Chapter 112 - 0112: Do What You Want With Me

Chapter 112: Chapter 0112: Do What You Want With Me

Elena’s Point Of View

"You think you can run forever?" he hissed, dropping the cigarette and grinding it beneath his heel with a slow, deliberate malice, as though savoring the small act of destruction. In a flash, his hand shot out, his thick, calloused fingers entangling deep into the crown of my hair.

He yanked my head back with violent, agonizing force, and for one disorienting moment, the streetlights above blurred into smears of sickly yellow. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a small, useless voice noted how strange it was that the sky could look so ordinary while my world fell apart beneath it.

My skull felt like it was tearing open. I clawed wildly at his thick wrist, my nails raking over his skin, leaving bloody red tracks as I tried to pry his iron grip off me. My lungs screamed, my bruised ribs burning like hot pokers as he jerked me upright like a broken ragdoll.

Every instinct in my body howled at me to fight, even as some smaller, quieter part of me already knew it was hopeless. That quiet part of me had been growing louder for years, ever since I’d learned to recognize the particular silence that came before violence in our house... the held breath before a door slammed, the way footsteps changed rhythm when danger walked in.

I had learned that language long before I learned to read.

"Let me go!" I choked out, my voice raw, breaking on a sob. "Stay away from them! Leave my siblings alone!"

Dave’s high-pitched scream pierced the night air. "Elenaaa!" He tried to charge forward, his tiny fists helplessly pounding against the man’s thigh. "No! Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt Elena!" His small face was a mask of pure terror, tears and snot mixing freely as he threw his whole seven-year-old body against a man three times his size.

He had always been like this, I thought distantly, even through the pain... fearless in the way only children who didn’t yet understand their own mortality could be.

I remembered him at four, marching up to a stray dog twice his size to protect a wounded bird, and some broken part of me wanted to laugh even now, even here, at how little had changed.

Before Dave could land another blow, a second man stepped out from the shadows, grabbing Dave by his collar and lifting him right off his feet. Dave’s legs kicked uselessly in the open air, his cries turning shriller with every passing second, his small hands scrabbling at the stranger’s forearm.

Heather lunged too... my brave, terrified sister. She hurled her ten-year-old body straight at the man holding my hair, her nails catching his sleeve, her teeth sinking brutally into the soft skin of his forearm. "Let her go! She said let her go, you monster!"

Her small frame trembled even as she fought, fear and fury warring plainly across her face. I had taught her that fury, I realized in some distant corner of my mind... taught her to survive by refusing to bend, and now that lesson was going to get her killed.

I remembered the nights I had whispered to her that no one would ever hurt us again as long as we stood together, and the memory tasted like a lie I hadn’t meant to tell.

The man barked out a harsh, bitter laugh, even as blood welled from the bite on his arm. With a violent, careless flick of his shoulder, he backhanded Heather. The impact sent her flying sideways, her small body crashing against the brick wall with a sickening THUD before she collapsed into the dirt.

For one terrible moment, she didn’t move at all, and my heart stopped along with her. The world narrowed to that single, unbearable stillness, every sound swallowed by the roaring silence in my own head.

"Heather!" I shrieked, my throat shredding.

Before she could get up, two more men materialized from the dark, grabbing her small arms, pinning her against the rough stone. She whimpered, dazed, blinking hard as if trying to remember where she was, blood trickling from a shallow cut above her eyebrow.

"No!" I twisted, writhed, kicking wildly, but the man holding my hair only tightened his grip, dragging my back flush against his heavy chest. His breath was hot, sour, smelling of cheap spirits and rot as he leaned down to my ear.

"Don’t touch them!" I screamed, completely frantic, my voice cracking under the weight of sheer terror. "Please... I’ll go with you! I’ll do whatever you want! Just leave them out of this!"

He chuckled, the deep vibration rattling through my own spine. His lips hovered near my ear. "That’s for your mother to decide, sweetheart."

The word hit me like an iron bar to the face. My stomach violently revolted. My mother. The monster who had orchestrated this, who was treating us like livestock to be weighed and sold. Bile rose in the back of my throat, hot and acidic, and for a moment I thought I might actually be sick right there in the dirt.

Somewhere beneath the terror, a bitter, disbelieving voice whispered that I should have seen this coming... that every warning sign had been there for years, and I had simply refused to read them. I thought of all the nights she’d counted money at the kitchen table with that same cold calculation in her eyes, and how I had told myself it meant nothing.

"No," I whispered, shaking my head frantically, tears blinding me. "Don’t... don’t say her name."

"Oh?" he taunted, yanking my hair even harder, forcing my chin straight up to the dark sky. "What’s wrong? Don’t like being reminded who owns you?"

"I’m not hers!" I spat, blood mixing with my words from my split lip, spraying across his wrist. "I’ll never be hers!"

His grin widened, wolfish and ugly. "You’ll sing a different tune once she’s through with you."

Behind him, Heather’s cries turned into broken screams as she thrashed against the two men holding her. "Elena! Don’t let them take you... don’t let them take us!"

Dave was sobbing so hard he was hyperventilating, his small legs kicking air as the man holding him held him up like a sack of grain. "Elenaaa!" His voice had gone hoarse, cracking on the single syllable of my name over and over, each repetition a small blade twisting deeper into my chest.

I would have given anything, everything, to trade places with him in that moment, to carry his fear so he wouldn’t have to.

"Stop!" I begged, my voice completely shattering. I thrashed with every ounce of strength left in my battered frame, my heels slamming into his shins, my fingernails digging into his face. Adrenaline burned through my veins like liquid fire, blotting out thought, blotting out reason, leaving only the desperate animal need to protect my siblings... the same need that had driven me for years, ever since I’d first understood that no one else would.

I had been mother and father and shield to them since I was barely older than Heather was now, and some exhausted, aching part of me had always known this night, or one like it, was coming.

He only laughed, hoisting me fully onto my feet, though my knees buckled beneath me. "You’ve got fire, I’ll give you that," he grunted, leaning closer until his cheek touched mine. "But fire burns out, sweetheart. And when it does..." He leaned in, his lips curling right against my earlobe. "...you’ll be nothing but ash."

A surge of pure, primal fury exploded through my fear. I gathered the blood and saliva in my mouth and spat straight into his face.

The thick glob of blood-stained spit landed square against his cheek.

The man’s expression stilled. His laugh died instantly. His dark eyes turned dead, hollow, terrifying.

CRACK.

His palm whipped across my face with enough force to send blinding white stars exploding behind my eyelids. My head snapped around, my jaw popping, and the world went completely black for a split second. I fell heavily to my knees, my brain spinning inside my skull, a high-pitched ringing drowning out every other sound.

"Elenaaa!" Heather screamed, her voice cracking into a high-pitched screech.

"Leave them alone!" I sobbed, my body trembling so violently my teeth rattled. "Do whatever you want with me... kill me if you want, just keep them out of this!"

The man wiped his cheek with the back of his sleeve, his expression settling into a cold, cruel sneer. "You think you’re in any position to make demands, bitch?"

He grabbed a fistful of my collar and yanked me up, dragging me like a corpse toward the mouth of the alley. My bare feet scraped against the glass and gravel, unable to find purchase. Behind me, I could hear Heather and Dave being dragged along, their desperate cries echoing sharp and hollow against the damp stone walls.

Every sound they made carved itself into my memory, a fresh wound layered over older ones that had never properly healed.