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“Beautiful…”
The word is a knife in my stomach.
Beautiful.
Beautiful means target. It means exposure. It means abuse. I want to be ugly. I want to have scales covering my skin, bad hair, and crooked teeth.
“The most beautiful one.” His hand moves down to cup my ass, and he’s on the bed, getting behind me.
My thin gown rises, the edges whispering along my skin. Another cry of fear scrapes through my aching throat. Please help me… please, please!
I squeeze my eyes closed and focus. I’m going away from here. I’m traveling far away, to a place where my mother smiles at me with soft blue eyes. Her eyes are like the ocean, soothing and gently surrounding me.
Rough hands touch my skin as he drags my gown higher.
No… Go back… Go away… I’m in a field of daisies with my dad. Zelda is with us, and she’s running ahead and laughing. Her golden hair bounces in curls behind her like happy sunshine. She’s skipping.
Daddy’s strong arms hold me so tight against his chest. My small fingers are in his soft, dark hair, and I’m high off the ground, safe. My sister is picking daisies…
I can’t be sure if it’s a real memory or a dream. I was only five when they died, killed in a car crash, leaving us at the mercy of the State of Florida Foster Care System.
Meaty hands are on my hips, touching the elastic of my panties. No! I squeeze my arms tighter against my sides, doing everything I can to return to that field, to my Daddy’s strong arms. I have to get away from here before…
“Get off her!” Zelda’s voice cuts through the darkness, followed closely by a loud CRASH!
Dwayne’s body slumps and falls on me along with pieces of what feels like a plate. I struggle out from under the heavy, sweaty man now out cold in my bed.
“Get up!” Zelda hisses at me. “Ge
t dressed! We’re leaving.”
My hands shake so hard, I can barely grasp the sides of my gown. I quickly throw it on the bed and grab my jeans off the floor. The broken lamp is beside Dwayne’s head, and a dark line of blood runs down his temple.
“Don’t waste time staring!” my sister says, and I see she’s got her shoes on.
I’m ready to go, but one last thing… Zelda’s back is to me. She doesn’t see me reach in his pocket and take the wallet. I want all my pictures, but I especially want this one. I do not belong to this man.
My throat hurts, and Zee grabs my hand. “Let’s go!”
She never releases my hand all the way out into the rainy Florida night. I follow her, running as fast as we can, block after block until we’re out of the neighborhood. We’re entering what used to be farmland. Now it’s slowly turning into a subdivision, with huge wooden house-skeletons rising high into the dim-lit night.
Enormous concrete culverts lie in ditches waiting to be covered with dirt. They’re a network of tunnels, and Zee runs us down into one, pushing me inside first and crawling in after me.
In that ditch, on that rainy night, she promises me we’re never going back. We’ll keep running. This time we’re going farther south, down the Florida coastline, and we’ll figure out a way to survive.
We’ll never see Dwayne Vega again…
Chapter 1
Almost ten years later…
Rowan
Days like this I want to be on the track, pedal to the floor, flying at top-speed as the tension burns from my brain like the carbon from the engine of my Formula One race car.
Instead, I’m secure in a sleek, black limo. My trusted driver Hajib is behind the wheel, taking me across the extension bridge connecting Monagasco proper with the outer banks where our beachside estate at Occitan is located. Street lights flicker past, and I watch the breakers on the ocean below.
My uncle’s voice is in my head. “The people are nervous. They hear reports of terrorist attacks in Nice, less than thirty kilometers from their homes, and they panic. We’re too close to the front lines. They need a symbolic gesture of protection.”
