Chapter 35 Kaia
KAIA
Time has no meaning.
Uncle—no, Antov—comes each night. Maybe every day, I can’t keep track. He comes and he yells at me.
Curses out everything I’ve done for the family, the trouble I’ve caused, and his disgust that I would choose the Gallaghers over my own flesh and blood.
Flesh and blood that only wanted to use me to pump out an heir because they were too greedy to marry into another family.
How was I ever loyal to them?
How did I laugh and joke at dinners, host parties to celebrate business deals, and strive to be the best forger to make my family proud?
How could I do all that and be so blind to their true nature?
Blind to the fact that my family are monsters and I helped them keep up the facade because I was blind.
Part of me wonders if deep down I knew and chose to ignore it.
I question everything as I lie there while Antov carves into my body with blades and burns my flesh with cigarettes and lighters.
Were my parents the same?
Were they just as monstrous or were they good?
Was the accident that led to their death really an accident?
Was Anya really my friend or was she a plant to keep me in line?
Did my brother always detest me, or was that only in recent years?
The questions keep some of the pain at bay.
Not so much when there’s a leather strap over my mouth and Antov’s got men dunking my head backward into a bucket of ice water until I’m certain I’m going to drown.
Through it all, through the heat of pain and the sharpness of cold, through the stink of blood and urine when I piss myself on this blasted table, through the agony of blades and tools ripping into my skin and the stink of electric prongs against my body, I endure.
I endure because I’m pregnant and death no longer feels like the peaceful end to my life.
I have two choices. Ensure the torture goes far enough that Antov kills me, thus saving me and my baby from eternal torment.
Or I find a way out of here.
A way out feels impossible.
I hurt, everywhere.
Every heartbeat throbs with the pain around my body, I’ve lost all sensation in my broken fingers and every swallow I manage is like my tongue has transformed into shards of glass.
The one time I taunted Antov about going too far, he told me he had doctors on standby to either bring me back or keep me alive long enough for the baby to grow.
He’s thought of everything.
Which means I need to think of something better. Something new.
It’s just…hard.
Exhaustion seeps into my bones. Weakness weighs down my limbs and as days trickle by, I’m beginning to lose my grip on what keeps me safe.
Awake, I’m in pain.
Asleep, I’m caught in turbulent nightmares of Eva suffering through the same pain because I failed in rescuing her.
One night, Antov enters my cell in a fit of rage. The Gallaghers aren’t dying out like the good little dogs they are, so he’s going to let Flynn know exactly what kind of treasure I carry inside me.
He doesn’t give me a chance to speak because he’s so busy with one hand clenched tight around my throat and his other waving around as he rants, that he chokes me out and I slip into the sweet safety of unconsciousness.
Softness greets me when I wake.
A pillow against my cheek that gives off a sweet, subtle scent of Lavender when I breathe in.
A pillow?
Was it all a dream?
My thoughts move sluggishly, and I twitch slightly, flexing my right hand, but the usual sharp edges of my restraints don’t cut into my wrist.
There’s nothing there, just soft sheets beneath my hand.
Am I back in bed?
Was I trapped in some kind of nightmare?
Maybe I did make it out that night with Eva. Maybe my torture was nothing more than a torment coma after getting shot in the leg.
I open my eyes and the world blurs.
There’s no leather strap across my mouth anymore, no restraints around my wrists or ankles, and only softness beneath me. Something creaks to my left and I flex my hand.
Pain, sharp and vibrant, shoots up my arm and my eyes snap open wider.
Still sore.
My fingers are still broken.
It takes a few long seconds for the pillars of the bed, the floral walls and white furniture to become familiar as I gaze at them, but as soon as they do, reality hits like a brick to the chest.
I’m not waking up in the safety of Flynn’s home.
This is Antov’s home.
Antov’s bedroom.
My stomach rolls as I turn my head and the creak reveals its source.
My uncle.
He stands with his back to me, facing the dresser while rubbing some kind of lotion on his hands and dressed in nothing but a silk robe that clings to every unflattering roll and dip of his pudgy back.
He sniffs then glances at me in the reflection of the mirror, smirking when our eyes meet.
“About fucking time,” he mutters. “Thought I’d have to do this with you unconscious, which I’m not against. Less fucking hassle, but this way I don’t have to hold up your fat fucking leg.”
What the hell is he talking about? Bracing my right elbow on the bed, I push myself up much to the painful protest of my body and finally see that I’m still as naked as I was down in that cell.
Bruises dot my legs and my stomach, more lacerations than I dare to count cover my body, and yet despite how angry and painful they all are, at a glance they seem to have been treated in some manner.
Everything except my left hand. I glimpse it and force myself to look away as the disjointed, wrong angles of my three broken fingers turns my stomach, and I’m ready to hurl.
More so when Antov starts talking again.
“I dreamed of this day. Fucking you until the next Yudkin heir is produced then leaving everything to them, living out my retirement years knowing the greatness I created was being well handled by my own blood. Only now…” He turns to face me.
