"You're mother and I have an understanding, and she understands the things in the household, because she too grew up knowing what it was to work. I grew up on the estate of my father's villa near Ireland, I spent my days running around barefoot, in a peasant dress. I rode my horse bareback and had my own patch of garden that I would tend to everyday. From the farmhands my father employed I learned how to fix pumps and motors, I learned how to sharpen sickles and axes. My father did not like me doing these things but being a spirited and willful child he could not stop me."
She sighed. "I truly was less of a wealthy merchant's daughter, but more like a tenant living in a huge house full of cold and ruthless people. I was living off the good graces of my father because of my birth right. The only time I can even remember my father talking to me for more than two minutes was when he accepted the proposal from his business associate. I was fifteen Dominic, the next year I was supposed to marry that slimey man. He was old enough to be my father, he looked me up and down like I was a prized racehorse." She said, her voice so full of emotion that she had to choke back tears, "My father," she said now bitterness in her voice, "just sat there grinning like the cheshire cat. He was leering at me - I had never seen him look at me that way it made me feel dirty. He kept egging on that fat slug, and the two of them finally settled the business deal that they had been working on, with the understanding that I was to be thrown in as this mans prized whore. Dominic, I didn't believe that women were bought and sold as slaves anymore, that is not what I understood from the bible. Women were supposed to be treated as equals."
She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly before she contined. "So I ran, I got as far as Babele before my father's men caught up with me. I didn't know anything about Babele . . . I had no idea that my father had connections there, nor that arms merchants met in the outdoor cafes and local restaurants to do business. I was working as a bar maid when I was recognized by one of my father's business associates.
"I was at a restaurant with my friends and it was from there that I was taken by some thugs. It turned out they were working for my father. So I was dragged kicking and screaming back to my father in chains. Upon arrival at my fathers home," she said, as tears streamed down her cheeks, "I was stripped naked and whipped right there in the courtyard with the whole town gathered round to watch. He showed me no mercy - it didn't matter that I was his daughter. I was whipped with a cat-o-nine tails until my back was a raw bloody mess. I was sent to my room, and locked in. Sophia, my maid would come into my room to clean my wounds, and had very nearly recovered. Until my father dragged me out of my bed and began beating me with his bare hands. Dominic he called me a whore every time he hit me, when I fell to the ground and could no longer get up, he started kicking me. I lost consciousness and woke up sometime later in my bed once again."