Page 13 of Fallen Empire (The Fallen Trilogy #2)

Savannah

The pain that exploded in my jaw was bearable.

That was the most fucked up part.

The moment his fist landed, I already knew what would come next—my jaw would shift, my head would spin, my knees would hit the floor. I’d learned the pattern. The rhythm. The sequence of destruction.

There was no use fighting. Not anymore.

Not after the first time I tried.

Because fighting back only taught him how to hurt me better.

There’s an old saying that some lessons are learned the hard way. I’d learned mine with a cracked rib and blood in my mouth, proof that resistance wasn’t bravery.

It was an invitation.

So I stopped trying. I stopped screaming. I stopped hoping that someone might hear, or care, or come.

Now, I just took it.

The punches. The lashings. The bend of my finger moving backwards in a direction it wasn’t meant to go until—

Snap .

That was the sound that silenced me the first time. Not the scream. Not the impact.

The break.

Because once you hear your body fail you like that, once you realize pain can actually reach a pitch where your mind leaves your body just to survive it… you don’t come back the same.

People are quick to judge.

Quick to say what they would’ve done. Quick to cast an opinion on a mess they don’t have to live inside.

“I would’ve left the first time.”

“She should’ve listened to her friends.”

“I could never let that happen to me.”

I used to believe them.

Back when I was the one handing out protection orders. Back when I was an attorney, standing beside women who begged for safety I could barely promise.

I thought I was different. Educated. Respected.

A woman who helped survivors, not one who’d become one.

But fear doesn’t care how many degrees you have.

It doesn’t care how strong your voice is in a courtroom.

When it comes, it wraps around your throat and squeezes.

It whispers in the dark.

It tells you no one will believe you.

It tells you he’s powerful—and you’re not.

And when you finally need someone—

When your face is swollen, your ribs ache, your accounts are frozen—

Those same people with their easy opinions?

Gone.

Because everyone wants to be part of your story when you’re standing tall.

But rock bottom?

That’s when you find out who gives a damn.

I should’ve left before it got worse.

But tell me— Define worse.

Was it the belt the first time? The one that split my lip and kept me home for three days because I couldn’t smile without bleeding?

Was it that broken finger he bent backward while whispering, “This is what happens when you embarrass me”? Back then, I didn’t understand what he meant. But I do now.

Or was it the moment I stopped shielding my face—because I knew I wouldn’t survive if I fought back again?

People love to say they’d never stay. That they’d pack a bag and leave the second a man raised his hand.

And I used to be one of them.

But fear doesn’t just whisper.

It suffocates.

And the moment you try to breathe—try to scream—it reminds you: Last time, you couldn’t walk for three days. Last time, he shattered your bedside lamp across your back. Last time, you almost didn’t wake up.

Fighting back felt like war in a ten-by-ten ring.

But there was no ref. No bell. No mercy.

And if that was the punishment for staying...

What the hell would leaving look like?

What kind of rage would come from him learning you escaped?

What would happen if no one opened the door on the other side?

Because people love a comeback story—once you're already standing. But when you’re flat on your face, bleeding, begging for help?

That’s when you find out just how many people were really in your corner.

Spoiler alert: It’s not many.

And now, lying here, I understood why some women never made it out.

Why some gave up. Why silence was easier than survival.

The pain I’d endured at the mercy of someone who once claimed to love me didn’t compare to the fire clawing its way through my chest now.

This pain wasn’t rage or fear—it was something worse.

Something deeper. A raw, unrelenting agony that pulsed with every shallow breath.

I’d never been shot before. Never thought I would be.

The bullet missed my heart by less than an inch.

I’d heard the doctor say it. Heard Millie’s sobs when they wheeled me in.

Heard Jaxson’s voice crack. They thought I couldn’t.

But I could. Somewhere beneath the surface of it all—beneath the copious amounts of morphine, the machines, and the darkness pulling at me—I could hear every sound like it was underwater, muffled and distant but real.

The pain should’ve knocked me out completely. I almost wished it had. My body was numb in places it shouldn’t have been, while others felt like they were burning alive. My chest throbbed, a steady, crushing rhythm that reminded me I was still here, still breathing… barely.

My ribs ached with every shallow rise and fall, and my spine felt splintered from the accident, from the fall, from everything.

The drugs dulled it, but they didn’t take it away. Not completely. I was caught in between—too weak to wake, too strong to let go.

And maybe that was the worst part.

Because I wanted to. God, I wanted to . Not because I didn’t love them—Millie, Jaxson, the life I almost had—but because letting go seemed easier than holding on to a body that felt more broken than whole.

The morphine couldn’t touch the kind of pain that came from being betrayed, hunted, shattered, and left to bleed on the floor while the man I thought I’d never escape stood in front of me with a gun.

So I stayed in the quiet, in the space between life and whatever came after, because waking up meant feeling all of it again.

And I wasn’t sure I could survive it twice.

"It's been over an hour. She should’ve shown some sign of life by now."

Millie. I knew that voice anywhere, sharp but cracking at the edges. She was close. Probably right next to me, pacing or perched on the edge of a chair, clutching whatever hope she had left.

