Then there would be no helping me.

I looked to her, my eyes wild, mouth open. She was grabbing her throat and coughing, trying to sit up, both cheeks red and swollen from where he had hit her. Her shirt was up around her breasts, and her underwear was crooked, halfway down her thighs.

Jesus Christ. If I hadn’t gotten here in time…

“Luisa,” I whispered, reaching for her. She looked at me with fear, total and utter fear, and tried to scoot backward and away from me. The bed and nightstand was blocking her exit.

I raised my palms as I went toward her on my knees. “Luisa, it’s okay,” I said as calmly as I could. It wasn’t easy. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She shook her head, panicking, her hands clawing at the sheets as if she were trying to climb up on the bed. I gently grabbed her arm, but she pulled it away and started shaking uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face.

I was frozen in my own form of panic. I was watching her destruct. I was watching her break. And it hadn’t been me who broke her.

“You promised,” she gasped between her heaving sobs, crying into the side of the bed. “You promised.”

Her words sliced through me like the slickest blade. I had promised. I promised I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. I promised to protect her.

I broke my promise. And by doing so, I ended up breaking her after all.

Suddenly Este was beside me, trying to make a grab for her. I could hear The Doctor behind me, peering over Franco, remarking on my shot, how long it would take for him to die. But I remained there on my knees, stuck in that moment where I finally ruined Luisa. The coldest, blackest rage had a hold on me, and after a while, it was all I could feel.

Fury became my captor. My hands were bound in shame.

Eventually, The Doctor pulled me up to my feet and poured a vial of bitter liquid in my mouth, moving my jaw so I would swallow it. I could barely stand and found myself pitching over but The Doctor held me up. He was saying things but I couldn’t hear anything above the blood roaring in my ears. Fragments of my nightmare came rushing back.

“So what are your plans with him?” The Doctor asked. His words found their way into my ear, sinking in for the first time and penetrating the fog.

I looked to him in slow surprise. I was sitting in my chair in my office, The Doctor across from me, smoking a cigar. “Oh, so you’re finally here,” he said with a nod. “Nice of you to join the real world, Javier.”

“Where is Luisa?” I asked thickly, taking in my surroundings, wondering how catatonic I had been.

“Don’t worry about her,” he said with a flick of his wrist. “She’s with Este and Juanito in the kitchen. She’s drinking tea. She’s a little bruised but she’s fine otherwise.”

Fine? He hadn’t seen her destruction the way I had. That strong, beautiful woman folded over from too many years of fear.

I couldn’t stop seeing her eyes.

“Franco didn’t get a chance to rape her,” The Doctor went on, smiling slyly. “But I still think we should let him suffer, don’t you?”

“As much as humanely possible,” I said, my jaw clenching. My hands kept opening and closing, making fists. “I want to do everything that I told him I would do.”

“Either he wanted to test you or he had a death wish. Regardless, the man is a dumb fool and we don’t need dumb fools in our family, now do we?”

I shook my head absently, not really listening. I was already fantasizing about my revenge. I looked over at him. “You can revive him, right, if he dies or passes out?”

He chuckled. “Well, I can’t revive him if you remove his head, so save that for last.”

“That is the plan.”

He got up, a gleeful tone to his voice. “Tell me what tools you need and I’ll set things up in my office.”

The Doctor’s office was in the small guest cottage on the property. It’s actually where the Doctor lived. I wanted his torture house to be as far away from me as possible. Screams were so disturbing when you were trying to eat dinner, though now I wished his office wasn’t soundproof. I decided I would leave the doors and windows open and let everyone hear exactly what we were doing to Franco.

“I want a saw,” I said. “A very rough, strong saw. The kind that really rips flesh and gristle and bone. I want a jar of acid, something to dip toes and fingers and tongues in. I want a cattle prod. I want a red hot poker. My Taser gun.”

“I see. Would you also like a rat and a bucket? Medieval torture never goes out of style.” He went over to the door. “Franco is unconscious upstairs, but I’ll get him down. I stopped the bleeding because I wasn’t sure what you wanted to be done with him. He’ll be awake and ready for you by the time you come by.”

I swallowed hard, the anger continuing its course up and down my body, firing off in electric flames. I was going to make Franco pay. I was going to make him regret he ever looked in her direction. Then I was going to make Luisa see what I do to those who hurt her. I was going to make her look at him. And then she’d know exactly what I’d do for her.

This was all for her.

Luisa

The screaming started at four in the morning, about two hours after Franco had attacked me, and continued on well into the afternoon. At first it rattled me, bringing back memories of being at Salvador’s and the torture I had to hear, and it kept me from sleeping.

Not that I could sleep at first anyway. I knew Este and Juanito were always around, watching me. I suppose their job now was to protect me since Javier was out exacting torture, but that didn’t mean I trusted them. Who would protect me from them? Still, Juanito seemed safe enough, maybe because he was young and reminded me of a boy I grew up with. And to his credit, Este didn’t appear to hold any grudges over me attacking him again.

After a while though, I was able to rest, my head on the island in the middle of the chef’s kitchen. When I woke up around ten a.m., light streaming in the kitchen, Juanito was serving me tea and toast, the latter which I refused. I had no appetite. It was then that I noticed the screams were still coming from the cottage—the doctor’s office—though they were weak now and sporadic. They no longer had an effect on me. I was able to ignore them, and perhaps, if I was honest with myself, I was starting to enjoy them.

Just a little bit.

I had been lying awake in bed, daydreaming about a life I never had, when Franco came and knocked on my door. At first I thought it was Javier, coming to stay the night with me. It was so embarrassing when he turned me down, and I hated myself for being so needy and vulnerable in front of him. I just didn’t want to be alone. I had my reasons and my reasons all came true.

Once I saw it was Franco, I screamed. I could see it in his eyes, that vile tar, that blackness, what he had come for. I expected him to lumber toward me with his injured foot, but he was fast. He threw me out of bed and onto the floor, and after he punched me a few times, my cheekbones taking most of the hits, he started strangling me with one hand. With his other hand he squeezed my breasts painfully and started to yank down my underwear.

With Salvador, I had learned to stop fighting back. I learned to stop struggling. He had always told me it was his right as my husband to do whatever he wanted to me and that I had to do whatever he wanted to him. Even if I had been one of his whores, he would probably say the same thing. It was his right simply because he was Salvador Reyes.

But I wasn’t going to let Franco rape me, not without a fight. So I struggled. It was all in vain. His grip on my throat was so strong that I felt all the life drain out of me. The edges of my vision grew black as I gasped for breaths that I couldn’t take in. I thought I was going to die on that floor, completely helpless while he had his way with me.