Confrontations
Zorah shrugged, lying through her teeth, “maybe. It depends on your answers.” He was absolutely going to die today.
“What do you want to know?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why this house? Why were you going to bring me here?”
“To give you your dream life.”
“I call bullshit.”
“I love you.” He swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet of the room. Despite the number of people in it, everyone was nearly silent as everyone allowed Zorah her time. “I’ve loved you a long time.”
“You’re in your fifties. You are more than twice my age.”
“Love cannot be measured in numbers. Throughout history there have been many men with younger wives.”
“Is this where you start quoting to me from the bible all the old men who married children?” she spit furiously. “Why would you presume I would marry you or call you husband? You were my uncle!”
He stared at her, “I know you love me. I know the way you stared at me from the choir, from your pew, at dinner each evening. You loved me and you wanted me to take care of you in the way your mother couldn’t.”
“I loathe you. I wanted my mother to protect me from you and instead she left me to be the sacrificial lamb to your abuse.”
“You respect me because I instilled it in you.”
Chester’s “this man is a fucking idiot” echoed as Zorah stared incredulously at Ippocrate.
“I was terrified of you. There is a significant difference between love and respect versus fear and hatred. You were inappropriate with me too many times to count. You tried to steal my innocence. You crawled into my bed when you drugged me.” At his stunned expression, she ground out, “we found the bunker under the church.”
“Which will be discovered by your bishop in the morning.” Dagoberto commented with a twisted smile as Ippocrate paled. “He’s going to know how filthy you are. Your entire reputation is going to be in tatters before noon tomorrow. The entire congregation is going to know you were a pervert chasing your niece around the altar while she tried to escape you. They will all know you put her over your lap, her ass bare.”
“Zorah, you have to know, I never touched you.” Ippocrate blurted out. “Sexually. Yes, I watched you and I did change your clothing to take a photo with you, but I’ve never touched you intimately.”
“You spanked me!” she yelled at him. “It was intimate when you spanked me.”
“I was disciplining you. I was teaching you to obey the man who would someday be your spouse. The bible says a wife should obey her husband. I never touched you for the purpose of sex. Not yet.”
Something about his words told her he believed his words to be true and she felt repulsed.
“Why not?” she asked curiously, her eyes narrowing on his horrible jowls which shook when Dagoberto reminded him with a smack to the face to answer her. “You removed my clothing. You took photos of me and evidently touched yourself to those photos. I’ve been through this house and saw all the things you intended to do to me. Why not do what you wanted to do while I was unconscious and incapable of stopping you?”
“I told you. I love you. I wanted our first time to be special. When we lost our virginity together,” his face turned a ruddy shade of red as the men guffawed at his words. “It would have been a pure love. Not like the filth Icaro Lucchesi brought to the table. She deserves purity and innocent love. I saved myself for her.”
“You were supposed to be sacrificing your sexuality for God, for Jesus, not for me.” Zorah shot back angrily.
“I wanted your first time to be special and it would have been. It still could be. Tell them to let me go and we’ll start over.”
“My first time was special.” She saw Vodingo frown as he looked at her from behind Dagoberto. She was proud of how she kept her face straight in the midst of the confusion from several of the Lucchesi men who were hovering. “Icaro made certain my first time was everything I ever dreamed. He was patient and kind and loving. He made sure I knew love and everything we did was consensual and not coerced the way you would have tried to force me.”
“No.” the word was hoarsely drawn from his throat and then he yelled. “No! He was not touching you for thirty days because he whored himself out like he was going to die the next day. You were meant to be mine! He didn’t touch you! You’re mine!” He started yanking and pulling his arms in a futile attempt to get out of the chair but this time he was glaring at Icaro as if he wanted to kill the other man.
“I was meant to be his. I was meant to be Icaro’s. You and my grandparents might have betrothed me to him in exchange for murdering an innocent man but from the minute he laid eyes on me, he knew I was born to be his. I was his gift from God, himself. I was created to be the balance in Icaro’s life. I was his, from the day I was born.”
“You were going to be mine!”
The way he was turning a strange shade of purple and his rage mounting, told Zorah she didn’t want to be in his presence any longer.
“I would never have been yours.” She swallowed the fear away and looked to her father, “Dad, I believe him when he said he didn’t touch me intimately. I don’t think he had sex with me when I was unconscious and it’s all I need to know. The fact he was going to force me to be here in this house, to rape me –”
“I never would have forced you.” Ippocrate screamed at her. “Not ever. I intended to slowly win you over and –”
“Brainwash her?” Icaro’s voice was steely.
“If you could make her love you, by stealing her away then so could I. I know her far better than you ever did. I love her.”
“You are revolting,” Zorah shook her head. She walked to the edge of the room, “I want to go home. I’m done here.”
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