WAR GOD

Chapter One

Somewhere in a large mansion with ornate architecture and interior design, located somewhere in the heart of the city of Atlanta, Ivan was seated in a chair, clicking a retractable pen repeatedly as he stared at the paperwork on the table for passing minutes. His eyes ran through the letters back and forth so many times in few seconds like he was hoping to getting other meanings from what he had read.

The cluster of letters plastered on the white paper read a divorce agreement, with a long line at the bottom left for him to scribble his signature on.

Opposite him sat the pretty lady whom had placed the divorce agreement in front of him and whom he was about to end things with - Vera, a lady with a bold red lipstick, which created a beautiful contrast on lips against her shining porcelain skin and her royal blue dress. Young but with wrinkles that had crept to the sides of her eyes, indicating she was getting towards the age of mid life crisis, and skin care products couldn't hide them any more.

Ivan's clueless face marked one of the stark differences between he and his about-to-be-ex-wife. With a big body wrapped about in a black suit which couldn't contain his large muscular body. The buttons of his jacket stayed tightly to his body but threatened to bust out if he flexed his muscles.

Vera's eyes hovered around his wide and bearded face, wondering what was making him take a little longer than she had expected he would. She had thought he was going to sign the papers as soon as she placed them in front of him.

Without any further hesitation, he brought his hand on the paper and scribbled his signature, much to Vera's surprise. Although she had wanted him to sign but she couldn't understand why she was beginning to feel she didn't want him to.

Three years ago, they had signed on a contractual marriage in that same room because she it had been mandated that she needed to get married to take the top position of the family company. It was a sort of trap so she wouldn't have any choice but to marry someone who they wanted her to marry.

She had thought it had been a meaningless hindrance to stop her from reaching what she wanted and she wasn't ready to back down because of that. At the same time, she detested their choice. Being an over-achiever, she devised the plan of the contract marriage.

What had been different that year was that Ivan wasn't rich-looking as he looked that moment he wanted to sign those divorce papers, totally different from what he looked like when he wanted to sign for the contract marriage.

He was to be paid three million dollars as soon as the three-year contractual marriage elapsed. He was a house husband through out the marriage, playing his character when he was needed, even as far as public display of affection. He played it really well and Vera might have felt a tincture of something towards her fake husband.

Fast forward to that moment, Vera had become what she had always wanted to be - to be the most successful woman in the city. She had gotten what she wanted Ivan to help her get, perhaps even more but at that moment she felt bad letting him go like that.

She collected the divorce papers from him and slipped the divorce agreement into the brown envelope from whence it had come out, then she gave him a wry smile which he didn't return. She brought out his cheque from her jacket and stretched it towards him. The clueless Ivan's face instantly lit up in surprise as his eyes read the content on the cheque and raised his face to look at her. She gave a reassuring smile to him like what he was seeing wasn't a dream - she had added to two million to the original agreement.

"That's for an exceptional job," Vera said to him.

Ivan stared at her for a while and turned away to look again at the slip in his hand. He muttered a thank you to her and folded it to put it in his pocket.

Vera had gotten so used to waking up and finding his bare body wrapped in white sheet in the morning that she began to feel that him leaving was going to leave a vacuum in her large house. She knew the loneliness that would follow as soon as he leaves.

"You know, you can stay here for a while. I feel a little guilty for cutting this marriage so short," she said and chuckled.

Ivan looked through that chuckle and found out that she was going to feel lonely when he leaves. Even though he was hard on the outside, the mushiness inside him made him to second guess his decision to leave her. He was able to eventually overcome his emotions.

"No, thanks," he said, "you don't have to feel bad for cutting it short because it was an agreement. It was a fake marriage." He finished his statement and bit his bottom lip when Vera fell her head. She smiled and raised her head, Ivan could see through the false smile. She simply agreed with him that he was right.

She had found him as an ordinary man three years before in a bar when she was on the search for a fake husband. He was the lucky one who she had a night stand with. She told him she was looking for a man to do a theatrical performance with for a period of about three years. He had immediately jumped on it as soon as she made mention there was money in it for him if he agreed to it; he showed heightened interest when she disclosed to him how much he was going to get after it all ended.

However, there was something Vera didn't know when she found him three years ago. She had thought he was an ordinary man but didn't know he wasn't. She wasn't aware he was powerful and perhaps more wealthier than she was.

