Chapter 1: Blood and Birthday Wishes
The bathroom air was thick with steam and the sharp, clean scent of lavender castile soap. Catalina’s hands moved through the water, a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Her fingers, long and slim like Valentina’s own, traced patterns on her daughter’s submerged knee.
“You have to be more careful,” Catalina murmured, her voice barely above the hiss of the faucet. “The way you look at boys. The way you move. He sees it.”
Valentina stared at a hairline crack in the ceiling, the familiar pit of dread opening in her stomach. The clawfoot tub was supposed to be a sanctuary. It just felt like a holding cell tonight. “I don’t look at anyone, Mom.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Catalina’s hand tightened on her knee, not painfully, but with a firmness that silenced protest. “I see it. He sees it. You’re walking around with my body, his eyes. It’s a trigger. You know that.”
The words settled like stones in the hot water. Valentina focused on the water-stained gold leaf peeling near the mirror. Outside, a car door slammed, the sound muffled by the old house. Dominic was home.
Catalina leaned closer, her dark hair brushing Valentina’s shoulder. The lavender couldn’t mask her own scent, something nervous and metallic. “He’s been quiet lately. Thinking. Watching you since you… bloomed.” Her breath was hot against Valentina’s ear. “Your father wants to claim what’s his tonight, babygirl. He told me. He’s in a mood.”
A cold tremor ran through Valentina despite the scalding water. “Claim what?”
Catalina’s other hand moved from the rim of the tub, disappearing beneath the soapy surface. Her fingers trailed up the inside of Valentina’s thigh, a touch too intimate, too knowing. Valentina froze. The bathroom seemed to shrink, the steam suffocating.
“You know what,” Catalina whispered, her lips now touching Valentina’s ear. Her hand found its destination, cupping her daughter roughly. Valentina jerked, but her mother’s grip on her knee was an iron band. “Shh. Just getting you ready for him. Making it easier. You fight and he’ll just get angrier.”
Catalina’s middle finger began to rub slow, deliberate circles over the sensitive nub of her clit. It wasn’t pleasurable. It was clinical. A preparation. Shame boiled up, hotter than the bathwater. Valentina bit her lip until she tasted copper, her eyes stinging with unshed tears, fixed on that crack in the ceiling.
The bathroom door creaked open.
Dominic filled the frame, a massive silhouette against the dim hallway light. The steam parted around him. He’d showered at the shop; she could smell the industrial soap and the faint, forever scent of gasoline. He was bare-chested, wearing low-slung jeans, his feet bare on the cracked tile floor. His eyes, dark and glittering, went straight to Catalina’s hand moving beneath the water.
Valentina watched his face. No surprise. Only a heavy, focused intensity. His gaze travelled from the hidden motion, up her body, to her face. He licked his lips.
“Out, Cat,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
Catalina’s hand stilled. She didn’t look at him. She looked at Valentina, her expression a messy fracture of guilt, fear, and a terrible, complicit resolve. She leaned in, kissed Valentina’s temple, a whisper of a touch. “Be soft for him,” she breathed, and then she was rising, water sluicing off her, grabbing her robe and slipping past Dominic without a word. The door clicked shut behind her.
Dominic locked it. The snick of the bolt was the loudest sound in the world.
He walked to the tub, his movements deliberate, predatory. He knelt on the bathmat, the denim straining over his thighs. Up close, Valentina could see the sweat beaded in the gray of his goatee, the tired lines around his eyes. The familiar face was a stranger’s tonight.
“Look at you,” he grunted. He didn’t touch her. Not yet. His eyes devoured her: the rise of her breasts breaking the water’s surface, the pink of her nipples tightened from fear, not cold. “All this time. My own fucking blood. Growing into this.”
He unbuttoned his jeans. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. His cock sprung free, already fully hard, thick and ruddy, the head glistening with a bead of precum. He fisted it slowly, once, twice, his eyes never leaving hers. “See what you do? See what my own little girl does to me?”
Valentina couldn’t speak. Her throat was sealed shut.
“Cat said she got you started.” He reached into the water, his big, calloused hand pushing her mother’s away, taking over. His touch was completely different. Not clinical. Possessive. Rough. He pushed two fingers inside her without preamble, his thumb grinding against her clit. She cried out, a short, sharp sound of shock. “Tight. Good.” He worked his fingers, a brutal, twisting motion. “Gonna make you wet for me. Gonna make you take your daddy’s cock.”
He withdrew his fingers, bringing them to his mouth, sucking them clean with a low groan. “Our blood. Tastes like us.” He stood, his erection bobbing, and gripped her under the arms, hauling her upright out of the tub. Water cascaded onto the floor. He didn’t towel her off. He turned her, bent her over the cold, slick rim of the porcelain, her wet skin sticking to it.
“Please,” she finally choked out, the word pathetic and small.
“Please what?” he growled, spreading her legs with his knee, his hands gripping the swell of her hips. The broad, hot head of his cock pressed against her opening, a blunt, impossible pressure. “Please, Daddy? Yeah. Say it.”
He didn’t wait. He shoved forward, a brutal, tearing invasion. Valentina screamed, the sound echoing off the tiles. It was too much, too big, a burning stretch that felt like being split apart. He buried himself to the hilt in one savage thrust, his pelvis slamming against her ass.
“Fuck!” he roared, his head thrown back. “Oh, god, that cunt. That’s my cunt.” He pulled back and drove in again, setting a punishing, deep rhythm. The tub groaned against the wall with each impact. His hands dug into her flesh, sure to leave bruises.
Valentina sobbed, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the smooth porcelain. Each thrust drove the air from her lungs. The pain was a white-hot wire, but beneath it, buried under layers of horror, a treacherous, shameful spark of physical sensation flickered—a deep, full friction her own fingers could never replicate. That spark made her want to vomit.
He fucked her like he was trying to break her, to remake her. He leaned over her, his sweat dripping onto her back, his mouth at her ear. “You’re mine,” he panted, each word a thrust. “My daughter. My niece. My fuck. You come from this. You belong to this.”
His pace grew frantic, his rhythm faltering. With a final, guttural roar, he hammered into her, his body seizing. She felt the hot, pulsing flood of his release filling her, a violation so profound her legs gave way. He held her up, shuddering through the last of it, before sliding out.
He stepped back, breathing heavily. Valentina slumped against the tub, trembling violently, his cum already leaking down her thighs, mixing with the bathwater on the floor.
Dominic tucked himself back into his jeans, zipped up. He looked at her, sprawled and used, and for a second, something flickered in his eyes—not remorse, but a stark, terrible recognition of what he’d just done. It was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by the usual hardened mask.
He unlocked the door. “Clean yourself up,” he said, his voice flat now, empty. “Dinner’s in twenty. You don’t come to the table, I’ll come get you.”
He left, closing the door softly behind him.
Valentina lay there, the cold of the porcelain seeping into her bones. The steam was gone. The room was just a bathroom again, a place of dirty water and old cracks. She could hear the low murmur of their voices through the wall, the normal sounds of a house settling. Her body throbbed with a raw, aching truth. The outside world, the bullies at school, their whispered words—freak, inbred, monster—they didn’t know the half of it.
The real monster was here. It was in her. And it had just been fucked into her all over again.