WANT ME BACK. BREAK ME TWICE

Episode 12

The morning after the fire, the rain had stopped, leaving the estate draped in a heavy, humid fog. I sat on the edge of my narrow cot, my entire body shaking with a deep, bone-chilling fever. Every breath I drew felt like inhaling crushed glass; my lungs rattled violently, and a dull, constant ache radiated from my ribs. I touched my cheek, it was swollen , a brutal reminder of Marina’s slap.

But there was no time to bleed.

"Get up, lowlife," Treas’s voice cut through the damp air of the staff corridor. She stood at the doorway, her wrapped hand resting delicately against her belly, her eyes flashing with a restlessly cruel satisfaction. "The back courtyard is a mess from last night. The wind tracked the black soot and ash all over the marble patio. Clean it. I want every single trace of yesterday scrubbed away before Rohan gets back from his morning meetings."

Every trace of yesterday. She wanted the physical ash of my mother's painting erased from existence.

I didn't say a word. I dragged my uselessly stiff knee not fully recovered out of bed, my skin a translucent, sickly gray. As I walked past my sister, Treas leaned in, her whisper sharp and venomous. "If I see a single black speck left on that white stone, you'll look more pathetic than you do now.

For two hours, I knelt on the cold, damp marble of the patio, balancing my weight on my stronger side. With my left hand, I pushed a heavy scrub brush, mixing my sweat with the black residue of my burned memories. The physical pain was immense, feeling my eyes with tears I couldn't control but inside my chest, the massive wall of my calculated rage was hardening into iron.

By midday, the gravel crunched. Rohan’s sleek town car had pulled up the driveway.

When he stepped out, his sharp eyes immediately scanned the courtyard, locking onto my frail, trembling figure. He paused, his jaw tightening. Even from across the yard, I could feel his gaze tracking the angry red swelling on my cheek and the way I held my breath to suppress my tearing coughs. Something raw and uninvited twisted sharply in his features.

"Rohan! Darling!" Treas hurried out onto the patio, her face instantly melting into an expression of fragile distress. She wrapped her uninjured arm around his waist, leaning heavily against his side. "Thank goodness you're home. I've been having such terrible anxiety since last night. The doctor said stress is dangerous for the baby."

Rohan’s eyes didn't leave my face, his voice dropping into a tight, low register. "What happened to her face, Treas?"

Before Treas could answer, Marina stepped out onto the balcony above, her voice smooth and dripping with engineered poison. "Elara had another violent episode last night, Rohan. She threw a tantrum, tried to damage property in the yard, and had to be restrained. It seems her jealousy over Treas’s pregnancy is making her completely unstable. She is a danger to the child."

Rohan's expression hardened , his tired face instantly becoming stiff. I watched the internal conflict inside him turn into a toxic, defensive anger. He hated how much he cared. He hated how my suffering pulled at his soul. So, to protect his own fractured ego, he chose to believe the lie.

He crossed the patio in long, heavy strides, stopping right in front of me. His towering shadow completely blocked out the sun. "Look at me," he commanded.

I slowly stopped scrubbing. I lifted my head, keeping my dark eyes entirely steady, meeting his furious gaze through the falling strands of my damp hair.

You're becoming a real danger to my family, you know that Elar" Rohan rasped, his voice rough. I saw his fingers clenching into fists at his sides, fighting the subconscious urge to reach out to my bruised skin. "They tell me you're throwing tantrums because you can't accept your place."

"I am cleaning the stone, Sir," I whispered, my voice paper-thin and hollow.

"Don't lie to me!" he snarled, the absolute lack of fear in my eyes driving him to the brink of madness. He needed me to break. He needed me to scream at him, to fight him, to give him a reason to feel something other than this suffocating guilt. "If you cannot control your malice, you will not see Allegra at all. I will revoke the visitation tomorrow morning. Permanently." No, he can't do that, it would probably be my last time seeing my daughter and he's going to take it away from me.

The direct threat to my daughter was supposed to crush me. It did, but I couldn't react, I couldn't plead not because that's what he wants but because a particular reaction from me could make him suspicious, and I can't afford that. My heart bled at the thought I wouldn't be seeing Allegra.

But I only looked at him silently. The void in my eyes grew vast and completely empty of him. To Rohan, it looked like total submission. Although he wanted a different reaction from me. "Beg me Elara, I will completely revoke your chances of ever seeing Allegra again, and that's what you hold most dear. That's exactly why you endure all the torture, right? So beg me" he hissed "and I might consider." He said as a cold faint line almost like a smile appear on his face, filled with arrogance and something like a plea. He didn't know that inside my mind, the final thread holding me to his world had just been cleanly severed.

"Understood," I murmured softly.

Rohan exhaled a ragged breath, his face returning dark, angered at how I choose to not satisfy his ego. Turning on his heel and walking back toward the mansion without another word. "Keep her away from the main house," he ordered the security guards coldly. "She stays in the servant quarters until further notice."

Late that night, I sat alone in the dark kitchen. The house was dead silent. A sudden, violent spasm shook my chest, and I bent double, a hacking, dry cough tearing through my throat. When I pulled my hand away, my palm was slick with dark, arterial blood.

My body was failing. The cold basement and the brutal labor had broken my physical shell.

Slowly, deliberately, I reached into the hidden lining of my sweater and pulled out the small, amber glass vial Mr. Zach had given me. It caught the dim moonlight filtering through the window, glowing like a dark, intoxicating jewel.

“A fraction of a milligram off... and the central nervous system forgets how to wake up entirely. The heart simply stops.” Zach's warning echoed in my head.

A week ago, I might have felt a flicker of human fear. I might have doubted the lethal mathematics of faking my own demise. But as I looked at my bloodstained palm, and remembered the ash of my mother's painting, the chilling floor of the storage room and the cold, unyielding cruelty in Rohan's eyes, the fear evaporated into nothingness.

The drug wasn't a danger anymore. It was my deliverance. It was the only door out of this cage.