Chapter 76
Congratulations to me on 100k. Thank you all ??.
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Aurora walked into the room fully.
Her eyes were on Gemma.
Just Gemma.
Like everyone else had dissolved.
"He... he... raped me," she said again.
Not asking. Not accusing.
Just trying to make the words feel real in her mouth.
They didn't.
Her back found the wall.
She didn't choose it. Her body just stopped trusting her legs and the wall was there and she let it hold her.
She slid down it slowly, the way something collapses when the last thing keeping it standing finally gives way.
She hit the floor.
Knees pulled up. Back against the wall.
Hands flat on the ground beside her like she needed to feel something solid.
Gemma moved toward her immediately.
"D-Don't." Aurora's voice stopped her cold, but shaking.
Tears were running freely down Aurora's face now. She wasn't making a sound.
Just sitting there against the wall with tears falling like her body had decided to do it without her permission.
Then it started coming back.
Not in order. Not gently.
In fragments. Sharp and merciless, the way glass comes apart.
Her eyes widened, already seeing everything vividly. Tears filled them, her face was a mess.
She was shaking madly.
The room. The dark room. The smell of alcohol soaked into the walls. The sound of music that had no business being that loud.
Ginny.
The sounds Ginny made. The sounds that Aurora had spent years convincing herself she didn't remember.
Being tied. Unable to move. Unable to help. Unable to do anything except sit there and watch and scream inside her own chest.
Then Zane's friends leaving the room.
Then the door.
The click of the door.
Usually that was the last thing she could ever remember.
That was always where her memory stopped.
Until now.
Now it didn't stop.
Now she remembered what came after that door click.
His hands.
His weight.
The way she fought and how much it didn't matter.
How he has tied her hands to the bed and mercilessly p0unded into her. Tearing her apart. Ripping her open.
The pain.
Her screams.
The specific, devastating pain of something being taken that could never be given back.
He slapped her, punched her.
She had been sixteen years old.
[FLASH BACK]
"Zane... Zane please... please I'm begging you. Please don't- don't do this to me. I-I swear I'll do whatever you want." Aurora begged, her heart tight with fear.
Zane chuckled.
"You're already doing it now baby. You're doing what I want. Now get on the fucking bed or I'll push you. And then it'll be harder. Nothing will stop me from being brutal. Get. On. The. Fucking. Bed." Zane stepped closer.
Aurora shook her head frantically, stepping back. "Pl...please."
The music from the main hall got louder. A well drafted plan by Bianca.
Ginny was still under the bed.
"Hear that?" Zane smiled. A menacing one. "That's a message to you from your friend saying no one's coming here. No one will hear you." He laughed. "And you know what's better? Baby." He leaned forward to her level.
"After this. We're leaving New York. We'll go somewhere farrr away. Just you... and me... together.... Like it should be...." Zane smiled wider.
"I'll... I'll go anywhere with you... fine. Just don't -"
"Shhhh" Zane interrupted Aurora, closing his eyes briefly. "I know you baby... you might be a softie, but you're smart. You think I don't know you'll try to run away? Escape?"
Aurora shook her head. "N-no. I promi-"
Zane pushed her to the bed roughly. She screamed.
"Enough talking. Tonight, you're mine." He squeezed one of her br￡asts roughly.
Another scream left her.
He slapped her hard, and followed it with a harder punch.
She bl€d from the nose.
He immediately grabbed the rope nearby and tied one wrist to the head board, she tried fighting, he punched her again.
"Be obedient! It's not that hard!" He rounded the bed to tie the other wrist.
"Zane!!!! Helpppp!!!!!!!" Aurora screamed as Zane started taking ripping off her gown but he lost patience and got upset at how hard it was since it's a beaded dress.
"You just had to wear this today!" He punched her again.
Aurora coughed bl··d.
He cut one hand off her gown, feeling so high already.
How badly he wanted her was unexplainable.
He was able to tear a part of the gown but lost patience and lifted it up angrily.
He instantly tore off her pantie.
