Chapter 5 Thorne #2
“You pull that shit out, and Matthew dies,” he said, gripping the ends of my hair tighter.
“If you want to bitch and whine, I suggest doing it to my son. Your failures made you the obedient dog I molded you to be. In here, you speak only when you’re fucking told to, and you offer your services to accomplish what I need done.
If you want a fucking pity party, find it elsewhere. ”
“Fuck what you need done, Andrew—”
“Valens,” he spat.
Articulating every syllable, a snide smirk crossed my lips. “Andrew.”
It earned me another fist, cracking my nose and splitting it, but it was worth the cost to see the fury flash across his normally stoic face.
“Do you want the details of your failures? How they screamed when my men murdered them in cold blood while you continued on with your duties?”
I drew my blade faster than I could stop myself, slashing it across his stomach with an anger that consumed my rationality.
A line of blood bloomed, confirming my strike and sparking my satisfaction.
Swinging again, I didn’t give a fuck about the repercussions.
I’d kill him, or he’d have to kill me before he’d ever set a fucking hand on Matthew.
Valens plucked a knife of his own from his waistline, rotating it with the ease of someone with years of combat experience.
As I went to slash my blade across his skin once more, he rammed his into my shoulder, twisting it to maximize pain.
“A stab wound won’t fucking kill me. Your pathetic display of emotions?
Useless. A baseless threat that’s going to get one of your men killed. Who should—”
“You’ll have to kill me,” I snarled, interrupting him once more.
“You won’t touch another one of my men. If you have pain you wish to inflict, then use my body as your bag.
But the moment, the fucking instant you touch one of them, you won’t have a right hand anymore.
And we both know how worthless you are without me, considering I practically run this base. ”
He snarled, metal slicing through skin. “And we both know how worthless you are without your men. If you want to be killed, I won’t honor such a noble request,” he mocked. “You’re forgetting I have the influence, rank, and status.”
“But who’s the one who contacted me, Andrew?
Who’s the one who requested my services to aid in breaking your son?
Because last I checked, that pitiful phone call marked your failure as a father.
You need me, and if you didn’t, you would’ve never requested my fucking help.
Fuck your influence. Fuck your rank. And fuck your status.
Without those medals on your chest, you are nobody.
Just a poor excuse for a father and a man incapable of saving his own wife. You’re the worthless one.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “You think I care she died? You think I give a fuck about my son?”
“YES!” I screamed. “Yes, I fucking do! Because you have to have every line straight, every T crossed, and every fucking box checked. Your son is an anomaly, which impacts the respect your men have for you. If you didn’t fucking care, if you weren’t an insecure cunt, then he wouldn’t be here.”
“An insecure cunt?” he repeated, lifting me by the edge of the blade to meet his face.
“The reason I need him fixed is to get him off my back. My men respect me. Your men? They despise you. Hate the monster you’ve become at my hand because you can’t keep them alive.
How many innocent souls have you murdered to aid me? To aid our cause?”
I swallowed the cry of anguish that nearly slid between my lips, allowing a near breathless laugh to replace it. “Respect you? Is that what you tell yourself?”
Snatching another knife from my waist, I drove it straight toward his neck, every desire to kill him clouding my knowledge of awaiting consequences. The light trickling in from the windows glinted against the blade, and just before it could make contact, he grabbed my wrist.
He bent it back, the crack of bone unmistakable as he tossed the blade to the far side behind his desk. “Pathetic. Everything you do is surface-level. You’ve earned your title as Commander, but this shit? This moronic display you’ve come into my office with? You’re worse than my son.”
He craned his neck before slamming me into his desk, hauling me over it far too easily. His knee crashed into my stomach, no pauses granted as he continued an onslaught with his words, too.
“I can overlook your fucking need for praise, but even if you don’t respect me, you’ll listen to me. I can do far worse than sending Matthew to Iraq. You’ve seen me kill men, and his torture? Double.”
“F-Fuck you,” I wheezed, spots lining my vision. “You’ll have to break me all over again before I… obey. You have brainwashed me for too long… T-Too incoherent to anything other than your rhetoric for years…”
“Again.” He grinned. “I’ve broken you once before; I can do it again.
I know your weaknesses, the nightmares you keep at bay while you drown yourself in liquor to subdue them.
Why do you think I handed you my son to break?
Did you think it was only to subdue him?
” He laughed as he tossed me into his chair, my back cracking at the force.
“You’re breaking yourself all over again. ”
He walked away, boots slapping against the floor as he opened the cabinet to various bottles of liquor. The sound of glass clinking echoed, a bottle of Jameson resting in his hand. He twisted the cap off and took a swig.
“You’ve forgotten your place. You take my orders, and you make them work. If I asked for the fucking sun, you would give it to me. No questions. No remarks. Order,” he said as he stepped closer, his hand twisting the chair until we were facing each other.
Narrowing my gaze, I spoke through broken pants, “And what if this is my fucking resignation?”
“You can’t resign, otherwise all this shit? It falls on you. A drunk, worthless piece of shit I had no idea infiltrated our pristine base.”
“Blackmailing?” I laughed weakly, far weaker than I wished. “Blaming me for the polluted platoons you lead? You really are desperate, aren’t you, Andrew? It’s ironic—”
Before I could spew another word, his fingers dug into my cheeks, prying my mouth open as the bottle was stuffed inside.
He tilted my head back and pressed his knee into my stomach to hold me against the chair.
Once positioned, his thumb and pointer finger snuffed my breath, and I was held relentlessly to the fate of choking on liquor.
