CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1186 Words
Laura was at the Lords wife Court scrubbin the floor.
Then the brush slipped from Laura’s hands, water sloshing across the marble floor as the accusation hit her like a slap.
“The diamond bracelet… it’s gone!” The lords wife’s voice cracked through the room, sharp and venomous, echoing off the high ceilings of the west wing. Her face was twisted, not with grief, but with triumph,the kind someone wore when they finally had an excuse.
Laura straightened slowly, her knees trembling from hours of scrubbing on cold stone.
"Laura you" the Lord's wife voice echoed.
"You stole my jewelry "
"I didn't ma'am" Laura spoke out
“Don’t lie to us!” Tuna cut in, stepping forward with his jaw clenched. Her eyes, usually lazy with boredom, now burned with something darker. “We were the only three in here. Who else could it be?”
Laura’s breath caught. She looked between them.
Tuna, and the wife, whose hate had been quiet but constant . Now it had a weapon.
“Search her,” the Lord's wife hissed, raising a manicured hand.
Before Laura could move, two guards were on her. One wrenched her arm behind her back, the other yanked her bag open and dumped its contents onto the floor. A worn hair tie, a half-eaten biscuit, the cleaning rag she used for the baseboards. No bracelet. No jewels. Nothing.
“That proves nothing,” Tuna muttered. “She could’ve hidden it.”
The Lord's wife’s lips curled. “Take her to the lower room. If she won’t confess here, she’ll confess there.”
Laura’s blood went cold. She’d heard the servants whisper about the lower room. The place where questions got answered, one way or another.
She tried to struggle, but the guards were stronger. They dragged her down the stone stairs, past the pantry, past the furnace room, into a space that smelled of damp and rust and old fear. A single iron table sat in the middle, chains hanging from the wall.
“Please,” Laura whispered, her voice breaking. “I’ve done nothing. I’ve worked every day. I never touched"
The first blow came before she finished the sentence.
A fist to her ribs. She doubled over, gasping, tasting copper. Then another. And another. Her body hit the cold floor, and she tried to curl around the pain, but they wouldn’t let her.
“Where is it?” Tuna’s voice was distant, distorted, as if she were underwater. “Talk, girl.”
She didn’t answer. Because she couldn’t. Because there was nothing to tell.
Then came the iron.
They heated it by the furnace and pressed it against her leg first. The smell of burning skin filled the room, sharp and sickening.
Laura screamed.a sound she didn’t recognize as her own. Tears tore down her face, hot and useless. When they moved it to her hand, her fingers went numb, then seared with agony that made her vision white out.
Through the haze, she heard the wife’s voice, calm and detached, like she was discussing the weather.
“She’s stubborn. Leave her. She will confess or else she won't survive "
Laura lay there on the cold floor, her body broken, her breath ragged. Her leg throbbed, her hand felt like it didn’t belong to her anymore, and the taste of blood wouldn’t leave her mouth.
But in the middle of it all, one thought cut through the pain, clear and sharp:
They wanted this. They needed a thief. And I was the easiest one to blame.
The door to the lower room splintered inward with a crack like thunder.
Laura didn’t even register it at first. Her vision swam with pain, her burned hand clutched against her chest, her leg a raw, throbbing mess. She thought the guards were back for another round. She didn’t have the strength left to scream.
Then she heard it—his voice. Low, furious, cutting through the damp air like a blade.
“Who dares touch what is mine?”
The Alexander.
He stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the torchlight from the hall, chest heaving, fists clenched at his sides.
His usual cold, controlled mask was gone.
In its place was raw, barely contained rage. The kind that made even the guards step back and lower their weapons.
Tuna froze. The Lord's wife’s smug smile vanished, replaced by a flicker of panic.
“Alexander,” she said quickly, voice too high, too forced.
“This girl,she stole my jewelry. We were just”
“You beat her.” He didn’t look at her. His eyes were locked on Laura, lying broken on the floor. On the burns. On the blood. On the way she flinched even at the sound of his voice.
His jaw tightened. “And you laughed.”
The Lord's wife opened her mouth, but he was already moving.
He crossed the room in three strides, dropping to one knee beside Laura.
The moment he saw her hand—blistered, blackened, trembling,his expression darkened further.
His hand hovered, not touching, as if he wasn’t sure if even that would hurt her more.
“She stole it!” the wife shrieked, desperate now. “I have it right here!”
From the folds of her gown she pulled the diamond bracelet, letting it glint in the torchlight. She and her Tuna stepped forward, laughing, triumphant. The sound was ugly, cruel.
“It was never missing,” the tuna sneered. “We just wanted to see how far she’d break before she confessed. She’s a thief. A liar. She deserves it.”
The Alexander didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
He rose slowly, every movement deliberate, and turned to face them. The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“You dare what is mine,” he said quietly. “My own. To torture an innocent girl for your amusement.”
“It was a lesson”
“It was a crime.”
In one motion he backhanded tuna across the face. The sound echoed like a gunshot. She stumbled, clutching her cheek, eyes wide with shock. The daughter gasped and stepped back.
“Nobody,” he said, voice like steel, “touches what belongs to me. Not even you.”
The guards didn’t move. They wouldn’t dare.
He turned back to Laura, lifting her gently despite the fury still burning in his eyes. She was too light, too still. Her lips were cracked, her face streaked with tears and soot.
“Tuna,” he said without looking back. “You’re dismissed. If you ever raise your hand on her again, I’ll remove it myself.”
Tuna swallowed hard and fled.
The lord’s wife stepped forward then, silence.
The Alexander scooped Laura into his arms, cradling her like she might shatter. As he turned to leave, he paused at the doorway and glanced back at the Lords wife and tuna, still frozen in fear.
The door slammed behind him, and the only sound left was Laura’s shaky breathing, and the Alexander's heartbeat against her ear,fast, angry, and fiercely protective.
- Writer