Apart from that, he was something Vera couldn't imagine he was or believed existed. If he revealed to her what he was, her mind would literally explode; and if she tried to fathom what he was, her brain would fry up and shrink. He was something strange and out of this world.

Peradventure she did come to understanding of him without any of these things happening, she would be a threat to his existence. Being with her might eventually lead him to fall in love with her, which must not happen because of what he was. He might die...

He was well aware of all these and, hence, the reason he had to leave before she found out who he was.

While she had been thinking he was a house husband all those while, he had been secretly taking care of problems that might have tried to raise their ugly heads. Ivan had been beheading these problems before Vera could catch sight of them or smell their presence. For instance, Vera wasn't aware that she had gotten some enemies as soon as she declared her intention to run for the position. She had turned some of her family members into her enemies because of her defiance.

She was aware actually but she didn't know her enemies wanted her dead.

Assassins and bounty hunters had been sent her way without anyone touching a strand of her hair because Ivan had been taking them out of her way. She had been so surprised that she had effortlessly gotten into that position. She didn't know all these had happened.

During the three-year marriage, there was a time when it occurred that her company was on the brink of going bankrupt, and at the same time, the board of directors were on her neck to get her to step down - Ivan had secretly came to her rescue and had helped the company from sinking as an anonymous angel investor.

Consequently, she was awarded for being able to pull the emergency brake right before sinking the company into the ocean of bankruptcy. Vera searched for this anonymous angel investor for months and gave up, totally oblivious that he lived under her roof.

In so many ways, he had helped her without her knowing a thing and he was prepared to keep it that way. His time with her had ended and he needed to return to where he had come from.

Vera stretched her two arms towards him to offer him a hug but immediately retracted her hands to herself before he could see it. Ivan walked away quite hesitantly away from her and slowly began to gather pace as he walked towards the door and opened it. The last thing Vera saw of him that moment was his silhouette in bright sun before he closed the door.

She walked away from the table feeling a little embarrassed of herself. She reached her hands for a bottle of rum sitting on the table and opened it, then slowly poured its content into a cup, clumsily letting a few spills pour on the table. She gulped it without pausing as she emptied it into her throat, then making a loud grunt of satisfaction with creased brows which disappeared almost immediately. She then poured herself another cup, spilling more drops of the rum on the table again and nonchalantly left without cleaning it to stare outside the window.

Ivan walked some distance from the house, he then looked back to take a last quick glance at the white painted magnificent structure and caught the figure of someone standing at window looking down to him. He knew it was her that moment.

He plastered a dry smile on his face and waved at her. She replied with a wave where her hand didn't go past the length of her shoulder. He watched as she walked away from the window, then he slowly turned his face away. As soon as he walked some steps away from the wide and large transparent gates, he took out his phone from his pocket after taking some cautionary looks left and right. He put a call through to someone.

"Hermes," he said with blank eyes, "I am out of the place."

Hermes happened to be the man who held the fort for Ivan and watched over his properties, his investments and everything of value to him while he had stooped low to act like a house husband for a rich, overachieving lonely woman woman who wanted to be the most successful woman in the city.

"There's something I want you to do for me," he said with an an expression that betrayed the clueless face he had always worn through out the contract marriage. The clueless face was what Vera saw all the time and was unaware of what the owner of the clueless face was capable of doing. To her, he was muscular but couldn't hurt a fly. The other face where he had a death stare like that of an unrepentant psychopath was only seen only by those who tried to hurt Vera.

"What's that?" Hermes asked over the phone. He had said it like he knew what Ivan was about to say. Like he knew that whatever mission he was about to send him on, was going to require the shedding of blood...

He wanted to do one last thing for her. He wanted to obliterate a person whom hated her guts and wanted her dead. He knew Vera wasn't aware of what this person was capable of and needed to take him out before the person tried to make a deadly move on Vera.

He said, "I want you to kill a son of a bitch called Steve Anderson."

Chapter Two

Vera sprawled herself on the couch, staring at a large portrait of her hanging on the wall, using her eyes to trace the details of her face. Her eyes found the eye bags that her make up tried hard to conceal; she then used her fingers to touch the eye bags on her own face. Her eyes explored the portrait again and found the little lines of wrinkles that had crept to the side of her folded eye lids as a result of stretch of her wide smile. She felt her face to know if those were wrinkles from her smile or from ageing. The 35 year old lass sighed.

