Chapter Thirty-Six
Livia
They know I’m there before I can take my next breath. But in that same breath, I can’t unsee what I saw. It’s burned into my brain and will remain there forever.
“Livia,” Callen says, his tone heavy, his brows knitted together, his calm demeanor gone.
“Put it back on,” I say, icily cold. “Put it back on right now.” I’m rooted to the spot, my fists are clenched so tight that the pain in my palm is not enough to trigger me.
“Livia,” Mason says, coming toward me. I step away from him before he can touch me. I don’t want anyone to touch me. Ever. I will never be the same again. Ever.
“Put it back on right now!” I scream, looking at all three of them. I’m disintegrating. I’m barely breathing. My blood has drained from my veins, and I feel like a puppet, standing on the tips of my toes, held up by a fragile string. If I fall, I will fall to my death.
“Put it back on.” They won’t keep this from me unless they drag me out by my hair and kill me. My tone belies that sentiment because it’s the only thing that prompts them.
Deacon clicks a button. On the monitor on the desk, I see a nightmare unfold.
I can’t help but see the time flickering on the screen. This has already happened. It happened last night… while I was being nurtured and worshiped, warm, safe, and protected. While I was being taken into strong arms and held so tightly, somewhere else something unthinkable, cruel, and monstrous was happening.
A man fills the screen. He’s wearing a purple silk shirt with a thick layer of chains around his neck. His hair is messy, and he looks evil.
I’ve never met him before. I’ve never seen him before either but I know who he is.
Kirill Yenin.
The man I should be marrying. He turns away from the camera and faces a woman in a chair.
A woman I know and love...
Faith.
She’s wearing her favorite dress in her favorite color, blue, except it’s speckled with blood… hers. Her face is swollen, and her lips are busted and bleeding.
Oh god. Faith.
I swallow down the urge to vomit, but when Yenin slaps her so hard across her face that she falls off the chair. I bend over, clutching my stomach, as everything inside me turns upside down.
Callen moves to turn it off and I scream at him to leave it.
The camera moves with Yenin, capturing everything, and I watch in complete horror at what he does to her.
Laying on her side, he kicks her face with his boot, and I hear her faint gurgling sound as blood fills her mouth. He takes a handful of her hair, pulls her up to her knees, bends over, and punches her in the stomach. The sound she makes will haunt me until the day I die.
Tears roll down my face but I don’t even allow myself to blink. I can’t stop watching this. I’m not allowed the luxury of not seeing what he was doing to Faith.
And so I continue. My eyes taking in every brutal slap, punch, and booted kick. I listen for any sound Faith makes because I have to etch it into my brain. I can’t forget anything about this. But it’s Yenin’s laugh that shatters through me when he lets go of her hair and Faith topples over like a bloody rag doll.
I don’t close my eyes when Yenin undoes his pants, when he pulls out his penis, and does the most degrading thing to Faith. I don’t close my eyes. I just swallow the vomit that rises up inside me. I just remember the shame in Faith’s one eye, the one she can still see through that isn’t swollen shut from being repeatedly hit.
But I can’t contain the sob that fights past my resolve as I stand and watch what Yenin does to Faith.
“Livia,” Deacon says. “That’s enough.”
“No,” I say firmly. “It’s not. It’ll never be enough.”
I remained fixated on the screen in front of me. My insides turn to ash when Yenin takes a pair of scissors and haphazardly cuts off her dress, nicking her skin purposefully. He cuts off her bra and panties and when she’s naked, he looks directly into the camera. And then he takes the scissors, pulls at the short, trimmed hair on her mound, and proceeds to cut through the strands.
“This is for you, Livia,” Kirill Yenin says as he blows away the pubic hairs from his hand. “This is what I always intended to do to you on our honeymoon and every night after. This is for you. Watch closely. Your cunt is going to get nice and wet when you see what I was going to do to you.”
He removes his gun from the back of his pants, and...
I’m shaking so much that it feels as if I’m losing my eyesight. This time, Deacon comes to me, and I move out of his reach.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” I say, and the ice in my voice is the same that’s running in my veins, and it clogs my heart.
He flings her onto a stained wooden table and then brutally penetrates her with his gun. This time, he draws a mournful cry from Faith, and he enjoys it. The camera zooms around the room. There is a group of men standing around and watching, laughing when she cries.
While Yenin repeatedly shoves the gun into her, another man comes onto the screen and hands him a cane and a dildo. Yenin forces the dildo into her mouth until she chokes and this creates another round of raucous laughter.
“This is all for you, Livia Daniels.” Yenin’s shrill voice echoes around the room. He then flips her over onto her stomach on the table as if she were a slab of meat and not a human being.
The front of my dress is soaked with tears. I’m so ice cold, I can’t move. But it’s not enough. I can’t look away now. I need to see it and feel what Faith is feeling.
Yenin canes her. From her shoulder blades down to her feet. Faith is not even moving away.
She’s not moving.
She’s not moving.
She’s not moving.
And then Yenin takes the cane and inserts it into her anus, shoving it in so roughly that I can hear her body beat against the wood of the table.
And still, she doesn’t move.
Faith doesn’t move.
The screen goes blank, and it triggers everything inside me. I double over, ready to upend my insides onto the floor. Ready to scream and shout and...
“Faith. Oh god. Faith.”
“Livia,” Callen says.
I wipe my tears before I look at them.
“You did this. He wouldn’t have taken Faith if I were there. You did this. You killed her. You killed her. You’re monsters just like him.”
I take the thing nearest to me, I don’t even know what it is, I just fling it at them.
“You protected me, and I gave him Faith on a platter. I did this to her. I killed her. I should have tried harder to escape, but no, I was a coward. I thought I was falling in love... I killed her. Me and no one else.”
I reach for more things and I keep throwing them. I don’t care what makes contact or not. Death follows me wherever I go. I wasn’t enough to keep my mom alive and I wasn’t there to stop Faith from dying. Both of them are my fault.
“That was supposed to be me,” I cry, exhausted, defeated, and empty.
“If that was you, the world would be on fire.”