The clanking metal piercing and loud.
The panic so fierce.
I had to get away.
I had to.
A needle was stabbed into my arm.
I fought for coherency.
I’d fought, Logan, I’d fought.
But I should have known it from a young age.
I was a possession. Property. Inanimate.
I never had a chance.
* * *
I’d awoken the next day with my father sitting beside me where I lie on an unfamiliar bed, my sight partially obstructed by a swollen eye. It took half a second for me to come to awareness. To the gutting, horrified recognition.
Still, my hands flew to my stomach.
To the emptiness that would forever ache within me.
A wail climbed from the depths. So deep and severe I’d thought it would rend me in two.
“Foolish child,” my father had said. But it was soft, his fingers brushing through my hair.
Everything hurt. My broken face and my beaten body and my shattered soul.
Another sob ripped up my throat and banged from the walls.
A grief so deep I’d thought I’d perish right then.
“I warned you not to do something so foolish. Something that would force me to do something I would regret.”
My father had the audacity to let tenderness fill his voice.
“Is Logan dead?” The question cracked, so thin and brittle. I didn’t know if I would survive the answer.
“It seems he and his entire family have fled. But we will find them.”
It was the smallest fraction of relief.
A shooting star that passed in a blink through the sky.
“You cannot hurt him, Papa,” I’d begged.
“He betrayed me, mia vita. He took my brother.” His own sorrow wound with his words. “Betrayed me. Stole from me. Touched you.”
“I love him, Papa.”
Even after what you’d done. Even after what you’d cost.
Everything, everything.