by Renard, Loki
* * *
I wake in the middle of the night.
There is somebody in my bedroom.
I can’t see them, but I feel a presence which was strong enough to reach through the veil of sleep and draw me into consciousness without so much as touching me.
“Stavros?” It’s his name on my lips, just like it is his name always on my mind. I do not know how long it will take for me to stop thinking about Stavros, but I know my heart rises at the notion that he has returned, perhaps for some nocturnal sexual delight. Maybe he’ll be gone in the morning, but the shadows will provide cover for our lust, which almost always took place in the dark. Our love is a twisted thing, and I am beginning to think I will never be free of it. He is an addiction from which there is no recovery.
“Sirios.”
It is not Stavros’ voice which answers me.
It is my father’s.
I feel as though an abyss has opened up and I am falling into it. For a moment, I can almost convince myself that this is a bad dream. If I sink down below the covers and close my eyes really tight, maybe I’ll go back to sleep, wake up and discover that none of this really happened at all.
My father turns the light on and I find myself looking into his grave, disappointed face. “So it is true,” he says. “You fled Athens and sold yourself into slavery just to end up peddling narcotics.”
“You sold me, father,” I spit, my fear rising. I have never spoken to him like this before. I have barely spoken to him at all. We are not a close family. We do not talk. And I would never have ever dared to defy him before now, but he has me cornered.
“Sold you? I organized a suitable match,” he says gruffly.
My father was a very handsome man, once. He’s not anymore. Evil leaves its marks on a man. It twists his features into a perpetual sneer. It makes his eyes hollow. When I look at him, I don’t see my father, I see a pure market force.
“You’re coming with me,” he says. “You’re going to marry Don Corelli. It was a mistake to let you complete your studies before marriage. The American culture gave you ridiculous ideas. Half of Europe knows what you have been doing with that slave trader.”
“You mean Stavros?”
My father’s upper lip curls at the mere mention of his name. I wonder if he came for Stavros first. I wonder if he is dead. There is no escaping Salvatore Medici.
“Did you kill him?”
He doesn’t answer me. He stands there full of paternal disappointment and rage, and I know that if I refuse him to his face, he will snap. My father is a terrifying man. My mother died when I was just four years old. Some people say that he killed her. Even though I cannot know for sure, I believe them.
What I do know for certain is that I have never been brave or stupid enough to defy him to his face, because the look he gets in his eye when he is displeased is enough to terrify even the bravest men.
“Get up. Get dressed. You will be married today.”
This is the part where I should argue that he doesn’t have the right to do this to me, that I am not his to give to other men, that what he’s doing is no different to what Stavros would have done, but I can feel the rage seething from every pore, and there is something about being the child of a true monster which makes me immune to everybody - everybody, except him.
I find my body going into auto-pilot. I am obeying him, getting dressed, shutting down. I don’t even ask what is going to happen to my operation. It is beneath my father, but I am sure that he will find some use for it. I only hope that none of the fishermen have been harmed. I don’t think he would have hurt them, as long as they didn’t put up resistance.
The following hours are a blur. I am taken and put on a plane. There are servants to tend to me, do my make up, get me ready for the wedding I don’t want. Nobody seems to notice my state of shock.
I am so disappointed in myself, but I am also utterly done. It took everything I had to come up with the plan to get myself sold. I suffered through Stavros’ attentions. I managed to survive the raid on his compound. I escaped, and made a life for myself.
But it was all for nothing. I cannot resist my father’s will. I am not brave enough. The learned helplessness drummed into me from a lifetime of experience will not allow me to. I do not dare defy him, because I know in my soul that defying him will be the destruction of me.
For all the fighting, for all the pain, for all the loss, I have ended up precisely where I began, and there is nothing left inside me.
Chapter 10
Siri
“Oh my god, Sirios, you look beautiful!”
A woman who calls herself my friend is squealing over me as I stand like stone in front of a mirror, feeling absolutely hollow. I suppose I do look beautiful. Enough white lace could make anything look beautiful. It doesn’t matter. It’s never going to matter ever again.
I can hear strains of organ music coming from the chapel nearby. To me, it sounds like a dirge for my funeral. I died the moment I woke up to find my father in my room. Every hope, every dream, every shred of possibility of living my life was torn from me and now I am here, the pawn I was made to be. I am disgusted with myself, feeling a loathing so deep I cannot put a name to it.
I sent the one man who could have saved me away. I stood on my own two feet, but in the end, it was my own sick allegiance to my father which made me unable to resist the plan which was set in motion all those years ago.
My feet are heavy. My mouth is dry. I feel as though I have been crying for days, though I haven’t shed a single tear. Marriage is the last thing I want, to anybody.
I yearn for the solitude of the fjords, the depths of Stavros’ basement, everywhere and anywhere besides here.
My extended family has been brought to celebrate of course, people I never knew clustering about me telling me stories of things that may as well never have happened. Their joy seems to increase in direct proportion to my misery.
“You look so much like your mother.”
“Before my father murdered her?”
