Chapter 8

• For the second time since she was kidnapped, Lexie woke up chained to the dungeon walls. Her head aching dully and her body sore and cramped.
• Impotence was the most primal emotion she felt along with shame. She was naked, her body bare to the breeze which scorched her skin like whips, her hair crawling all over her face and her lips chapped and dry like her throat.
• Her pride was now battered and bruised, her stomach empty and practically begging for food.
• But how could she quench her hunger when shackles restrained her hands and feet?
• Sighing a breath of frustration into the air, she listened to the only sounds loud enough to reach her ears, the chirping of the morning birds and the sound of every breath that passed her lips.
• Yesterday, she thought she had succeeded in getting away. She had managed to get her hands on hands the keys and had even managed to open the door only to be met by her own despair.
• Just like the last time she was shackled in this dully illuminated room, lamentation ran like blood through her veins. She regretted her actions. If she had known it would end this way, she'd sit like a good girl in the living room and wait until her captor came to order her around.
• But no, she just had to go and stab him and now she was tied to the walls of his torture room, waiting to be tortured to death for what she had done.
• However, she couldn't help but repeatedly ask herself if what she did was really wrong...well stabbing him wasn't right, but was it wrong of her to defend herself, to at least try and free herself?
• The answer was a no, but Lexie was sure her captor would answer that question the opposite way.
• Shaking her head, the only part of her body she could freely move, Lexie's eyes drifted over to the whips, the knives and the ropes on the table not too far from where she was restrained.
• She could feel fear clouding the rationality of her mind, the walls of her heart and the curves of her body. She was sure she'd die here now, those tools were proof of what he did to his other victims and what his father did to his mother and sadly, the same fate awaited her.
• A shiver of displeasure ran down her spine, not stopping until it touched the bottom of her feet. She wasn't ready to die yet, but when footsteps greeted her sensitive ears, she started to prepare for the torture she knew would come.
• The knob on the door twisted and then the big brown board was easily pushed open.
• Amidst the dull lighting of the room, in came a man wearing a suit of black, the same man who had knocked the sense to feel out of her neck yesterday to be more specific.
• His eyes darted around the room until they landed on her, then a smirk made it's way onto his red lips. "I see you're conscious now." He voiced.
• Lexie wanted to slap that smirk off his face and dig out his eyes which assessed her body instead of her face, but disrespecting this man would turn the world against her, considering his seemingly old age.
• Wrinkles adorned his face and his veins popped out of his hands, showing itself to anyone who dared to look.
• Yet still the lethal look in Lexie's eyes could not hide. "I am." She retorted.
• The man chuckled, closing the door behind him as he stepped further into the room. "I see you've still got the fire in your eyes, but the ten whips Zheme, your fiancé told me to give you will surely put it out."
• Zheme?
• Her fiancé?
• So that was his name.
• Lexie tilted her head, confusion shining like light in her eyes. "Whips? Who's gonna get whipped?"
• "You."
• That one word caused Lexie's heart to quicken. Whipped? She was gonna get whipped for something that needed to be done?
• "Where is this Zheme?"
• The old man pocketed his frail hands and rose a brow. "You put him in a hospital girl, but he left me strict orders to not feed you until his return and to tarnish your back with ten lashes of that harsh whip."
• Lexie's eyes travelled over to the whip as she tried to disappear into the walls. She knew she'd be punished, tortured even but nothing could prepare her for such atrocity.