Luca

6 - When you're not enough

Sofia

“Papa, please. I tried!” I sob to myself. But I know that it’s useless to beg. Papa won’t stop hurting me until he’s out of breath.

“Not hard enough!” Papa strikes me again, this time, so forcefully that I collapse to the ground. My arms tremble—I can’t hold myself up. My eyes seem to rattle inside my skull from the sheer force of his punch. Maybe he’s even damaged my eye socket, though I’m not sure.

What have I done to deserve this?

Why does he hate me so much, no matter what I do?

Why couldn’t I have been born to people who actually wanted me?

Why do I feel like an intruder in my own home?

How do you make someone love you when you’re not enough?

I didn’t ask to be born!

Papa kicks me in the ribs, all the time screaming what a useless, worthless piece of s**t I am. I’m not the daughter he wanted. I killed my mother. I’m nothing like my sisters; they would never shame him like this.

I tried so hard to make the Don’s wife like me, but she just didn’t.

What else was I supposed to do?

Literally kiss her feet and beg her to like me?

I’m not even sure it was me she disliked, but I know she didn’t want her son to marry me. I try to be the daughter my father expects, but instant dislike can’t be forced into affection.

Marnie Vidal does not like me, so what am I meant to do about it?

If I knew the answer, I’d act on it in a heartbeat. I despise the way my father treats me. Not long ago, he made me a complete prisoner. In truth, I have always lived as a prisoner, one way or another, but I used to have a taste of freedom before Papa forced me to leave school. Yes, I was followed everywhere, and anyone I spoke to was reported to him by his men. Often, my supposed disobedience earned his anger and his fists. To Papa, nearly every person I dared to speak with was beneath him.

After I was forced to drop out of school, I also had to abandon any dreams of becoming a veterinarian. From that moment on, I was made to stay home. I was never let out of the house unless Papa said it was okay, and even then, I couldn't leave without someone going with me.

I don’t know what it is like to be like other girls. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to sit on the phone with a friend all night, laughing about nothing. But I don’t have any friends—never have. People always kept their distance, too afraid to get close because of who my father is.

I wish I were strong enough to stand up to the man who gave me life. But I can’t; he could destroy me completely. He once dragged me to a boat and offered me to one of his contacts—a se.x trafficker.

On that day, I begged him on my knees like a child to take me home. I held onto his legs and promised I would do as he wanted me to do, anything he wanted, I would do it. Being with my monster of a father would have been better than being sold to a se.x trafficker! I was so scared that day that begging didn’t faze me. I would have done anything so long as he took me home. He did take me home, but then I received the beating of my life!

I still don’t know to this day whether it was just one of his scare tactics or if Papa really was going to hand me over to that man. I don’t like to think about it if I can help it. I could have ended up anywhere in this world as the se.x slave of a rich man. Only rich men buy girls from my father – very rich men.

I have wondered once or twice whether those girls have any kind of decent life or whether they end up locked in someone’s basement, brought out only for se.x parties and orgies where they're the dessert. Maybe if I had ended up like that, I wouldn’t have been alive for long.

That could have been me if my father had carried out his threat. The girl who was used and abused until there was nothing left of her.

Am I lucky?

I have a roof. I’m fed. I’m safe—but safer here with him, or out there with the unknown?

Sometimes I wonder which is worse.

I shouldn’t complain. I have free run of this big house, using any room I want—the gym, screening room, library. I love the library best because I love to read. I’ll read anything, any subject, as long as I keep out of Papa’s bedroom and study. That’s all that’s expected.

I’m lucky in the way that Papa is not always home, which means that I don’t see him all that often. I have a Nanny – yes, still at my age – a woman who raised me and is always there for me. I love Lorna; she’s the only mother I have ever known. Lorna looks after me in every way a mother should. If I need to talk, she’ll listen. She reports back to my father only to tell him that I’ve done as he asked of me while he’s been gone. When he is gone, Lorna and I dance, sing, and she’ll even read to me while I sit by the open fire in my pajamas.

That will all change now—Papa is using me to get what he wants from Don Vidal. It isn’t the first time he’s done this; he’s used me before to lure men into giving him whatever he wanted. Men believe that he might hand his daughter over to them if they offer business shares or do his bidding, even resorting to murder.

