Chapter 115 - 0115: You’ll Learn Respect The Hard Way

Chapter 115: Chapter 0115: You’ll Learn Respect The Hard Way

Elena’s Point Of View

My mother stumbled back, her chest heaving violently, her scarf slipping from her head to reveal her messy, unkempt hair, strands plastered to her sweat-damp forehead. Her eyes were completely crazed, fixated on me like she wanted to tear my throat out with her bare teeth.

The men in the yard shifted uncomfortably. Heavy boots scuffed against the loose gravel, metal clicked as someone nervously adjusted a heavy blade at his belt, and low mutters stirred among the group, an undercurrent of unease rippling through them.

I didn’t just look at her. I raised a trembling, blood-stained hand and pointed my finger right at the circle of men standing around us in the dim, yellow lamplight.

"And you!" I shrieked, my voice cracking into jagged, raw shreds as tears and blood poured down my cheeks. "You shameless, disgusting creeps! You stand there watching this?! You have no shame... NONE! Would you do this to your own daughters?! Your own little sisters?!"

A couple of the men looked away, shuffling their feet in the dirt, unable to meet my eyes, but I didn’t stop. I forced my raw, bleeding throat to scream louder, my whole frame shaking with unbridled fury.

"You would ruin a child’s life for how much?! How many worthless bills is it taking for you to act like animals?! You stand here helping a monster sell her ten-year-old daughter to a man old enough to be her grandfather! You beat up a sixteen-year-old girl just to soothe your pathetic egos and take orders from a psychotic woman!"

I spat toward their boots, my lungs burning like open fires. "You are all sick! Every single one of you is disgusting! Cowards! Cowards who hide behind knives and boots to hurt children!"

The boss sneered, wiping his bloody temple with the back of his hand, but the men kept their mouths shut, the low mutters completely dying out under the weight of my words, shame flickering faintly in a few downcast eyes.

The yard went utterly still.

The silence pressed down heavy, thicker than the cold night air. My chest heaved, every breath slicing absolute fire through my ribs, but I didn’t look away. My words hung there in the space between us like a poisoned blade no one wanted to touch.

My mother didn’t speak right away. Her face was locked, unreadable, her jaw sharp and rigid in the flickering crooked lamplight, and for one fragile moment, I let myself believe I had reached her, that some buried fragment of conscience might yet answer.

The men shifted uneasily. Heavy boots scuffed against the loose gravel, metal clicked as someone nervously adjusted a knife at his belt, low mutters stirred among the crowd but quickly died under the weight of her glare.

Then, slowly, agonizingly, the corners of her thin lips twitched upward.

She was smiling again. Not the manic smile from before, but a slow, quiet, toxic grin that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. A smile that made my stomach twist into violent knots, that told me whatever hope I’d felt had been a lie, a cruel trick my exhausted mind had played on itself.

"Bold," she said finally, her voice terrifyingly soft, almost caressing the word, though her dark eyes burned with an icy, lethal coldness. "Very bold, Elena."

I stood there on my knees, chest rising and falling in ragged, shallow gaps, trying to still the uncontrollable shaking in my limbs. Heather whimpered behind me, clutching Dave tight to her chest. Dave’s crying had turned into hiccupping sobs, small and broken, his little hands flailing helplessly toward my back, as if he could pull me to safety through sheer will alone, as if love were enough to undo what was coming.

My mother’s gaze flicked past me, landing straight onto the two small, helpless bodies shivering in the dirt.

And that was the exact moment the world dropped out from beneath me.

"You think you’re brave," she said, tilting her head with a terrifying, calm curiosity, "but what happens... when your bravery costs them?"

Her long, dirt-encrusted finger lifted lazily, pointing straight at Heather. Then at Dave.

Every drop of blood in my veins turned to solid ice.

"No..." My voice cracked, all the defiance evaporating into pure, unadulterated terror. "Don’t... don’t you touch them."

Her laugh bubbled up again... low, rich, dripping with something utterly rotten. "Don’t touch them?" she repeated mockingly, taking a slow step toward my trembling siblings. "You disobey me? You shame me in front of these men? You dare raise your voice and tell me to die... and yet you think you can give me orders?!"

"Please!" I gasped, stumbling forward on my knees, reaching for her dress before one of the guards stepped up and kicked my shoulder, sending me sprawling hard onto the gravel. "Please! They’re just children! They didn’t do anything! They’re innocent!"

"Innocent?" she hissed, her grin stretching crueler and wider until it looked like a tear across her face. "No one in this family is innocent, Elena. Least of all you."

She reached out and snatched Heather by her collar, dragging her up until her little toes were barely touching the dirt. Heather let out a sharp, terrified shriek, her tiny hands clawing at our mother’s thick arm, desperate for purchase against something that would not yield.

"Mama! Mama, please! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!" Heather sobbed hysterically.

Dave threw his arms around our mother’s leg, kicking her shin with his tiny sandals. "Let my sister go! Let Heather go!"

My mother didn’t even flinch. She raised her free hand and slapped Dave hard across his little ear, sending him tumbling back into the dirt, crying uncontrollably as he held his bruised head, his small body curling in on itself like a wounded animal seeking shelter that didn’t exist.

