doesn’t exist?” I crowd her against the door of the private jet just as its engines roar to life. “Why do you hate him so much that just the thought of saying his name has you wanting to vomit.”
“He made me watch!” she shouts before she can stop herself. “He made me watch what they did to my mother.” Tears roll down her ashen face unchecked as she repeats, “He made me watch.”
I want to kill, I want to go on a rampage, but instead of doing either of those things, I do the last thing anyone would ever expect. I pull Roxanne into my chest, hopeful her tears will cool the rage burning me up inside.
If they don’t, I’m sure I can find another means to dispel my anger.
Torturing her father will be a good start.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Roxanne
Sighing, I rest my cheek onto the top of my knees. The meal a member of Dimitri’s staff is placing on the bedside table smells as divine as the previous three, but no number of excited rumblings from my stomach will pull me out of the slump I’m in.
I cried in the chest of a man who’d rather kill me than bed me.
If that isn’t bad enough, it seems as if that was the beginning of my punishment.
I’ve been shunted from activities. Left out in the cold like the naughty child I am.
The confession Dimitri forced out of me three nights ago on his private jet isn’t to blame for my disturbing ways. I was barely a child when my father found humor in my pink cheeks and wide eyes. He wanted to embarrass me, where in reality, he sparked a sinister curiosity for sex.
I didn’t see the men sleeping with my mother—I didn’t even see her—all I saw was two bodies becoming one, the gripping of flesh, and harmonic sounds I’d never heard before. I saw how the simplest movements could change the light in someone’s eyes in an instant.
I saw beauty when all I should have seen was darkness.
When my grandparents discovered the reason for my almost erotic drawings in grade five, my grandfather contacted the first shrink he found. He was mortified like Dimitri, confident there was something horrendously wrong with me.
Mercifully, my grandmother saw past my chipped exterior and overstimulated curiosity. She understood my vividly graphic drawings weren’t to recreate acts I should have never seen. I wanted to recapture a unique beauty I hadn’t seen since I went to live with my grandparents, not live in wickedly naughty thoughts.
My nanna was light years ahead of her time. She taught me it was okay to be sexually inquisitive as long as I wasn’t being forced against my will to explore it nor encouraging others to experiment in ways they weren’t comfortable. She slackened my lead with things like reading novels not recommended for my age but retightened it when she believed my curiosity couldn’t be curbed in a non-physical manner.
Her system was faultless until that night in the alleyway a year ago. There was no beauty in my previous exchanges with Eddie, no crackles in the air, or breathy, wordless moans. There was nothing but lackluster, lifeless exchanges that had me wondering if the memories of my childhood were as jaded as my devilishly immoral compass.
Then he arrived out of nowhere as dark and dangerous as ever. When I spotted Dimitri, the faintest trickle of desire floating through my veins switched to a full-blown pandemic of heated rushes and core-clenching tingles. Every inch of my body tightened in anticipation. I was trapped, mesmerized, and finally free from the chains that had held me down for years.
It wasn’t just him watching me that heightened my senses to beyond belief. It was wondering what he’d do to me if he weren’t a spectator, how I’d react if his hand were to replace Eddie’s. Would the light in my eyes change like they did for my mother, or would they fill with tears like hers did every time my father’s friends left?
Although the thought of discovering the truth should have haunted me more than it did, my nanna’s constant reminder that I’m a perfectly balanced and normal person kept it on the back burner.
I’m an adult now, so it’s perfectly okay to be fascinated with sex. I just had to find the right person to spark a response out of me.