Fear gripped Aurora at the realization; no escape, just hope, no help, just one expectation: pain.
She burst into painful tears, worse than whatever she was doing before.
"No no..... Please!!!!!!!!"
Without waiting, Zane pushed into her in one go. Tearing her apart.
Aurora's nails dug into the bed and an ear splitting scream left her lungs.
Her tied wrists were burning in pain.
She struggled, she fought, she fought hard.
"HELPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
It felt like hours, cuz maybe it was. She couldn't think. Couldn't process anything.
She would lose consciousness and wake up hoping it was just a terrible, horrifying dream, but she never did. Instead, it was just Zane grunting as he wounded her.
Her life and everything about her existence flashed before her eyes.
Lungs so tired she could barely scream anymore.
She woke up three times, and who knows how many rounds he had done on her.
"You're mine." Zane murmured in her ear. Sounds of skin slapping viciously filled the room.
The music outside would stop for a moment, but when it continued, it was something more indulging, more intoxicating, something to keep everyone high, distracted and in the mood.
She lost strength, her eyes burned with tears. She could barely move anymore.
And even then, she managed to move her mouth...
"H...help......"
[END OF FLASHBACK]
Aurora let out a scream. A loud one. It shook the walls of the mansion.
Elara flinched. Xander almost held his breath.
Melvin looked away. Gemma's tears fell.
Another scream left her.
Her hands came up and pressed against her head, fisting her hair in handfuls and she sat there on the floor of her parents' bedroom and finally, after all these years, felt the full weight of what had been done to her.
Elara made a sound from the doorway.
Xander turned away, pressing his fist against his mouth, eyes wet.
Melvin stood completely still, jaw working, eyes burning.
Gemma dropped to the floor in front of her daughter. Not touching. Just there.
Kneeling on the floor in front of Aurora, close enough to reach, waiting.
"My love-"
"You knew," Aurora whispered.
"Yes."
"You always knew."
"Yes."
Aurora lowered her hands.
Her face was destroyed. Swollen. Wet.
"And you let me walk around not knowing."
"We were trying to protect-"
"YOU LET ME WALK AROUND WITHOUT KNOWING!!!!" Her voice cracked open completely.
The room flinched.
"I... I.... Do you... know... even in that situation, I called for you... I called for my mom... And.. and... I hoped m-my dad would burst into the room and end my misery... He always rescued me... he always did."
Melvin broke. His tears fell.
"I fainted.. so many times... Waking up to the realization that it wasn't a nightmare... And when... he dealt with me.. he wanted to take me away... Do you know how scared I was?? DO YOU KNOW HOW SCARED I WAS??!!!"
Gemma cried harder.
" Even... when he left me alone after he was done.. I couldn't move my legs... all I could do was wait for whatever was coming next. I couldn't move. And then someone... someone else came in... Someone else came in.... To help..... Yes... someone came.... But"
Aurora cried. " It was already too late, my life was already over. I was finished."
Nanny Mira was outside, in the hall, palm over her mouth. Eyes wide.
Aurora pressed her head back against the wall.
Her breathing was wrong. Too shallow. Too fast. Her hands were trembling visibly now, fingers she couldn't control, body moving without her say so.
"Aurora." Melvin was beside her now.
"Look at me. Look at me baby."
She couldn't.
Her eyes were somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere years away.
"Auri." His voice broke on the name. "Stay with me. Stay here."
She blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then her eyes rolled back.
And she went completely limp. Bl00d trickled out of her nostril.
"AURORA!" Gemma caught her.
"Call the ambulance!" Melvin was already moving. "NOW. Call it now!"
Xander had his phone out before the sentence finished.
Elara stood in the doorway both hands pressed to her mouth, tears streaming, shaking her head slowly.
"This is our fault," she whispered. "Xander this is our fault. If we had just- if we hadn't- she wouldn't have-"
"Lara not now-"
"This is our fault!" Her voice broke completely.
But nobody had time to answer.
Because Aurora was already gone somewhere none of them could follow.
