I’m the contracted bride of the billionaire

“My experience growing up wasn’t precisely a Trademark film,” Amelia started in a little voice, unfit to meet Philip’s extraordinary look.

As she prepared to open a demon-filled Pandora’s box, she stared down at their joined hands and traced his calloused knuckles with her thumb.

Philip stayed quiet, permitting her to track down her balance at her own speed.

Amelia was encouraged to move forward by his welcoming presence and patient stillness.

“I experienced childhood in quite possibly of the most unpleasant area in South Philly. the kind of place where the school buses even felt uneasy passing through.”

She gave an empty laugh. “Not that it really mattered because my parents didn’t care if I got an education anyway,” Amelia was sucked back in time when the first memory she allowed to surface made her stomach roil with distress and prickled her brow with a cold sweat.

Amelia, a six-year-old girl, was holding her worn-out baby doll as she looked around the drab living room with wide, terrified eyes. The stale air carried a strong odor of cheap beer and cigarette smoke. As a resounding crash sounded from the kitchen adjacent, her bare feet retreated from the filthy, sticky floor.

“You ridiculous bitch!” her dad’s roaring voice made her jump.

“Couldn’t actually do something goddamn right!” A second meaty thump followed by a muffled whimpering response from her mother. When her elderly father went into a drunken rage, Amelia should not have intervened.

The young girl rocked back and forth for comfort as she curled into a tight ball on the sagging couch and hummed tunelessly through her tears.

This was simply one more run of the mill night in the Anderson family.

The only home she had ever known, beset by violent arguments and screams.

She had long since stopped pondering whether or not her parents’ love had ever existed at all and where it had gone.

Philip was back in the present when he saw Amelia’s face crumble with agony as she recalled her first horrifying glimpse of childhood trauma.

Her hands were shaking, eyes coated and far off as she grappled with the frightening past she had battled so frantically to beat. “My dad was a mean, oppressive alcoholic.

For that scumbag, I could never do anything good enough. He took out the entirety of his annoyance and hopelessness on me and my mother, similar to we were simply punching packs for him to mistreat.”

Amelia felt bile ascending in her throat, the old scars airing out and overflowing their foul disdain.

She wouldn’t even come close to seeing Philip, alarmed by the repugnance she could find because of her ignoble disclosures. Philip, on the other hand, simply tucked a finger under her chin and gently tipped her head up so that their eyes met and their intimacy was startling.

His demeanor was delicate and miserable, a significant throb noticeable in his eyes that said he grasped her torment very well. “Please accept my apologies, Amelia,” he scratched, jaw ticking with scarcely held back feeling. “A child shouldn’t have to go through something like that.

Particularly not on account of the people who should cherish and safeguard you.”

Notwithstanding the weight burdening her heart, Amelia felt an amazing glint of trust catch in her chest at Philip’s delicate sympathy. Even when he caught a glimpse of the harsh realities of her youth, he did not retreat or shut down.

Reinforced by his strong presence, she permitted the broke recollections to continue streaming out… haunting tokens of the fruitless profound no man’s land that had starved her in her most early stages.

Amelia sat miserable in a feeble swing on the ramshackle school jungle gym, in isolation as different children played and chuckled cheerfully on the opposite side of the schoolyard.

Head down, she dug grooves into the woodchips with the toes of her scraped shoes, attempting to vanish into the shadows so the domineering jerks would generally not torture her about her worn out used articles and unwashed hair.

Somewhere off to the side, she saw her colleagues sneaking looks and murmuring behind measured hands, their voices savage. “That is trailer trash orphan Amelia Anderson…” “My mama says I better not get her cooties or I’ll become unfortunate white junk too…”

Alone at home after one more agonizing day of being shunned and criticized, ten-year-old Amelia withdrew to the battered asylum of her room.

As the injustice of her abandonment weighed heavier than a burden twice her size, she hurled herself onto her creaky twin bed while writhing in agony.

A small voice in the back of her head whispered what she had already begun to believe about herself: No one could ever love something as unwelcome and filthy as her, over the muffled screams and crashing from the living room.

“Thinking back, a piece of me contemplates whether my people couldn’t stand one another and took out the entirety of their issues on me since they furtively loathed having a youngster in any case,” Amelia mumbled, her fingernails digging half-moon forests into Philip’s calloused palms.

“I was just their biggest mistake, a constant reminder of how badly they’d messed up their lives by breeding,” she said. As her emotional turmoil threatened to drown her, she pressed her lips together in a tight line.

