Nicky
My mom was a beautiful woman. Kind and patient with the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard. An artist like Lina. A dreamer that saw beyond what was real. They were so much alike, even though I was the one who took after my mom in looks.
I was seven when she died, and since then I’d always wondered what she saw in a predator like Frank Baldi to marry him and let him give her two kids. Two innocent girls he gnashed at piece by piece, night after night, until there was nothing left to prey on. At least, for me.
The first time my father came to my room late at night, I’d just turned eight. He’d given me so many gifts for that birthday. Toys, a charm bracelet, a pink dress I wore during the party in the morning, and at night, he came to me with the last of his gifts. A white, satin night gown.
It was so beautiful, and it made me feel like a princess. He took off my unicorn pajamas and underwear, gave me a bath and helped me put the gown on. I didn’t know why he was doing it when I’d been dressing and bathing myself and my sister for a long time. And I didn’t bother to ask because I looked so pretty in what I thought was the nicest gift I’d ever had. Eight-year-old me thought he was trying to take care of me like Mom used to, compensating for her loss since it was my first birthday without her.
When he lay with me in bed without his shirt, told me to let my hair down and gave me a kiss on the mouth only grownups could have, I froze. My whole body stiffened, and my mind was paralyzed. For a few weeks, I didn’t understand much of what had been happening between us, what he’d been doing to me. All I knew then was that it was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be that way between a girl and her daddy.
One day, I told him I didn’t like it when he kissed me. He didn’t get mad as I feared he’d have, like he always had; Frank Baldi wasn’t exactly a peaceful man, and his belt was his third hand. But that day, he just smiled at me and said he’d kiss me somewhere else I’d like more. It’d be our little game.
Every day, he’d come to my room, strip me naked, kiss me on a different part of my body and ask me if I liked it, with the promise of a new gift for every time I said I did.
Then the kisses came with touches. At first, they resembled tickles, or so he tried to convince me. But then…there were fingers…scary, painful, nasty fingers…
When I told him I didn’t like this game anymore, he said my mom had always loved it, and since she was gone, he needed someone else to play it with him. Then he’d tell me how special and beautiful I was because I looked so much like her.
I didn’t want to disappoint, Daddy, so I played his game. Day after day, week after week, month after month, until I realized this was no game. My father was a monster. The worst kind.
Eventually, I gathered the courage that sprouted from my pain and told him to stop. I didn’t care if he’d use his belt on me. I’d take a beating every night of it spared me the nasty fingers.
What I couldn’t take was how he threatened to play the same game with Lina. I knew he’d been visiting her, too, but she was younger than I was and didn’t look like Mom at all. She had his eyes and dark hair. The nasty fingers hadn’t crawled inside her. Not yet.
To protect my sister, I tried to become what Frank Baldi wanted me to be. I’d become a mom to Lina anyway. What difference would it make to be more like Mom with him so he’d leave my sister alone?
But I was a kid. Nine to be exact. I couldn’t always hold my tears. I couldn’t always pretend. So when I didn’t fit the role, he turned to Lina to feed his sickness.
Then the ugly nights became a full horror show when I got my period. Much to my dismay, I became a woman at eleven with a full rack that couldn’t be hidden, not from the boys at school, the shitty neighborhood or the animal at home. I was no longer a kid to him. No more games, only a nightmare, bloody and painful, to relive forever.
But that wasn’t the worst part of the story. The worst part was that I let my father rape me over and over and over to protect my sister the only way I knew how as a fucking kid, so she’d have a chance at healing and maybe having a normal life, so she wouldn’t have to deal with whatever I had to every single moment of my existence, but, in the end, it was all for nothing.
I failed at protecting her or myself. As if we were born to be devoured by beasts and monsters, Lina became a meal for another wolf, and soon, I’d be fed to a coyote.
My eyes squeezed with tears of fear, pain, failure and shame. These feelings were going to be the design of my life from now on. My mind, though, even with how desperate I was, refused to believe this was it. How could I accept that horrible destiny, to relive the horrors of my childhood, being used and abused to fulfill the pleasures of a sick predator? And for what? Survival?
If I married Domenico, I’d be the subject of a psycho’s sick entertainment to do with as he pleased. To the world, I’d be the wife of a mobster, an accomplice, a criminal just like him. In reality, I’d be a beast’s captive. I’d kiss my dignity and humanity goodbye. Who wanted to live in captivity with nothing but pain and humiliation? Was losing myself a price worth paying to survive?
No. Absolutely not.
Except I didn’t need to survive just for self-preservation. I had to do it for my sister, too. I couldn’t leave her behind in this world of blood all alone. I had to be there for her. As long as I was alive, there was still hope that maybe one day I wouldn’t fail. Maybe I’d finally save my sister.
But how?
For the first time in years, I felt helpless and weak. How could one girl stand against the forces of malice and evil named the Bellomos and the Lanzas?
Spiraling, I widened my strides through the mansion garden. Michele’s footsteps sped behind me. I spun and yelled at him, telling him to fuck off and leave me alone. I was on the verge of breaking down, and I didn’t need anyone following me or watching.
When he didn’t listen, I couldn’t take it anymore. “God!” I screamed at the dreary sky, letting out my desperation to anyone who would listen. Then I fell to my knees, tears streaming down like I’d never let them before, not in public anyway. But even falling apart in private was a luxury I wasn’t allowed in this sick, twisted, shit show run by Tino Bellomo.
A hand squeezed my shoulder, and my body jerked too violently than normal. “Don’t fucking touch me, Michele.”
“It’s me, Nicky.” Lina’s soft voice surprised me. I didn’t hear her approaching.
Swiftly, I wiped my face and scrambled to my feet. I’d always shielded her from my pain and tears. She didn’t need to see them. No one did. I might have showed Tino and his hound some of my weakness, but I wasn’t going to start breaking in front of her now.
“It’s cold here. Go back inside. I’ll join you in a minute,” I said without looking at her.
