Chapter 73

ARIA

I believed him. I believed him.

My eyes were open but I could see nothing. My ears were working but the only thing I could hear were his threats.

My heart was beating but I wasn’t living.

My eyes were wet and filled with salty tears but no tears escaped.

Yet I was weeping.

Pain blossomed over my scalp but I kept silent. I endured it. No! No! I relished it. I felt it and wanted more of it.

I wanted something to tell me that I was still living. I needed some proof of my own existence. I wanted something to remind me that my biological machinery was working.

I wasn’t dead. I was alive.

But I was dying a silent death.

“Now lay down.” Like a newly trained puppy, I obeyed him.

My master. My husband My tormentor.

“Keep your head tilted up and don’t move.”

I did as he asked. Tilted my head but closed my eyes, not before a tear rolled down, disappearing into my hairline.

“Don’t move. It’ll be over soon.”

It will never end, will it?

Until the end of time, I was stuck with him.

I listened a