Her face again caught the part of her face where she found a strand of hair jutting out from under her chin. Consequently, she ran her fingers on her chin to find where the premature hair stuck out. She found it and improvised her red painted nails as tweezers.

A call came in as she struggled to uproot the shrub of hair. She made a frustrated grunt as she saw the interrupting call and grudgingly stretched her hands to pick her phone from the table. It was her mother, Catherine who was calling. As soon as she picked it, she forgot what had been trying to do before the call.

"Hello darling, how was the divorce agreement? Did it go well?" Catherine asked.

"It was good. Signed faster than I expected," Vera replied as she examined her fingers.

"Well, that's great. I'm really glad that leech did," Catherine said. Vera rolled her eyes as she heard this.

Catherine hadn't been aware of the contractual marriage between Ivan and Vera, so she had been part of the audience Vera and Ivan were entertaining with a fake marriage. Vera's mother had always had reservations towards Ivan since the day she met him and therefore never got to bond with him.

She hated that Vera had refused the wealthy man she (Catherine) had tried to matchmake her with. She hated that instead of picking another wealthy man, she stooped so low to pick a man who had never held ten thousand dollars in his hands, not to talk of three million dollars - so she had thought. Throughout the years of that marriage, Vera and her mother argued over the matter several times to the extent that Catherine threatened that she would disown her if she didn't get rid of him. She didn't mean it but only did it to only frighten her. However, her daughter didn't budge.

Catherine had always thought Ivan was a gold digger; an act that he had intentionally made Catherine to believe. The old woman so wished that her daughter would supposedly open her eyes and see that he wanted do like what a gold digger and a leech have in common - to exploit. She even desperately desired that their marriage would fail...

Her wish eventually came through. Vera and Ivan had publicly put up the act that Ivan had cheated on her and abused her physically. With swollen cheeks and a black eye at her left eye, the story sold out successfully to her mother and the public. It was two weeks after these that Vera presented the divorce papers to Ivan and mutually ended the contract, under the guise that they were actual couples getting divorced.

"By the way, I called to tell you that Steve Anderson's birthday is tomorrow. Get dressed in your best dress and-" Catherine had barely finished her words when her daughter cut her short.

"Mum!" Vera shouted at her.

"What?"

"I know what you're doing," Vera said angrily.

Vera knew her mother wanted to utilise he divorce to quickly attach her to Steve Anderson before any lady reached her. Steve Anderson happened to be the man she had wanted her to marry, the one she had rejected to marry Ivan. Steve was the son of a billionaire father and heir to his father's fortune when he would kick the bucket.

Luckily, he was a divorcee and Catherine foreshadowed the wealth she and her daughter would be in if she married him. Catherine wouldn't want to call she and her daughter a leech; rather she would call it survival. Besides, the family wanted her to do it.

Vera made it known to her mother that she didn't want to be in any rush to get into a relationship, citing that she had barely recovered from the divorce from Ivan. Catherine blatantly told her daughter that she wasn't trying to get her into another relationship, with a tone that betrayed her seriousness. Vera knew her mother was lying.

When Catherine began to feel guilty for lying to her own daughter, she then confessed that she was trying to get her to be with Steve and that it was at the request of the family. The family felt that it would be good if they married, as it would be financially beneficial to the family company.

"So, I'm gonna be sacrificing my happiness for the good of the company?" she said, sarcastically.

"Don't look at it that way. If you look at it that way, all you would only see is the bad side of all these," Catherine replied. She told her daughter that it was preferable to be in wealth and not in love than being poor and in love; she said the love would eventually vanish because of lack.

Vera simply replied all of her mother's words with grunts and groans.

"So," her mother began, "are you coming?" and finished.

Vera knew if she didn't say yes to her mother's offer, she would regret it. If the day of the party eventually passed without her attending, her mother would begin to dish to her annoying lectures and would eventually double up on trying to convince her to have a thing with Steve.

Vera despised Steve to the extent that she thought that Steve must have hated her too. Her hatred was because he was competition and because he was a snob.

She didn't know being at the top of the family company would mean that she would have to get into a relationship with someone she hated.

She then thought of a mischievous thought of going to the party and getting into some agreement with Steve to deceive her mother that they were in relationship.

"I will be there," Vera said to her and heard her mother let out a little chuckle of satisfaction. Vera hung up and threw her phone on the couch.

