Page 40 of Caged Heart
Him who, the governor?
Mars rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms. His hands stopped the rubbing motion, pushing them deep in his sockets. Something was happening that neither Monica nor I could stop. The sinking feeling in my body took me prisoner as their father lifted Ares’s head off the table even though I didn’t realize when he put it back down, and walked him over to Mars.
“Fuck her or fuck your brother. It shouldn’t be hard since you’ve already had one of them,” The bile rose with each implication of what happened to the brothers. “My advice, try a new piece of ass before I take you both as an example then have all the men in here further remind you what it is to be part of the Wick. And I promise you, son, they won’t be as gentle as I’ve ever been.”
The sensation of a million pin needles pricking me simultaneously was all I could feel on my skin as the bile didn’t just rise and stop there, this time, I leaned forward and emptied the contents of my stomach out on their plush carpeting.
My anger rose with every gut wrenching vomit that left my body. When I shut my eyes, all I could think about was the brothers' disdain towards each other. The way Ares slept in the closet, the bruises on his body and the smile on Mars. The one that I didn’t know masked his pain and hurt. The laughing that they both did with us but never with each other. The rage they emptied on the rink when they fought other people.
That one night came to mind when he told me to run. It dug itself out of my memory and wasn’t so much the words he said to me but how he said it. How he was practically telling me something without telling me.
“You, yo—, yo—, you need to let me go. Please.” I begged with tears.
“Listen to me,” he said, emphasizing each of the last three words.
“Something isn’t right here, Pretty girl because I want to bury myself inside of you and fuck you until someone fucking sedates me. Hurting you until everything around you is me. I want to embed myself inside your person to the point that you become me. Another fucking god walking around hellbent on destruction. I want to turn you fucking inside out, Goldilocks.”
“Goldilocks, don’t cry.” I heard Ares’s voice through everything and I opened my eyes to see him looking at me even though his dad still had him restrained.
My lip quivered as I tried not to further release a sob but the tears fell down anyway.
“Save your tears, Goldilocks. Don’t cry for me. Don’t.” He said, so sadly that I just wanted to run to him and comfort him from it all.
I have to save him, and I have to save them all. No matter what.
Chapter28
Mars
No words could pass between my brother and I nor Monica and I. I just looked at them as my father had me at a crossroad. I couldn’t do this to Ares anymore. I know we were kids and it wasn’t something either of us enjoyed. We were fucked from the second we were born. Our names were a mockery if we think about it now and even our father’s name, fucking Kronos. I guess he really was more like him. Fucking his kids over and over until the only time they could be free is if he were dead. But even if he’s six feet under, hidden in tartarus to suffer all night and day, just like the Greek titan, he has also tainted us.
Ares and I will never be normal. I know what Ares does and he thinks I don’t know. I see the bruises. They bring me pain, yes, but they bring me joy because I know that he fights them. His demons aren’t going to eat him alive. He sees the same demon as I do; Artemis. When she died, I cried but didn’t cry tears of sadness like everyone thought, I cried tears of joy because she was too gone in the ways of our family, too far gone. Ares didn’t know this and I didn’t tell him. There were things that Artemis would do, they weren’t sexual, but they were still sickening. The love that she held for us pushed me further to abhor her. The way she infiltrated my mind to the point that I couldn’t see the other women that I was fucking but only her.
The therapy was the only way I knew I was going to not succumb to the same fate as her. She wanted Ares to herself and to take him as her own as if it were normal but I had to save my brother. Even if I was paralyzed every time our father hit him. I couldn’t do much. On the outside it seemed as though I was the perfect son, not moving everytime our father beat him right in front of me but what Ares doesn’t know is that father meticulously injected me with some kind of medicine that until this day, I didn’t know what it was but I couldn’t move. It wouldn’t allow me to move so all I had for myself was to see what was being done to my brother.
The nights he ran to my closet, I pretended I didn’t know where he escaped. Where he was hiding. Those were the nights Ares slept but I couldn’t because father would drag me out of the room and serve me up to his fucking sick buddies.
There was never any release for me. No reprieve for me as all I could pray for was for it to be over. I participated and complied so that it would go by faster. I did what I had to do to get back to Ares. The things that I was subjected to at a young age caused me to become someone who walked around with a shell of a body. Someone who used their body to get what they needed done and fucked women giving them everything but never letting them look at me in the eyes. They were always on all fours like an animal. That’s what it was; it was animalistic and unnatural. I transferred the hurt, the pain, the agony and everything to them. In my eyes, they weren’t deserving of much more than that. I knew it was my mother’s fault that I had such a warped sense of direction with women… Yet now when my gaze fell on Monica and Carmen, I couldn’t do it now. I couldn’t hurt them. Lily was lucky that she was away with Damon because they left early from the funeral, they didn’t have to see this. They didn’t have to be embarrassed to hear everything my father made my twin and I do.
Tears fell down my face as a headache was like a hostile squatter occupying every inch of my head. I looked at Ares, how he wanted to fight our father but his body kept him in the loop of those harsh touches, the pain of it all and my guilt ate at me. What kind of older brother was I that I didn’t shield him from everything? I should have protected him. Ares’s expression was drawn in agony, but not over his own pain, it was over the fact that we both knew of Monica’s past. What she faced and Father wanted me to bring that back to the forefront for her.
I couldn’t do that to her but then again I couldn’t do that to Ares. Without thinking it through, I shut my eyes and cleared my mind. I opened them again, looking straight at my father, not bothering to look at Ares because I knew he would cause me to balk at my decision.
“I’m sorry, Moni.” I said to her but I couldn’t look at her. “Ares, I should’ve been a better brother, I’m sorry. I should have protected you.”
“Shut up.” Ares said, but it wasn’t from a malicious place, he just wanted to move the attention away from Monica who was clutching her shredded clothes tight.
She won’t ever forgive me for this. I know this and am too ashamed to ever face any of my friends again.
“I’d rather take all the men on. I’m not choosing between them, I choose me.” I said.
“No.” Ares said softly as if he was being transported to a memory that was shaken loose. I don’t want to revisit it so I focused on the now.
“You’re a fucking joke, kid. You can’t even become a Wolfgang.” Father signaled one of the men and he grabbed me. Another one grabbed me too and started to take me away, and I yanked my arms out of their hold.
“I’m fucking going, don’t grab me like that.”
“Shut up.” Father said as if he were disappointed in me and madness overtook me.
