Bad Bishop by L.J. Shen - 5

For the first few hours every day, everything was blurry.

A fuzzy world devoured at the edges, like I was staring at my reality through a frost-coated window.

This morning was no different.

I pressed my clammy forehead to the cool toilet seat, waiting for the nausea to propel me into another round of projectile vomiting.

The only thing to come out at this point were acidic fluids. I barely ate, and whatever I did consume I ended up retching soon after.

A small, cold hand pressed against my back, twisting away damp ringlets of hair that had stuck to my skin. I stared up at my mother miserably.

“ Get that demon out of me, ” I signed in ASL. “ I can’t take it anymore, Mama. ”

“Still don’t remember his face?” she asked, ignoring my demand.

I shook my head. “ It was dark, and he drugged me. ”

She placed a gentle kiss over the crown of my head. “Don’t you worry, bambina mia . Mama will fix this for you. I always do.”

My body jerked forward. My mouth opened on its own accord, and another wave of puke tsunamied through me.

The devil put its seed inside me. That’s what Mama said when she thought I couldn’t read her lips. Her precious daughter was ruined forever.

I felt dirty. Used. Like my entire existence shrank into those few minutes when it happened. It defined me. Consumed me.

There wasn’t enough water in the world, not enough soap in the universe to make me feel clean again.

The bruises were gone, but the scars lingered. The phantom wounds tore open at night, gushing memories I couldn’t escape.

I hadn’t stopped bleeding for eight weeks, even though I missed my last period.

Defeated, I glided from the toilet to the floor, curling into a fetal position, closing my eyes and wishing, begging, praying to wake up someone else.

_______

I came to half an hour later, still trapped inside myself.

Stretching my legs shakily, I slung my elbow over the toilet seat, pulling myself up. I treaded out of my bathroom and into the hallway.

I was about to go down the stairway and look for Imma, when I noticed Papa’s office doors were ajar. I stopped.

My parents were inside, standing in front of a grand, gold-plated mirror. This allowed me to read their lips. My mother was crying, her coiffed hair ruffled in disarray.

What did he do now? Take another mistress? Kill another one of her friends’ husbands?

I pressed myself against the wooden door, curling my fingers around its edge and watching them through the mirror.

“Let me take her to Italy. I know a doctor in Capodimonte who can deal with this discreetly. She’ll recuperate there.”

He gave her a cold, unnerving stare.

“ Chiara ,” he said. Even without hearing his tone, I knew this was a warning.

“Please. We need to get her an abortion.” My mother dabbed a handkerchief to her swollen eyes. “Before it’s too late.”

“ Stai zitta ! Out of the question.” Papa pushed his fingers into his receding white hair, yanking it about his scalp. “This is God’s will. I won’t defy Him.”

“She was raped , Vello. Fuck your God.”

He advanced toward her, slapping her hard with the back of his hand. My mother’s face flew sideways. The ring on his pinky left a stamp-sized mark. I pressed my palm to my mouth, muffling a gasp.

It wasn’t the first time my father hit my mother.

But it was the first time he did it in front of his sons.

Achilles, Luca, and Enzo stormed into my line of vision. This appeared to be a family meeting about my future. One I wasn’t invited to, as usual.

“ Basta! Basta! ” Enzo broke my parents off, giving Papa a violent shove. “My upbringing is fucked up enough without adding domestic violence into the mix.”

“The hell you think you’re doing, Dad?” Luca thrust my father behind his desk, using it as a buffer between him and Mama. “Next time you raise a finger to my mother, you’ll have no hands to wipe your ass with. Am I clear?”

“Watch your mouth.” Papa heaved in his seat, catching his ragged breath. “I’m your father and your don.”

“I don’t care if you’re the fucking pope. You touch my mother—you pay.”

My father poured himself a drink with trembling hands. A conversation ping-ponged between him, Luca, and Achilles. Since Luca took a recliner across the room and Papa had his back to me, Achilles was the only person I could clearly see and whose lips I could read.

