As if I didn’t know.
I hadn’t ever shown a sign of short-term memory loss, yet they acted like I couldn’t remember any of the rules they drilled into me. That I was expected to always submit and obey.
“Do you think this isn’t serious?” he asked before he backhanded me sharply.
I fell backward, easing into the numbness to avoid reacting to the pain. Before I dropped fully, because I refused to show fear that he could exploit, I straightened on my knees.
Fuck you.
Getting back up on my knees and still not making eye contact with him, I zoned out, staring at his shoes. And I let the numbness take over so I could blank out and retreat into that shell that would keep me sane.
“Am I bothering you?” he demanded. “Is it tedious to listen to me? Are you bored listening to me, you bitch?”
Another backhand.
I hid further inside myself.
“How dare you sigh like that? Acting like you’re too good for a lecture.”
Another hit. This one took me longer to get upright again. My ears rang. Dizziness crept into my head. But still, I stayed on my knees, head up if tipped toward my chest.
“Because you are not,” he growled. “You are not good for anything but doing exactly what your husband will tell you to do. You are not good for anything but being the obedient wife we have trained you to be.”
Heavy breaths left him as he ranted.
“You are a bad waste of space and nothing more. Just a fucking whore to give strong sons to the man who will put up with your presence!”
Despite my protective shell of blanking out, that safe nothingness I shrank into in my mind, his words pierced my soul.
No. I don’t deserve this.
I have never done anything to deserve this.
And I hadn’t even fucking sighed.
I was simply breathing, recovering my breath after the cold. Because that was all I really was. What I’d been reduced to. A breathing animal, not a human. A creature in a cage, tortured, conditioned, and beaten.
Yet, once more, I couldn’t help but exhale deeply. Being thawed out in this dirty apartment wasn’t issuing a conscious effort ofrespiration. It was merely a physical reaction to the warmth, to needing oxygen and to warm myself.
Once more, he misinterpreted that survival instinct of my diaphragm as a sign of disrespect and disobedience.
“How dare you sigh at me like I am a bother and not your teacher?” he bellowed.
I lost count of all the hits that he rained down on me while always making sure he wouldn’t cut my skin. He pounded his fists on me and slapped his palms against me, giving the kinds of injuries that I would feel deep inside but wouldn’t be permanently visible on my skin.
All I could do was sink into the numbness and wait for it to end.
It wasn’t easy to distinguish the difference between falling unconscious or simply retreating further into the blank shell that I relied on to keep me sane. Eventually, though, the room fell quiet. I was alone again. Yusef had finished beating me for the perceived slights and left me locked in this room—one without a window this time.
In a heap of despair, I let my mental shell recede.
Pain radiated from multiple epicenters over my body. Every one of his hits registered as I took inventory of how I would survive this time.
As I tried to stand, sounds returned to me from the other room. Through the thin walls, I heard Erik speaking, reminding me that I was never alone. He would come and go as he pleased. Yusef was my typical guard, but even in the short spells he would leave, a camera would be positioned on my door to track whether I would attempt an exit.
That was another lesson I’d learned over a decade ago, the one and only time I tried to escape after I broke the doorknob on the door of a crummy apartment bedroom they had been keeping me in.
That was when I learned that even if my brother and his enforcer weren’t here, they would always be watching. Punishment had followed that failed escape. Swiftly and severely, they both beat me for daring to leave. It was a hellish nightmare I never wanted to revisit again.
