"Don't Let Them Breathe"

Warning: DO NOT READ if you haven't read "Torn from You" it will ruin it for you. HUGE SPOILER ALERT!(Warning scene very disturbing. 18+yrs).

Don't let them Breathe

The door creaked as I pushed it open. It felt as if I was opening the door to my soul and it was groaning on its last thread of sanity. I’d thrown up five times this morning as I paced back and forth waiting to meet my father. I thought nothing in this world could make me willingly walk back into his life... I was wrong.

I stepped into the dimly lit house, then slammed the door shut with the heel of my foot, announcing my presence, although I suspected Raul knew the moment I left my house an hour ago.

The second my eyes hit her it was like a part of my heart was sucked from my chest and shattered. The cutting rawness of pure hatred for my father struck me so hard that I had to close my eyes and take several deep breaths to keep from ripping his throat apart with my bare hands.

I had to breathe through this. Block it out. Not feel. Feeling anything was going to kill Eme and me both.

Alfonzo shoved Emily’s head away from him, and her body swung back and forth on the chains. My weight shifted forward, the instinct to run to her automatic.

Fuck. No. Jesus. I had to get my shit together or my mother was dead and Emily... Emily would suffer a far worse fate than death.

I looked away from her. This was survival. I grew up knowing how to keep my emotions in check, yet seeing Emily now...every single emotion was crashing down on me at the same time, and I was going to break. I could feel it. My mind was screaming with the need to protect her, and here I stood just watching as she hung cruelly from chains.

I don’t know how I managed to keep my voice steady enough to speak, but I did. “Are you screwing up our deal already, Raul? She is mine. That was non-negotiable. I believe I made myself perfectly clear.”

I knew the moment she recognized my voice. Her body was trembling, and then she started sobbing. Jesus. Fuck. I couldn’t do this. How could I let her hang there when I stood ten feet away?

Fuck, baby.

“She’s yours when I tell you she is. And lose the attitude or our deal is finished.”

I remained silent, trying to get myself under control when inside I was a fuckin’ tornado that was heading straight for Raul, ready to shred him to pieces and shove his body parts up Alfonzo’s ass until he vomited them.

The wind whistled through the cracks in the window frames, and the sound covered up my swift inhales as I slowly got my breathing under wraps. “Our deal is solid.”

Raul laughed, and I remembered the sound so clearly, like it was yesterday my mother and I escaped him. “She likes to fight. You’re lucky I’m allowing this. She’d make a hefty amount on the market. Would you prefer I test that theory?”

“Logan?” Emily called. “Logan. Please.”

I bit the inside of my lip so hard I tasted iron. My mother’s words repeated over and over in my head. Emotions will get you killed here. Drown them. Don’t let them breathe. Use a physical reminder of that when you need to, Logan. It was a piece of advice I’d need more now than I ever needed growing up in that place.

I dug one fingernail on my right hand into the nail bed of my thumb so hard that I could think about nothing else except the pain. It was just enough to get myself under control.

“No. You have what you want, and I have what I want—her. The rest is left alone.” I tuned out the sounds of the chains she was swinging from and shielded my mind as I spoke.

“Logan! Please.”

Jesus, Mouse. Jesus, don’t fight. I wanted to scream. I wanted to beg her to stop fighting, and tell her I’d get her out of this. But I couldn’t. If Raul suspected for a second that I was playing him, I’d lose her.

Her only hope was for the Logan she knew to die. For me to become the man Raul wanted as his son.

It was that moment that I blocked her from my mind. A waterfall of coldness seeped into my body as I let in the emotionless boy I had once been back in.

“Never call him that!” Raul shouted. “He is Master to you now.”

I saw Alfonzo raise the whip, and I reached out my arm to stop him, but Raul’s sharp glance had me lowering it. I couldn’t stop what was about to happen.

A lash swept across her back, and she screamed. That sound...that scream would haunt me for my lifetime, and I deserved it.

“Logan!” she shouted.

“Do exactly as you’re told, Emily,” I grit out.

