Page 247 of Like Grim Death: Part One
He kicks me again, his shoe flat on my lower back, more a stomp than a kick. It steals my breath for a second, but I just laugh once more. He’s got more than this. I know he’s fucked up. I know he wants to snap something.
Snap. Me.
“If you can’t do it with your bare hands, grab a tool. There are some along the back wall.” I shrug just as his fist collides with the side of my head, angling my neck to the side for a second. The blow feels deep, like a resounding ache, and my ears ring, but it’s still not enough.
I hear him walking away.
I smile to myself.
Then a jarring, vivid pain lights up along the center of my back, right over my fucking spine. A cry leaves my lips, completely involuntary. The ache is vibrating, an echo of the connection between the steel of the hammer and my body.
Before I can say anything else, he’s in front of me, kicking me in the solar plexus, hard, and knocking me onto my back, which is still reverberating with pain.
He kicks my inner thigh, pushing it open, and I know where the next blow is going to land because every muscle in my body tenses up, but it doesn’t stop the groan from leaving my lips as his foot connects with my dick.
My hands fly to my groin to cover myself, but a second later, the hammer smashes against the top of my wrist and that searing pain causes me to jerk my hands close to my chest as I lie on my back and this time,he’s fucking laughing.
He kicks me between the legs again, something my father used to do to me when I didn’t listen or I asked questions or I tried to stand up for Mom, to the point I stopped doing the latter. I never did again. I let her take the beatings instead of me because I was a fucking coward. And now someone is fucking with Ella and I can’t fix it because I’m not any better and I’mstillthat same coward who let Brooklin’s world get all fucked up. I’m still the same man who couldn’t protect either of my sisters. Who let Lucifer fuck around with coke and I just laughed when he did his first line when we weren’t even teenagers yet, because it was an escape and he deserved it and we all needed it and I looked away when Ezra would get so fucking hammered he’d pass out in the middle of a party. I helped him to his bed but I didn’t say anything the first time, the fifth time, the hundredth fucking time.
The pain overwhelms me, coming in a wave as Father Tomas drops the hammer on my knee and my entire body jolts but he’s straddling me, hitting my fucking face, my pulse still throbbing between my legs from where he kicked me.
Every blow takes something from me, and I lift my hands up to stop him but he grabs my wrists together, forcing them back to the cement as he slaps me, the least bad thing he’s done.
I keep my eyes closed, my body doubled up, tense, but he’s on top of my chest and I can’t move and my legs feel useless with the sharp ache in my dick and he’s slapping me again and again and again and my hand is aching, the one he took the hammer to and I wonder if he broke one of my fingers and I’m thinking I’m useless and I deserve this and every person I’ve let down would smile at me right now. At this.
He slaps me again, and again, fire on my face, throbbing throughout my body, my teeth tight together as I try to breathe and breathe andbreathe.
Tears form behind my eyes.Fucking coward.
He’s not making a sound, but the two words echo in my brain anyway, just like someone is speaking them to me.
Fucking. Coward.
A strangled groan leaves me, my nostrils flaring as Tomas hits just above my brow, and something hot and wet and shameful spills down from the corner of my eyes, streaking over my face and I wish it was blood but it’s worse. It’s cowardice, and I try to fight Tomas’s hold on my hands to shield myself, but he puts his weight on my wrists and a scream leaves my throat but Tomas doesn’t stop because he gets high on my humiliation, and I can’t blame him.
I deserve it.
My throat burns as another scream leaves me and he hits me with a closed fist, and it feels like my brain fucking rattles inside my skull and I know he might’ve fucked me up for good as my ears ring and everything is wavy in my mind because I hear something.
Something I shouldn’t.
Footsteps.
A door thudding closed.
“Mavy?”A voice like a light. A name that represents a version of me I’m not right now.I’m not what you need, pretty girl.
My chest tightens, my body alive with so much pain, it’s almost euphoric in the worst fucking way. I taste iron on my lips, and I hear it again, and it’s louder now, closer somehow because my brain has been broken and now I’m completely fucked up.
“Mavy!”
Tomas doesn’t stop, lost in blood lust, and I try to open my eyes, but my lids feel swollen and everything fucking hurts and—
I hear something steel scrape against cement. A strangled cry. “Get off him!”
Then the body beating mine seems to jolt and a scream is leaving someone’s mouth that isn’t mine. The weight on my chest goes to one side.
“Ella, stop—”
