Sabina- Mature Romance

Prologue

****TRIGGER WARNING

          Author's Note: Sabina is intended for an adult audience. As a heads up, this book will depict graphic violence, sexual assault, and explicit sexual content. If you would still like to read Sabina without potential triggers, send me a message and I can give you a heads up on which chapters to avoid. 

7 Years Ago

"Sabina, go to your room."

She couldn't hear him, couldn't hear any of the chaos going on around her. After the third shot, everything had gone quiet for her.

Large hands grabbed her shoulders, shaking her, but she didn't look up.

There was blood on her hands. she wiped them on her shirt, but seeing the stark contrast between the yellow cotton and blood only made her stomach twist. 

"Sabina," the man commanded.

She looked up into flat brown eyes. His face swam through her tears, she hadn't even realized she was crying.

With one more shake he pushed her away in disgust. She stumbled for a moment before she righted herself, heading towards her room numbly.

The crunch of glass under her feet made her move cautiously. The voices in the room behind her grew louder. 

By the time she reached her room, she was almost running, desperate to get away from everything that had just happened.

She slammed the door behind her, staring at it, almost convinced that the nightmare would follow her into the space that no longer felt like a sanctuary.

Every once in awhile, she heard a shout, but never the sound of sirens. They were too far off the road, no neighbors around. No one in the house would call attention to what happened here and tomorrow, she would be expected to pretend it had never happened.

Though the violence had never come so close to home before, she knew how it would all play out. She would be expected to do what was right for the family.

She walked to her bathroom like a zombie, almost tripping over her backpack in the process.

The sight in the mirror made her recoil in horror. Her hair was dark in spots, covered in someone else's blood. A savage part of her was just relieved that it wasn't her own, that she wasn't dead.

She turned the shower on, not waiting to undress before she stepped in. The water turned red at her feet for a long time. It wasn't until the steam made her dizzy that she stripped and cleaned herself, scrubbing her skin viciously, convinced there was still blood on her.

Looking in the mirror, she didn't see herself, not really, she'd never seen that kind of fear before. It changed everything about her, making her face look drawn and pinched, her lips flat with stress and her eyes dead.

Someone knocked on her bedroom door, but now she only stared at it numbly. If they wanted in, they could come in. She couldn't stop them, she was no longer under the delusion that she had any kind of control over her life.

She'd always heard the whisperers about her family, the undercut of fear that fueled the respect she never quite understood.

She understood now.

People were afraid because they were smart, and people respected because they knew what would happen if they didn't.

"Sabina, open the door honey. I need to see you."