Page 60 of Torn By Fate

It went on for what felt like hours, blow after blow after blow. Each one landed with the same devastating force, the same terrible precision.

There were no words. No curses, no threats, no demands for information.

Just the sound of a fragile body being dismantled by someone who had no intention of stopping until the thing beneath him was no longer capable of being called a body.

I pressed my palms against the carpet and pushed myself backward, dragging my body across the floor until my shoulders hit the wall.

I dragged myself upright, half sitting, half slouching against the wall.

My vision cleared in fragments.

First the ceiling and then the room itself. I saw the shattered lamp and the dark spray of blood across the beige wallpaper.

And then my gaze landed on two figures.

Adrian.

My husband’s back was to me, one knee planted on the man’s chest, his shoulders heaving with each blow, his arms moving with relentless cadence as they unwinded through violence. His fists were dark, covered in blood, the knuckles split and raw. They rose and fell in that same terrible rhythm.

The man beneath him was no longer fighting.

He hadn’t been fighting for a while.

His arms lay at his sides, fingers curled loosely.

His face was unrecognizable, a ruin of broken bone and torn flesh, the features rearranged into something that bore no resemblance to a human face.

The blood pooling beneath his head had spread across the carpet in a dark, awful stain.

Still, Adrian didn’t stop.

He hit him. Again. And again. And again.

My stomach heaved.

My throat closed around the taste of vomit filling my mouth.

I couldn’t stop looking.

I should have, but I couldn’t.

The violence was almost… hypnotic.

My face itched, and I brought my hands up, feeling the wetness on my cheeks. It was his blood. My attacker’s blood that had sprayed across my skin when I’d broken his nose.

Adrian’s fist rose one final time and came down.

The impact was a dull, final sound.

Thud.

His arm hung in the air for a moment, trembling, the muscles in his forearm corded and rigid. Then it dropped to his side.

The only sound left in the room was my ragged breathing as I wheezed, each inhale a battle against the swelling in my throat.

Adrian didn’t move.

He knelt over the body, his head bowed, his shoulders rising and falling with deep, controlled breaths. His hands rested on his thighs, blood dripping from his knuckles onto the carpet in slow, deliberate drops.