Page 62 of Cruel Deception
My body convulsed. Breath stuttering. Chest rising in panic. I stumbled back into Cassian’s chest.
“I found your violators.” he said, voice low. Controlled. Deadly. “They’re yours now. Do what you want. Or walk away—and I’ll make them beg for death.”
His voice was terrifyingly calm. There was no joy, no mockery. Just steel.
“I figured if I sent them off to hell, you wouldn’t get the satisfaction.” He walked over to a regal-looking chair, carved from dark wood, and sat like a king presiding over a blood trial.
I approached them slowly.
Trembling. Rage crawling through my veins like venom, memories flooding—hands tearing at me, my screams, the room’s cold grit.
I stormed to the man in the middle, the one who took me, he tried to raise his head. His jaw was broken. One of his eyes was gone—just an empty, pulpy socket glaring back at me like a wound that could never heal.
I slap him, hard—again, and again—my palm burning, his blood smearing across my skin.
“You think you broke me?” I spit, voice raw with fury. “You think what you did made you powerful?”
I grab his jaw, forcing him to look at me. “You’re not a man. You’re filth. A rotting, cowardly stain on this earth.”
My breath shakes, but I don’t stop. “I wake up every day with your hands still on me. But guess what? I’m still here. Standing. Breathing. While you’re the one tied up and begging.”
I lean in close, venom in every word.
“You didn’t win. You never fucking will.”
He flinched. And I slapped him. Hard. Again.
Tears burn my eyes, but I force them back, my fists trembling as I glare at the others. “You held me down, you laughed—you’re all pathetic, spineless bastards!”
“Please—please, have mercy!” the man on the left whimpers, his voice cracking through the tape, his eyes wide, desperate. “We didn’t mean it, please, we’ll do anything!”
The man on the right nods frantically, muffled sobs escaping, his body shaking as he tugs at the ropes, blood dripping from his wrists.
The middle man just stares, his eye hollow, pleading silently, sweat mixing with blood on his brow.
I walked to Cassian.
“Can I have a gun?”
He rises, pulling a sleek Beretta from his back pocket, its weight cold as he hands it to me.
“The three days I was gone from the hospital,” he said, “I spent them hunting these pigs down.”
My throat clenched.
He didn’t need to explain. But it did something to me. Like he was... less of a monster. Or maybe just a monster who sometimes wore my pain like armor.
I turned and pointed the gun at the rapist’s leg.
He trembled, crying. “Please—please don’t—”
My hand shook.
Shoot him, Charlotte.
I tried.
I couldn’t.
