Chapter Forty-Nine Charlotte
Chapter Forty-Nine
Charlotte
I’m barely conscious, barely clinging to life by the time Mark finally unties me.
The chair has splintered into dozens of pieces beneath me, and I let out a weak moan, trying and failing to use my elbows to crawl toward the door. I try not to notice the wrong angle one arm bends at. It’s clearly fractured halfway to the wrist. From here, I can see a rusty old sign on the wall. I can just make out the words Brooklyn Navy Yard . But knowing where I am doesn’t do me any good. Already, Mark’s broken me. My body, at least.
But never my spirit.
I, Charlotte Bellefleur, was raised to know how to bend to a man’s will.
But never break.
With my one good hand, I clutch one of the splintered chair legs, pulling it underneath me to shield it. Like I’m clutching at my own heart. But the move is only to hide it from him. I don’t think Mark ever intended for me to die here. But my laughter has pushed him into a blind fury.
And if it’s going to be one of us ...
Like hell is it going to be me.
I shake my head, what I’m able to move of my neck, anyway. My whole body hurts like I’m one large wound—at this point I might be. A dull ache shoots down between my shoulders, and my face throbs like it’s swollen beyond recognition.
But still I force myself to let out a delirious, scratchy laugh.
He wrenches me back by my hair, forcing my spine to bow unnaturally.
“You filthy little slut,” he growls, a bit of spittle hitting me.
I grin up at him as I rasp, “He calls me the same thing when he fucks me.”
The rest of it is implied as I cast him a deranged smile.
And I fucking love it.
I’m not ashamed, and Mark can’t make me be.
The realization that he’s lost, that he has no more control over me, plays out on his face. His twisted sneer goes still, but there’s visible tension in his jaw before suddenly the veins in his neck strain. He forces me to roll onto my back by the root of my hair, but that’s exactly what I was anticipating.
As I roll, I bring my foot up and into his balls. Hard.
It’s the weakest spot on his body, but somehow, it’s also the part that makes him think he’s justified to hold power over me.
But my power is my own.
To give and to take.
Not even the devil himself can keep it from me.
I use the last ounce of my strength to pull the splintered chair leg forward just as Mark topples down onto me. Between the weight of his average five-foot-nine frame and the momentum of him falling, it’s enough.
He impales himself on the wooden shard, right in the chest. Not deep.
But it doesn’t need to be, to make him bleed.
He rolls onto his side, gasping and panting, his eyes frantically searching for another one of the Righteous to help him as I shove him off me and stagger to my feet. But it’s just him and me.
Exactly how he wanted it when he and my father forced me down the aisle.
“You ... you fucking stabbed me,” he says weakly.
Like even he can hardly believe it.
Clearly, he doesn’t know how I’ve been learning in therapy not to bottle up my resentment anymore. I stare down at him, swaying a little as the room spins.
But that doesn’t stop me from placing my foot on the splintered chair leg as I use all of my weight to shove it farther in.
“I hope Lucifer fucks you every day for the rest of eternity,” I spit onto Mark’s now stilling corpse.
“That particular punishment is yours alone, I’m afraid.”
I turn just in time to see that he’s come for me. To watch the horror in his eyes as he sees what Mark has done to me, the way it melts and heats to an inferno of fury. To see that he really does love me in his own messed-up way, after all. I breathe, “I’m sorry.”
Not to him. But to humanity.
For what he’ll do to them when I’m gone.
Everything fades to black as I fall into his waiting shadows once again.