They went to sit in the living room, once again sinking into the plush cushions of the sofa. Topaz jockeyed herself from her chair and onto the couch without Law's help and he perched delicately on the space next to her.

Topaz wrung her hands and Law noticed that her cuticles were freshly gnawed until they started bleeding. Her fingertips were red and swollen, irritated and almost infected looking. She clenched her hands into fists and put them tightly in her lap.

"There's something I need to tell you…" she murmured.

Law felt his blood turn to ice in his veins.

"I had hoped never to have to talk about it again. This was all supposed to be over… over a long time ago," she whispered and then shook her head sorrowfully. "But they haven't caught him yet. He's still loose." She closed her eyes and shuddered. "I can get you out of here if you want. I can send you to stay with Marina-chan and Ryou-kun behind their gated mansion walls. Just, let me tell you and then you can decide what you want to do."

Topaz shivered again and her teeth chattered. She ran her hands along her braced leg, picking at the buckles on it with her fingernails. It must have hurt her because she grimaced in pain, twisting her mouth. Then, she continued speaking with a wavering and weak resolve.

"I married a… very bad man right out of high school. I wouldn't listen to a word my parents or friends said about him. They saw something horrible in him, but I… I saw something wild, something exciting, in him. Looking back, now, I wonder how I missed the signs. I mean, they were so obvious." Her voice thickened and cracked, broke, and she choked back her tears. "The decline was slow, but it was there. It was so clear."

Law started to reach for her, but she shuddered and he instantly snatched his hands back. His fisted them on his thighs and he felt the muscles quivering beneath his palms.

"He was always jealous when I hung out with other people or talked to other men. At firsts, I thought it was adorable and sweet, but… it wasn't…" Topaz's eyes glimmered with a thick sheen of unshed tears. "I didn't realize at first that he was cutting me off from my friends and family. I just wanted to spend all my time with him so when I made plans to be with someone else, he offered to stay in and watch movies and cuddle all night and I'd always blow them off. As time wore on, I stopped doing that and I'd try to spend time with Kaito-san or Marina-chan. He always stopped me somehow."

Topaz hesitated and a few tears ran down her cheek. "Once, he got me so drunk that I couldn't even walk straight. Whenever we went out in groups, with my friends or my parents or his friends, he always said stuff about me. Mean, derogatory, shameful, humiliating things. Not so much around my parents and my friends, but with his he was truly the worst. He talked about…" she dug her fingernails into the flesh of her cuticles, peeling the skin back, tearing it apart.

This time, Law did cautiously lay his hand over hers and stop her from hurting herself any further.

She wouldn't look at him. Maybe she couldn't…

He knew the shameful feelings that came from abuse and torture, like it was all your fault that horrible things happened to you. He also knew what it was like to have someone talk about the things they did to him at night, making it seem like he was a worthless piece of meat.

He shuddered along with her.

"Then, he was always buying new," her voice stuttered and broke, "always buying new… sex slaves…"

Law bit his lip, hard, almost drawing blood from the healing split on his mouth.

"I only found out what he did to them after it happened. He raped them so brutally, out in the woods behind our house where no one could hear them screaming. He had a little shack set up full of toys and chains and whips. He starved them to death regularly and beat them to death and bled them dry." She let out a great hiccupping sob and pressed her face into her long fingered hands, but she continued through her tears. "I found out he buried all the bodies in my garden, said my love was what made my roses so beautiful, but it was really the rotting stinking bodies he buried there!"

Law frowned. He knew how it was. He had buried other slaves himself, seen and felt firsthand the cruelty of masters who cared nothing for life.

"Then, he started in on me," she whispered. "The first night he beat me, he was so drunk. I thought he'd never do it again, but… he did… he did and so many times… and afterwards, he always cried and broke down and told me he loved me and that he would never do it again. He said he would never hurt me again because he loved me so much."

Her narrow shoulders shook with sobs and she appeared unable to go on. Law gave her hand a little encouraging squeeze. She turned her palms up, clasped his hand, and held it tightly.

"Then, it got worse. He started blaming me, saying I made him beat me because I didn't cook dinner right or I wasn't waiting at the door when he came home. He started to destroy me. He told me I was worthless and that he was the best I would ever have. He told me all the time how generous he was being to settle for me, for some trash when he deserved better. He said I needed to be punished, beaten, for dragging him down. Like the fool, one of those battered women you hear about on the news, I believed everything he said."

Law knew those feelings intimately. He had seen them on other slaves and felt them in himself. He hate that someone as sweet and kind as Topaz had suffered like he had. It created a slow, burning rage inside him that made him want nothing more than to hunt down her assailant. But what could he do? He was a slave, and he'd no doubt be killed.

"I stopped caring about my appearance and I just did everything he said without question. He started demanding sex from me, strange horrible forms of sex." Topaz violently shuddered at the memory and looked like she was going to throw up. "Oral sex so hard he'd shove himself down my throat to choke me nearly unconscious, doggy style while he spanked me, hickies so red that he often drew blood from my skin, and sometimes he'd chain me to the bed and have me however he wanted. He stopped buying sex slaves." She whispered, "He had me now. He didn't need them anymore."

Law gently stroked her hand with his thumb as she went on.

"When he took me to his shack, I knew he was going to kill me and I didn't care. I thought I deserved death," she confessed. Then, she guided Law's hand to the brace on her leg, letting him feel the buckles as cold as ice. "He took a power drill to my leg, starting at the ankle. He shattered all the bones and tore apart the flesh. It never healed even with all the things the doctors did to it. I can't use it anymore. All the nerves are gone."

Law'd eyebrows crashed down in horror.

Then Topaz looked up and her jade-green eyes met his mercury-colored orbs. Her face was wet with tears and her eyes were red from crying. "I'm telling you this because he still wants to hurt me. He'll come here and if you want to go somewhere safe, I'll understand." Then, she yanked her hands away from him, stood, and wobbled into her chair.

Law stared after her. He didn't know what to say.

...

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