The sweet, suffocating scent of hundreds of flowers in the fields of a farm in upstate New York was, to anyone else, the setting of a dream. To Sophia, it was the prelude to a nightmare.
Her sister, Sol, had landed the most important photoshoot of her career so far — the face of a designer brand's new spring collection. Rogerio and Lucia, bursting with pride, insisted the whole family show up to fawn over their "golden goose." And Sophia, unfortunately, was on her rare day off from the hotel.
"Please, Mom... I'm severely allergic to pollen. I can't go — I'll get really sick," Sophia begged in the kitchen, her voice strained, before they left.
Lucia didn't even look at her as she adjusted Sol's designer dress.
"Stop being selfish, Sophia! Does everything always have to be about you and your made-up illnesses? It's your sister's day. You're going, even if it's just to carry her bags."
With no choice, Sophia was dragged along. It didn't take thirty minutes in the flower fields for her body to react. Her eyes turned red and swollen, her skin began to burn, and her throat started closing, turning every breath into a painful struggle. She coughed, trying to hide it, but her weakness annoyed Owen, who was chatting with the photographer and trying to pass himself off as an important businessman.
Owen walked over to her, gripping her arm so hard his fingers dug into her flesh.
"Are you trying to embarrass our family in front of Sol's sponsors with that dead look on your face?" he hissed near her ear, his breath hot and dangerous. "Get out of here now. Go over by the stables and get out of my sight. At home... we're going to deal with this little attitude of yours."
Sophia swallowed hard, her chest tight not just from the allergy but from sheer terror. She knew exactly what "deal with it at home" meant. She was going to get beaten again.
Trying to push the panic aside and find a moment of peace before the storm, Sophia struggled over to the farm's animal area. Away from the flowers, the air felt slightly easier. She stopped near a fence and watched a small sheepdog running happily across the grass, wagging its tail freely. That animal seemed to have more right to life and happiness than she did.
When the shoot ended and the group gathered near the cars, Sophia — in a glimpse of innocence and a desperate craving for a shred of genuine affection in her life — looked at her fiance.
"Owen..." she started, her voice weak. "Could we... could we get a dog? A little puppy for our house?"
Owen stopped walking. Sol and Sophia's parents also stopped, staring at her as if she'd said the most idiotic thing in the world. Owen laughed cruelly and shoved Sophia against the car door.
"A dog?" Owen sneered, his face inches from hers, eyes full of contempt. "You don't even know how to take care of yourself — you're a worthless piece of shit who can barely mop a floor right, and you want to take care of a dog? Hell no, you suicidal freak. All you're good for is running up bills."
Rogerio clicked his tongue.
"Don't listen to that crazy girl, Owen. She just wants attention."
The silence in the car on the ride back was the worst kind of prelude. The moment the front door of the house in Queens closed behind them, Owen's mask of civility fell away entirely.
He dragged her by the hair to the bedroom and threw her to the floor. The beating was cold and methodical. Owen took out on her all the rage of being just a soldier in the mafia — a nobody who needed to humiliate someone weaker to feel like a man. Sophia's parents turned up the volume on the television in the living room, deliberately ignoring the muffled thuds and their daughter's moans of pain.
When Owen finally left the bedroom, locking the door from the outside to go to Sol's room, Sophia lay crumpled on the cold floor. Her entire body ached, her face was bruised, and her soul was utterly shattered.
She couldn't take it anymore. The physical pain was nothing compared to the emptiness and the relentless humiliation of living in that hell of rejection and narcissism.
With trembling hands, she dragged herself to the bedroom's bathroom. She opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out three full blister packs of anti-anxiety medication and strong painkillers she had been hiding in secret. She didn't think twice. She opened them one by one and swallowed every single pill, drinking water straight from the faucet.
It's finally going to be over, she thought, lying down on the bathroom floor, waiting for eternal sleep to carry her far from there. It was her fifth attempt.
But fate refused to let her go. About forty minutes later, Lucia came into the bedroom with a spare key to order Sophia to wash the dinner dishes. When she found her daughter unconscious on the bathroom floor surrounded by empty blister packs, panic engulfed the house — not out of love, but out of fear of scandal and of losing the family's live-in maid.
Owen and Rogerio forced Sophia to throw up into the toilet, shoving their fingers violently down her throat, while Lucia shook her and screamed at her.
"You piece of shit! You want to destroy our lives?!" Lucia shrieked, slapping Sophia's pale face as she coughed and expelled the poison. "If the police show up because of a suicide, our chance with immigration is over! You're selfish — you're completely insane!"
Sophia cried, weak, lying on the wet bathroom floor, staring up at the faces of her abusers above her. She had failed again. Not even death wanted her.
The next morning, her body still poisoned and her bruises hidden beneath the heavy housekeeper's uniform, Sophia took the bus to the Wisbech Hotel. She was a walking ghost. But what she didn't know was that, on this very day, Don Eros Wisbech would be inspecting the hotel.
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