★
[LIFE LINE HOSPITAL]
The hospital corridor was cold the way hospital corridors always are.
Gemma sat in a chair against the wall, hands clasped in her lap, eyes fixed on nothing. She had stopped wiping her face.
There was no point anymore.
Melvin stood beside her, one hand on her shoulder, jaw so tight it looked painful.
Xander sat with his elbows on his knees, head down, staring at the floor between his shoes.
Elara hadn't sat down once since they arrived.
She paced. Slowly. Back and forth. Arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold something in.
Then the door opened.
Dr. Nina came out.
She looked at all of them and her expression said everything before her mouth did.
Gemma stood immediately.
"Tell me," she said.
Dr. Nina exhaled slowly. "Severe emotional shock.
" She paused. "Aurora's condition is critical.
What she found out tonight - the manner in which she found out - it broke through every wall we built.
Every suppression. Everything her mind had been protecting her from came through at once. " She looked at Gemma directly.
"The shock alone was enough to send her body into shutdown. And right now her body..." She paused carefully. "Her body isn't willing to come back easily."
Gemma pressed her hand over her mouth.
"There is a possibility," Dr. Nina continued quietly, "that this could lead to another coma. A longer one."
The corridor went silent.
"Nina-" Melvin's voice came out rough.
"I know," she said. "I know." She reached forward and took Gemma's hands in both of hers.
"But I need you to hear me. I will do everything.
Everything I have. She is not leaving us.
" Her voice was firm. Absolute. "If she survived what happened to her years ago, she can survive this.
She is a fighter Gemma. She always has been. "
Gemma looked through the small window in the door.
Aurora lay still inside. Machines. Wires.
The clinical silence of a room doing everything it could.
She looked so small.
She always looked so small when she was still.
Gemma's tears fell quietly.
"Please," she whispered. To Nina. To the room. To whoever was listening. "Please don't take her from me."
Nina squeezed her hands once.
Then turned back toward the room.
Behind them, Elara had stopped pacing.
She stood against the wall, arms still wrapped around herself, staring at the floor.
"Xander," she whispered.
He looked up.
Her eyes were wrecked.
"We should have let them handle it," she said. "We should have just. we pushed. We kept pushing. And now she's..."
"Elara..."
"This is our fault." Her voice broke completely. "She came home already broken from something. I could see how her eyes were swollen, something happened before she came home. And then she walked into that. And we were so loud. We were so... "
Xander stood up and pulled her into him.
She cried into his shoulder.
He held her.
And said nothing.
Because there was nothing to say.
★
Mr. Thorne stepped away from the hospital entrance and brought the phone to his ear.
It rang once.
"Speak," Zane said.
"She's in the hospital."
Silence.
"Which one."
"Lifeline."
Another silence. Longer this time. The kind that had something moving inside it.
"How long has she been there."
"Less than an hour. They rushed her in. Critical condition from what I could gather."
Zane was quiet for a moment.
Then something shifted in his voice.
Something that sounded almost like satisfaction.
"A hospital," he said slowly. "She's in a hospital."
"Yes."
"Vulnerable. Sedated most likely. Limited security." A pause. "Thorne."
"Yes."
"This is the opportunity."
Thorne said nothing.
"Start moving," Zane said. "Quietly.
Carefully. I want everything in place before she wakes up." His voice dropped lower.
"I've waited long enough."
The line went dead.
Thorne lowered the phone slowly.
He looked up at the hospital entrance.
Then he made another call.
★
Kiara checked the address one more time before pushing the hotel door open.
The room was dim. Expensive in that anonymous way hotel rooms are. He was already there, sitting on the edge of the bed, jacket off, looking at his phone.
He looked up when she walked in.
"You actually came," he said.
"I said I would," she replied.
She set her bag down by the door.
The room felt smaller suddenly.
He stood. Crossed toward her slowly. Eyes moving over her face like he was checking something.
"You look tense," he said.
"I'm fine."
"You sure?"
