Chapter Thirty-Six
Candace
“Please don’t tell them I’m a whore… I’m not.”My mother’s pleas echo through my mind loud and clear as I stare through the window at the inky black sky.The stars splash against the smooth black velvet like sparkling diamonds.
I’m sitting on the floor by the window with my head and back up against the wall.Dominic’s asleep in bed, undoubtedly drained from not knowing what to do with me.I woke up a little while ago and came here.I wanted to sit on the floor.Even though I can’t seem to pull myself together, there’s something soothing about it.
The sky tonight is the same as it was that night when the truth hit me and I found out what was going on in my home.
I was thirteen years old. At the time things had been bad for about eight months and Papa started working away.
It was while my father was away that Uncle Lucas would show his true colors.That sick bastard took advantage of his brother’s wife and child every chance he got.I never knew anybody could be so evil.
Horrific images fill my mind as I look at the darkness, and I see my mother as clearly as if she were sitting before me.Naked and beaten.
I wasn’t supposed to see any of that.I wasn’t supposed to know.
Mom told me to be in bed by eight and I wasn't to come out of my room no matter what I heard.
That night, as I heard her screams, I snuck out of my room and went into the basement.Under the floorboards of her room was a passage with a little door on the wall.The cracks in the wood allowed me to see everything that took place in her bedroom.That's when I saw them all in bed.Her with Uncle Lucas and that man, Tobias.
It was him. That was the first time I saw him and knew the truth behind her cries.They beat her so badly she could barely walk.She wasn't even able to put on that act that all was well.
Frightened to alert them to my presence, I had to watch it all happen.When they left, I only came out of my hiding place because I saw how badly they hurt Mom.I helped her, and she told me what was happening.She told me why she was doing what I saw her doing.All for Papa. They could only get away with it because at the time he was away for months.
Hours later, someone knocked on our door.It was the D'Agostino boys. They'd come by to walk me to school.I never even realized what time it was.
Please don’t tell them I’m a whore… I’m not…
That's what she said to me then, pleading with me not to tell them.
I never thought she was a whore.All that time I heard her and the voices of strange men in our home I never once thought of her as such.When she told me she wasn’t my heart broke for her.
A few weeks later, after enduring nights of listening to her suffer, I heard her scream out again and knew she was being beaten.There was no way I could just lay there and not do anything.So I disobeyed her one last time and that time I didn't go into the basement and hide.I was determined to save her.I ran into her room while Uncle Lucas was on top of her and stabbed him with the kitchen knife.
I got him in his side but the wound wasn't deep enough.He grabbed me and taught me a lesson neither my mom nor I would forget when he beat me and raped me.
Rape...it's the first time I've thought of that word in so long and now that I have it feels like poison in my brain.
Papa didn't know what was happening to us until that week he and Mom were killed, and he only knew what was happening to her.Not me.
He came back from his work and I don't know what Mom told him, or what made her tell him but it caused an argument like none other.
As I watched them die before me, I wished I'd said something or gone for help.Mom and I lived like that for close to two years.Maybe things would have been different, and I’d still have my parents with me now if i'd cried out for help even once.It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but… Uncle Lucas threatened to kill me and my mother if I did.Then he used my fear to his advantage.
I wasn’t a whore either. Not at thirteen.Not at fourteen and not at fifteen.
I wasn't one either when I stood on that stage to auction myself to Jacques.
Now I'm here, struggling to come back to the light, but this hole in my heart forbids me.
Too much is happening. I started out wanting to find out who Richard Fenmoir is, and now I have the name of my parent's killer.Tobias Navarro.
Dominic is looking for Uncle Lucas and he's the kind of man who won't stop until he finds what he's looking for.That's great, except for the fact that all the secrets are being dug up along the way.
It's getting to the point where I'm losing the strength to keep up the lie and the will to keep certain things buried.
When my parents were killed, I explained everything I could in a way that would help those looking to search, but also hide the secrets.I never told anybody that I saw Tobias with Mom and Uncle Lucas in bed, and I never told anyone that it was Uncle Lucas who got the job for Papa.