The slither of leather sliding across the floor sounded and then the whoosh in the air. My body rejected everything that was happening, and the cramping in my muscles from being contracted so tight became agony. But I wanted the pain; I needed it. It took everything in me to stop myself from yelling at Alfonzo to whip me instead. To beat me. To tear me apart, just so she can be left alone.

I repeated over and over again that it’d be over soon. Emily was strong. She’d survive. The problem was that I was afraid of her being too strong. Of fighting when I needed her to submit. Fuck, I wanted her to fight. I taught her how to fight, damn it. And yet, it was the worst possible thing she could do here.

“You speak only when you’re told to or you’ll feel the cut of the whip. Understand?”

The whip came down hard on her back again, and Emily gasped, throwing her head back as her body swayed back and forth. “Yes. Yes, I understand.”

I heard the glide of leather on the tiles over and over again.

“Please, no more.”

Her plea was ignored as the whip crackled and slashed into the back of her legs. She shrieked and tried to get away, yanking on the chains and moving her body in different directions.

Again it came.

Then again.

And again.

Blood dripped from my nail bed.

I cursed under my breath, and Raul heard. It was my first mistake. He’d continue whipping her because of that mistake. I did it to her. Fuck, baby. Fuck.

Raul nodded to Alfonzo, and the snap of the leather sounded again and again. Tears pooled in my eyes as she now hung limp and sobbing.

Anger was the only thing left to keep me sane, but I had to keep it contained. I glared at my father who finally held up his hand and ordered Alfonzo to stop. The fury was at myself for getting her messed up in this. The hate for myself. There’d be no room for mistakes or for sympathy. Sympathy and caring would get her sold.

“We leave in two days. Take her to the transporter’s location. He will crate her and meet—”

“No,” I said, trying desperately to keep the panic in me under wraps. “That won’t be necessary.” I’d grown up hearing about girls dying in those crates.

“Do you think I trust you?” Raul stood, and the scrape of his chair screeched.

I met my father’s eyes. “She dies in transport then you have nothing. And I have nothing. The girl stays with me.”

Silence.

“Very well, but Dave and Jacob will accompany you. Logan...no mistakes. Compendia?”

I saw Alfonzo walk up behind Emily, and I thought he was going to undo the chains, but when his hand slowly slid down her back over the red welts and then stopped on her ass...

No. Fuck, no.

“Raul.” I took a step towards her, and Raul held up his hand.

“You go near her,” he picked up his phone, “and your mother is dead.”

I couldn’t see exactly what Alfonzo was doing to her, because his body blocked me, but I saw Emily’s body shaking violently.

She cried louder, pulling at her bonds, blood dripping from her wrists. “Please don’t touch me. Help me...”

Both my thumb nail beds were bleeding as I stood, unable to do anything except watch with shattering horror. I knew Raul was testing my loyalty, the lengths I could be pushed with Emily. He was immoral and satanic with a filthy, cruel mind that I couldn’t forget—ever. What I thought was bad, was never bad enough for him. When I thought nothing could get worse...it would.

“No. Please no. Why are you doing this?”

Her plea snapped my emotionless, cool facade for a brief second. “What the fuck? She’s mine. No one touches her.”

“Your slave is mine. I’ll let you have her, but not until you prove yourself.” Raul’s mouth twitched, and Alfonzo made a low groan and stiffened.

Jesus, Christ. I was going to beat the fuckin’ hell out of that guy then cut off his dick and shove it down his throat.

Alfonzo reached up and undid the manacles, and she fell hard to her knees.

Mouse. Eme. I love you. Fuck, baby, I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.

I knew she’d look at me, and I wanted to turn away. To avoid seeing the hatred, the pain, and, worst of all, the betrayal in her eyes. But I deserved every one of those emotions from her. I needed to see it, so I could become who she needed me to be.

Slowly she turned and looked over her shoulder.

My breath stopped as I stared back at her. But I wasn’t looking at her. I didn’t see Emily anymore. I saw nothing. I was nothing. My mind had become a cold, dark place where I’d live for the next several weeks until I got her out.

Logan was dead.