Page 7 of The Last Time You Break Me

Hell, it would even break most monsters.

I couldn’t allow myself to eclipse this space with my demons.

Not yet.

I needed to do this.

I was here for a reason. I allowed myself to be taken for a reason. Tobleedfor a reason.

I needed an answer. Answers for everything.

For the family.

It was taking them too long to follow the leads fed to them. The very same leads I’m determined came from a traitor within our ranks.

My father suspects it. So does Reggie.

I refused to return home empty handed.

It’s a dreadful feeling walking the halls of your home where devious lies dwell.

It’s wrong. Never feeling safe. Never knowing if the moment you lay your head down at night and close your eyes if it will be the time when a clip is emptied into your skull in the name of revenge.

Fearing backlash from your enemies is one thing. Stalkers in the night.

Sharing a house with a traitor is another altogether.

Unnatural when we work on the bonds of loyalty. Without it, we have nothing. It’s taken years for me to slowly find my footing within the ranks.

As the boss’s daughter.

They talk a big game.

Just as they stand before me and tell me I’m ready, they flick the switch to the electrical cables and zap my ass again. All in the name of training us to survive this cut-throat world.

Reggie always told me I wouldn’t withstand my father’s training.

The brutality of it.

Some days, I wonder if I had been born normal, if he’d be right.

But I wasn’t born normal.

I was born different.

Wicked.

I allowed them to hurt me, to abuse me because I needed my fix. Because I needed to feel that high. It might not make senseand it might be seen as something horrid, but the adrenaline, the rush I get from being beaten down, only to rise.

It was a better feeling than any drug could execute. A high forever lasting.

A Harley Quinn laugh burst from my chest, maniacal and unsettled chuckles as I taunted him, “Best you got shit-dick?”

One thing my father’s ruthlessness taught me…

Not only how to withstand the pain.

But how to use it as fuel.

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