"Give her time, Millie."

Jaxson. Deeper, quieter. His voice came from the other side of the bed. I was between them. Between the two people I loved more than anything in the world.

And I wanted—desperately—to tell them I was still here.

I’d tried earlier. Just my hand. A twitch.

A movement. Something to let them know I wasn’t gone.

But the pain that shot through my arm was unbearable.

Like dragging shattered glass beneath my skin, every tendon set on fire.

It radiated up to my shoulder, seizing my chest until it felt like my lungs were collapsing beneath the weight of it.

I’d had no choice but to retreat again, to slip back into the safety of stillness.

I couldn’t feel my feet. Not even a tingle. I wondered if they were still attached to my body, or if the numbness meant something worse. It was a terrifying thing—not knowing what pieces of you are still intact. What’s been taken.

But I could feel my left leg.

God, I could feel it.

A long, dull pain throbbed up the length of my thigh, anchoring itself into the bone like it belonged there. The pressure was constant—unyielding. Every few seconds it would spike, sending sharp jolts through my hip and groin, like the bone was splintered just enough to scream.

I didn’t know the details, not exactly. But I’d heard the words whispered over me.

Hairline fracture. Stabilized. No surgery on it… not yet .

It still felt broken. Like something deep inside had been cracked open, and now every breath pulled the pain a little further apart.

It pulsed like a second heartbeat, one made entirely of pain.

Fragments of conversations drifted in and out, like echoes from the bottom of a well.

Millie’s voice cracked with tears. Ben tried to comfort her, though his own grief weighed down every word.

And Jaxson... God, I knew this was killing him.

I could feel it. His anguish pressing down on the space beside me like gravity.

Bits of speech kept threading themselves together, trying to build images in my mind. I caught the doctor’s voice explaining the extubation process, though I couldn’t tell who he was talking to. Everything felt like it was still floating through the air, suspended just out of reach.

It came in flashes. Like a dream you try to chase after waking, grasping for the edges before they fade into nothing.

How many days had it been?

How many conversations had I missed while lying here, still and silent, with no way to respond?

But this one… this one was important.

Even through the fog—through the confusion and the agony that stitched itself into every inch of me—I remembered her voice. Sharp. Furious. Cracking through the silence like a whip.

“She’s in a fucking coma, Jax.”

Nic. I could hear her as clear as if she were standing over me now.

“What the fuck did you do?”

She’d snapped at him, and the memory of her voice pulled me closer to the surface than anything else had in days.

And still, the pain raged. Worse than before.

It wasn’t just fire now, it was a storm.

One that lived inside my bones and wrapped around my ribs like a vice.

My chest throbbed with every breath, my leg screamed with every twitch, and my chest…

it felt like it had shattered and been stitched together with broken glass.

Even blinking, even thinking, felt like dragging my mind through barbed wire.

But that voice...

That memory...

It reminded me that someone was still out there.

And no matter how much the blackness called to me—how much I wanted to let it take me under just to escape this torment—I couldn’t.

Not yet.

Because somewhere, on either side of this pain, were the people I loved.

And I had to claw my way back.

For them.

My eyes were trying to flutter, strained and sluggish, like lifting weights I hadn’t trained for. The muscles around them fought against me, dry and unused, as if the simple act of opening them had been forgotten altogether. The skin pulled tight. My lids stuck together. Every blink was a war.

But I was going to show them I was still here.

I wouldn’t dare speak of the raging pain that tore through every nerve ending—of how breathing felt like broken glass, or how my body seemed to burn and freeze in tandem—but I could do this. I could open my eyes. I could let them see me. Let them know I hadn’t given up.

"Jaxson," I heard Millie say, a plea of hope dancing in her tone.

Then came the sound of something scraping against the tile floor, a chair, maybe. Someone was moving closer. But it was his voice that broke through the agony.

“Savannah, baby, we’re right here. You don’t have to say anything. But if you can hear us, we’re right here.”

His hand settled gently on my shoulder.

It should’ve been comforting. It should’ve anchored me. Instead, it exploded through my skin like a thousand needles igniting every nerve down my arm. The pain was sudden, electric, slicing its way from my collarbone to my wrist like fire under my skin.

But I didn’t flinch. Didn’t cry out. Didn’t give in to the unrelenting torture his touch had triggered. Because I wasn’t letting go now. Not when they were both so close.

Not when I’d made it this far.

The pain didn’t ease, but something else pushed through it, something stronger than the fire in my limbs.

Light.

A soft glow behind my eyelids, blurry and distant, like the world was calling me back.

I tried to lift them. It felt like trying to peel back concrete.

But slowly… they cracked open.

Just a sliver at first. Then more.

Shapes bled into my vision, fuzzy outlines moving in front me. The ceiling. Lights. Movement. Then—faces.

Millie. Jaxson.

They hovered just above me, blurred by tears I hadn’t realized were mine. My eyes drifted between them, back and forth, locking on each for only seconds at a time. I didn’t dare move my head. Even that felt impossible. But my gaze, weak as it was, spoke the truth.

I was still here.

And I saw them.