The Italian Dom by N.J. Adel

CHAPTER 18

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.

“I can handle the cold, Sis. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I rarely swore in front of her, but I was losing my shit already, and what I’d picked up in her tone was the last thing I needed right now.

Unfazed by my unnecessary aggression, she told Michele to give us some privacy. He walked away and stood at a distance, his back to us. She, the fucker listened to. Unbelievable.

She linked arms with me and started, switching direction toward the greenhouse. “It means you don’t have to protect me anymore. You don’t have to hide your feelings or let yourself cry only when I wasn’t looking. I’d been listening to your tears for so long.”

“What?”

“You know, when you thought I was sleeping, at our old place, at the academy, at the apartment. I’d always listened, but I didn’t want to say anything before because I know how proud you are.”

I chuckled at my stupidity. “Great. Another failure to add to the list.”

“How about you start saying what you really want to say instead?”

“Excuse me?”

“C’mon, Nicky. Say what you really feel for once. Blame me for what’s happening. Tell me that if I hadn’t been married to Tino, none of this would have happened.”

Shaking my head, I chuckled again with zero humor. “Again, that marriage was my fault. I was the one who brought you here in the first place, remember? I brought you to the wolf myself, thinking he’d protect you from his psycho son instead of protecting you myself, and look what happened.”

She opened the door to the greenhouse. “None of this is your fault. You gotta stop blaming yourself because it’s for nothing. I know you don’t believe or accept it, but marrying Tino was the best thing that ever happened to me. Being with him was a choice I made, not something he forced me into. You gotta stop using me as an excuse.”

I stopped. “An excuse for what?”

“For putting your life on hold, convincing yourself you have to give up everything to protect and take care of me, for running away from what you really need to deal with.”

I put down my arm, leaving her hold. “Are you kidding me right now? Jesus Christ, Lina. What do you know about what I really need to deal with?” My life was at stake here, courtesy of the precious murderer of a husband she idolized. But, of course, I had to hide it from her, not to give her the protection she now despised, but to save my own life because she’d never believe me.

“More than you think. I know you better than anyone.” She looked away for a moment. “And I know Tino, too.”

My eyes narrowed at her. Was she hinting at something? A flicker of hope entered my heart. “What exactly did he tell you? What do you think you know?”

She glanced around, as if making sure no one was watching or listening. But even if it looked like no one was close—Michele was twenty feet away—someone was always watching in this Godforsaken place. She closed the door and took me to one of the benches among the plants. Then she made me sit with her. “I know you don’t allow yourself to feel or be vulnerable. You always have to be tough. You have to scare everybody away so you’d feel safe. But what you need to understand is that you don’t need to do this anymore. You have to start living your own life, Nicky.”

And you have to start not being so fucking oblivious. “I was living my life. The life I chose to live, until…”

“Until you met Dom. You couldn’t resist him. I know the feeling.”

“Holy fuck! Are you out of your mind? I didn’t… I can’t believe this shit. But why the fuck did I think you’d believe me over him?”

She lifted her index finger carefully and put it on her lips, and then she mouthed, “Of course, I believe you.”

Confusion filled me. “Do you?”

She pulled me into her embrace, her mouth to my ear. “Yes. Always. I’ll believe you over anybody. Every single time. Please, just play along and try to understand what I’m trying to tell you.”

When she pulled away, her eyes beseeching me, my breath caught. I didn’t know what she was up to or what she really knew, but if I was sure of one thing, it was that I trusted my sister with my life.

I nodded with a sigh, giving her what she asked for as Michele’s shadow tinted the glass doors. “You’re right. I’m sorry I lied. I couldn’t resist him.”

“It’s okay. It’s a good thing he wants to do the right thing…and Tino wouldn’t kill him.”

My heart skipped a beat. Was she saying what I thought she was saying? Did she know Tino threatened to kill me?

“You know why he didn’t? Why he wants you two to get married?” she asked, her eyes misting with tears.

Yes. Very well. But did she?

“Because he loves you,” she said, and I couldn’t help the snort that burst out of my mouth. “I mean it. Despite what you think the reason is, it’s only part of it. Tino is pushing for this marriage because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone he loves.”

“You’re giving me mixed signals here, Sis.” I could swear she’d figured out what her husband said he’d do to me if I didn’t marry Dom, but now I was lost.

“Men like Tino and Dom are brutal, cruel and even merciless. But that’s not all there is to them. Dom, just like Tino, would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. If what he wanted was a woman, he’d do anything for her. He’d kill anybody to make her his.”

Even her own sister. I wiped my forehead, sweating in the end of December. “Then we’re on the same page?”

Her lips twitched as she nodded. “Just answer me this one thing.”

I let out a sigh of relief that she knew without having to tell her, that she truly understood what kind of husband she had. “Anything.”

Her shaking arms wrapped around me, and she whispered, “You really don’t want to be with Domenico?”

Even if I did for a split-second when I let my ovaries take control, after today, if he were the last person on earth, I’d rather stay single for the rest of my life. I cupped her cheeks and shook my head in response.

Tears sprang from her eyes. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes.” She rose, sniffling. “I’m so happy you decided not to fight your feelings for him anymore. Marrying Dom is the right decision. I can’t wait to give you my celebratory gift.”

My lashes fluttered. I understood she was just saying some safe bullshit because of Michele, but something about that last sentence didn’t add up. “What gift?”

“You’ll see. It’s in the nursery, and if you come with me now, I think you’ll love it so much.”