Hermes came to pick Ivan and dropped him off at a bar, at Ivan's request. As he pushed the door open, he was welcomed by the boisterous and loud music, dazzling lights and a raving crowd that were mostly men. They were raving as they saw an unclad lady slowly slid down the pole on the center stage in a seductive way.

Ivan didn't know when his head began to move front and back to the rhythm of the music. He did that till he walked up to the counter to sit.

He called to the bartender to pour him some liquor. He raised the small cup in his big hand and drank the liquor in one gulp, he then made a grunt of satisfaction as it burnt his throat. He told the bartender to pour him another cup.

He drank it the way he drank the first one. He turned to see the lady on the stage making snaky moves towards a man who kept making loud excited noises as she slowly rubbed her hands about his body. She then gently pulled him by his tie from his seat, which he succumbed sheepishly while laughing excitedly.

They both walked to the stage, pulled a chair to the centre and sat him down on it with one push of the tip of her index finger. As soon as she sat on him, the crowd went wild, while the man's face was stupefied as she danced slow and sensually on him.

Ivan smiled at this for a moment and told the bartender to bring wine to him in the VIP lounge; he then walked over to the empty VIP which had been reserved for him, squeezed some dollars in the hands of the bouncer that stood by the place like a statue because he had been standing for hours. The bouncer appreciated him as Ivan fell into the comfort of the chair.

In not less one minute that he sat down there, a group of hot and sexy ladies in all shapes and sizes walked up to him. The bouncer stopped them with his large hand, but Ivan told him to let them in. They shrouded him like they had known him before.

The bartender came and dropped the wine which he had brought in a tray on the table. Ivan then ordered him to bring more.

The crowd of men went into another frenzy when a particular tattooed lady in bright red lingerie, boots and a cowboy hat walked in leisurely like a model on the stage.

At every sound that her shoe made against the floor, the men made loud noises until she sat in chair and spread her legs in the air, causing the men to go into another frenzy again.

The noises the men made seemed to be more than they had made for the other ladies that had come on that stage. It showed she was the star of the bar and apparently, she was the boss the bar.

Her performance ended with her bowing down and the crowd noisily cheering. They made wolf whistles as they watched her walk away from the stage, seeing her legs lunged forward, causing currents on her tattooed buttocks at each step.

A man stopped her before she could make another step. The obese man raised himself from his chair and told her to come down from the stage but the lady didn't move an inch. He said to her that he had watched her performance and she was amazing. He then turned to the crowd to say he had thought to himself during the performance that he needed a girl like her in his life.

"This is my girl and there's nothing anybody is gonna do about it except you want your dead body delivered to your family," he said and laughed alone to his own joke. He told her once again to come down. She didn't change her mind, instead she stared at him daringly.

"Do you who know I am?" He said to her. The crowd began to make indistinct noises as the atmosphere began to become tense.

The man was a person that was dreaded and feared by everyone in the district. The music had stopped at this point and the noises from the other patrons subsided as he turned around to look at everyone. Some of the other strippers whispered softly to her to do as the man had said but she didn't listen.

The fat man laughed and climbed to the stage along with the cup of cold beer in his hand. He walked towards her and grabbed her, tried to force her to come with him.

In a blink of an eye, she pulled the man by one hand and gave him a deadly superhuman punch that threw him three feet across the floor till he bored a hole in the wall, causing a loud noise from them.

Fear immediately spread fast on the face of everyone else like an deadly epidemic and they began to tremble when they saw the man didn't rise to his feet. They all knew he had died as they saw blood flow from underneath his body. They all stood, absolutely terrified but frozen solid like it was a symptom of the fear they shared.

Then about four strong men who were the fat man's boys came from different corners of the bar to fight her but none of them could lay a finger on her. She squashed all of them like they were nothing.

Amidst all these, Ivan had a smile on his face all through what happened. The next thing he did was raise his cup in the air, and let his voice pierce through the dead silence.

"Come and have a drink with me, Artemis."

Everyone's eyes moved to where the voice had come from and stared in fear at Ivan for making such a daring move. They watched as she strutted towards him with a menacing stare.

Their fear suddenly turned into a shocking surprise when they saw her kneel and bow before Ivan.

"You're welcome back, my lord," she said to him.

"Thank you, Artemis," Ivan replied with a smile and sipped his drink.