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she said, "What exactly did you mean? In that text. When you said you could do more for me."
He smiled slowly.
"You pretentious chick. You really don't know why you're here. Oh drop the act sweetie."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Sit down," he said. "Let me show you."
★
[LIFELINE HOSPITAL]
Oma rushed into the hospital. She ran swiftly to the ward.
Her running increased when she saw Elara crying and being consoled by Xander.
Gemma was silently praying as she cried.
Melvin was numb.
Her heart leapt.
She slowed down when she reached them.
"Aunty... Uncle..." Her eyes moved to the ward through the glass on the door.
Aurora and the doctors...
"How did you know we're here?" Xander asked quietly.
Elara stayed in his arms.
Oma turned to them slowly.
"Nanny Mira. She told me. Well, I was uneasy after she got triggered in school and Leo took her. So this evening I called her phone but it wasn't reachable, I called you too and Lara but no one picked. So I called Nanny Mira and she told me." Oma explained slowly.
"Leo?" Elara finally let go of Xander.
" Then why did she come home crying?" She murmured.
" What?" Oma came closer. "What is... what is even happening? What made her like this? I've never seen a trigger do this much to her. What happened?" Oma went to Melvin and Gemma.
"Chief. Aunty. What happened? Can someone just say something?"
Gemma's mouth moved.
"She... she found out..."
Oma's brows creased. "Found out what?"
"That Zane also assaulted her that night... not just Ginny." Melvin answered.
"What?!"
Dr Nina, the second and the nurses were all stressed.
Aurora was neither getting worse nor better.
Even in her unconscious state. Tears left her closed eyes.
"Doc, her breathing." A nurse said.
Aurora's breathing got unstable. Her chest pumped up and down. More tears left her closed eyes.
"She's still remembering. She's still seeing it. It keeps replaying in her head." Nina muttered.
"Aurora fight. You can give up now. Not now. Fight Aurora, fight! Your mother is not losing another child. You're dad might be silent but he's crushed inside, he's broken. You can't leave them. Everything they did was for you. Fight Aurora. Fight!"
"Doc, her breathing-"
"Increase the oxygen," Nina said immediately. "She's not regulating."
A nurse adjusted the mask, pressing it more firmly over Aurora's face.
Her chest kept rising too fast. Too sharp.
Like her body was running from something it couldn't escape.
"She's still in it," Nina muttered. "She's not out of the episode yet."
The second doctor stepped closer, eyes on the monitor. "Respiratory rate is spiking. Heart rate too."
Aurora's fingers twitched weakly against the sheets.
"BP is fluctuating," the second doctor said. "She's not grounding."
"I can see it. Prepare a sedative."
"Dosage?"
"Low. I don't want her fully under. I just need her out of the loop."
The syringe was ready in seconds.
Nina stepped closer, her voice dropping slightly.
"Aurora... listen to me. "You're safe. You're not there anymore. Do you hear me?"
No response.
Just tears slipping from the corners of her closed eyes.
"She's not responding to verbal cues," the second doctor added.
"Give it." Nina said.
The needle went in.
A pause.
Her breathing hitched once-
Then again.
Then slowly...
It began to come down.
Not steady.
Not normal.
But not spiraling anymore.
Nina exhaled quietly. "Good... stay there."
The room didn't relax.
Not yet.
"Keep monitoring," she said. "She's not out of this."
Outside, Oma staggered weakly.
"So... that explains it... Those weren't ordinary. It was because...." She muttered, staring into space.
"I should've searched harder that night, I should've done more. I searched everywhere but couldn't find you."
Oma crouched to the floor.
"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." Tears left her eyes. "Sorry sorry Auri. I'm so sorry." She whispered, more tears falling.
Outside the hospital, Thorne's phone beeped. A message from Zane.
Wait.
"What?" Thorne frowned. "Wait for what? Can he just make up his mind already?"
He sighed tiredly and typed back.
Alright boss.
Zane was planning and whatever it was... it was solid... He's gonna get her.
TBC...