“Now I’m going to fuck you and it’s all enjoyment because you’ve got that Irish cunt’s baby inside you. ”
My hand reflexively moves over my belly as my sluggish thoughts struggle to keep up with what he’s saying.
“No matter. Pleasure is just as worthy, and I want that cunt to know that I fucked you every day until his bastard came into the world. So lie the fuck back down.”
I can’t.
This isn’t happening.
In the cell, I was bound and gagged and unable to do anything but suffer. Here? I’m free to act.
But for some reason, my body doesn’t listen to the panic screeching through my heart.
Every joint hurts, even the soft fabric underneath me catches on open wounds and my head throbs like my brain’s been put through the blender.
As the edges of my vision blur, I swallow hard around the painful sharpness in my throat and beg my body to move.
It doesn’t.
I remain sitting there like a frozen lump, unable to heed my own internal screams of panic as Antov moves closer.
Move! Do something! Move! Not like this, don’t let it end like this!
Fear grips me in an unrelenting vice and I’m frozen to the spot.
Until Antov touches me.
His fingers brush my left shoulder and I jerk away. He slaps me hard, sending my teeth cutting into my cheek, and touches me again but I slap his hand away.
He slaps me again and grabs my shoulder.
“Don’t fight,” he snarls down at me. “You won’t fucking win.”
Our eyes meet and despair washes over me, but as he leans down, bringing his face sickeningly close to mine, something finally reconnects between my mind and my body, and I act.
Kicking one leg out, my foot catches him right between the legs and he stumbles back with a pained, furious gasp.
I scramble up, but as soon as I put weight on my injured leg, agony rips through the bullet wound, and I crash down to the floor.
“You fucking cunt!”
Antov lunges at me as I try to get back up and the only thing nearby is the porcelain lamp on the bedside table.
Grabbing it with my good hand, I turn and slam the lamp into the side of his head where it shatters into a thousand pieces and crumples to the ground, sparking and hissing.
Antov stumbles to the side and roars while blood streams down the side of his face and I see my chance.
Run, Kaia! Run!
I make it two steps before Antov slams me into the dresser, painfully winding me as he uses his bodyweight to drag me off the dresser and then back into it.
My head snaps forward, colliding with the mirror and it cracks under the impact of my skull.
“I don’t need you conscious to fuck the life out of you!” Antov yells.
As he drags me back from the dresser once more, something catches against my palm, and I reflexively curl my fingers around it.
It’s a hairpin. Long and thin with my aunt’s initials carved into the base.
“Aim higher next time,” comes Flynn’s voice from somewhere deep in my mind.
Antov drags me back toward the bed and I whimper, then jerk myself around with a cry as agony pulses through my thigh.
Our eyes meet and I raise the hairpin in my fist and then plunge it in a downward arc toward Antov’s throat.
The end of the pin pieces higher up in his neck just like Flynn told me to do, and blood spurts out from the wound.
I don’t stop.
I drag it out and plunge it into his neck again. And again. And again.
Antov yells and gurgles, stumbling backward onto the bed, but I move with him.
My hand moves back and forth like a pendulum, taking on a mind of its own.
We hit the bed, bounce, and end up on the floor with me on top so I take the hairpin in both my hands and keep going.
Again and again and again I plunge the hairpin into his gurgling throat, yelling the entire time.
Pain doesn’t register anymore, exhaustion is a thing of the past, I’m fueled by rage and panic and desperation and warm blood sprays from his torn neck through like a fountain.
It sprays on my bare skin, covering me like a sprinkler while gushing over the floor and soaking into the bed sheets.
“I hate you!” I scream hoarsely. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate!”
Something crashes in the distance, and each swing of my arm makes my shoulder pop repeatedly.
My yells and screams mingle with something else, presumably Antov’s own dying yells as he claws at my arms and fights to dislodge me.
But he can’t.
His arms fall limply to the side, his jaw remains slack and open and his eyes gaze up at me, empty and unseeing.
I killed him.
He’s dead, but it’s not enough.
It’s not enough for the cruel way he treated me, for all the repulsive things he said he was going to do to me.
Tears pour down my cheeks, mingling with the blood.
Then someone touches my shoulder and a spike of terror lances through me like the cold lash of a whip.
I turn on instinct and drive the hairpin into the shoulder of whoever has arrived next to me. The force of my swing sends me crashing into him, forcing him to fall back from his haunches.
“Ah!”
His cry is familiar, I realize as we land and suddenly thick, warm arms are wrapping around me while painfully familiar gray eyes swim in front of mine.
“Kaia! Kaia, it’s me! It’s Flynn! It’s me, you’re okay. You’re okay!”
“F-F-Flynn?” The hairpin remains embedded in his shoulder and still clutched in my right fist as we stare at one another.
He doesn’t waver and he doesn’t flinch. He holds me, and a wrecked, weak sob tears past my lips.
“Flynn!”
“I have you. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”