The Understated General Returns

Chapter 8 : Flogged Forty Times

Dennis slapped the man across the face so hard.

Chamberlain's scream ripped through the house, the sound a man makes only once in his life and never forgets.

Dennis held his gaze steady, watching pain flood the man's eyes without a flicker of mercy in his own.

"Please! Please, I'm sorry!" Chamberlain sobbed.

Dennis loosened his grip slowly, deliberately, letting the man feel every second of it. "Sorry doesn't pay years of stolen rent, and keeping her apartment this way," he said. "Now you will pay her back. Every single dollar you took from that apartment while she thought you were protecting her interests. Do the maths yourself, or I'll do it for you. And trust me, my number will be higher."

Chamberlain's eyes went wide, darting toward the door, but he knew there was no door far enough from Dennis Kensington.

He nodded, hands trembling as he pulled out his phone, his good hand fumbling with the screen twice before he managed to open his banking app.

"The account details," Dennis said. "Now. Don't make me ask a second time."

Doris stood a few feet away, arms wrapped around herself, still trying to process everything Chamberlain had confessed under pressure, the years of lies, the money Camilla had paid him to sabotage her tenancy, the small cruelties stacked one on top of another until they became a mountain she'd nearly drowned under.

She watched her husband, the man she'd buried in her heart six years ago, standing there like judgment itself, and felt something twist inside her chest.

Dennis called out his account number. Chamberlain's fingers shook so badly he mistyped it twice, cursing under his breath each time. Then, finally, the transfer went through.

The credit alert chimed on Dennis's phone. He glanced at it once, confirmed the amount against the number he'd calculated in his head, and only then did he release Chamberlain's collar.

For one breath, Chamberlain thought it was over. He staggered back, clutching his face, relief washing over his battered face like a man pardoned at the gallows.

Then Dennis grabbed his wrist and snapped his index finger.

The scream that followed was worse than the first, raw, echoing off the walls. Chamberlain dropped to his knees, tears streaming freely now, his whole body shaking like a man having a seizure, spit and snot mixing on his chin.

"This is for being an asshole," Dennis said quietly, crouching to look him directly in the eye, close enough that Chamberlain could feel his breath. "For every night she cried herself to sleep wondering why her own family hated her enough to do this. Get out of here before I decide your other fingers deserve the same lesson."

Chamberlain didn't need to be told twice. He scrambled up, cradling his ruined hand against his stomach, and ran out into the night without looking back, his footsteps echoing until the door slammed shut behind him.

Dennis exhaled slowly. He turned to Doris, and instantly his face softened. He crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. She stiffened for a second, overwhelmed, then broke completely, her whole body sagging against him as the tears she'd been holding back for years finally spilt over, soaking into his shirt.

"You don't have to worry about anything anymore," he murmured into her hair, his hand smoothing slow circles against her back. "Not the rent, not that apartment, not any of it. I'm getting us a real home, somewhere no one can touch you, no one can threaten you, no one can whisper lies about you behind closed doors, and your family, they will never come near you again. I promise you that. On my life."

Doris pulled back just enough to look at him, searching his face like she was trying to memorise a man she thought she'd lost forever, a man who had come back from wherever he'd been changed into something harder, and more dangerous.

He only pressed a kiss to her forehead.

~~~

Across town, in Camilla's sitting room, the mood was very different.

Camilla sat on her chair like a queen, holding the phone in hand, dialling Chamberlain's number for the fifth time. It rang and rang, then went silent, the dial tone mocking her.

"Mom, are you sure we can trust this man?" Victor asked, lounging on the sofa with a glass of wine swirling it lazily.

"He's worked for me for years," Camilla snapped, though a flicker of unease crossed her face, quickly smoothed away. "He knows exactly what happens if he crosses me. Give him time. He's probably still squeezing that beggar Dennis for every last dollar he thinks he has."

Ethan laughed, already picturing the scene. "Can you imagine their faces? Doris crying, Dennis on his knees, begging like the nobody he actually is."

The front door burst open before he could finish his sentence.

Chamberlain stood in the doorway, his shirt torn at the collar, his hand swollen purple and his face a mask of fury and humiliation that none of them had ever seen on him before. Behind him crowded five hulking men, their expressions promising nothing good, filling the doorway like a wall of muscle and threat.

Camilla rose slowly, her smile faltering into something uncertain. "Chamberlain? What happened to you? Did you get any money? Did you throw them away?"

He didn't answer; his silence was an answer sharper than any scream, and something in Camilla's stomach dropped.

"I almost died," he finally said, voice shaking with rage. "That man nearly killed me. And you sent me there like it was nothing. Like I was nothing."

"Chamberlain, calm down; we can talk about this. What happened"

"Take them," he snapped to his men, cutting her off completely.

Victor shot up from the sofa, wine glass shattering against the marble floor. "Wait! What are you doing? We're the ones who pay you!"

Nobody answered him. The men moved fast, grabbing Camilla, Victor, and Ethan before any of them could run for the stairs.

Camilla's scream cracked through the house, but there was no one left in that mansion to help her.

Canes came out; Chamberlain watched with his broken hand cradled to his chest, his dark eyes empty of any pity.

"Flog them, Forty," he said. "Each, maybe then you'll remember what this cost me."

Camilla begged, screamed, tried to bargain with money and promises she no longer had the leverage to offer. None of it mattered anymore.

The first strike landed across her back, and her scream tore through the house. Victor tried to shield his mother's body with his own and earned twice the blows for it, his cries turning hoarse by the twentieth strike. Ethan sobbed on the floor, curled into himself, counting each one under his breath because counting was the only thing that made the pain feel survivable.

By the time it was over, all three of them lay collapsed on the marble floor, welts rising angry and red across their skin, breath ragged, dignity stripped completely bare.

Chamberlain looked down at the woman who had once treated him like a servant to be ordered around at her whim. "You built your home on other people's suffering. Now you finally know what it feels like. I don't ever want to see your ugly face around my property.”

He turned and walked out without another word, his men trailing behind him, leaving Camilla too broken to even lift her head off the cold floor.