Chapter 9 #2
That word. That fucking word they’ve been putting on me since the beginning. Since Valeria’s fingers under my chin on the front steps. Since the first man who looked at my face and decided it meant permission.
I raise the karambit to my cheek. My hand is steady now, like holding the karambit somehow calms the voices, gives me back control over my thoughts, over what I choose to let in.
The blade hovers just below the sharp rise of my cheekbone, and I don’t need to take a breath before I press the tip in slowly, deliberately, watching the metal sink into flesh that still feels like it belongs to someone else.
The pain is immediate, and I clench my jaw, breathing in deep, and my nostrils flare. But I refuse to scream. I refuse to. Fucking. Scream.
Blood wells up instantly, dark and thick, sliding down the curve of my cheek, my salty tears stinging the open wound as it seeps into where the skin parts.
I don’t stop. Not for the pain. Not for the blood. I keep dragging the blade downward in one long, vicious line, carving deep from the high point of my cheekbone all the way to the corner of my mouth. And I take my time, too. Making sure it cuts as deep as the poison they’ve fucked into my system.
The cut is ugly on purpose, because that’s what I want. I want a scar that no one can ignore. A mark that will be the first thing they see when they look at me, that will make them flinch away from my face.
I don’t want it to heal neatly. I want it wide enough that it’ll always pull and twist when I speak or smile or try to pretend I’m still human.
The blade catches on the edge of my lip, and I push harder, splitting the tender skin open until the lower half of my face feels like it’s coming apart.
I feel the flesh part. Hear the wet, sick sound of it giving way under the steel.
And while I carve it deeper, the monster inside me uncoils, stretches its limbs, and finally starts to breathe.
The karambit slips from my fingers and clatters into the sink. I’m bleeding everywhere. Red everywhere. Splashing across the white porcelain, dripping down my shirt, soaking my hands, pooling on the floor like I’m leaking out everything they tried to put inside me.
I look up.
The mirror.
The boy looking back at me is fucking ruined.
My face is split open from cheekbone all the way down to my lip—a deep, ugly gash that gapes like a second screaming mouth. Blood sheets down the left side in thick, heavy curtains, soaking into my collar, running hot along my throat, dripping off my chin.
There’s blood in my teeth. My hair is wrecked, sticking up in every direction like I tried to rip it out with my own hands.
And my eyes…
My eyes are the worst part.
Wide. Wild. Empty. The eyes of something that’s been backed into too many corners and finally stopped pretending it’s still a person.
The eyes of a boy who entered through those iron gates three years ago holding his little sister’s hand, still believing the world might be kind if he was quiet enough.
That boy is gone. I can see the exact shape where he used to live inside my chest. Just a hole now. A hollowed-out place where something used to be soft.
I stare at him—at me—and something ugly twists in my stomach.
Pretty.
That fucking word.
They’ve been calling me that since the first day. Since Valeria tilted my chin up on the front steps and smiled like she’d found something she wanted to break. Since the first man looked at my face and decided it meant I was something to be used.
I did this.
I made it ugly on purpose.
The pain is still burning, sharp and honest, but I don’t flinch. I lean closer to the mirror, blood dripping steadily from my chin onto the sink, and I look at what I just did to myself.
This is mine.
This scar. This ruin. This ugly, twisted mouth that will never smile pretty for them again.
They can touch my body. They can make it betray me. They can hold me down and laugh while I come against my will like some broken toy.
But this face?
This one belongs to the monster they made me.
The scream rips out of me like something possessed—raw, guttural, demonic—tearing up my throat until it feels like it’s shredding apart.
It’s not human. It’s not pain. It’s years of swallowed screams, of hands on my skin, of that sick, wet sound of perversion, of every time they called me pretty while they broke me open.
It explodes out of my chest, bouncing off the bathroom tiles, filling the entire room with pure white fury and bottomless rage.
I scream until my voice cracks and blood mixes with spit on my lips, until the new gash on my face burns like fire and my knees buckle.
I scream until there’s nothing left inside me but this sound—this ugly, furious sound that says the boy is dead and the darkness that’s left is breathing fire.
And when it finally dies, when I finally fall to the ground on my knees, the silence that follows is worse.
Because now the monster is wide awake. And it’s mine.
My shoulders heave with every rapid, ragged breath when I notice the neat, shiny black shoes in the bathroom doorway.
Rowan.
He stands there like a shadow that learned how to wear a suit.
Perfectly still. Perfectly composed. The overhead light catches on the sharp crease of his trousers, the polished leather of his shoes, the heavy gold watch on his wrist—all of it immaculate, like the violence happening in this room is beneath him.
He looks down at me on the floor.
His face does nothing.
No flicker of surprise. No disgust. No pity. No recognition that there’s a bleeding, broken fourteen-year-old boy sitting in a pool of his own blood with a fresh gash splitting his face open. Just cold, clinical assessment—the same look he gives me when he watches me train.
His eyes move slowly over the damage, the gaping wound running from my cheekbone down to my lip, the blood still dripping steadily from my chin. He studies it all the way a surgeon might study a difficult incision—detached, calculating, mildly interested in the outcome.
The silence stretches, and he notices the bloody karambit in the sink.
I wait for something—anything. Revulsion. Anger. Even disappointment. But Rowan Capello doesn’t waste emotion on things that don’t serve a purpose. His expression remains perfectly blank, almost polite, like he’s observing a mildly inconvenient mess on expensive flooring.
He crouches in front of me, takes my chin in his hand with clinical precision, and I fight the urge to hiss at the pain as he tilts my face toward the light. The same way he might examine a new weapon.
His gaze lingers on the fresh wound for a long second, cataloguing the depth, the angle, the way the edges are already starting to pull.
“We need to get this cleaned.”
His voice is calm. Clinical. Like he’s commenting on a scuffed shoe or a misplaced document.
Then he releases my chin and stands, stepping back with that efficient, graceful precision that defines everything he does. No wasted movement. No unnecessary emotion.
I’m still breathing too fast, chest heaving, blood running down my face in warm sheets, when I force myself to look up into his eyes.
For one splintered second—barely even a heartbeat—something flickers there.
Not pity. Not sadness. Not warmth. Nothing soft or kind.
It’s colder than that. Sharper. A sliver of something dark and possessive, almost like…
recognition. Like he’s seeing exactly what I just did to myself and a part of him approves.
Like he’s watching a weapon sharpen itself and finding it satisfactory.
He turns his back on me, about to walk out, when he stills, glancing halfway over his shoulder.
“No man will touch you again,” he says flatly.
A pause. Brief. Absolute.
“You have my word.” And then he walks out like the conversation is over and the matter is settled.
The door closes softly behind him, and I’m left alone with the terrifying realization that in Rowan Capello’s world, mercy is a debt owed.
A debt that’s now carved into flesh.