After Being Bought by the Disfigured CEO

Episode 4

I am an orphan, my mother is gone, and my father is a mercenary. I don't remember a single day when he gave me a gift, not even a father-daughter smile. Everything I have is what the women who work for him give me. I never went to school, but he hired a woman to tutor me at home. At first, I thought it was normal to study at home, but then I started to notice the children going to school through my bedroom window.

I never went outside; I was kept inside the house as if I were a disease incubating in a person. As time passed, I would ask my father why I couldn't go out. And the answer was always the same.

"Because I am your father, and I decide what you do or don't do."

He always answered me that way, with ignorance. I never saw a loving smile from him. It was always fighting, always cursing, and yelling. Until one day, he was drunk in his home office with a picture in his hands, crying. I approached, and he looked at me angrily, as if I were interrupting something.

"It's all your fault, you are cursed. Your mother and I were happy, why did you have to show up, why? Just to take her away from me? You have her face, and that's what irritates me the most. Get out of my sight, go back to your room before I beat you to death, you wretch."

I ran out of there, not because of the insults – those didn't hurt me anymore – but because of his threat to beat me. When he hit me, I would be in a lot of pain for days. But all I wanted was to see that picture, which I was sure was of my mother. I had never seen what she looked like; he said I looked like her, but I wanted to be able to see it for myself.

I went into my room, trying to figure out a way to find that photo, but he works from home; he rarely leaves, except when there is a problem with the shipments of the girls he sells to rich men. I overheard this while hiding in his office closet.

These sales happen at the back of my house; from the balcony of the last room, I can see everything. They climb onto a kind of stage, while several men sit in chairs, they place bids until one wins, and the woman goes smiling to the man's lap. I would stay there quietly until the last woman was sold, and I would try to imagine what they would do to them.

My education never went beyond learning to read, write and do math. In other words, English and calculations, and nothing more. I never saw a man without clothes, I only saw what my own body was like, and for me, we were all the same; what differentiated men from women was their hair. We have long hair and they have short hair.

That changed when I turned 18, because it was on my birthday that I found out I was going to be sold. I overheard him talking to a man about how I was everything he wanted. Small and a virgin, and for his fetishes, I would pass for a teenager.

I didn't quite understand what they were talking about, only that I would be sold to him. But just by the tone of the man's voice, it wasn't anything good. As soon as he left, I got out of the closet and as I was leaving the office door, one of the maids pulled me by the arm and dragged me to the cleaning closet.

"Amelia, pay attention. You're not sleeping tonight; I'm getting you out of here."

"Get me out of here? Why?"

"We can't talk now, don't sleep tonight and don't say anything to your father." She opened the door and left, and I was left without understanding what had just happened.

But just as she had ordered, I stayed awake waiting for what was going to happen. And to my surprise, at three in the morning she came and opened the door.

"Let's go, it's time." I got up and followed her as she went downstairs, pulling my hand. "Pay close attention. You're going to get in that car and you're not going to look back or come back."

"I can't leave my father alone, he's mean to me, but he's my father."

"Amelia, you are very innocent. But you are also very special to me. If you stay, he's going to sell you to a man who rapes women and ends up killing them sexually, is that what you want?"

"I don't know what that means." I never had that kind of teaching; it's like she was speaking another language to me.

"It's a very bad thing that ends a woman's life. But the fact is you will die if you don't run away." I looked at my house one last time and she took me out to the car. "The man you are going to live with will take care of you. But I also want you to take care of him, because just like you, he is also alone in life. And he has a burn scar on his face."

"Sleeping, what happened?" She looked back as if she was in a hurry for me to get out of there. She said she didn't have time to explain, that I would find out for myself, and pushed me into the vehicle.

The car picked up speed as soon as it left the gates, and I began to look around. Even though it was night, the lights from the streetlights and the few windows made everything so beautiful. I practically didn't even blink so I could admire all this wonder, since I had never left the house before.

"It's even more beautiful during the day, Miss," said the driver, and I looked at him smiling. "Lourdes' sister works in that house, you don't have to worry, Mr. Forth won't hurt you, but you'll have to insist that he lets you stay; under no circumstances go back to your father's house."