Chapter 8
- Time Skip -
My fingers coiled into the mattress, claws digging through the fabric as the stitches in my side wept a slow, hot grease against my skin. Sunha was beyond rage; he had entered the quiet, trembling state of a psychopath looking at a defective machine.
From the arched window, the scent of sulfur and expensive clove tobacco drifted over the bed. One of his older brothers sat on the sill, a massive, broad-shouldered silhouette. He didn't just watch-he idly flipped a heavy brass lighter, the rhythmic clink, clink, clink acting as a countdown timer for my execution. Sunha, entirely blinded by his own manic episode, didn't even notice him. To Sunha, I was an animal, and a man does not hide his corrections from his family.
"Look at you," Sunha whispered, his voice dangerously low, almost tender. He stepped onto the mattress, his heavy leather boots pressing directly onto my bandaged thigh. I screamed, a raw, wet sound, as the bones in my leg groaned under his full weight. "A primitive, leaking piece of meat. You ruin my floors. You embarrass my bloodline."
Desperate to stop the crushing weight on my leg, I reached up, my raw, gauze-wrapped fingers blindly grasping for his ankle-
*CRACK*
The backhand was so heavy it didn't just burn; it split the flesh over my cheekbone. The concussive force exploded in my left ear, leaving behind a dead, high-pitched whine.
My head slammed into the headboard, a fresh fountain of copper rushing into my throat. I choked on my own blood, coughing it onto the pristine white sheets.
"Did I tell you to touch me?" Sunha snarled.
He didn't wait for an answer. He seized my collar and yanked me forward. The fabric tore, digging into my throat before he threw me off the bed. I hit the hard linoleum floor with a sickening thud, the impact violently dislocating one of my weakened ribs. A jagged gasp caught in my chest-I couldn't breathe, my lungs locking up in pure, suffocating shock.
Before my vision could clear, the cold, agonizing weight of the iron chain dropped over my neck.
Sunha didn't just pull it backward; he braced his boot against the small of my spine and wrenched. The iron links bit instantly into my windpipe, crushing the cartilage. The air inside me was trapped; my chest heaved uselessly. I could feel the intense, terrifying pressure building behind my eyes as the capillaries began to pop, painting my vision in a bloody, purple static. My tongue swelled, protruding past my bleeding lips as my hands clawed uselessly at the metal links eating into my throat.
Yes... my fractured mind hissed through the suffocating blackness. Kill me, break me, just don't look away.
"Are you serious about choking a gutter rat to death in your own bedroom, Sunha?"
The older brother's deep baritone cut through the dark. The chain slackened just enough for a desperate, agonizing rasp of oxygen to tear down my throat. I vomited a mixture of bile and blood onto the floor, my entire body convulsing as I curled into a fetal position.
"Our father doesn't hire staff to scrape the fluids of a diseased rodent that crawled out of the gutter into our estate, you know?" the man spoke from the window sill, his voice smooth, mocking, and heavy with a lethal poise.
Sunha's blood boiled; the veins along his neck turned a violent purple as he clenched his fists around the iron links. "What are you doing in my room, you bastard? This is my business-"
"Your business becomes a nuisance when you expose the entire compound to your rabid little stray," the man interrupted, his sea-blue eyes glinting through the tobacco haze. "Your eldest brother, Seo, will not hesitate to put a bullet through your skull if this broken toy remains here and proves to be a useless parasite to our operations."
"Besides... a fragile, toxic piece of waste like her has zero survival value among alpha wolves like us," the man hummed, his piercing blue gaze finally sliding down to track my trembling form.
"Shut up-" Sunha roared. His large hand shot downward, clamping onto my waist with a bruising pressure, violently pulling me against his hip as if warning the intruder that I was his property alone to destroy.
The brother stepped down from the sill. He didn't just walk over; he stepped directly onto my outstretched, bandaged hand, grinding his heel into my broken fingers until the white gauze turned entirely crimson. I couldn't even scream anymore; my throat was too ruined, producing only a wet, pathetic whistle.
He stopped directly in front of our collapsed forms, towering high like a dark monolith. His hand came out of his pocket with terrifying speed, his thick fingers wrapping into my raven hair, and pulled my head up so violently I heard the distinct pop of my neck vertebrae.
His skin was incredibly hot, smelling of sulfur.
He forced my face upward, inspecting it like a butcher looking at rotting pork.
"This skeletal, pathetic little freak... this is your new pet? Look at this face. It's disgusting."
"Get your filthy hands off her!" Sunha thundered, lunging forward to angrily push the man away.
But the older brother was simply too broad, too immensely strong to be moved by a boy's rage. He didn't even shift his footing. Instead, he casually slammed my face downward into his own leather boot, breaking my nose against the rigid toe before letting my limp body collapse back into the pool of my own fluids.
The man's blue eyes shifted to Sunha-a deep, predatory look of absolute authority.
Unexpectedly, he threw his head back and unleashed a deep, booming laugh that echoed off the high ceiling.
"Pathetic boy," he laughed once the amusement subsided, looking down at Sunha with patronizing derision.
Before Sunha could utter a syllable, the man's hand shot out like a strike of lightning, wrapping his thick fingers around Sunha's throat and lifting him entirely off his feet, slamming him back into the wardrobe. The wood splintered. Sunha choked, his face turning a dark, humiliated purple as his older brother leaned in close, pulling his face forward until their noses almost touched.
"Don't you ever think you can drag just any gutter trash into this house, you bastard child," the brother whispered darkly.
He released his grip, sending Sunha hitting the floor, gasping, his pride completely shattered. Sunha fell completely silent, his head lowered for a very long time, as if those specific words-bastard child-had pierced his soul deeper than any blade.
The man straightened his black cuffs, his expression instantly reverting to a slate of pure Antarctic ice. He stepped over my twitching body and exited into the hall, closing the heavy oak door behind him, leaving us alone in the freezing quiet.
. . .
The darkness in the room felt infinitely heavier this time, a suffocating vacuum. The silence that followed was heavy, wet, and dead.
I dragged my shattered body a fraction of an inch forward, my face sliding through my own blood on the linoleum. "Sunha..." I wheezed, the sound barely human. "My... Master..."
Sunha didn't move. He stood by the shattered wardrobe, his face a white, expressionless mask of pure, unadulterated psychosis. His eyes weren't human anymore. The humiliation his brother had inflicted had curdled into something monstrous, and I was the only thing left in the room to absorb it.
Slowly, his hand reached down and picked up the heavy iron chain again.
I didn't try to crawl away. As the shadows swallowed the room, a wide, bloody, entirely unhinged smile tore across my broken lips. I wasn't going to survive the night-and the thought was absolutely intoxicating.
