MASSILO P.O.V
The black van arrived at the same place we left which was the chicken bar.She was taken in through the back door by some men in disguise and was tied up along the way while Dad followed them behind,I had to stay in the car till they were out of sight.
"This is how far we can go,we need to leave now" Xavier uttered urgently before being cut shut by Mr Denice whisper, "We can't just back off when we've seen it all"
"Why was Mr Mason in that van? I thought he was in Poland"
"We must find out" I said the last part in a soft mutter while leaving them in the car and heading down to the back door.
I stood at the back door,peeping through a small opening at the center, my heart was hammering so hard,it felt like it might rip through my chest.The sight before me was something I couldn't have imagined in my worst nightmares.
I stopped dead at the threshold like somebody had slammed a door inside my ribcage.The room smelled of stale perfume and something acrid I couldn't name.
Sua was sprawled on the floor,the hem of her dress bunched around her legs,her face looked wet and raw from crying.Her eyes were wide and empty as if she'd been pulled out of one life and dumped into another she didn't recognize. She fumbled at the carpet with shaking fingers,trying to find purchase on a world that had just unraveled.She looked so small,so lost, her hands clutching the ground as though she needed to hold on to something real.
And then there was dad.Standing over her,his voice was cold,his words cutting through the silence like knives.He looked at Sua with a hard,slow contempt that made my skin crawl. When he spoke,his voice was low and flat,but each word had teeth.
"I warned you" He said and the warning was a blade. "I told you to keep your distance.I told you not to touch what belongs to this family" He took a step forward and the shadow of him seemed to swallow the light in the room. "You think you can walk into my son's life and wreck it without paying? You think marriage will fix what you ruined?"
Sua made a sound like half plea and half whimper like she didn't even know where she was. "I-" She began and the syllable tore apart on the floor.
My father crouched down until they were almost eye level and the menace in his face sharpened.He smiled without warmth. "Do you know why I don't despise you,Sua?" He let the name hang. "Because you did what she was too weak to admit she wanted.You slept with my wife" He said it plainly as if naming it would erase it. "You think that made you small? No.It made you dangerous.You planted yourself inside this house.You knew the consequences"
Heat rushed to my face.The room swam.His next words came out slow and deliberate like a promise. "I warned you not to be with my wife.I gave you a choice.You took her anyway" He stood up then,and when he moved,there was the faintest scrape of his shoe on the floor that sounded like a countdown. "So now you will listen.You will do exactly what I say,or you will watch everything you love burn.Understand me?" The threat wasn't theatrical,there was a patient cruelty in it like a man explaining terms to someone about to be executed.
Sua's body collapsed inward,she curled like a thing trying to make itself small enough to disappear.
"Please" She whispered and it was barely there.My hands wanted to move,wanted to grab him,grab her and tear the truth out of both of them,but my legs were lead.All I could feel was the fracture running through the center of my life,widening with each calm with hateful sentence my father spat.
I looked at them,at my father's steady,cold face and at the woman I had promised myself to trembling on the floor and something broke quiet inside me.The only sound left in the room was Sua's sobbing and my father's slow, satisfied breath.
I finally moved,one step forward,then another,my chest tight.
"Enough" I said,but my voice sounded thin and useless in the thick silence.
My father's men shifted immediately, stepping between me and Sua.One of them with a broad,square-shouldered brute pressed a hand to my chest, stopping me like I was a child.
"Move" I snarled,but they didn't.
My father turned,his face was cold and almost amused. "You think you can protect her now?" He asked. "Where was this fire when she was lying to you? When she was in your mother's bed?"
The words hit again,deeper this time,like he was driving a nail into my skull.
"She's mine to deal with" I said through my teeth.
He stepped closer until he was eye to eye with me,his presence was heavy enough to choke on. "She was beaten because she needed to understand what defiance costs.If I wanted her dead,you'd be standing over her body right now"
Behind him,Sua whimpered.Her hands were still covering her face,blood was streaking her knuckles.The sound of her crying clawed at me.
"You can keep her" My dad said finally,his voice dropping into something even colder. "But if you do,you'll live knowing what she's done.Knowing what she is.And knowing that I will never,ever let her near this family again"
His men stepped back at last,as if dismissing me.
I knelt beside Sua,my hands hovering over her because I didn't know where to touch her without hurting her.She flinched anyway,as if my shadow was just another blow.
Her eyes finally met mine,so red,swollen,desperate and something inside me twisted until I couldn't breathe.
"Come on" I whispered,but my voice broke. "We have to get out of here"
She didn't move right away.It was like she didn't trust that the beating was over.When I finally helped her to her feet,she leaned against me like she might collapse and all I could feel was my dad's stare burning into my back as I led her away.
For the first time,I realized I wasn't just angry at him.I was afraid of him.
They hadn't let me get far.
