Read For a Roman's Heart for Free Online Page A

always.
    Her parents stalked into her doorway, their frowns deep and hateful.
    Her mother reached out and snatched the broach from Adrenia’s hand. She smiled. “This is beautiful. Gold perhaps?”
    Her father took it in hand and turned it this way and that. “No. It is bronze. Cheap.” His gaze assessed Adrenia before he tossed it at her. It hit her in the stomach and landed on the floor. “You may keep it. Since it was probably your only payment for being his whore.”
    Anger sliced deep inside Adrenia, and her silence shattered. “ I. Am. Not. His. Whore .”
    She leaned over to pick up the broach, and her father grabbed her by the shoulders. He hissed his recrimination in her face. “You are lucky I don’t pen you up with the hogs.”
    Shaking with rage, Adrenia’s fingers tightened on the broach painfully. “Do it. Why don’t you just do it?” She jerked out of his grip and tried to walk away.
    He grabbed her by the arm, his grip biting until she gasped. An answering loathing boiled in his eyes. “Ulpia, get the knife.”
    Caught between a staggering fear and dejected apathy, Adrenia allowed him to drag her into the main room. She dropped the broach in the process. Impotent fury at herself roiled inside Adrenia. Why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut?
    Her father threw her a disdainful glare, but didn’t speak as he shoved her into the table, and her stomach hit the edge. Her breath whooshed out, and she gasped for air. Powerful hands held her down, and then she realized that her mother had returned with a huge knife her parents seemed very fond of.
    “Hold her down, Ulpia.”
    Ulpia complied as Adrenia’s father held the knife in front of Adrenia’s nose.
    “No!” Adrenia struggled. “What are you doing?”
    “Punishing you for your filthy mouth. Since you’ve let a soldier soil you, you no longer need your crowning beauty. You’re used goods, my dear.” Her father almost growled the words.
    Fear she’d tried hard to restrain screamed upward as her father grabbed her ponytail. He yanked it upward, pulling harshly at her scalp.
    He sawed.
    She screamed.
     
    “Strange lot,” Victor said as they passed the actual villa.
    The villa appeared close to five acres in spread. A very decent size for a citizen veteran to own.
    Terentius, though, barely heard his optio’s comment. “What?”
    “That girl’s family is odd. So is she.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Is that all you can say?”
    He usually didn’t spill his innermost thoughts to anyone, not even Victor, but this time words slipped from Terentius without his usual restraint. “Her father may be clever, but he’s brutal.”
    “So?”
    “He mistreats women.”
    “How do you know?”
    Terentius slowed his horse. The animal plodded while Terentius’s thoughts ran at lightning speed. “Adrenia’s mother has bruises all over her arms.” He turned a quizzical gaze on Victor. “Didn’t you see them?”
    “They’re farmers. They work hard. Maybe she’s overworked the crops or fell.”
    “That’s shite and you know it. They were bruises made by a man’s fingers. I’ve seen that type of injury before.”
    “I did not think anything of it. My father regularly beat my mother and me. My five brothers too.”
    Terentius winced at this new information. “Do you beat women?”
    “Not women.” Victor shrugged, and quietness came into the brute’s eyes. “Now you must tell me what you plan to do about the girl.”
    Terentius pondered, his thoughts turning full time back to Adrenia. “Did you see how she stood her ground with us? She might have run at the sight of us. My gut tells me something is wrong. Very wrong in her family.”
    “What do you plan to do about it?”
    “Nothing this minute. We’ll pay a call to this Cordus at the villa and in the next few days once we’ve settled at the fort we’ll see how Adrenia fairs.”
    “Why do you care?”
    As the horses picked up the pace, Terentius didn’t have a reasonable answer. “She