“Oh, yes, you are, Oren.” His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth. “Because only cowards cave to men like your father. And while I can admit that I’m one, you’re too fearful, toopatheticto stand on that truth.”
“Yeah? Well, if I were such afuckingcoward, would I have destroyed those hidden pictures in your room? The letter? The photo of yourmomandsister?”
He faltered, his eyes widening. “W-What…”
“I told you before, I’m not rational. Youbrokeme, so I destroyed everything you held dear, like you did to me in the bathroom. Only difference? I wasn’torderedto.”
He shook his head, denial in his pained expression. His chest heaved, the sound I’d heard before, one he’d released in the training room as he was spiraling. “N-No… No no no…”
“You’ll see your welcome gift on your bed,” I muttered, the bite I’d held earlier gone. I couldn’t…no. I did not feel sorry for him. Not at all.
His breathing quickened, his shoulders rising and falling with the ensuing panic. With an unfocused gaze, he looked past me, disassociation taking hold. Struggling to catch his breath, his lids flickered, a fractured whimper escaping him.
“T-That’s all… That’s all I h-had… Left…”
“It’s unbearable, isn’t it? To be broken beyond repair?”
His bottom lip wavered, and his body slacked in the chair. The man who’d been challenging me, the man who’d been spewing nonsense, was gone—that easily.
Tooeasily. Almost as if he had been telling the truth, that he hadloved me.
“I hope it hurts just as much as it did for me.” I swallowed the growing lump in my throat and turned on my heels. I flicked my gaze to the window of black, knowing my father was judging, because I was faltering. Goddamn it, I was faltering, but I’d made my choice.
Ihadto stick with it now, no matter the consequences. To falter here would be idiotic, pathetic, and I wasn’t that type of man anymore.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THORNE
Ilost track of time. It became a foreign concept, one that didn’t fucking matter to me anymore, because inherently nothing mattered. The moment Oren had looked at me with a soullessness I’d never wished for him, and told me that he’d destroyed the last pieces I had of myself, of myfamily,I’d given up.
I had nothing to fight for anymore.
I was finallydone.
Raw from the restraints, my wrists ached even though I hadn’t battled against them. My throat was scratchy from lack of water, the dehydration settling in only giving me a sliver of an idea of how long it’d been since I’d seen Oren. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blinked, but the dryness of my eyes reminded me of the tears I’d shed, tears that I’d held back for years, tainting my skin the instant he left me alone.
How many days had passed? How long had I been trapped in here? Had anyone wondered where I’d gone, and why I hadn’t returned since Venezuela?
It was ultimately a baseless curiosity, because I already knew the answer.
No one cared.
Why would they? I’d never been worth the fight, the battle, the time, so why the fuck would it start now?
Part of me was grateful no one had returned to test the depth of my sanity. I was too tired to care, too incoherent to have a conversation—there was nothing more to say because they’d already won. Words had dissolved off my tongue just like my soul had vacated my body, leaving nothing behind but a hollowed shell of a man who was beyond salvation.
If they wanted me beaten down to where I became mindless, they’d succeeded. They’d fractured my essence; the two years I’d spent in these cells were nothing compared to the damage Oren had inflicted in mere hours. It wasn’t the blade, or even his fists, that carved a hole in my resolve; it was his words, the way he looked at me as if I’d never mattered to him.
And maybe I hadn’t. Maybe that’s why he’d never believed anything I said or the truths I tried my damndest to utter.
I’d always been told I was unbelievable, untrustworthy. Any time I’d tried to confide in someone about my father—no one had listened.
No one asked why I left home at sixteen, why I ran from my lineage as if I could somehow save myself from the damage. While part of me wished someone could hear that little boy inside of me screaming to be held, the other desired nothing more than to bury that trauma so deep that it’d never be salvaged, never be used as leverage against me. And still, even after he’d tainted me, used my body to his satisfaction so he wouldn’t do the same to my sister, I’dcared.
I’d always cared.
I’d convinced myself it’d been a byproduct of his mental illness, a side of him that never would’ve been born into the world if it weren’t for the harshness of war. But I secretly knew that was a lie, and even as I begged and pleaded for my mom to just believe me, tosee me,she never did.
