Belittle Me Now And Cry Later

Chapter 6

At that moment He raised his hand and made a simple gesture just a slight wave of his fingers, casual and dismissive.

But the effect was immediate and terrifying.

The six men surrounding Marcus moved as one, a coordinated assault that gave Marcus no time to react, no chance to defend himself. The first man grabbed Marcus's arm, his grip like iron, and yanked him forward so violently that Marcus's shoulder screamed in protest.

Before Marcus could even cry out, before his mind could fully register what was happening, he felt it a massive fist driving into his stomach with pile-driver force.

The air exploded from Marcus's lungs in a single agonized wheeze. His body wanted to double over, wanted to collapse, but the man holding his arm kept him upright, kept him standing for what came next.

Marcus retched violently. He hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours there had been no money for food, no time to think about something as trivial as sustenance when his mother was dying. So instead of food, his mouth filled with water and blood, the copper taste mixing with rain as he vomited onto the manicured grass of the Li estate.

He was still gagging, still trying to remember how to breathe, when the second attack came.

Something hard and wooden a bat, his pain-flooded mind registered dimly swung through the air with a horrible whistling sound and connected with the middle of his back.

The impact was beyond pain. It was as though his entire spine had been struck by lightning, every nerve ending firing at once in a symphony of agony. Marcus's legs gave out completely, but again, the hands holding him kept him from falling, kept him upright for more punishment.

Before his body could adjust, before his mind could process the damage, a boot drove into his ribs from the side.

This time, the hands released him, and Marcus crashed to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. The wet stone of the estate's entrance courtyard was cold and hard beneath him, rain pooling around his body, mixing with the blood that he could now taste in his mouth.

But they weren't done.

Two of them hauled him back to his feet or tried to. Marcus's legs wouldn't support him anymore, so they simply held him upright between them, his arms stretched out to either side like a crucifixion, his head lolling forward weakly.

And then the real beating began.

Fists rained down on him from multiple directions at once. His stomach, his ribs, his face every part of him became a target. Marcus tried to keep track of the blows, tried to brace himself for each impact, but there were too many, coming too fast. One punch would land on his jaw, snapping his head to the side, and before he could recover, another would sink into his solar plexus, driving what little air remained from his lungs.

His nose broke with a sickening crunch that he felt more than heard. Blood poured down his face, hot and thick, mixing with the rain and his tears. One eye swelled shut almost immediately. His ribs he could feel them cracking, could hear the awful splintering sounds they made as boots and fists found them again and again.

When they finally let him drop, Marcus collapsed into a heap on the stone, his body no longer responding to his commands. He tried to cover his head with his arms, tried to protect himself from what he knew was coming, but his arms wouldn't move properly anymore. They felt broken, crushed, useless.

The men didn't need to hold him anymore. He was no longer capable of escape, no longer capable of anything except enduring.

Boots found him on the ground. One, two, three attackers surrounded him, kicking him in the ribs, the back, the head. His face pressed against the cold wet stone, and he felt his cheekbone crack under someone's heel. His mouth filled with blood and broken teeth.

The pain had gone beyond pain now it had become something else entirely, something transcendent and all-consuming. Marcus's entire existence had narrowed down to this single eternal moment of suffering.

And through it all, through the roaring in his ears and the darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision, he could hear laughter. Zachary was laughing. Lily was laughing. Even some of the men beating him seemed to be enjoying themselves, grunting with satisfaction as their blows landed.

Finally finally Zachary's voice cut through the sound of fists and boots hitting flesh.

"Stop."

The beating ceased immediately. The men stepped back, leaving Marcus lying in a pool of rainwater and blood, his body twitching involuntarily, pain signals firing from every nerve ending at once.

Through his one remaining functional eye, Marcus could see Zachary's expensive shoes approaching. Then Zachary crouched down, bringing his face level with Marcus's.

"That," Zachary said pleasantly, as though discussing the weather, "was for touching her at all. Now..."

He stood and turned to Lily, gesturing gallantly toward Marcus's broken form. "My dear, would you like to deliver the final punishment yourself? For all the years of humiliation this insect has caused you?"

Lily's face lit up with something that looked disturbingly like joy. "Really? You'd let me?"

"Of course," Zachary said warmly, as though offering her a gift. "He's wronged you most of all. You should have the satisfaction."

One of the men handed Lily the baseball bat they'd been using—a wooden weapon now stained with Marcus's blood. She took it in both hands, testing its weight, a small smile playing at her lips.

Marcus watched her approach through his one good eye, watched the woman he had loved the woman he had nearly died for three times raise that bat above her head like an executioner with an axe.

He tried to speak, tried to form words through his broken mouth and shattered jaw. What came out was barely intelligible, a wet gurgling sound mixed with blood and rain, but somehow he managed to force out the words:

"Lily... don't... please... my mother... she's all I have... and I'm all she has... please... I'm sorry... sorry for embarrassing you... sorry for coming into your life... sorry for everything... please don't..."

For just a moment, Lily hesitated. For just a fraction of a second, something flickered across her face was it guilt? Regret? The ghost of some long-dead feeling?

But then her expression hardened again, and she smiled—that same cruel smile she'd worn when she threw the ring at him.

"That's too late now, Marcus," she said softly. "You've traumatized me for years. Years of having to pretend you were my husband, years of having to endure the shame of being associated with you. You've traumatized me more than enough."

The bat came down.

The first strike landed across Marcus's back, right over his spine, and he felt something inside him break—really break, something fundamental and important. His scream was silent; he had no air left to scream with.

The second strike hit his shoulder.

The third landed on the back of his head.

Marcus stopped counting after that. The pain had become so overwhelming, so all-encompassing, that his mind simply began to shut down in self-defense. He was dimly aware of the impacts, aware of his body jerking with each blow, but it all seemed distant now, as though it were happening to someone else.

His vision was going dark. Not from closing his eyes he wasn't sure he could close them anymore but from his brain simply giving up, his consciousness retreating into some deep protected place where the pain couldn't follow.

The last thing he heard clearly was Zachary's voice, sounding pleased and satisfied:

"That's enough. Throw him outside."

His back hit the stone of the front steps and he rolled, once, and came to a stop at the bottom of the driveway, face up, the rain coming straight down.

 and immediately the bodyguards left and went inside.