CHAPTER 29: YOU CAN’T BREAK

Chapter 29: You Can’t Break

Warning; This Chapter Might Be Sensitive to some people!

Danielle woke with a stabbing pain in her mouth. Her head ached and her eyes felt drowsy.

For a second she did not know where she was. Then the smell hit her. Wet earth and smoke, some cold-like metal.

A rough hand grabbed her hair and pulled her upright.

"Auch!" She yelped and blinked hard...

Ethan was looking at her closely.

"You’re awake," he squatted closer and laughed. "Good. I wanted to see you look at me."

Danielle tried to move but ropes bit into her wrists. She was tied to a chair.

The ropes felt rough and had left red marks. She tasted blood from her lip.

Ethan pushed a hand under her chin and forced her face up. "Look at me...Look at the man who ruined your life. Look at the man who killed your peace."

She did not answer. Her throat felt dry and made it hard to swallow. Tears filled her eyes, but Danielle had learned to hide small things. She breathed through this weird pain and held her face steady.

Ethan smiled like a man who enjoyed the torture he gave. He walked around her chair as if he were at a show.

"You should have let the world be easier. Instead you live. You live like a spoiled child. What a waste."

Something in Danielle snapped, a small bright thing that people call anger. Anger came quicker than any fear. She looked at him, and she did not bow her head.

But the quick flinch made her neck’s wound open up, reminding her of what Theo had to do to save her...

"You do not get to decide that...You do not get to tell me what to be."

Ethan’s face changed for a second, and his smile widened.

He reached behind him and pulled out a knife, holding it like a toy.

"This is the part you do not like...You see the steel and you feel small. You see the blade and you want someone to save you. Is that it? Is that why you sleep with a guard?"

Her hands shook against the rope but she did not speak...Danielle was thinking of Theo.

To the way he had stood and protected her. To the way he had taught her to breathe when fear tried to swallow them whole. She let that thought anchor her.

Ethan stepped back and called out with a voice that wanted an audience. Footsteps answered him. Men came into the cabin, some of them faces Danielle did not know.

They formed a rough circle.

Ethan walked to the center and set the knife on a stump. It looked ordinary and hateful on that wood. "Do it," he said. "Do what is proper. Make the show. Prove you are brave."

He spat the words in her face like they were simple commands. He wanted to break something inside her. He wanted her to beg, to sob, to fall apart under his feet.

This devil wanted an easy victory.

Danielle felt the rage and the shame push at her at once. She felt small and huge at the same time. She could hear every breath in the cabin.

"I will not play your game...You can cut your things. You can show your knives. You can shout. But I will not make you the master of my voice. I will not feed you the victory of my fear."

"You think you are brave?" he hissed. "You think you can choose how this goes?"

"Maybe I am scared...Maybe I am angry. But I can still choose. I choose to live."

One of the men moved forward as if to make Ethan take the knife. Ethan waved him back with a hard look. He liked the scene being exactly his pain, control, a slow show of power.

But Ethan had expected tears, not this defiance.

"You are wrong...No one chooses for long when I decide otherwise." He picked the knife up and gripped it like a threat. He lifted his arm like he might show the men something brutal.

Ethan wanted someone to shout and cry and the circle of men to clap in approval. He wanted to hurt the little light in her chest.

Instead, she spoke again, softer this time but stronger. "You are wrong because I have a life. I have people who would come. I have a man who would die for me. I have the right to be angry at you. I have the right to breathe."

Ethan’s face changed for the first time. It was a small thing but it was there. He backed up a step, not liking fear in himself.

He had always hated that in others.

"You see, my little baby...I don’t like women like you."

Danielle rolled her eyes, "the feeling is mutual..."

"Oh? You think I gave you permission to talk? Hahahha!" Ethan looked around, making sure his people laughed too.

They did-but forcibly.

"Come on, cut yourself in fronf of us. That’s what we’ve been told...you liked hurting yourself for attention. Me and my men will give it to you, so come on."

What a disgusting and narcissistic demon Ethan was...whoever he was, Danielle couldn’t stop comparing him to Theo.

Theo never made fun of her hurting herself or when she was desperately begging for attention. Theo, no matter how cold and mean he was-he never made jokes about her past.

"You’re a little man...the so-called people around you are forced to laugh at your jokes. Are you so desperate for approval? Perhaps, you should cut yourself too...give them a show."

Ethan raised his brow, and placed his hand on his neck. "You little bitch..."

"Insults...but zero intelligence...whoever raised you, did an awful job."

A smirk spread across Ethan’s face, "lovely. But how about, I’ll undress you in front of everyone and let you use your body like a bitch?"

"A threat to rape?" Danielle raised her eyes to stare directly into his. "And you can’t do it yourself because you’re scared that people will see what a small dick you have inside your pants?"