Marriage Of Convenience

Chapter 1

Clara Diaz

(age: 14 years old)

"Mamma." I call out as I walk into my mothers' open bedroom. But just as I open the door I pause at the doorway when I see my mother sitting down on the floor and crying with her face in her hands.

She was hurt and her dress was torn as blood rushes out of her head.

"Mamma!" I yell as I run over to her throwing my painting down.

Gently prying away her hands I gasp when I look at her face. A big cut stretches' out on her forehead with red blotches all over her face. A sob breaks past her swollen lips as she looks at my face. She brings her arms around me and hugs me as she cries silently.

"My baby. I'm so sorry." She chants again and again as she cradles me. "I couldn't stop him." She hiccups as she lifts my face and places a warm kiss on my forehead.

"Mamma, please don't cry." I say but tears stream down her face causing mine to spill over too. I don't like it when she cries or when she is hurt. But she always cries so I paint for her every day to see her smile.

My mother has a beautiful smile but she is always so sad. So sad because of my father.

My mamma tells me that I was a prized possession of my father, that he would never hurt me the way he hurts her.

But he hurts me.

Especially when he locks me in the cupboard or when he throws me in the swimming pool until I learn my lesson. Everything I seem to do is wrong for him.

He never beats me though.

I don't have a scar on my body because my father says that nobody would want me if I didn't look perfect enough.

I try to make my father happy. So hard but he never liked me. Perhaps its because he didn't have a boy child. My mother tells me that there is no respect for women in this world and when the time comes I shouldn't give birth to a female because it would only cause her more pain.

I know that my mother loves me, she's just sad and hurt all the time to pay attention to me or to spend time with me. And my father is always busy at work. He never comes home and whenever he does he hits my mother or does something bad to me.

"Louise." my father's voice suddenly snaps me out of my thoughts and I flinch involuntarily. "How dare you make my hija sit on the floor?" [daughter] he snaps at her and fists her hair lifting her off the ground as she screams at the pain when he slaps her making her fall on the bed.

"I-I'm sorry." she chokes as my father hits her again until she shuts her mouth and controls her sobs and plasters on a fake smile through her tears. The one I do otherwise he would lock me away for the next week.

I don't like the dark.

I am scared and I want to be good so that he would just go away for one of his long business trips.

"You're sorry?" he growls at her and takes a chunk of her hair, she winces but never loses her smile. He points at me as he speaks to her. "She is going to the wife of 'il diavolo'." my mother looks at me through shiny eyes as I freeze.

I heard that name before.

'il diavolo' or as I heard Sebastian Hernandez.

True to his nickname was truly a devil in disguise. According to Pierre- my bodyguard- Sebastian at the age of just thirteen tore out the heart -the whole functioning organ- of his uncle in the middle of a grand ball.