A heavy hand slammed into my shoulder,hard enough to fold me forward.The same broad-backed man who'd held me back before planted himself between us and the doorway like a wall.My father moved with the lazy precision of a predator closing distance,not a foot of hurry in him,only the surety that whatever he wanted would be had.
"Not a step" He said,calm as a man reading the paper.No one moved.The other men hemmed us in,shadows breathing around the two of us.
"I'm taking her out" I said.My voice was flatter than I felt,like it belonged to someone else. "You don't have...."
"You think you get to walk out with her?" My father interrupted and when he said her name,it sounded like spit.He crouched until his face was level with mine. "You haven't learned anything.You still think you can fix this with your clever vows and loyalty" His lips twitched into a smile with no warmth. "You walk away and you make a mockery of what I taught you about consequence"
Sua was at my side,leaning against me like she could be a shield if we moved together.She tried to steady herself,to find the fragment of strength that could lift her from the floor and into the world.For a breath I let myself believe we could go until one of the men reached forward and did something so slow and clinical it hurt worse than a punch.He took her elbow with an iron grip and pulled.
"No" I said.I twisted toward him,but another hand caught my jacket and held me like iron. "Let her go"
The man hauling her didn't spare her a look.He hauled her back as if she were a crate to be set down and dismissed.Sua stumbled,her knees knocked the floor and she gasped.She clawed at me,her fingers scrabbling for purchase on my sleeve. "Please" She mouthed.Her lips were swollen,the word came out like a torn thread.
My father straightened and nodded once,to no one I could see.It was a king's signal.The men formed around Sua like the closing of a door.
"Make her apologize" My father said,his voice was like a cold instrument. "Make her say she's sorry for what she did.Make her say it until I believe it"
What happened next moved like a nightmare insisted into motion.They dragged her to the center of the room,one man's hand at the base of her skull,another at her arm. She fought.Half-broken,her energy jagged and struck out at them,a flurry of useless,breathless flails.They held her like something that needed to be contained.
I lunged.My fingers found air where her shoulder had been,a brute shoved me back and the world slammed sideways.I could see everything in a single,terrible tableau.Sua's fingers scrabbling,her face a wet map of bruises and tears,the men's faces blank and professional,my father watching like a man making sure a job is finished.
The first blow landed with a sound I felt still,not bone-crunching,not the sick detail that makes a man recoil,but hard enough to throw Sua's head back and tear out a sob.She doubled,brought up an arm to guard herself,and another came.They were methodical,not vicious for sport but vicious for purpose,to bend her will until the apology came loose.
"Say it" My father said and when he spoke the men struck in time with his words. "Say you're sorry to me.Say you're sorry to your son.Say you're sorry you slept with my wife"
Her sobs were ragged, shredding. "I'm...." She began between strikes,the word swallowed by the next hit.
"No!" I shouted and it felt useless like a boy's cry.They shoved me back again,harder.One of them leaned close enough that I could smell cheap tobacco and sweat. "Shut up,kid" He said. "This is not your business"
I couldn't watch.Every hit was an accusation hammered against my chest as much as hers.I knew then that my father wanted more than an apology.He wanted to rewrite the script so I would live inside his version of events.He wanted humiliation on record,on my tongue,because that would make the rest of his cruelty legal in his mind.
Between the blows,between the sounds that made up her suffering,I heard her voice thin and broken: "I'm sorry.I'm sorry.I'm so sorry" The words came as if dragged out of her by a rope.
My stomach turned.The apology sounded like the death of everything I'd believed in,her love,my trust,the future I'd imagined.It wasn't a real apology,it was a surrender,a coerced concession spilled out under the weight of fists.
When they finally stopped,not because mercy found them but because my father gave the silent signal to end,she was on her knees,shaking, mouth open on an echo of the last syllable.Her blood and tears streaked together down her face.She couldn't hold herself up,she slumped,folded into herself as if she could become small enough to disappear.
My father stepped forward,reached down and lifted her chin with two fingers like a man checking the price on a ruined thing.His eyes were bright with something that wasn't satisfaction so much as confirmation.
"Good" He said. "Now remember that sound" He leaned toward me. "You remember it too,son.You remember that she will always be marked.You carry that with you if you keep her"
They dragged her out of the room then,not gently, not hurriedly,but with the measured efficiency of men who had done this before.I wanted to move with them,to wrench her away,to tear the whole building down with my bare hands,but the hands that had held me back were still on me.My father's final look as they took her away was calm,the mild interest of a man closing a book.
When the door clicked shut behind her,the silence that followed was worse than any sound.I stood there,slick with sweat,the rawness in my throat fiercer than any wound.The world I thought I knew had been hollowed out in a single hour and the only thing left inside that empty space was the echo of Sua's apologies,the sound of someone being made to prove their guilt with their own suffering.
I pressed my palms to my eyes until the light turned red and I wondered what kind of man I would have to become to fight what sat across from us: not just my dad,but the history he guarded with fists and loyalty.