I was going to have a baby I didn’t want. A baby by a man who raped me. How could I love it? How could I take care of it? Would they even let me keep it? Would I want to? Both options were frightening and overwhelming.

My father and brothers thought I had intellectual disabilities. Only Mama knew the truth.

“He owes Luca a favor.” Achilles lit himself a cigarette. A heavy ball of lead settled in the pit of my stomach. “He’ll do.”

Him? Him who? What will he do?

Did they know who did it? Were they going to force me to marry him?

I’d long come to the conclusion true love was a myth. Like Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy. I’d yet to find one happy couple in the entire Camorra. But I never thought I’d be paired with the man who did this to me. Surely, not even my family was this cruel.

Luca said something that made Achilles scowl and mutter, “Right, because we have plenty of accountants and nice, respectable dentists to fucking choose from, don’t we?”

I blinked, registering the unfathomable.

They were marrying me off.

Not to the beast who raped me, but rather, to the first willing man who’d accept such a foul deal.

“His character aside, he’s the only motherfucker who can protect her as well as the Camorra. The king of disorganized crime.”

Character aside? That sounded hardly promising.

Achilles took a drag of his cigarette, releasing two wrathful streams of smoke through his nostrils. “And say what you will about the Irish, but they take care of their own as much as we do.”

Luca must have stood his ground because Achilles added, “He’s the only man deranged enough to entertain this fuckery. Of course I’m protecting Lila.”

“Have you lost your goddamn mind? You can’t marry our sister off to that dipshit.” Enzo bulldozed into my vision, tossing a hand toward Achilles. “He’s a psychopath. I’ve seen him cut a man’s tongue and feed it to his wife for snitching. Lila is pure and innocent and—”

“Pregnant.” Papa slammed his palm on his mahogany desk, rattling the entire floor with its force. “She’s pregnant and can’t give birth out of wedlock. We can’t marry her off to anyone in the Camorra because word would get out. They’ll know someone dared rape her, and we’d be a laughingstock.”

“She’ll give birth here at home. It’ll be our secret,” Mama said decisively. “Then we’ll give the baby awa—”

“No. Too many people coming and going.” Papa shook his head. “Too much staff. It’ll leak.”

“We’ll go to Ischia—” she started again.

“And have an abortion,” he finished for her, mouth twisting crookedly into a sneer. “I’m not dumb, Amore mio . You’re not going anywhere with that girl.”

That girl.

This was what I was reduced to. A problem. An embarrassment. An issue to sweep under the rug. Anger bloomed in my chest. For the millionth time, I wondered if I did the right thing by deceiving the entire world about my so-called condition.

I could’ve been a debutante. Suitors and made men would’ve jumped through hoops to impress my family. I could’ve bargained a better position for myself to enter a marriage. Now I was leftovers. Scraps. A hot potato my family wanted to toss into someone else’s hands.

“All you care about is prestige!” Mama grabbed a Deruta vase from the mantel midstride and threw it at my father. She nicked his temple before the antique shattered on the floor. Plucking a fire poker next, she swung it in his direction, this time aiming for his chest. “ Madonna Santa! Who cares what people say? You’re not handing her off to a murderer. She is mine.”

Luca pried the poker from Mama’s hand before she managed to land another strike on Papa, but it didn’t stop her kicking the air in protest. I’d never seen Mama this way. Not even when Papa got one of his mistresses pregnant.

“This is all your fault.” Papa stubbed his finger in my brothers’ direction. “You’ve been soft. Soft on the Russians, on the Irish, on the Chicago Outfit. There’s someone out there who thinks he can walk all over us.” He pointed at the window. “What happened to your sister sits squarely on your shoulders. Now look who we have to give her to.”

“Vello, no.” Mama switched from fighting to pleading, dropping to her knees, folding over. “Please. Don’t do this. She’s everything to me.”

“He’s right. She must be wedded,” Achilles said dryly, ignoring Papa’s accusations.

