Omerta- Book I (Winner of the 2015 People's Choice Award)

24) Torn in Half

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                Ferro the Ferocious pulled his fingers out of me and backed away from my body, his head bowed like an animal contemplating whether or not to charge. His chest heaved up and down.

                Too many emotions were swimming through my head, and I could only imagine what was going through his as well, because nobody was more unreadable than Ferro at that very moment.

                        “Leave the kitchen,” he said coldly, flicking off the light in the kitchen with finality. There was something in his tone, something cruel and unpredictable, that kept me dead silent. “I need a moment to myself.”

                        Ferro dismissed me with his back, reaching up into a cabinet to pop some pills into his mouth. He then ripped open his freezer, grasping a bag of frozen peas and pressing the bag to his swollen face. He stood in front the bright light of the freezer, refusing to look back at me. I felt used, slütty, and dirty…

                        “Parla inglese?!” Ferro barked, startling me. “Do you not speak English?! I said, head to my bedroom, tigrotta!” He slammed the freezer shut. “Now!”

                        While his back was still turned to me, I gathered whatever sliver of dignity I had left and slipped on the stupid tiny Italian underwear that had pooled around my ankles. But as I pulled them up, my eyes started to sting with tears. Whøre. I should have punched Ferro hard in the back of the head, I wanted to, but I didn’t.

                        “You’re a real piece of shit for treating me like some toy, Ferro. Especially when you’re so obsessed with me. The cameras in my closet were a little excessive, don’t you think?”

                        He didn’t reply.

                        That was it. I was so heated, so hurt, that pulled the underwear back down and slid off my bra, clutching them both tightly in my hand. What the hell are you doing? I didn’t want anything from this bastard on me, so I was taking it off, that’s what I was doing. It wasn’t like he had never seen me naked before, let alone another woman! Ferro had been adjusting his bag of peas on his face, and hadn’t heard me tear of my underwear off like a wild woman.

                        Ferro removed the peas from his eyes and turned to face me, but the cruel remark he was prepared to spew lodged in his throat. It was nighttime, so the moonlight was the only glow into the apartment and barely reached the kitchen. It was too dark for him to tell that I was naked, right? He wasn’t some sort of supernatural bat freak, or anything, right?

                         Ferro stepped a little to the left, his head tilting as he did so. What the hell was he doing? Fuck! I faced him head on. He was looking at my goddamn silhouette. He totally knew.

           

                        “Are you fücking naked?”