Chapter 4

A surge of pure, primal adrenaline cut through the drug-induced fog. It was the mother instinct, the desperate, hopeless need to protect my child.

As one of Ryan's friends, Steve, drew back his foot for another kick, I uncoiled. With a strength I didn't know I possessed, I twisted my body and threw my elbow back, hard.

It connected with his shin. He howled in pain and surprise, stumbling backward.

For a single, breathtaking second, there was a lull. The crowd quieted. Ryan and Mark stared, momentarily stunned by the "toy's" resistance.

It was a fleeting victory.

Ryan's face contorted with rage. The game was over. This was personal now.

"You bitch," he seethed. "You want to fight back?"

He lunged at me, grabbing me by the throat. He lifted me from the floor, my feet dangling uselessly. I clawed at his hands, but his grip was like iron. The world started to go gray at the edges as my air supply was cut off.

"I'm going to break you," he whispered, his face inches from mine.

He threw me across the ring. I landed hard on my side, the impact jarring every bone in my body. A sharp, cracking sensation shot up from my arm. I knew it was broken.

He stalked toward me, not with drunken swagger, but with cold, deliberate menace. He was going to hurt me in a way that was worse than the random beatings. He was going to be methodical.

He drew back his foot, aiming not at my body, but at my head. Then he stopped. A cruel smile spread across his lips.

"No. Not yet."

He grabbed my broken arm, twisting it. I screamed, a raw, voiceless sound that was lost in the renewed roar of the crowd.

"You think you're strong?" he taunted, his face a mask of contempt. "You have no idea what strong is. My fiancée, Ava... now she's strong. She deals with death every day and she's still the kindest person I know. You? You're nothing. You're less than nothing. You're just trash for me to take out."

Every word was a nail in the coffin of the love I'd had for him. He was using his memory of me to torture me. He was holding up a twisted, idealized version of our life as a weapon against the woman he couldn't even recognize.

He let go of my arm and stood over me. I saw his leg swing back. I saw the expensive leather shoe coming toward my stomach.

I tried to roll away, to shield myself, but I was too slow, too broken.

The impact was devastating. A cataclysmic, internal explosion of pain that was different from anything I had ever felt. It wasn't just bone or muscle. It was deeper. It was life itself being torn apart.

As the agony ripped through me, something inside my heart shattered. It wasn't just the pain, or the betrayal, or the loss of my child that I knew was happening in that instant. It was the final, complete death of hope. The man I loved, the future we had planned, the family we were supposed to be-it all turned to ash and blew away in that single, brutal moment. There was nothing left but an empty, howling void.