We're not done, little lamb
1529 Words
SERAPHINA
I stood in the bathroom under the shower, the hot water scalding me but I didn’t turn it down. It felt better to stay in here than relive and continue to feel what had happened a few hours ago. Like maybe if it hurt enough, it would wash away the shame clinging to every part of me after what they did to me in the café.
After they had left me in the café, I didn’t know for how long I stayed there on my knees, crying silent tears. But then the manager had showed up, and she had told me to go home.
But instead of coming to the Morelli Estate, I had walked and walked around the town, and found myself standing in front of the Black Mountain Orphanage. It was the orphanage sponsored by the town church with the same name which was also the name of our town.
I must’ve stood there for a long time because at one point, a sister had come out and escorted me inside. She hadn't asked me any questions, but I knew from the way she looked at me that she knew who I was. All she did was take me to the big kitchen and had offered me a plate of steaming rice and broth.
I'd sat there on the small table as I picked at my food and watched as a few of the sisters worked with the helpers and the volunteers in the kitchen. The hustle and bustle of the kitchen had muted my mind for a time there, giving me reprieve from my thoughts that were all over the place.
When the kitchen had started to empty out, I'd realised I couldn’t stay there any longer and I had finally made my way to the Morelli Estate— not home, but the place where my mother stayed with her rich husband.
Now, hours later, I was still in trance, unbelieving what had just happened to me.
Dante Morelli was back.
So was his best friends, Oliver and Allister.
But he had said that he was the only one who'd gone to prison two years. So I wondered why his best friends had disappeared for two years if they hadn't been sent to prison. And how could they not get the time when I had given my statement not just against my stepbrother but them too. They were also equally responsible for what they had done to that girl.
And now it seemed they were trying to do the same thing to me.
I shivered even with the hot water pouring over me as my mind went back to their threats. Dante had said I sent him to prison for something he didn’t do and now he will do it. He threatened me with ràpe. And it scared me. It fûcking filled me with terror.
But I hated how when he was making his threats, punishing me and hurting me, there was this tiny part of me still attracted to him. That sixteen year old girl who had gone to that party to get her stepbrother’s attention was still somewhere trapped inside me, searching and looking for someone to look at me and see me. And apparently it still wanted that person to be Dante.
It was probably because of my childhood where my mother neglected me and didn’t pay me any attention, but when three of them surrounded me as much as I was afraid for what they’ll do to me, I felt seen too.
I closed my eyes and dropped my forehead to the tiled wall. I needed therapy and an escape plan to live my life away from my mother, this town and now the Lords.
Except the throbbing pain in my arse made me want to look deeper into what I had felt and still felt when Oliver had spanked me. It hurt and scared me, I didn’t like the pain but when he had looked at me with his blue eyes, almost soft… I wanted to have him look at me like that again.
And maybe I was scared more than I should be because I had never been with a man, never experienced anything related to the sensation that fluttered inside me at their close proximity.
I closed my eyes, and not for the thousandth time I wished that I had someone to turn to. But all I could see behind my closed eyes was his beautiful face. Those obsidian eyes. That calm, infuriating command in his voice. The cruel twist of his lips when he called me little sister.
I hated how he made me doubt myself. I had seen with my own eyes what they were doing to that girl, the girl I’d hated, but still I had decided to save her from their cruelty.
But for two years I had lived in doubt and guilt, because of how he had told me to think again and pleaded to me to not sent him away because I was mistaken. I had spent two years in doubt wondering if I had made a mistake and sent an innocent- not that he had been one in any sense of that word- but what if he wasn't guilty of what I had accused him of.
And now when he was back and looked at me with that unfiltered rage in his eyes as if he was a victim of injustice, those doubts were plaguing me again.
Those doubts were resurfacing probably because I was once attracted to him, which was still there somewhere beneath all that fear and horror of what had happened.
The little girl begging for a scrap of attention was, even now, thinking about the way his eyes had locked with mine as I had knelt helpless in front of him. And not just him but his best friends too. And that same traitorous part of me that had always craved his attention flared alive again, almost excited that I finally had his attention.
With a frustrated exhale, I turned the shower off and made my way to the fogged mirror. Swiping a hand on it, I turned to the side to look at my arse. Red marks in the shape of fingers were marking my arsecheeks. And as I poked the red flesh with my fingers, pain flared up.
It was that kind of pain that made my stomach twist in a way I didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. It scared me more than my stepbrother's threat.
Tears rushed into my eyes at the reminder of the humiliation and I welcomed it. This was logical, understandable even, but these foreign twists and flutters in my stomach and feeling attracted to my step brother even after knowing what he was capable of wasn’t. It wasn’t logical. It was madness to even feel slightly okay with what they did to me.
And, I didn’t understand how could Dante expect me to believe that he had been innocent of the crime when this was how he was treating me.
If he could even suggest to ràpw me just to get back at me then how could I believe he didn’t do it in the first place.
I picked up the towel from the rack and wrapped it around myself, my hair dripping down my back. As I stepped out of the bathroom, my skin pimples with goosebumps as the cold air caressed my wet body.
But it wasn't the cold of the air that sent a chill down my spine, and made me freeze midstep.
All three of them— Dante, Allister, and Oliver were there in my bedroom like shadows waiting to consume me.
Allister was leaning against the wall near the window, arms crossed, a cold look in his warm colored eyes. Oliver sat casually on the edge of my bed, picking at something under his nail as if this intrusion was something they did on daily basis. And Dante, he was closer than the rest, standing near my dresser, his gaze dragging down my body slowly, deliberately, like he had every right to look. His dark eyes burned with a storm that had me taking a step back.
My breath caught. The silence was louder than any scream. But I curbed my impulse to run. They had caught me by surprise in the cafe, I won't let them hurt me again.
But even as I thought that, I knew I could never fight even one of them much less three of them together. And still, I tried to swallow my fear and choked out with as much courage as I could gather, “What the fûck are you doing here?” My voice cracked despite me wanting to sound stronger and wanting to put as much anger in it as I could.
“You didn’t really think it was over, did you?” Dante murmured, his voice rough and a prelude to what was to come.
"We are not done with you, little lamb," Oliver said, his blue eyes meeting mine, showing his excitement.
"Far from it." Allister added, cold and emotionless.
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A. Gupta
- Writer
