Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
I sat on the couch with my knees drawn up, my kindle balanced on my thighs as I scrolled through titles I had no intention of reading. I had bought so many new ebooks this morning, but I didn’t know which one to start.
Reading would always calm me, but I found myself not in the mood for… anything.
My chest constricted, and the familiar knot of anxiety coiled in my stomach.
My breakfast was still on the coffee table, untouched. I couldn’t even bring myself to take a bite into the protein bagel that was my favorite.
I scrolled through my kindle's library again, thinking that maybe this time, one book would catch my attention. Maybe an older one that I would want to reread, but nothing piqued my interest.
I set the device down on the armrest and let my gaze drift across the apartment. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a small kitchen with stainless steel appliances that still bore the thin plastic film across their surfaces.
The apartment, only a ten-minute walk from the university, came fully furnished with the bland efficiency of a hotel suite—a beige couch, a glass coffee table, and a single abstract print above the television that I suspected no one had chosen with any real feeling. It was just random decor.
I chose the bedroom on the right, the one with the smaller closet but the better natural lighting. I had spent the better part of my morning arranging my things with the precision that felt less like preference and more like compulsion.
Everything was in its proper place.
Everything was accounted for.
It was old habits that lived in my muscles rather than the mind.
I had arrived at six this morning, my father’s man dropping me off with three suitcases.
I thought today my father would finally come to visit me.
It had been three years since he sent me away. Three years since I had last seen any member of my family. Today, I moved from the all-girls Catholic dorm to this apartment to begin my adult life.
My father in his letter believed that I would be safer in student housing than my own private condo. Maybe he was right…
Still, I wished he had come to see me himself.
Not that I expected comfort from him, but because showing up would have meant I mattered enough to warrant the effort.
Maybe I wanted to know that I wasn’t… forgotten. Only to be used as his pawn when he needed me to fulfill my obligations for the family.
But of course… Santino Morelli didn’t care for such frivolous, sentimental gestures. A letter was efficient. It was irrelevant to him that I was beginning an entirely new chapter of my life.
I had grown accustomed to solitude.
No family. No friends.
Eventually, I came to understand that loneliness had its one undeniable advantage.
You’d be less likely to be disappointed when you were alone.
The silence of the apartment pressed against my ears. At St. Clare’s Academy for girls, there had always been noise—the shuffle of nuns’ habits, the murmur of prayer, the collective breath of dozens of girls moving through corridors in pairs.
Here, there was only the hum of the refrigerator and the distant thrum of traffic four floors below.
I placed my palm flat against my sternum before letting it drift lower to my breasts, pressing lightly against the fabric of my blouse. The tenderness there was still present, a dull, persistent ache that flared whenever I moved too quickly or turned the wrong way.
Three years of binding had left their mark in more ways than one: bruises like thumbprints along my ribs and skin chafed raw beneath my arms. And my breasts were constantly and uncomfortably sore.
I could still feel the ghost of the compression garment against my ribs, the way it had reshaped my breathing into something shallow and insufficient.
The only time I ever got a reprieve from the binding was when I was taking a shower, and that too must have been quick. We were only allowed a set amount of time in the shower.
Sister Marguerite had taught me how to bind myself at fifteen, my first day at St. Clare’s, a Catholic private school. Her hands had been clinical and impersonal, telling me in her measured voice that modesty was a virtue and a woman’s body was something to be concealed because it invited the kind of attention that led only to sin.
Anything capable of tempting a man was a burden a woman had to carry in silence.
Virtue.
The word sat in my mouth, thick and heavy like a stone.
I had been taught to wear virtue similar to how I wore the binding—tight, invisible, and unquestioned.
My body never belonged to me.
It had been a vessel for someone else’s ambition. A peace treaty. My body was for my future husband… and my womb would carry the Salvatore heir, whether I wanted it or not.