Chapter Three

Still at that same bar, when everyone had run for their lives, Artemis and Ivan entered a place behind the backstage that led down a dark hallway. They moved through the darkness until Artemis moved before Ivan to open a door to a dimly lit room where some men have special sessions with some strippers.

Artemis didn't stop her movement as she walked towards a wall. She went through it and disappeared. Ivan went after her.

They found themselves in a place where some people sat in a circle like a cult meeting. A place where ordinary humans couldn't access except they were part of the sect that was in that room. The choice of the colour of lights gave the atmosphere a gloomy one.

The room contained the most top secret organisation in the world and all its members were the most powerful beings on earth. The members were gods and the sect was called All gods. Ivan was their head, whom they called the All-father.

The members bowed as Ivan walked into their midst to sit in a chair that stood distinct from the other chairs that the members sat in, like it was a throne.

They all began to welcome him back to the sect. He had been away for years because he was recovering from the wounds of a war - a war that took the lives of other gods like him. A war between the new gods and the old gods.

One god, Prometheus had led other gods in a coup to kill Ivan (Zeus) and take over his throne. Prometheus and the gods who wanted to kill Zeus called themselves the new gods, and called Zeus and the other ones old gods, saying they were too old to rule.

Ivan was angry and couldn't take such insolence; he then killed Prometheus that instant to teach the others a lesson. That was where the war sparked.

Some gods from both sides died some merciless deaths in the war. Hera, the love of his life died while she saved Ivan's life. She had been the one who taught him all of the fighting skills he knew that made him a top war god. With tears in his eyes, he laid her head gently on his arm and covered her eyes, then he swore he would take revenge on the new gods.

As soon as he finished swearing and stood to avenge his lover's death, he saw the cowards among them had fled, and the brave ones were dead.

Her death hurt and broke the heart of the powerful god. He went on a hiatus to recover from the wounds of the war and also to grief the death of his lover. It was during his break from his god duties that he had met Vera.

The other gods that remained faithful to him waited for his return. They were, however, not aware of his plans to go after the new gods to get his revenge.

Ivan's eyes scanned the face of the gods, whose face he had almost forgotten.

"I have missed this gathering..." Ivan said and went silent for a while before speaking. Ivan appreciated the members for their patience in waiting for his return.

"You shouldn't have done what you did Artemis," Ivan said to her.

"But he deserved it." She replied in defence.

"Trust me, I know," he said, "but what you did has attracted the attention of the world to us. We are supposed to be a secret."

Ivan knew the danger of what had happened the other time. He knew that very soon, their secret might be out. Although rest assured, he knew that they couldn't be found out yet because no one would believe them as there was no evidence but it was enough for them to feel threatened and be careful.

"Has anyone seen a new god around?" Ivan said, with his insides boiling. They all remained silent.

Artemis broke the silence and told Ivan that they heard news of Hera's younger sister. Ivan's face lit up at the mention of who Artemis said.

"Where's she?"

"She's living somewhere far. Somewhere at the other side of the world. I heard she has been hit with an incurable disease," Artemis said.

"Disease?" Ivan asked.

"Yes and she's living in poverty." Artemis replied. Ivan couldn't believe his ears. He couldn't believe that a god could be struck with disease or even be poor.

"We need to find her."

At a square in front of a shopping mall somewhere, there was a blind girl who sat on the ground and sang in a melodious voice, while playing her guitar. Passers-by who were touched by her condition and enjoyed her music threw coins in a jar in front of her.

A group of mischievous boys passed by her as she sang. When they saw that she stared at distance without letting her eyes move, that was when they knew she was blind. The boys instead of dropping coins, dropped small rocks into the blind girls jar.

The girl paused when she heard the thump of something heavier than coins, she knew that the people she couldn't see had drop something other that wasn't a coin.

She heard as the boys laughed and as they walked away and knew they had done something mischievous. She dipped her hand into her jar and felt those stones. She smiled, pulled them out and threw it away. She then continued to play her music until when she felt she was tired.

Like as if she could see, she covered her jar and carried it in her arm. She picked up her walking and hung her guitar on her shoulder, then she began to walk away from the square with the guidance of her walking stick.

As she turned into the alley, she could sense something wasn't right as she began to bring her pace to a stop. She stopped to listen for any sound. What she heard next was a cough that indicated that there was someone there. She didn't know there were four teenagers standing before her.

