“Lower your voice,” I whisper, trying to offset his booming sound with the quietness of my own.

It doesn’t work.

“Why haven’t you been returning my calls?” he asks.

“We had a fight, Owen. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Whatever,” he says, waving his hand and sitting on their bed.

“Get up!” I grab him to pull him up, but instead he just pulls me down on top of him.

“Get off me!” I yelp, but he puts his hand on my mouth.

I bite down as hard as I can. He screams out in pain and slaps me square across my face. My cheek burns like it has been lit on fire and something starts to ooze out of my nose.

When I taste the iron, I realize that I have a bloody nose.

Before I can stop him, I’m on the bed, flat on my back, and he’s on top of me.

“Get off,” I whimper but he doesn’t budge.

Instead, he pins my hands back, towering over me.

“Tonight, you’re mine,” he whispers into my ear and pulls out a gun. “If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to kill that new family of yours.”

27

Olive

When I stay quiet…

My mind goes blank. My body stops moving and resisting.

I just got my mother back. I’m not going to do anything to hurt her. I’m not going to do anything that will hurt my brother and sister.

“That’s more like it,” he says, relaxing his grip a little around my hands but not on the gun. “Now, you’re going to do exactly as I say or they die.”

“What guarantee do I have that you’re not going to kill them…after?” I ask, keenly aware of my parched mouth.

“You don’t. But I’ll let you go if I have a good time here.”

Blood drains away from my face.

My fingers get ice cold and so do my feet. He feels my body as if I have given my consent.

Thoughts rush around in my head.

Mostly, they are memories of what he used to be like.

How can this really be the man I used to know?

How can this really be the man who I wrote all of those letters to in prison and who wrote me all of those letters back?

He used to be someone I admired and now he’s someone I despise.

I smell liquor on his breath. He’s drunk but he has a high tolerance.

Still, he knows exactly what he’s doing. His hands move around my body as I try to figure out what to do.

I can’t let this happen but I also can’t let him hurt Josephine or her family.

I have a lot of regrets in my life and that won’t be one of them.