My Mafia Marriage

9

Warning: This chapter talks more about Natalia's dark past. This will include r*pe and abuse, so please skip this chapter if you don't feel comfortable.

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I don't even have to turn around to know who is standing behind me. He's arguably the second-worst nightmare in my life; The monster who has done everything in its power to ruin me. The monster I speak of is my ex-boyfriend, Brett.

Brett has short blond hair with red-ish brown eyes that torment me with every glance. He has a big crooked nose and thin pink lips that contrast his pale skin tone. Brett is of average height for a male and average size. Luckily, after years of drug addiction, he has lost weight and is now more skinny than buff.

Embarrassingly, Brett was my high school sweetheart. We dated for almost two years, and he was my first everything. I was young and dumb, so I thought what we had was love, but I'm now sure it wasn't. Stupidly, I believed he would be my savior or prince charming that would rescue me from the hell I call my life, but after a month or so, he became worse than Mike.

Not long after I met him, he began to abuse me, r*pe me, and cheat on me. The abuse started with small things like slapping me if I didn't do what he wanted. He would then apologize and act as if it'll never happen again, and I'd stupidly believe him. It didn't take long for this toxic cycle to turn into him r*aping me as a punishment for disobeying, punching me until I was unconscious, and making me watch him cheat on me.

The worst part is, when he would apologize the next day and say he loved me, I would forgive him. I was so used to being mistreated by men that I didn't understand how horrid this situation was. Partly, I also was so affixed to the idea of him being my savior I overlooked all the red flags. I wanted to get rescued by my prince charming so badly I allowed the abuse to continue in the chance that he was the one who would save me.

My childish dream was crushed almost immediately, but by then, it was too late. I was trapped in the toxic cycle already with no way to escape. My love, or as I call it, infatuation with my childhood dream, faded quickly, and so did me. I was at a low point when I met Brett, so meeting him than going through what he put me through destroyed me.

The little bit of self-love, mentality, and personality I had left died when he came. He made sure I was nothing but a shell of a person, which I was for the two years we were together.

The r*pe killed me because it was something Mike had never done, which I was thankful for. No matter what I said or did, he wouldn't stop. Instead, he would sinisterly smile at me, which haunts my nightmares, and cause me more pain by being more forceful and rough. He knew it killed me inside, made me feel like a worthless being, so he did it more so than anything else.

When I did believe I loved him, he would bring girls to my house and have sex with them on my bed in front of me. He made me watch as he cheated on me, and he loved it because he knew how damaging it was for me. Brett knew it destroyed me in many ways, so he continued doing it until I stopped crying and begged him to stop while he forced me to watch. He realized, at that point, that he got what he wanted from me; Brett turned me into an emotionless shell of a woman.

After almost two years, Lil helped me muster up the courage to break up with him. Not that I never tried to break up with him during those two years, because trust me, I did; it just never worked. No matter what I did or said, he wouldn't let me go. That is until Lilian got involved and somehow got him to leave me alone.  I have no clue what she did or said, but I've always been so grateful for her, more so after that situation.

Instead of my life getting better after we broke up, it got seemingly worse. Shortly after Lil got him to stop harassing me, I found out that our relationship was all part of Mike's plan to break me both mentally and physically. He made a deal with Brett to date me so he could break me in ways Mike couldn't. He knew I would never fall in love with him, so he could never break my heart in that way, which is why he hired Brett. He also knew if he ruined relationships for me, it would prevent me from escaping in the way I dreamed of. I don't know why Brett ever agreed, possibly for free drugs, but I don't think I'll ever find out, nor do I want to.