"Is someone there?" She said with a trembling voice.

One of them noted to the others that they felt she was blind. One of them who looked like their leader came close to her and waved in her face.

"She's truly blind," he said as he retracted his steps away from her.

"Of course, can't you see that she has a walking stick or are you blind too?" One of them said, while the other two gave a suppressed laugh.

At this moment, this girl was trembling and losing her balance. All she saw was darkness and all she heard was scary noises; utterly terrified that she was about to become a victim of circumstance.

"Please what do you want?" She said, with her voice was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"We want something that you have," one of them said to her.

The girl in her mind, knew she had two things they must want - the money or her body. She went silent suddenly, with great fear of what might happen next.

She heard one of the boys tell the others that what they were about to do didn't feel right; they shouted at him to leave and he walked away, leaving three of them.

In an instant, she felt strong grips on her shoulder and another at her legs; the next thing, she felt herself suspended in the air. She began to cry and scream with every strength in her, and at the same time trying to break free by struggling. One hand blocked her mouth tightly from behind. She heard a loud voice from the top of her head tell her to stop shouting, feeling droplets of saliva on her scalp.

The men dropped her on the ground. The one at the top of her head held her hands tightly while the other one began to prepare to remove her trousers. Hot tears flowed down her eyes as she mumbled a plea with her muffled voice.

The feeling of hopelessness that shrouded her at that moment made her to give up struggling with the perverts and let them have their way.

The one beneath her climbed on top of her and unbuckled his belt.

The last one who had become a spectator also had his conscience pricked and told the boys he couldn't do it.

"What's wrong with you all today? Why are y'all suddenly changing your mind on this fateful day?" The one with the unbuckled belt said with anger.

"It's not just right man, she's helpless. It's wrong to do this," the one with a change of heart said.

"But watching your stepmom in bathroom isn't?" The one who held the girl's hands said, causing the other one to laugh and making the remorseful one feel embarrassed. He stood there and watched.

The girl's voice had reduced to sharp muffled squeaks. The teen who wanted to go first unbuckled her trousers, making her voice to rise in pitch. As he hand went to the zipper, the girl made a muffled scream and tried to break from their clutches but they overpowered her until she gave up.

So many things ran through her mind as her defiler began to pull down her trousers - the fact she couldn't see the faces of those teenagers brought tears to her face; the saddening truth that they easily were having their way into her made her tears flow down to her face; when she realised that no one was coming to her rescue, it made those tears overflow.

Something, interrupted those thoughts so abruptly and not just her thoughts but the hands of her defiler. She knew he had not stop by choice but the manner at which he had stopped, showed that a force that he couldn't stop had thrown him off her. She heard him scream his lungs out in agony, and there was where she knew someone had come to her rescue.

A man had thrown a stone that hit right on his target - the head of the teenager who was about to forcefully penetrate the innocent girl. The other two boys were frozen for a moment as they watched their friend shout in so much pain as he held his head like it had detached from his body.

The man started to walk towards them with slow steps. One of the boys, who held the girl by her hands began to walk towards the man angrily with a stick he picked on the ground while he approached him.

Suddenly, the repentant teenager saw a woman take baby steps towards him. Her menacing countenance and the bold aura she wore didn't stop the boy from underestimating the punch that was coming at him from her. Until her heavy punch landed on his face and fell him flat on the ground, that was where he knew he had made a mistake by underrating her.

He suddenly broke into tears as he felt the effect of the her hit spread on his face fast. The boy coughed blood on his palm and saw a molar, half-submerged in his blood. He began to cry as the pain in his mouth came to him like an epiphany.

He wasn't aware the lady had held back and wasn't using her full strength. He didn't know he had been punched by a god - a new god.

The boy who had angrily approached the man with a stick got a taste of the man's fist, that made him touch the ground hard with a broken nose. All three of the boys were now in a crying opera, weeping in inharmonious voices.

The blind girl heard their wailing; she began to fear that whoever had beaten the boys to a pulp might not have come to save her. She heard as footsteps became louder as they approached her direction, she then began to plead and crawl back until she got a wall.

"Please don't hurt me," her tears which had dried up while the boys were beaten became wet again.

She felt a firm but gentle touch on her arm, which startled her.

"Don't be afraid," the man said with his baritone voice, "you are safe now," the woman said.

The overwhelming fear that had gripped her started to fade away.