Panic bloomed in my chest as I thrashed against him, struggling to battle his strength with my own.
My fingers clawed desperately for air, attempting to rake away at any open patch of skin I could find.
Driving my heels back into the ground, I tried to free myself from his hold, but every movement was inherently useless.
The first drop of liquor ignited the back of my throat, and I did everything I could to hold my breath, knowing that once I caved, its vile influence would taint another part of me—my lungs.
“This is who you are, Thorne. A fucking whore who opens his mouth to anything but common sense. I’m not stopping until you agree,” he spat, lifting the bottle and his hand to wait for my reply.
Leveraging the cut I inflicted, I drove two fingers into the gash. The warmth of his corrupted life force greeted me, and I pushed deeper, praying to whatever would listen that it’d be enough for him to let go.
He leaned in, his whiskey-tainted breath curling around my nose.
“My wife could do better than this.” He cracked my head back, liquor pouring over my face as it trickled down the sides of my cheeks.
It was the only warning I received before my mouth filled with the substance, the continued pour giving me no time to breathe.
I was drowning.
I was drowning.
I was drowning.
Gasping for air, my addiction swathed my senses, replacing the oxygen I breathed.
A quick reprieve as his hand found itself around my neck, squeezing. “Say it, or we’ll take all afternoon. I’ll call for someone to bring Matthew in here. Liquor is best spent between friends.”
Everything burned: my lips, my chest, my throat. One of life’s very requirements became nearly impossible as he contained me, rendering me helpless to his onslaught. But I couldn’t crack, I couldn’t break again, not when I’d finally stepped out from his shadows and back into the light.
“L-L-Leave Matthew out…of this…”
“Two seconds,” he answered, the bottle dangling in his hand. “Two seconds to make up for the shit you said, or I’ll personally haul him in here, and you and I both know he won’t make it out of this room if that happens.”
Every part of me, every fractured piece of my fucked up soul screamed for me to listen, to obey. But something stirred inside me that refused, something that had been resting for far too long, snuffed out by the leash Andrew had wrapped around my throat.
Through rasped breaths, I said six words I knew I’d instantly regret. “I refuse to bow to you…”
“Fine.” He stepped back and set the bottle on the table. Rolling his sleeves to his elbows, he casually strolled to the door. With just an inch of it open, he ordered a soldier to bring Matthew here immediately.
The door shut, sealing the fate I’d passed to my friend as Andrew grabbed the bottle once again, cracking it against the surface of his desk. It broke, the jagged half held between his fingers.
Before I could stumble to stand, he kicked my knee, the power rendering my kneecap useless. He was fucking smart to keep me from moving.
“You did this, Thorne. The next hour? That shit falls on you and your newfound defiance. If I had known you’d allow my son to fuck your respect, I’d have shipped him overseas.”
I struggled against him, trying my damndest to get my feet beneath me again.
My body ached, but not in a way I was familiar with.
No, this was a gut-churning guilt, a sinking realization that my idiocy had placed the only man I had left, the only person I had left, in harm's way.
The agony it blanketed over my heart overlapped everything else: the searing burn violating my throat, the bleeding wound in my shoulder, the bruises lining my face, and my broken nose.
A knock sent everything hurling into one feeling. “Sir?”
“Andrew, don’t… Don’t do this,” I pleaded, my voice breaking slightly. “This isn’t on him, it’s on me—”
“Everything falls on you, but it’s your will that needs breaking.”
He opened the door, and before Matthew had time to block, to think, to act, Andrew tossed him into the room.
Matt hit the ground with a sickening thud that was louder than the slamming of the door, and that’s when the onslaught rained down on him.
Valens’ foot drove into Matthew’s side. His face was next, two kicks blackening his eyes and causing red saliva to spew as Matt instinctively curled against the floor.
It provided little defense. Andrew grabbed the back of his neck to give him the leverage he needed to pierce his side with the broken bottle. The same area I’d attacked him.
Matt groaned, blood spewing from his lips, but it was his faltering, half-ass smile that broke me. “I-I’m fine… fine,” he repeated, as if he was anything but.
My bottom lip quivered, tears butting up against my waterline. The singular word came from me as a whisper, nearly too quiet to hear. “Stop…”
“Stop?” Andrew tossed him like a fucking ragdoll, his body hitting the edge of the desk before slumping to the ground. “I said hour. Unlike you, I keep my word.”
“Andrew, please—”
But there was no remorse, no lingering forgiveness in the depths of cobalt. I’d had my chance, and I disregarded it. Valens would beat my insubordination out of Matt, no matter what I yelled.
“Next time, I’ll break his fucking neck and watch you try to hold yourself together. This? This is a lesson that if you think my son’s influence will get you anywhere, you’re wrong. Understood?”
Forced back beneath his command with no way out, no hope, I swallowed every vulgarity I wished to spew. “Y-Yes.”
“No matter what semblance of freedom you think you have, remember you’ll always wind up here. If Matt dies, someone else will take his place. That’s the difference between you and me. You lead with your heart, your emotions, and no ounce of training will remove that blight.”
I had nothing left to give, not an ounce of rebellion flowing through my veins.
He’d snuffed it out the moment Matt walked through the door, suffocating the flame of autonomy that’d reignited in the marrow of my bones.
My gaze shifted, sweeping over the man whom I’d give up anything for: my life, my heart, my very essence.
“Matt…” I breathed, fearful that maybe I was too late, that I’d already failed. “Matt… Please talk to me.”
He stayed silent, the breadth of Andrew’s torture knocking him out cold.