“I spent my whole puberty being caused to feel like only a weight and a shame.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

As though I didn’t have the right to occupy room and inhale similar air as ordinary, balanced individuals.

My own folks supported those poisonous convictions each and every day.”

The harsh self-loathing in her voice caused Philip physical pain. Without a word, he pulled Amelia into his strong embrace, tucking her head beneath his chin. She trembled against him as more anguished memories tumbled free from their dark recesses, poisonous and unrelenting.

On her fifteenth birthday, a scrawny and pale Amelia watched bitterly through the tattered living room curtains as her parents climbed into their beat-up Chevy truck. They hadn’t even wished her a happy birthday before peeling out in a cloud of dust, shoveling white pills into their beer can from a crumpled baggie. Once again, they had chosen the sweet escape of their drug-fueled oblivion over acknowledging their only child’s existence.

At sixteen, Amelia dragged home in the dead of night after walking miles to get back from wherever her shift job was located that week. She barely flinched when the screen door slammed, rousing her father’s drunken rage. A vicious slap stung her cheek, his rancid spittle flying into her face as he raged about her “slutting it up to embarrass the family.”

If there was even a speck of a family unit left to embarrass…

The summer before her senior year of high school remains a blurred fever dream, a hazy montage of seedy parties and reckless encounters where Amelia tried to numb the gaping void in her soul. She bounced from soiled bedsheets to piss-stained couches to dingy alleyway rendezvous.

As long as whatever high or self-destructive thrill she chased momentarily allowed her to forget her worthlessness, she gladly surrendered her innocence to whomever would take it…

“Jesus, Amelia,” Philip rasped, his throat clogged with grief for all the young girl inside his wife had needlessly endured. “I’m so incredibly sorry. You deserved so much more than to be so systematically torn down like that. The abuse, the neglect, the abandonment… no wonder you felt so unlovable when that’s all you knew.”

Chest heaving, Amelia finally locked onto Philip’s gaze, her tear-filled eyes reflecting the depths of her wounded psyche. “I was completely convinced that I would only ever amount to being poor trailer park trash who wasn’t meant to be loved,” she confessed in a hoarse whisper. “That being used and tossed aside like garbage was my only purpose since my own parents saw no value in me.”

She hung her head in shame at the raw, self-deprecating truth she had just laid bare. Philip reached over and tenderly smoothed back her hair, his gentle caress failing to hide the heartbreak etched on his rugged features.

“I can see now why you felt you had to hide this from me for so long,” he replied, his voice strained. “The demons of your upbringing… they tried relentlessly to break your spirit from such a terribly young age. And you still overcame those shattered beginnings against all odds to become the brilliant, compassionate woman I fell in love with.”

A tremulous but relieved smile tugged at the corners of Amelia’s lips, grateful that Philip wasn’t pulling away or judging her even after these raw revelations. Somehow, as unbearable as reliving those memories was, she felt a profound weight lifting from her shoulders at no longer having to lug the shame of her past alone.

“Still…” she ventured cautiously, searching his eyes for any flicker of revulsion or doubts that the worst was still yet to come. “There’s more to the story, Philip. Possibly even darker and more unforgivable chapters. And I’m terrified of what you’ll think of me once I finish unburdening it all.”

Philip silenced her with a soft but passionate kiss, temporarily banishing her self-doubts. “Then we’ll face those demons together when you’re ready,” he vowed, his thumbs soothingly caressing her flushed cheeks. “No matter how ugly or shameful you believe your past is, it will never change how I see your present strength, resilience and worthiness. You own those scars, Amelia. They don’t own you any longer.”

Cradled in his arms, the solid fortress of his devotion surrounding her, Amelia felt her fears begin to ebb. She was laying her soul bare to Philip, every wound and former life hanging in the balance.

Yet somehow, she sensed this man’s love for her ran deeper than the sorrowful revelations she had only begun to unleash.

Still, Amelia couldn’t ignore the sinister sense of foreboding festering in her gut, a sick premonition that so far she had merely scratched the surface of the self-destruction that had once consumed her entire existence.

If Philip thought the darkness of her childhood was horrific… he had yet to glimpse the truly rock-bottom depths she had plunged in her wayward youth before clawing her way back to salvation.

The shadows of those unspoken transgressions loomed, gnarled and obscene, vultures hungrily circling Amelia’s conscience as they awaited the brutal, scorching light of truth to burn away the last remnants of her refuge.

She could only pray Philip’s love proved strong enough to withstand the searing revelations yet to come. Because Amelia knew that once she ripped off the finalveis of discretion, there would be no turning back from the fallout the skeletons in her closet were preparing to wreak.