Chapter 29: You Can’t Break
Warning; This Chapter Might Be Sensitive to so people!
Danielle woke with a stabbing pain in her mouth. Her head ached and her eyes felt drowsy.
For a second she did not know where she was. Then the sll hit her. Wet earth and smoke, so cold-like tal.
A rough hand grabbed her hair and pulled her upright.
"Auch!" She yelped and blinked hard...
Ethan was looking at her closely.
"You’re awake," he squatted closer and laughed. "Good. I wanted to see you look at ."
Danielle tried to move but ropes bit into her wrists. She was tied to a chair.
The ropes felt rough and had left red marks. She tasted blood from her lip.
Ethan pushed a hand under her chin and forced her face up. "Look at ...Look at the man who ruined your life. Look at the man who killed your peace."
She did not answer. Her throat felt dry and made it hard to swallow. Tears filled her eyes, but Danielle had learned to hide small things. She breathed through this weird pain and held her face steady.
Ethan smiled like a man who enjoyed the torture he gave. He walked around her chair as if he were at a show.
"You should have let the world be easier. Instead you live. You live like a spoiled child. What a waste."
Sothing in Danielle snapped, a small bright thing that people call anger. Anger ca quicker than any fear. She looked at him, and she did not bow her head.
But the quick flinch made her neck’s wound open up, reminding her of what Theo had to do to save her...
"You do not get to decide that...You do not get to tell what to be."
Ethan’s face changed for a second, and his smile widened.
He reached behind him and pulled out a knife, holding it like a toy.
"This is the part you do not like...You see the steel and you feel small. You see the blade and you want soone to save you. Is that it? Is that why you sleep with a guard?"
Her hands shook against the rope but she did not speak...Danielle was thinking of Theo.
To the way he had stood and protected her. To the way he had taught her to breathe when fear tried to swallow them whole. She let that thought anchor her.
Ethan stepped back and called out with a voice that wanted an audience. Footsteps answered him. n ca into the cabin, so of them faces Danielle did not know.
They ford a rough circle.
Ethan walked to the center and set the knife on a stump. It looked ordinary and hateful on that wood. "Do it," he said. "Do what is proper. Make the show. Prove you are brave."
He spat the words in her face like they were simple commands. He wanted to break sothing inside her. He wanted her to beg, to sob, to fall apart under his feet.
This devil wanted an easy victory.
Danielle felt the rage and the sha push at her at once. She felt small and huge at the sa ti. She could hear every breath in the cabin.
"I will not play your ga...You can cut your things. You can show your knives. You can shout. But I will not make you the master of my voice. I will not feed you the victory of my fear."
"You think you are brave?" he hissed. "You think you can choose how this goes?"
"Maybe I am scared...Maybe I am angry. But I can still choose. I choose to live."
One of the n moved forward as if to make Ethan take the knife. Ethan waved him back with a hard look. He liked the scene being exactly his pain, control, a slow show of power.
But Ethan had expected tears, not this defiance.
"You are wrong...No one chooses for long when I decide otherwise." He picked the knife up and gripped it like a threat. He lifted his arm like he might show the n sothing brutal.
Ethan wanted soone to shout and cry and the circle of n to clap in approval. He wanted to hurt the little light in her chest.
Instead, she spoke again, softer this ti but stronger. "You are wrong because I have a life. I have people who would co. I have a man who would die for . I have the right to be angry at you. I have the right to breathe."
Ethan’s face changed for the first ti. It was a small thing but it was there. He backed up a step, not liking fear in himself.
He had always hated that in others.
"You see, my little baby...I don’t like won like you."
Danielle rolled her eyes, "the feeling is mutual..."
"Oh? You think I gave you permission to talk? Hahahha!" Ethan looked around, making sure his people laughed too.
They did-but forcibly.
"Co on, cut yourself in fronf of us. That’s what we’ve been told...you liked hurting yourself for attention. and my n will give it to you, so co on."
What a disgusting and narcissistic demon Ethan was...whoever he was, Danielle couldn’t stop comparing him to Theo.
Theo never made fun of her hurting herself or when she was desperately begging for attention. Theo, no matter how cold and an he was-he never made jokes about her past.
"You’re a little man...the so-called people around you are forced to laugh at your jokes. Are you so desperate for approval? Perhaps, you should cut yourself too...give them a show."
Ethan raised his brow, and placed his hand on his neck. "You little bitch..."
"Insults...but zero intelligence...whoever raised you, did an awful job."
A smirk spread across Ethan’s face, "lovely. But how about, I’ll undress you in front of everyone and let you use your body like a bitch?"
"A threat to rape?" Danielle raised her eyes to stare directly into his. "And you can’t do it yourself because you’re scared that people will see what a small dick you have inside your pants?"
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