8
For every one thing Lex did to retaliate against my father, Marcus gave it back to me ten fold. Lashes to the back, beatings, starvation and dehydration. All I was told was that Lex was destroying it all. Valentine had lost nearly half his men in recent weeks at the hands of Lex and his men, buildings and warehouses destroyed, burned to the ground, men gutted, murdered and mutilated beyond recognition. They don’t hide the information from me, it’s spoken aloud outside my room, them discussing how crazy Lex has gone. He’s killing everything in his path.
Before I would have been disgusted, shocked and scared, but all I feel now is an adoration for the crazy bastard. He was bringing death to Valentine’s doorstep and I knew he wasn’t going to stop. I didn’t know if he would ever find me or get me back, part of me is sure this is where my life ends but there’s a glimmer of hope, a small beacon shining in the shadows surrounding me that it’s only a matter of time before I’m back with Lex.
I’ve lost count of how long I’ve been here, days, weeks, months? I had no idea. The slipping in and out of consciousness doesn’t help, every time I don’t know how long I’m out for and there’s only so much the human body can take before it starts to shut down. Not just in body but in mind too.
Give up¸the small voice inside my head urges, pleads for it if only to stop the suffering. If you shut down, shut it all off then the pain inflicted won’t touch you. It won’t matter because you won’t care. And if you don’t care, death isn’t so scary. If you just let the pain take you, if you just let yourself slip into that darkness, you won’t ever have to emerge again. There will be no more pain, no more suffering, just a peaceful darkness where nothing can hurt you.
The threats. The graphic images, the screams and the cries, they won’t matter because you don’t feel anymore. You don’t care.
I know if that happens everything I was before, everything I had, including my feelings for Lex will just vanish. That’s if I didn’t die first.
Not because they didn’t matter anymore but because I wouldn’t have the capacity to deal with them.
The mind is fragile.
It always has been, us humans like to think of ourselves as these super beings, strong, powerful, smart, but we have so many weaknesses. Emotion being one of them, it’s what controls most of us, even those who claim not to have it are controlled by it in some way. Greed. Courage. Fear. All emotion.
Lex tried to claim he was emotionless, he acted as if nothing mattered but everything did. His city. His control. His power. It sent him over the edge and if that isn’t emotion then perhaps, I’ve been wrong this entire time. With everything I have learned in my twenty three years, it’s that humans react on pure basic instinct. Survive. Fight. Live. By any means necessary. It’s amazing what we are capable of given the circumstances. How many stories have you read about women murdering their attackers? Children no older than ten or eleven killing their parents just to survive. We want to live. To Survive. We think we could never do such a thing but the balance between good and evil has always been a precarious thing. A slight nudge to the other side will tip the scales and once you’re over that edge there’s no turning back. You’re in a free fall, that abyss, that darkness ready and waiting to swallow you whole.
The wound in my abdomen doesn’t feel as painful today, it’s not as tender, doesn’t seem as if I’ll rip my body open if I move too much or too quickly which is a good sign. My bones aren’t fairing the same fate. I ache. All of me, from the top of my skull to the tips of my toes. Muscles scream in agony from all the positions I’ve been contorted into, from all the flinching and tensing that’s inevitable when you know pain is coming.
No amount of preparation would get me ready for what Marcus had planned for me.
It’s like he took pain and notched it up a level, figuring out new ways to torture without causing too much damage. It was punishment to Lex but to me too.
Despite being raised as a Lawson and not a Valentine, I must be punished for turning on the family name. It made zero logical sense but, in this world, what was logical and rational didn’t always mean what was right for them.
You’re a Valentine.He’d chant through his beatings,Wren fucking Valentine. Act like it.
But I’d never be a Valentine. I’d rather be nothing at all.
The screams of the girls surrounding me only settles that further into my brain.
I’ll let him break me and beat me and make me empty before I ever submitted to him.
It doesn’t feel like much time has passed when I’m visited again. I’m still healing and sore from the last visit, the blood barely dry on my skin but the gleam in Marcus’ eye this time is like none other. It’s wicked and evil, devious, like the devil has entered his body and is about to inflict damage.
I brace, standing on my bare feet. The grit on the floor bites into the skin on my feet and my muscles twinge wanting rest but there is no rest here. There will be no reprieve for me.
“Your man never learns, Wren. You must not be too important to him if he keeps doing what he is doing knowing each time he does it, I punish you.”
I scoff, “You don’t know Lex at all.”
“He’s weak. Useless and unfit to run this city anymore if a bit of cunt is what has finally tipped him over the edge.”
I square my shoulders, tipping up my chin.
I belonged to Alexander Silver, he doesn’t share, he doesn’t give up what is his. This city, it’s his, and me, I belonged to him too.
It was obvious.
He wasn’t a man that thought rationally, he knew what Valentine was doing and he was lashing out, unable to stop himself. If you cage a wild animal you expect to get bitten and Lex was no different. There was nothing grounding him without me by his side.
He would get to me. Eventually.
I just hoped I wasn’t too far gone when he finally found me.