The moment we returned from the village, a storm lived inside my chest and I could not calm it. I should have been drowning in shame, in guilt, in all the dark and heavy feelings a daughter ought to feel after what my father had done to me there, after what I had let him do, after what I had begged him to do. Instead, a secret joy spread through me like warm honey, thick and sweet and utterly obscene. I was falling deeper into my father’s love, a bottomless abyss where every filthy act pulled me further down, and I did not want to be saved. Yet a sharp terror cut through that honeyed warmth. To him, I might be nothing but a toy, a warm and willing hole to be used until his hunger dulled. The day his desire faded, he would discard me like a chewed bone, and that thought made my chest ache with a pain worse than any bruise he had ever left on my skin. So I made a vow right then, sitting on my bed with my thighs pressed tight against the memory of him: I would trap him, not with tricks, but with a devotion so absolute he would never be able to let me go. I would make him need me the way I already needed him, like breath, like blood, like the sweet, filthy shame that now ran through my veins.