Page 159 of Savage Don

Father voice fades away as my world crumbles right alongside of my tumbling heart.

Laura. My mother.

He had her lobotomized?!

The emotional pain is so intense I start to dry heave.

“You monster…” I rasp. But that doesn’t stop him. Father keeps yakking away in the background as I try not to pass out for a third time.

He’s going to shove an icepick in my brain and leave me in a padded cell until he can find someone stupid enough to buy me. Then, I’ll be a mindless baby making machine for as long as I’m kept alive.

The horror wraps around my throat, choking me with a savage brutality.

This is my Father… my family…

All of this time, I’d foolishly believed that Sonia had brought out the worst in him. But the truth was that he’s always been this bad.

It’s only taken this long for him to take off his mask in front of me. Now, there’s no holding back. It’s clear that this is the last time I’ll see him—at least, until he needs a womb to pawn off for the sake of power. He’s letting it all out, all of his frustrations and hate.

I’ll be gone soon. And without me, there will be no one left to drag him and Sonia down…

Sonia.

“Why did you choose her?” I hear myself ask.

Even through the deafening darkness that engulfs me, I can see the hypocrisy in Father’s choices.

Sonia is no lady. She’s barely even human. If anyone needs to be lobotomized it’s her.

“Who?” Father asks, taunting me.

He knows who. He just wants to make me say it.

“Sonia.”

“Ah, yes. Sonia. She comes with more than you could ever imagine,” he says. “And unlike you and your mother, she never says no. All I hear out of her fiery mouth is yes. That’s the attitude I need to get what I want, to get where I want. And I want more than you could possibly imagine…”

Father trails off, his attention grabbed by something else. It doesn’t take long to understand what that something else is.

Sonia.

I smell her sickly-sweet perfume invade the car as she opens up the back door and steps inside the Cadillac to join us.

“Speaking of the devil,” Father teases.

“Oh, how sweet,” Sonia lilts. “You two were speaking about me?”

I want to snap at her. I want to bark and hiss and roar. But I’ve been drained of life.

Still, through all of the oppressive darkness, I feel the light of a single distant star.

Ray.

He’s still out there. He can still save me from this horror.

We can still live our happily ever after.

And we can both get our revenge while we’re at it.