Vow to Protect

“Not if we leave. How about at the party tonight, you and I just slip out the side door into the darkness? They’ll never see us again. I have a little money saved, and you can sell some of your jewelry. We can get jobs and live a normal existence.”

As wonderful as her dream sounds for us, I know it’s useless to imagine. “You know if we did that, he would never stop looking for me. Both Sal and my father would hunt me down and drag me home. And then once they found me, they would kill me.”

Rose sucks a ragged breath into her lungs and lifts my chin with her finger. “Don’t say that.”

“You don’t think my father has been looking for a way to punish me all my life? Everything he does is to punish me for my mother’s death. Everything. Sal is just another in a long list of things that suck about my life. I’m used to it by now.” I pause, refusing to let myself get worked up over something that will never change. “We should go.”

Rose looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t. “I’ll find a way, okay? Don’t give up.”

She wants to say more every time Sal says something hurtful or, worse, when he hits me to get his way. My father put my virginity up as a shield, but it doesn’t protect me from Sal’s fists.

I paste on the fake smile my father and Sal will expect to see me wearing and head toward the door. “Let’s go before one of them comes up here after us.”

Again, she trails me, and when we hit the foyer, it’s only Sal in his tuxedo waiting for us. His black curls are slicked back, and he’s altogether too oily and smooth. He always has been. I hated him the moment I laid eyes on him. He’s a snake in the grass, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

He holds out his elbow for me to take, and I wrap my arm around it. If I didn’t, he’d drag me into him and make me pay for embarrassing him in front of Rose. It’s a lesson I’ve learned many times from the palm of his hand.

The limo is waiting outside the house, and Sal opens the door for us. Rose climbs in first, and then he steps in front of me, slipping in so that he’s stuck sitting between us. I wish I were the kind of person who had the balls to drag him out by his ear. Instead, all I manage is envisioning the squeak he’d make if I did it.

I buckle my seat belt, and the limo pulls away. Sal’s cologne wafts off him in nauseating waves, but I don’t dare roll down the window for air. He sees everything, and no matter what I do, it’s all an insult to him. Every breath I take is an insult to him.

“I’m glad your father suggested you change. You look much more proper now. Although I do like the silk on you. Maybe you can put it back on for me later,” he whispers.

I keep the disgust hidden from my tone. “If Father says it’s alright.”

I’m worthless in my father’s mind, so he won’t have me called a whore as well. In front of his friends, I’m the perfect doting daughter. There’s no way for him to explain away rumors of my sleeping around to them, so he’s forbidden Sal from touching me that way. I’ll take it because the thought of him touching me intimately makes me want to scream.

He stiffens and leans away, taking the cloying scent with him. My father’s one rule was no touching sexually before the wedding. And no matter how many times Sal has tried to coax me into breaking the edict, I don’t. Not when it is the only life raft my father has ever provided.

Since I rebuffed him, Sal runs his hand up my thigh, squeezing so hard over the material I’ll have a bruise. Unable to stop myself, I grab his hand and look him in the eyes. “He probably wouldn’t like where that hand is either.”

“Don’t be such a little virgin,” he hisses.

My virginity is the only thing keeping me safe from him, so I’ll use it for a shield as long as I can. I know nothing about sex, and if the porn or the pictures Sal forces me to look at when my father is away are similar, I don’t want anything to do with it. Even more so if he’s with me.

Rose lets out a soft squeak across the car, and I glance over. Sal has his arm slung around her shoulders, and his lips are on her neck. Her eyes are blown wide and scared as she meets mine across the car. Despite her terror, though, her chin is tilted up, and she’s trying to tell me she can take this. Take this for me. But God, I don’t want her to, not when she shouldn’t have to.