My aunt crosses herself and shakes her head. We don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about anything except what is superficial and easy. They all know I am being sold off, but unlike Stavros who is honest about what he does and why, these people want to dress it up and pretend that there is some romance to the occasion.
They are ignoring my distress with a deliberate aggression which makes me feel as though I am insane. If I cried, they would say they were tears of joy. If I begged to be let go, and told them I didn’t want to be married, they would laugh and call it cold feet. I am surrounded by those who should love me most, and they can’t see me at all.
“You stay there,” my aunt says. “I’m going to gather the bridesmaids and we’ll all take a nice group picture before you walk down the aisle.”
She bustles away, happy in spite of the fact there’s nothing to be happy about. This is an absolute travesty. Once I am married, that will be the end of things. I will be more tightly monitored than ever before. I will be forced to lie with a man I do not love, an old beast of a man who was already in his forties when I was born. Don Corelli is sixty-seven years old. My father says that’s not too old. He said it will be good for me, now that I have proven myself to be wild. He said I need a mature, firm hand to tame me.
I said I’d rather die.
He said the wedding cake would be vanilla.
Dozens of photos later, I am escorted from the little cottage where I got ready and delivered to the chapel. My father is waiting for me, gruff and dark. He says nothing as he takes my hand under his arm.
The walk down the aisle begins and the world goes away. I am still conscious, still walking and talking, but I feel as though I have died. I look over my shoulder just as the chapel doors close behind us, hoping to see a tall, handsome man with dark curling hair and devious eyes behind me, but the path is empty. I sent him away, and now there’s nobody to save me.
The wedding takes place in a seri
es of snapshots. There are voices. Smiles. Camera flashes. There is a man old enough to be my grandfather. Laughter. There is a procession. A priest. There are flowers. A bristly kiss proceeded by an announcement, once which says my name is now Sirios Corelli, that I am the wife of Don Viktor Corelli.
It’s wrong.
It is all so wrong.
The sun screams across the sky and my wedding night falls. We are staying in a hotel of Don Corelli’s choosing. He has allowed me to escape to the bathroom to get out of the dress which so weighed me down, but I can go no further.
“Come out naked,” he shouts to me as I try to think of ways to get out of this. Do I tell him I have my period? That might work, but if he checks and finds out I’m lying, there will no doubt be hell to pay.
I had some vague hope he might be unable to gain an erection, but when I emerge from the bathroom I find him very naked and somewhat erect. His cock is an abomination on his body, a strange protrusion too pale for the rest of him, but it is ready for me.
“I’m tired,” I say, doing my best to shyly avoid his gaze. I am still trying to come to terms with everything that has happened in a matter of hours, and I just can’t.
“You don’t have to do a thing,” he replies, beckoning me closer.
I know what is expected of me, and the weight of that expectation crushes my spirit. My mind is replaying Stavros’ name over and over, calling out to him silently, but he is not coming for me. Not again. Not after I fucked him and sent him away as used as he was going to use me. I wonder if he knows I am married. I doubt it. My father forced the ceremony in a matter of hours, though it was obviously prepared even before he picked me up.
How long did they know where I was?
It doesn’t matter anymore.
I am now standing nude in front of the man I tried to flee. I don’t know how much my father told Don Corelli. I don’t know if he knows I tried to get out of the marriage. I do know I’m not going to bring the subject up. I still don’t know exactly what Don Corelli looks like naked. I can’t bring myself to actually look at him, acknowledge his existence. If he is real, then this is real and I am in hell. But if I avert my gaze and refuse to truly see his face, then perhaps some part of me will stay safe. Don Corelli is a powerful man. But he’s less sexually dynamic than a kitchen sponge.
“I don’t think I will be very good at this,” I say, trying to make him take pity on me. “I’ve never done it before, and…”
“Don’t worry,” he grunts. “You’ll learn to like it. All my girls do.”
All his girls? He intends to keep seeing his mistresses, of course. He doesn’t truly desire me. I am just a pawn to be claimed for his side of the chess board.
In the very old days, kings used to trade daughters for such ends. That’s supposed to be over in the age of democracy, but like all the old things, it has simply gone underground and is now the domain of men who know that the law is too weak a force to ever truly crush the animal out of mankind.
He grabs hold of me and pushes me over the bed. I flop down without resistance, knowing I should be fighting back, and yet somehow, just… not. I’m going to be fucked by a man I don’t love, a man who has had designs on me my entire life. I should be grateful he has waited past my nineteenth birthday, I suppose, but I don’t feel grateful as his thick hands spread my cheeks and bare the parts of me I don’t want anyone but Stavros to see.
He is my husband. I pledged obedience to him in front of man and god. This is his carnal right, and I know better than to deny it to him. I close my eyes and I think of Stavros as I feel the scratchy swell of his old belly resting against my ass, his cock hard between my thighs.
“Fucking tight,” he grunts to himself. But I’m not tight. I’m dry. There’s a difference. It’s impossible to be aroused under these circumstances. Even Stavros took more time with me when he thought I was just a girl to be sold. He was more gentle, more caring. He wanted to know who I was. Don Corelli thinks he knows who I am, and he doesn’t care if he’s wrong.