I knew Luca and Enzo loved me. They always showed it in small brotherly ways. But Achilles took after my father. His heart was an iron fist clenched tight, always ready to deliver pain. It beat for power, money, and corruption. He had no more soul than the chess pieces sprawled on my father’s board.

“This needs to happen immediately. We can’t have people question the timeline,” Achilles added.

“And the baby?” Enzo flipped his pocketknife, cut-cut-cutting shallowly across his thumb to take the edge off.

“Sofia and I will take it.” Luca ran his knuckles over his jawline. “Or it can stay with Lila and some nannies. We can send Imma to live with her.”

Immacolata was the nanny who’d raised my brothers and me. She still lived and worked on our estate.

“But I’m not excited about the idea of Callaghan.” Luca stroked his angular jaw. “Enzo’s right. He’s a menace.”

“A menace who rules South Bronx and sits on a mountain of his enemies’ skulls. The man has no fear or morals. He’s a liability. A wild seed. We need to strike an alliance with the Irish.” Papa’s words were swift and final. “He’s my biggest headache right now. I need to nip it in the bud. This will tie our businesses with his. We’ll throw him some incentives, give him territory, and kill two birds with one stone.”

“ Sei un coglione ,” Mama snarled, rising to her feet. “He gave your daughter his eye.”

My life drained from my body.

This was who they wanted me to marry?

The awful man without the eye who threatened to drown, chop, rape, and kill me?

“The shit are you talking about, Mama?” Achilles swung his entire body in her direction, scowling.

“It’s true.” She tilted her chin up, straightening her spine. “She was doing her little doodles on the fountain outside the night you brought that godawful creature into my house. He found her and gave her his eyeball. She was covered in his blood, her hair all wet from the water when I found her. This is how depraved the man is. Taunting this poor, innocent girl.”

“Uhm, and you didn’t think of—let’s see— telling us ?” Enzo stared at her incredulously.

She hitched a shoulder up. “I didn’t think we’d have to see him again, and I didn’t want to trigger Lila. You know how delicate she is.”

Luca squinted. “And he didn’t rape her?”

“Well, no, but—”

“And he didn’t kill her?” Achilles frowned.

They made it sound like him sparing my life was a heroic act. I wanted to scream until my lungs caught fire.

Luca curved an eyebrow, contemplating. “Maybe he spared her because of her disabilities?”

Achilles and Enzo shot him disbelieving glares.

“Riiiight.” Enzo chuckled sarcastically. “Because he’s just that kind of stand-up guy.”

“He’s not the catch-and-release type.” Achilles scratched his jaw. “And he is not prone to mistakes. Something’s fishy.”

“Probably your breath,” Enzo suggested sunnily. “Have you been with any more of my exes recently?”

Sometimes my brothers said crude things I did not understand. This was one of those times.

“Maybe he decided to finish his business at Luca’s wedding,” Dad marveled.

“And this is fine with you?” Mama went red. “Marry her off to her rapist?”

“Tiernan Callaghan has grand aspirations. I’d rather work with him than against him. Lila will give birth as a married woman, and we’ll be able to put that pazzo on a leash.”

“And if he abuses her?” Luca leaned a shoulder against the wall, a godly sculpture, arms crossed around his middle.

My father huffed. “How much does she understand, really?”

A lot, Papa. More than you’d ever know. The only thing I can’t do is hear, and that is entirely not my fault.

“Set up a meeting,” my father concluded. “Tomorrow, at the latest. I want the entire Irish clan here.”

“No, no, no!” My mother fell to her knees again, pounding the carpeted floor with her fists. “I won’t let you take her. I won’t. You can’t do this to me. She’s all I have left.”

But there was no point.

I knew as well as she did, once my father made up his mind, there was no changing it.

My mother’s plan to keep me safe and unwed failed in spectacular fashion. Everything we’d worked for was in vain.

I was pregnant and getting married to Tiernan Callaghan.

And I had no say about it.