Chapter Six
The blood froze in my veins, and I felt the walls of the room closing in on me, as if fate had decided to stone me with one catastrophe after another by placing me at Valentina's mercy.
"Valentina... please, it's not what it looks like," Kira tried to intervene with a trembling voice, leaning down quickly to gather the scattered pregnancy tests.
But Valentina raised her hand to silence her sharply, her eyes never leaving my face with that loathsome smile.
"Not what it looks like?" she said, stepping slowly into the room. "I heard you both clearly talking about 'pregnancy' and a 'mysterious man.' My God, Stephanie... you've always been rebellious, but to become a 'whore' carrying a bastard in her womb? This has exceeded all my expectations."
I stood up, feeling the tears dry on my cheeks only to be replaced by the fires of anger and panic. "Shut up, Valentina! You are in no position to judge me!"
She laughed bitterly and stepped forward until she was directly facing me, her spiteful breath hitting my face. "I am not the one who will judge you... Father is."
I said in a pathetic plea, "Valentina, please... don't tell my father."
She replied cruelly, "Even if you plead until tomorrow, I'm telling him."
She rushed out of the room, and Kira and I followed her, my heart racing wildly.
She entered the lounge where my father was sitting and spoke in a voice that rang through the place: "Father... do you know what your spoiled daughter has done?"
He looked at us in confusion, lowering his eyes from his newspaper. "What is happening, Valentina?"
She said sarcastically, "Rather, what hasn't happened, Father!"
My father growled in frustration, "Valentina... stop speaking in riddles."
I was terrified, my limbs shaking violently at the thought of him knowing my truth, until Valentina dropped the bombshell: "Stephanie is pregnant!"
The newspaper slipped from my father's hand, and he stood stunned as if a lightning bolt had struck his head. He looked at me, his eyes scanning my humiliated features. "Is this true?"
I found nothing to say; I couldn't find the strength to deny it while my body was collapsing before him. He screamed in my face with a voice that shook my very being: "Stephanie... answer me!"
I said in a choked voice, "Yes."
Kira spoke in a desperate attempt, "Uncle Edward... it wasn't Stephanie's fault."
My father exploded in rage. "It wasn't her fault? Really? Then how did the child get here? Did it fall on her from the sky?"
He approached me with heavy steps until I felt his shadow swallowing me. "Who is the father of the child?"
I couldn't respond, so he dug his nails into his palm and said, "Stephanie... who is the father of the child in your womb? He will marry you immediately, do you understand?"
Valentina replied with her usual venom, "She doesn't know who the father is."
My father's mouth hung open in shock, then his features were invaded by the fires of sweeping rage, and he shouted, "You don't know who the father of this fetus is? Have you gone mad?"
He began pacing the lounge like a madman, clapping his hands together. "What will people say about us? How will we be able to face them with this scandal? Didn't you think about this, Stephanie?"
I said in a broken tone, "I didn't intend for this to happen."
He said sharply, "But it happened, Stephanie... it happened!"
He fell silent for a moment, as if a diabolical idea had ripened in his head, then he said, "I will marry you off to Mr. Bartholomew... he asked for your hand in marriage before and I refused him, but now I have no choice.
You will marry him to hide this scandal."
I gasped in horror and said, "Am I to marry that old man, Father? He is like a grandfather to me!"
He replied with a lethal coldness, averting his gaze from me: "I cannot let the stain of shame follow our family's reputation. I will not accept people whispering about us, saying that Edward's daughter is a whore who gave birth to a bastard."
I looked at him with glassy eyes, feeling my throat go dry as I cried out in disbelief, "Do you think that old man will accept me while I am pregnant?"
My father didn't hesitate for a single second; he fixed his harsh gaze on my eyes and answered in a tone void of any mercy: "Yes, he will accept, and he will give this bastard child his name... he wants you badly and asked for your hand many times while I was the one refusing."
My chest tightened so painfully I felt a physical sting in my heart, as if the walls of the lounge were closing in to stifle my breath.
My limbs froze as I saw my father's features turn into a mask of pragmatic coldness, adding indifferently: "The wedding will take place in a week... no need to wait, otherwise your belly will grow and everyone will know your truth."
I felt Kira squeeze my trembling hand behind my back, while Valentina watched the scene with a sallow smile of victory.
Only one week... one week and my father would hand me over to a man who represented everything I hated, to pay the price for one night with a "demon" whose name or face I didn't even know.
I placed my hand on my stomach subconsciously, imagining old Bartholomew with his sagging skin and foul breath approaching me, and I involuntarily compared him to the solidity and strength of that stranger in the red room.
I sank into a vortex of horror; would I spend the rest of my life with that old man?
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Back to the Present
He leaned his head down, and I felt his hot breath graze my ear while my entire body shuddered under his grip.
He whispered in a deep, resonant, and terrifying voice: "Did you really think your family could marry you off and sell what belongs to me to another man?"
He tightened his grip further, to the point where I felt my bones were about to shatter, and continued in a whisper that made my heart stop: "You, and the child you are carrying... belong to me. And no creature on this earth will dare take you from me."
I felt dizzy; everything that was happening was making me lose my mind. The man standing before me was the father of my child, the one I had been searching for but he was just a murderer, a cold-hearted person who knew no mercy.
Despite his handsome features and undeniable charisma, I felt a surge of disgust toward him. I yanked my hand away and said sharply, "I am not your property. Let me go!"
But he scooped me up into his arms as if I weighed nothing at all and said coldly, "I'm not asking you; I'm telling you something you don't yet know."
I tried to get down and escape his grasp, but it was useless; he was like an immovable dam.
He carried me outside, where my father stood in his way, shouting, "Who do you think you are to kidnap my daughter?"
He replied without even turning to look at him: "She is the mother of my child... Now, get out of my way."
Kira ran after us, screaming my name: "Stephanie!" But he placed me inside the car, and the driver sped off at maximum speed, with the other black cars following us like ominous shadows.
د I said to him, trying to catch my breath, "Just because you are the father of my child doesn't mean you're allowed to kidnap me!"
He looked at me with a gaze that pierced through my soul and said deviously: "Why didn't you tell me that you weren't the girl I was waiting for that day?"