After Prison, I Became the Apex of the Stars

CHAPTER 6

The lead bodyguard didn't even slow down. His open palm connected with the side of Luigi's face with a crack that echoed through the foyer like a gunshot, and Luigi's head snapped sideways so hard his entire body followed, spinning him halfway around before his legs gave out and he staggered into the wall with his hand pressed against his cheek and his eyes swimming with confusion because nothing in his pampered life had prepared him for the simple reality of being hit by someone who knew how to hit.

"You, you hit me?" Luigi's voice came out thick and slurred, and he was blinking rapidly like a man trying to see through water. "I'll kill you. I'll kill every single one of you, I'll kill your families, I'll burn your houses down, I'll make sure every person you've ever loved suffers for this."

Agatha's expression, which had been merely cold, turned into something that belonged in a freezer. Her grandfather, the man she loved more than anyone alive, was lying in a hospital bed right now fighting a disease that no doctor could name, hovering between life and death while she stood here listening to this worthless little worm threaten to kill her family.

"You want to talk about killing families?" Agatha's voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper, and the bodyguards went still because they knew that voice and they knew what followed it. "My grandfather is dying. He is the greatest man I have ever known, and he is lying in a hospital bed right now while I'm here wasting my time with cockroaches who think cursing at me will make them important."

"Your grandfather can rot in hell for all I care," Gwen spat, and the words left her mouth before her brain had time to review them, which was a pattern Gwen had followed her entire life and which had never once served her well.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop by ten degrees.

"Slap her," Agatha said calmly. "A hundred times."

The bodyguard closest to Gwen grabbed her by the shoulder and the first slap landed before Gwen even had time to close her mouth.

 The second came from the other side, snapping her head in the opposite direction, and by the fifth Gwen's lips were swelling and by the tenth she had stopped cursing and started screaming and by the twentieth the screams had turned into something wet and broMarcus that barely sounded human anymore.

"Please, please stop, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, please stop hitting me, please, I'll do anything, please." Gwen's words came out in a blubbering stream that ran together with the blood from her split lip, and her legs had given out so that only the bodyguard's grip on her shoulder was keeping her upright.

Luigi watched his mother crumble for exactly three seconds before something stupid and brave ignited behind his eyes and he launched himself at Agatha with his fist raised and a scream tearing out of his throat that was meant to sound terrifying but came out sounding like a child throwing a tantrum.

The second bodyguard intercepted him without even shifting his stance, caught Luigi's arm mid-swing, and in one smooth efficient motion that spoke of years of professional training, twisted it behind his back and brought his boot down on the side of Luigi's right knee.

The crack was loud enough to make Eddard wince from across the room.

Luigi hit the floor like a bag of wet cement, and the sound that came out of him was not a scream or a cry but something animal and raw, a howl that came from a place beyond language where pain is the only thing that exists. He grabbed his leg with both hands and rolled onto his side and the howling didn't stop, just went on and on like a siren that nobody could turn off.

Eddard watched the entire scene from the hallway with his arms folded and his expression unreadable, and when the noise became too much he frowned and stepped forward.

"Agatha, that's enough."

She turned to him, and the ice in her face melted into something respectful and almost apologetic. "Mr. Collins, these people disrespected you in your own home. They deserve far worse than what they received."

"This is the house my parents left me," Eddard said, and his voice was calm but carried something beneath it that made even the bodyguards stand a little straighter. "I grew up in these rooms. I don't want the sound of their screaming in it because it's annoying and because this place deserves better than their noise. Make them leave, quickly."

Agatha nodded and signaled the bodyguards to release both of them. She looked down at Gwen, who was still on the ground with her face swollen and tears cutting tracks through the mess on her cheeks, and then at Luigi, who was curled around his broMarcus leg like a shrimp and making sounds that had finally quieted into a low continuous moan.

"You are being spared right now because Mr. Collins asked me to stop," Agatha said, and every word landed on Gwen and Luigi like a stone dropped from a height. "If the decision were mine alone, you would each be leaving this house missing a hand. Remember that the next time you think about coming back here."

Gwen scrambled to her feet without a word, grabbed Luigi under his arms, and dragged him toward the door while he whimpered and clutched his right leg which hung at an angle that legs are not supposed to hang at. Neither of them looked back, neither of them said a single word, and the only sounds they made were Gwen's ragged breathing and Luigi's muffled crying as they stumbled down the porch steps and across the overgrown garden path.

They made it past the villa's front gate and down the street to where Gwen had parked the car, and only when she had looked over her shoulder three times and confirmed that no one was following them did she let Luigi collapse against the side of the vehicle while she pulled out her phone with hands that were shaking so badly she had to try the passcode twice before it accepted.

She called her husband Marcus, and the moment she heard his voice on the other end, every wall she had been holding up crumbled at once and she burst into tears so violent they made her whole body shake.

"Marcus, you have to come right now, that animal Eddard had someone break Luigi's leg."