He makes me dress in the tightest dresses, slap on the makeup, and pretend as though I want to be there. I even have to let those horrible men fawn all over me, sit right beside me while they touch me in ways my father feels are totally fine. A hand on my knee, a finger stroking my shoulder, lips too close to my ear.

I have to make them believe I want to be with them sexuall.y. I pout because I have to leave them soon, and tell them that if they just give my father what they want, we can leave the room and get to know each other. If you catch my drift.

They fall for it every time. But they never get what they want from me.

My father always tells me that I did well, that he’s proud of me, but the looks on the faces of those men when they realize they’ve been played is awful. I actually feel bad for them. Not all of them, some are just vile, but I know they all think of me as a prick tease.

Papa told me that’s the reason he keeps me locked up, because those men could kidnap me and rape me before killing me because of what I did to them. He forces me to do it, but what may happen is my own fault, according to him.

I didn’t have a choice in this marriage either. I dared not protest because Papa would have hurt me before a word left my mouth. Besides, now that I know it would have been Luca had I married, I wasn’t so against it. Marrying him would have freed me from my father. But that will never be now.

As Papa grabs the front of my hair and yanks my aching head back, eyes burning into mine, I know I’m always going to be his prisoner. There will be no marriage. Luca cannot save me now.

“First thing tomorrow, I’m takin’ you back to the Vidal’s, and you’re going to beg Marine Vidal for a second chance. You’re going to get to know her and make her love you. Get on your fuckin’ knees and beg if you have to! If you fail, I will kill you, Sofia. You can trust me on that. I have no use for you any longer. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Papa.” I whimper.

“Good girl.” He pushes me away from him with force and gets to his feet. He walks away from me, leaving me in a pool of tears and a hell of a lot of pain searing through my body.

“Oh, my sweet girl.” Lorna is now crouching beside me, her arms around me as I sob against her shoulder. “Shh. It’s okay, my darling.”

“She didn’t like me, Lorna.” I sob. “I tried so hard!”

“It’s going to be okay, I promise.” Lorna helps me to my feet and slowly to my room, where she strips me like a child and puts me in a hot bath.

I bathe myself, scrub my hair, wincing at the pain coursing through my body. Once I’m done, Lorna checks my wounds. I have a few, and lots of bruises. She deduces that I don’t have broken ribs, but she thinks one is cracked. I can’t go to a doctor because my father just won’t allow that, so I’m stuck letting my body heal by itself as always.

Lorna helps me dress, blow-dries and braids my hair, and then helps me into bed. She hands me two strong painkillers, and I swallow them with water. Tucking me in like a child, she pulls the comforter up to my neck and kisses my head. “Everything is going to be alright, Sofia. You’ll see.” Her British accent wraps around me like a warm blanket in the winter.

“How can it be alright, Lorna? She didn’t like me, and it hurts. Not because Papa did this to me, not because he’s forcing me to marry a man he chose for me. But because I am never going to get out of here. Whether I married that man or not, I will always be someone’s prisoner.”

“No, Sofia,” Lorna takes my hand in hers. “One day, I will find a way to get you out of here. No matter what I have to do, I’ll get you out of here.”

When I was little, I would smile and listen to Lorna tell me how, one day, we would run away together and how she would take care of me. I would get excited when she described the life we’d have out there somewhere in the countryside. Lorna would describe her homeland, England, and make Surrey sound so fabulous. Back then, I couldn’t wait to go there.

However, even as I dreamed of escape, I knew deep down it would never happen. Lorna would never find a way to get us out of here, and even if someday she did, we wouldn’t get far. Papa is a powerful and dangerous man, and he’d kill us the moment he found us. No, that hope belonged only to my dreams—just dreams I had, not anything real.

“I love you,” I tell her sleepily.

Lorna kisses my forehead. “I love you, too, sweetheart.”

I cling to her. I need her so much. I need her help. This woman is my mother, not biologically, but she raised me from a baby, and we have that bond.

“Everything will be okay soon, Sofia. I’m going to fix this, I promise. Sleep now. Things will look better in the morning.”

I snuggle down into my mattress and close my eyes as Lorna strokes my hair and hums a lullaby, lulling me to sleep.