By Corruption I Fall

Chapter Twenty-Nine

ORYON

She was elegance and pride in one tall and thin chassis of a woman. She is what women sought to be, what they hankered after. A rise of jealousy surmounted through me as I pushed her up against me, Xiomara touched my shoulder with her well-polished hands, delicate and close but evil. Evil as they come, Evil disguised as truth. Disguised as something close that felt like home.

But I had a home, a family,

Brother's that were left to rot in that disgusting dungeon that Ventori made us call "Home.

You made new brothers, You have a family now. Why wallow in the past?

Becuase it's what haunts me, what keeps me up at night, what makes it inconcievable, the thought, the action, the faith that she could be the one to-

To what?

Heal me, save me, give me warmth without ripping it away at the most vulnerable moment.

When you start to close your eyes around them, remove the pistol from underneath your pillow, When you wake up and they are there. When you go to bed, they await you with a sleepy smile and open arms.

Xiomara wanted to be that for me but to be someone's safe space, you have to be alive. The plan for her was not to live a long life.

"What is this?" I felt a hand creep into the back of my waist, moving around the .22 I carried around. It was given to me by Delin, the man that was capable of saving me.
"Protection, heiress. Your bodyguards carry them too"
She crooked her eyebrow up,"But they aren't here"
My hand moved over the curve of her ass, she shook her head and swatted my hand away, "But I am"
" Will you protect me?" She peered up at me with the same hope I saw in my adoptive mothers...
I broke it all the same.
"Do not use that gun around the house, boy. I'm warnin ya!'"

Kiovanna, Delin's texan wife snapped at me the day she saw Delin hand me over the gun.I nodded at the only woman who had won my respect through her immense acts of kindness that she never tired of displaying for me.

"A cup of cocoa, my boy. Two marshmallows for the perfect amount of sugar" She offered. That was my first night at their house after five years in captivity with Ventori and two more in prison. Wrongfully.

"What is co-co?"

She smiled patiently, "Cocoa, It's like hot chocolate"

I frowned, "What is that?"

"You have not had hot chocolate?'

"What is chocolate?"

She gasped and covered her mouth, shaking her head. Kiovanna came towards me with her hand outstretched, I flinched. I panicked, I whimpered.

"Please. Don't hit me, I don't know but I'll figure it out. I promise, just please-" I had my eyes closed and my arm out to fend her off. Logic didn't win over panic, trauma did. Trauma made me pathetic, stupid, at anyone's mercy.

"Atlas, Look at me"

I jerked away and held my knees against my chest. "Please, please. Please"

"Atlas, honey, look at me" She pressed, not frustrated and it confused me. Why hasn't she struck me yet?

No, no, no. no more lashes, no more whips. I am not a horse, I am eleven, I am a boy. I never wanted this, I wanted freedom,I never wanted this.

Let me go.

Let me be.

Let me go, Ventori.