"DAVE!" I screamed, my voice shredding into absolute rags.

My throat burned with bile. My entire body trembled with a visceral, suffocating helplessness. Every single instinct screamed at me to throw myself at her, to tear her eyes out, to kill her right then and there, but two heavy boots planted themselves on my shoulder blades, pinning me flat against the ground.

"Don’t hurt them!" I begged, tears spilling now, hot, thick, and unchecked, mixing with the blood smeared across my face. "Please! I’m begging you! I’ll do anything! ANYTHING!"

My mother paused. She looked down at me, holding Heather by the neck like a stray cat. Her eyes glittered with dark, sadistic triumph, as though she had been waiting her entire life for this exact moment of surrender.

"Anything?"

The word sliced through me like a razor blade.

I swallowed hard, the copper taste of my own blood heavy on my tongue, my voice breaking into a pathetic, hollow whisper as I looked up into her cold eyes. "I hate you..."

Her smile widened, her teeth gleaming yellow under the flickering streetlamp. "Say it again."

"I hate you so much..." I sobbed, my chest heaving against the dirt, the words tearing out of my chest raw and broken. "I hate you..."

And she laughed. God, she laughed. A rich, deep, guttural sound full of absolute relish, full of sickening victory, as though my pain were the sweetest thing she had ever tasted. Like she’d been waiting years to hear me break like this, to watch me crawl in the mud and beg, to finally claim the surrender she had always believed was her due.

I shook my head violently, tears blurring everything into smears of yellow and dark grey. "I’ll do it... I’ll go with them... I’ll marry that old man! I’ll give him whatever he wants!" My voice broke into an absolute, piercing scream. "JUST DON’T TOUCH THEM! DON’T DO ANYTHING TO THEM, PLEASE!"

She froze. Then she slowly tilted her head, her eyes narrowing like a predator that had finally forced its prey into a corner with no escape.

"Now..." Her voice dripped with sick, oily satisfaction as she casually dropped Heather back into the dirt. "Now that’s my daughter."

I felt Heather’s horrified gasp behind me. Dave’s little whimper cut straight through the night air. My soul screamed inside my chest, dying a thousand quiet deaths, as my mother turned around, flicking her wrist with the casual grace of a queen dismissing filthy servants.

"Take the little ones back to the house," she ordered the men cold-bloodedly. "Lock them in the back store. Don’t give them a drop of water until I say so."

Two of the men stepped forward, grabbing Heather by her arms and scooping Dave up by his waist, hauling them away despite Heather’s hysterical clawing and Dave’s shrill, panicked shrieks.

"No! No! Elena! ELENA!" Heather screamed, her fingernails tearing against the gravel as she was dragged backward. "DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOU! ELENAAA!"

"DON’T TAKE THEM AWAY FROM ME!" I thrashed furiously under the boots pinning me down, my voice breaking apart into raw, guttural animal noises, my hands flailing uselessly in the dirt as I tried to crawl after them. "HEATHER! DAVE! NO! LEAVE THEM ALONE!"

Their frantic, terrified cries echoed off the brick walls, growing fainter and fainter until they were dragged beyond the yard, swallowed completely by the pitch-black darkness of the night, leaving only silence and the ringing in my own ears.

And then, it was just me.

My mother’s victorious smile slipped, settling back into something colder, harder, and infinitely more sinister. She stepped closer, her dirty plastic shoes stopping inches from my face, until I could smell the faint, cloying perfume on her clothes... sour, cheap, and sickening beneath the sweat of the night.

She crouched down, grabbing my chin with an iron grip that bruised my skin, forcing my face up so I had no choice but to look into her dead eyes, eyes that held nothing of the woman who had once, perhaps, rocked me to sleep.

"As for you..." she murmured softly, as if the word were sweet honey. "Punishments. You don’t eat for three days. No water. You’ll stay locked in the cellar until the old man comes to collect his bride. You’ll learn respect the hard way."

My stomach dropped into a fathomless abyss. My heart felt like it stopped beating entirely. "Please..." I croaked, but the word meant nothing to her. It had never meant anything.

She released my jaw with disgust and stood up, turning her back on me with a finality that made me feel smaller than dust in the wind.

"Take her," she commanded without looking back.

The remaining men surged forward like vultures over a carcass. Rough, heavy hands clamped brutally onto my wrists, my torn dress, my bloody hair.

My scream tore into the night... raw, strangled, and hollow, as they dragged me backward across the sharp gravel yard, my legs kicking, my fingernails clawing helplessly at the dirt, leaving long, bloody grooves in the earth.

"No! Let me go! PLEASE! MAMA, PLEASE!"

But nobody stopped. Nobody flinched. My mother walked away toward the house without ever turning to look at me again, her silhouette swallowed by the darkness as though she had never been my mother at all.

The men dragged my broken body into the dark, their low, cruel laughter echoing in my ears, and I lay there in their grip, weeping until my throat bled, helpless to stop the nightmare that had finally claimed us all.