Page 1 of Broken Hearts

1

Celeste

I knewwhat I had to do now. The thought was burned into my mind, searing in its intensity. I didn’t have any other choice.

This was the only way forward for me.

I ran toward the pipe, picked it up and dashed back over to Alex and Dan, who were still brawling on the opposite side of the underground shelter at the back of the smaller cell. Dan saw me coming and twisted his head toward me. “Do it!” he roared, jabbing Alex in the nose. Blood immediately spurted from his face. “Kill him!”

“No. I don’t think so.” I lingered a few feet before them, tapping the pipe against my left hand.

“What?” Dan’s eyes went wide, panicked. Alex took the second of weakness as a chance to overpower him, quickly and deftly putting him in a chokehold. “Celeste… fucking hit him….” His eyes began to bulge.

“No. I can’t.”

Alex looked at me, eyes burning with intensity as he waited to see what the hell I was up to. I hoped to god I was doing the right thing. Hoped to god I hadn’t just made the worst mistake of my life and signed my own death warrant.

I looked back down at Dan. “I’m not helping you escape. You might not have personally raped or tortured any of those kids, but you helped the ones who did. You could’ve tried to stop it, reported them, done anything to try and help, like any decent human being would. But you didn’t. You chose money over humanity. Fucking money!”

“I… I needed it,” he choked out.

I shook my head and sneered at his pathetic joke of an excuse, unable to believe he actually thought I was that stupid that I might fall for it. Kids and teens had been abused, raped, and murdered for years under the watch of men like him. I’d seen the evidence now, and I’d even heard some of the horrendous details from his own mouth. But apparently, he expected people to understand his position, because he ‘needed money’. Everyone fucking needed money! It was the thinnest excuse I’d ever heard.

I narrowed my eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re just as sick and guilty as the rest. Just as much of a monster. So I won’t help you. Even if it means I have to stay here and lose my chance at freedom.”

“What the fuck?” His eyes bulged wider. “No!”

“Yes.” I gently tapped the pipe against my hand again, my shoulders tense as I waited for the inevitable explosion.

“No! You fucking cunt! Stupid fucking whore!” There it is. He struggled against Alex’s grip, voice high-pitched and panicked. “I’m getting out of here one way or another, and when I get back and let them know where you two are, they’ll come for you. They’ll rain hellfire on you, and I can’t wait to watch them cut your pretty little—”

Alex’s left hand pressed down on Dan’s throat, turning his words into muffled chokes and gurgles. He pulled a big, sharp knife out of his deep right pocket and held it up, looking at me questioningly.

“Wait,” I said, my voice coming out in a hiss between my teeth.

My pulse throbbed in my temples and the world seemed to darken and close in around me, narrowing my vision to Dan’s pathetic form. I didn’t feel scared right now. Not even a bit. The only thing in my mind, the only thing strong enough to force out the fear for now, was fury. It wasn’t the sort of fury people talked about in books or movies where they described it as red and blazing hot. It was cold, stony, crystallizing my vision and blurring everything else except Dan.

Until now, I’d never known what it was like to truly want revenge on someone. Not even Alex—when it came to him, all I’d ever really wanted was freedom, not vengeance.

I raised the pipe and brought it down on Dan’s left kneecap. He howled in agony, but I barely heard it through the blood pounding in my ears. My rage would not be denied. I smashed it into his right kneecap, then stood back. “Try running back to your sick bosses now, asshole.”

The only thing holding him up now was Alex’s arms. He glared at me from under his grip, his eyes glittering with malice. “Stupid slut,” he said before wincing and gritting his teeth. “I can’t wait to watch them fucking rape your ass until you bleed and cut you into—”

Alex cut him off again, digging the end of the blade into the big vein on the left side of his neck. He looked right at me as he did it, and I shrank back, seeing something new in his expression. Pure, unadulterated rage. Bloodlust. Intent to kill. I’d never seen that when he looked at me before.

I nodded at him. He smiled, then dragged the knife blade across Dan’s throat and stepped back. He never took his eyes off me.

I stepped back too, and I watched with a stony face. Dan gasped and clutched at his neck, his dark eyes wide with horror as he tried in vain to stem the flow of blood. It didn’t just seep between his fingers like it did on all the movies. It exploded out of him in thick crimson torrents, spraying everywhere, some of it even reaching me, collecting on my shirt in droplets.

I wasn’t horrified, like I probably should be. I didn’t scream, didn’t do anything to help. I simply watched in fascination, almost hypnotized as the man bled out in front of me. Something flashed in the back of my mind, and I finally understood after all these years why I did nothing when I witnessed my father’s murder. Why I stood there for twenty straight minutes just staring and staring.

I remembered everything about that day now. I remembered sitting at the foot of the stairs, just out of sight of my parents. I heard my dad saying that I would be given to his friends at their ‘social club’ on my seventh birthday in a few months, and I remembered feeling a cold, creeping horror and wondering why my daddy didn’t want me. All those friends of his were nice to me, but they always wanted to tickle me and have me on their laps, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, either.

I remembered Mom screaming and crying, and then I went upstairs, not wanting to hear anymore. All I wanted was to step out of my life, go anywhere but here, but I was too little to do that. There was no escape.

This was my life now.

My young brain must’ve quickly suppressed the awful memory of my father’s betrayal in an attempt to cope, but not enough to stop me from standing by and doing nothing when I saw him being butchered in the snow when I went outside a while later. I remembered standing there and wondering what was wrong with me, wondering why I couldn’t find it in myself to scream or run for help.

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