“Too fucking tight,” he complains after stubbing his softening cock against my sex for a few half-hearted thrusts. Whatever he took to encourage that erection, it wasn’t enough.
I don’t know what’s worse, having sex with a man I don’t even like, let alone feel any measure of desire for, or having him flop around limply behind me. He doesn’t seem to notice how much he is lacking and keeps jabbing at me, even though he is not remotely close to penetrating me.
“That’s right, you little slut,” Corelli curses at me. “You’ve been waiting for this cock, haven’t you. I’m going to be stuffing this into you day after day until you learn to take it like a good girl.”
His words are filthy. Depraved. Soulless. And kind of stupid.
All I can think of is Stavros. In my mind’s eye, I do my best to pretend that it is him who has me now, but that’s not possible. Stavros would never do this to me. He might cage me, or whip me, but he wouldn’t try to fuck me dry like some kind of sexual moron.
I find myself resting my chin in my hands, elbows propped up on the bed while the old man behind me entertains himself by basically pretending we’re having sex. It feels like a piece of wrinkled plastic is being rubbed against me.
“You like that?”
“Um, yes?”
Shit, what the hell am I doing? I’m really trying to appease the ego of the man who forced me into marriage. No. Fuck this. I’m not doing this. His stupid question is the final straw which snaps me out of the haze I’ve been in since my father woke me up in the middle of the night and dragged me off to be married.
I push up from the bed and turn around to face my husband. “Actually, it’s not good. Like, at all.”
I don’t think Don Corelli has ever been told the truth about his sexual prowess before. For a second he is confused, and then he’s just plain angry.
“How would you know what’s good? Your father promised you’d keep your legs together,” he grunts, pushing me down on my back.
“That’s not really something a father has control of,” I reply before I can stop myself.
“You’re not a virgin. Of course you’re not. A girl like you, face of a madonna, body of a whore. Whoever you let fuck you before, you’re mine now, Sirios. You’re my wife, and you’ll scream my name, or I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.” His anger is intense, all red and spittle filled. I crawl back across the bed to get away from him, knowing that one way or another, I am going to be hurt if I stay in his presence.
“Is that any way to talk to a woman?”
No fucking way.
It can’t be.
I must have gone crazy.
I must be hallucinating.
If I’m not, then Stavros just walked into the bedroom.
He has a gun in his hand and a murderous expression on his face. I don’t know what it is about Stavros, but every time I see him, no matter how long between moments, it feels as though I literally just laid eyes on him. He is etched into my heart and my mind, and seeing him now, strange as it is, does not feel strange. It feels right. He belongs here in this fucked up wedding night tableau. Wherever love is corrupted and commodified, there Stavros is, a dark angel ruling over all.
Don Corelli deflates visibly before grabbing a sheet to not quite cover himself. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the man who is going to kill you for touching her,” Stavros says with a cool, detached tone.
“She’s my wife!”
“She doesn’t want to be.”
“She doesn’t have a choi…”
BLAM!
With a casual squeeze of a trigger and that loud, world ending sound, Corelli crumbles next to me. I don’t dare look at what the bullet did to him, but I can tell he’s dead. There’s an immediate stillness which a wounded man wouldn’t have.
I’ve never seen a man die before. I’m shocked by how pedestrian it is, how quickly sentient person turns to inanimate meat. Stavros executed Corelli without he
sitation. It was like he just brushed some crumbs from his sleeve, not killed a man.
“You have anything here to wear?” Stavros is calm, collected. He shows no signs of stress whatsoever.
“Just the slip to my wedding dress,” I answer, in shock.
“It’ll have to do. Come on.”
I scramble to get myself into the light silk sheath. As soon as it is on, Stavros picks me up, tosses me over his shoulder and carries me out of the hotel room. We go down a freight elevator to the car park, where he has a car waiting, and just like that, we leave.
I don’t know how to feel about what just happened. I haven’t had time to feel. Twenty four hours ago I was tucked up in my bed in Norway dreaming of Stavros, now he is here, having saved me from my unwanted, very dead ex-husband.
It’s too much to even try to process, so I don’t bother. I just sit there, numb and maybe safe, or maybe in more danger than ever before.
“Thank you,” I say finally.
“You’re welcome,” he replies. “I owed you one, remember? Dude-sel in distress?”
“Oh yeah,” I smirk just a little.
We fall into silence again. “My father is going to kill us both,” I say by way of restarting the conversation.
“He can try,” Stavros says, cool as always. I wonder if he’s a sociopath. He might be. He doesn’t seem to have any real moral compass, and he doesn’t seem to fear pain or death, but then, would a sociopath have rescued me after I told him to go away and never come back?
“Why did you come for me?”
“You mean, after you specifically told me not to interfere in your life?” He glances over at me. “I felt like it was probably time I did, seeing as the other males in your life weren’t exactly respecting your wishes.”
