Chapter Twelve

Author's Note: Like the last chapter, this chapter also has a warning on it since it picks up Olivia's story where the last chapter left off.

There was no going back now. Olivia had made her choice and she would have to live with the consequences. Or perhaps not, as her imminent death was a distinct possibility. Her legs felt like jello as she forced herself to stand strong against whatever cruelty Christian had prepared for her in retaliation for her disobedience. For the moment though Christian ignored her and turned his full attention to the enforcers.

"Train her, and enjoy yourself in the process. Don't hold back."

The two enforcers nodded, one of them with a rather sadistic smile as he picked up all of the tools Christian had offered Olivia. The little girl's face went stark white, and Olivia felt her own color fade.

"No..." she whispered.

Whatever direct punishment Christian had in store for her – and she knew she wasn't going to escape that – she was going to be punished indirectly first. The indirect punishment was always so much worse. While physically she would heal from whatever injuries she was given, the emotional ones from watching others get hurt because of her hurt much longer and left permanent scars. Her heart and soul would never heal from them.

"You can't change your mind now, Olivia," Christian told her as he wrapped an arm around her chest and pulled her back against him so she couldn't escape.

She could feel Christian's erection pressed against her, clearly enjoying this, but she hardly noticed it with what was happening in front of her. When one enforcer pinned the little girl to the ground she started screaming and struggling with all her might. It wouldn't do her any good. Olivia couldn't watch as the other enforcer knelt behind her, ready to shove the handle of the whisk into the child's body and violate her for the first time of what was sure to be many. She turned her head away with a tiny cry. It didn't do her any good since Christian grabbed her chin and yanked her head back around.

"You will stand here and watch the whole thing," Christian warned. "Closing your eyes or looking away will only make it worse. You need to see what will happen when you disobey me. And you will see. Every last moment of it."

Olivia shuddered but didn't even try to break free. It would be no use. Instead she did what Christian had asked and returned her attention to the scene playing out in front of her even though she would have rather had every bone in her body broken. The moment the whisk was jammed inside of her, the child screamed in agony. The scream ripped an agonized sob out of Olivia as well, and in that moment Olivia gave up trying to hide what she felt. She knew there would be no way she'd be able to hide it, not when she already wanted to collapse into a puddle on the ground when the horrors had only just begun. She and the little girl in front of her had only gotten a taste of them. There was much worse to come.

Olivia paused in her story and stopped pacing to lean heavily against the wall. She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle and locked her gaze onto the floor. When she spoke again her voice was scratchy.

"It went on for a long time. So long that Hannah eventually stopped screaming and just stared hopelessly at me. I was what she locked onto even though I was to blame. I promised myself I wouldn't look away from her eyes. That I wouldn't abandon her."

She choked and her stomach heaved, causing her to wipe her hand repeated across her mouth and later her sweat soaked forehead. Somehow she managed to keep the contents of her stomach down. Peter could only watch as she struggled for control. In the end she regained enough to get the next part out in broken pieces.

"She was sodomized… with every… every tool I'd been offered and… repeatedly raped… Raped in every way… every way imaginable. By both of them. Sometimes alone, and… and sometimes together."

Olivia bit her lip and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Peter couldn't help thinking how young she looked curled up like that. As young as the little girl who had been so violently assaulted while she'd been forced to watch. The thought ripped the wound her story had created in his heart wider. Part of him didn't want her to go on, but he needed to hear the end.

"By the time they were finally done, she was bleeding... terribly... from both orifices. They'd torn her apart internally, pushed in too far. Intentionally, though I hadn't realized at the time. It was all meant to punish me. They left me alone with her, and I held her as she slowly bled to death. I tried to apologize, but there just weren't really words that felt like they were enough. No apology could ever be good enough for what I allowed to happen to her. So instead I tried to talk to her to distract her from her pain and inevitable end. That's how I found out her name. That she was only fourteen. She told me about her family as she died... and how scared she was. How much she wanted to go home."

Peter didn't think Olivia even realized she'd begun crying. It was only when the tears started dripping off her chin that they seemed to register. She brushed them away with a quick swipe of her forearm.

"Hannah bled out in my arms. She was only fourteen. Just fourteen, and she passed away in a dirty warehouse where atrocities happened every day and nobody thought anything of them. I kept holding her even after she was gone. When Christian and the enforcers came back they weren't surprised Hannah was dead. Christian's only response was to tell one of the enforcers to "take out the garbage." The enforcer ripped Hannah away from me and hauled her out by the ankle. I tried to go after her, but Christian caught me by the arms and wouldn't let me go anywhere. He wasn't done punishing me for disobeying him. Not even close. Just watching Hannah die wasn't enough. I was dragged back to my cell, stripped down, doused in ice water, and left alone. I wasn't sure which would get me first - the lack of food and water or the cold. By the time they came for me again I was nearly too weak to move."

Peter knew what he needed to ask next, but he didn't want to. God he didn't want to. He took a deep breath and forced the question out before he couldn't do it at all.

"And the next time Christian asked you for more than a choice?"

"Liv, don't answer that," Kris ordered before Olivia had a chance to say a word. "Whatever you may or may not have done, I don't want to hear it. While I trust Detective Ulric with details, I don't trust his bosses not to use them against you."

Olivia smiled wryly.

"Be vague?"

"Vague is okay... as long as you're careful. You know enough about how this works to be aware of what you should and shouldn't say."

Olivia nodded and took a few extra moments to put her next words together.

"I went back to the philosophy I'd used in the beginning," Olivia finally answered. "If it was going to happen anyway, then I could at least pick the lesser of the evils. I could pick what would result in the least pain and trauma. It was what I held on to even after I graduated. I couldn't prevent the overall evil that was happening, but I could mitigate it as best I could. I know that won't ever make up for what I allowed to happen. For what I did. But I tried. It was the only thing I had."

O . o . O . o . O

I know that won't ever make up for what I allowed to happen, for what I did, but it was the only thing I had.

Olivia's words refused to leave Peter's head even as he drove home from the prison. What she'd told them was going to stick with him for a long time, possibly forever. There would be no way to get the words out of his head, but at the moment he needed some relief from their presence. At least for a little while.

He gave his partner a call.

"You survived your first day in exile?" Maggie teased when she picked up.

Normally the joke would make him laugh and tease her in return, but in that moment all it did was strike a dead chord.

"Survived is a questionable word," Peter muttered. "Meet me for a drink? Please?"

He could hear the desperation in his own voice. Normally that would make him cringe at the very least but at the moment he didn't care. He was desperate or whatever the next level up from desperate was. There was no denying it, and Maggie was likely to see even worse from him if she agreed to go out for a drink.

"Peter..."

She clearly didn't want to go, but he didn't want to be alone right now. With the way he was feeling, he really couldn't afford for her to say no. At least Maggie would understand some of the toxic thoughts currently filling his head and nearly suffocating him.

"It's been awhile since she stopped talking and I still feel like I'm going to throw up."

"What? Who? Why are you going to throw up?"

There was only one question in that torrent that Peter felt like answering at the moment.

"Liv."

"The madam?" Maggie asked incredulously. "You got her to talk?"

"Yeah. Sayer and I were talking to her most of the day."

"Shit, is the list of what she's done really that bad?"

"No... It's the list of things that were done to her that's screwing with my head," he corrected. There was silence on the line for a beat before he filled it with a thought that had been all but consuming him. "You know, at one point she told us, "I was you," but she's wrong. She's more than we are. I could never have stood up to what was done to her and still tried to fight the way she did. Never..."