Page 135 of Uprising

I don’t say anything, I’m so fearful that any minute he might change his mind so I shadow his steps down deeper into the tunnels, away from all the activity, away from all the people.

When we reach the door I can see the huge bar across it. It’s rudimentary, like something from a medieval castle but I guess it does the job.

He pulls off the bar and it creaks as it opens.

I want to say thanks, I want to say something, but my heart is beating so loudly and right now all I can focus on is that in this room is the sole source of all my pain, all my daughter’s pain, all Roman’s pain too.

He doesn’t follow me in. I don’t look to see where he goes, I just step inside, shutting the door staring at the man who was meant to love me, meant to protect me, meant to be an actual parent.

But I guess all that pain, all that questioning about why I wasn’t good enough for him to love has gone. It’s been erased. Replaced.

I’ve realised the question isn’t about me and my supposed failings as a daughter. You see I’ve always judged him by my own values only he doesn’t have them does he? He doesn’t view the world the way I do. He doesn’t look at people, and see them the way I do. As people, and not things to be used. To be manipulated. This whole time I realise it’s been about him, about his ineptitude, about his fucked up perspective that valued power and money over morals.

I was never going to win his love, no matter what I did. Because he wasn’t capable of it. Neither he nor my mother were. I was a thing to be used, to be capitalised.

Not a person in my own right.

And now that I finally realise it, now that I’ve finally accepted it, it’s like some deep, dark grief inside me goes. Like something that’s been coiled and fisted around my heart for so long seems to finally dissipate.

I draw in another breath and instantly regret it.

It stinks. It absolutely stinks.

I can see him, taped to a chair the way I was. His shirt is drenched in sweat and blood too. He’s pissed himself. Soiled himself.

It’s disgusting. He is disgusting.

And yet when his eyes meet mine I can’t help the grin.

He looks shocked, surprised, I bet he never thought he’d see me like this, in this situation, that either he would die here or Darius would win and he’d be there lauding it up over me again.

“Hello father.” I say softly. Teasingly. As if this is all some silly prank.

He narrows his eyes, that same look of disdain he always kept aside just for me.

I walk over to where someone has laid a cain that is bloodied, a knife that looks blunt as hell, and some other instruments that could cause a delightful amount of pain.

I pick up the chain. It’s heavy, each of the five loops are the size of my hand and I know it will take an effort to swing this but hell, it will certainly hurt when it makes contact, it will break bones. With my fingers still bound together it’s definitely a lot easier to grip than a knife and I know it will be satisfying to swing it, to see the damage it causes. I wrap the chain around my hand, anchoring it with my grasp.

“Do you know what he did?” I ask. “Do you know all the disgusting ways he hurt me, how he abused me, how he tortured my body?”

He doesn’t reply. He just looks at me like I’m the traitor.

“You all thought I was so weak. You all thought I was just a thing you could use…”

“We thought you were a whore.” He spits.

I let out a laugh then. “I was.” I reply. I’m okay with that word now. Even that doesn’t bother me I realise because I don’t care what people think. I’m beyond it now. Finally too, that need to be loved, to be accepted is gone. “You made me that, first for Paris, and then for Darius.”

“You were a whore long before that, you became one the day you fucked that Montague bastard…”

I swing the chain smash it into his jaw, cutting off the insult before it can even properly form on his lips. His teeth are already broken and they cut into his tongue as he reacts.

“You made me the whore.” I shout. My voice echoing off the cold sterile walls. “You.”

My chest is heaving, my heart is thumping but while I can feel the fear there, I can feel something else, something deeper.

“You tried to break me, all of you did, you thought I’d simply take what you dished out, but what you didn’t realise is that I was stronger than you, stronger than all of you.”