Chapter 143: No Time to Scream

TRIGGER WARNING

This chapter contains extremely graphic descriptions of violence, gore, torture, mutilation, and death. It includes detailed depictions of bodily harm, dismemberment, and psychological terror. Reader discretion is strongly advised—skip if you are sensitive to extreme violence or graphic content.

Leitana knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know exactly what. No, it wasn’t that she didn’t know. Deep down, she knew. Her mind kept whispering it, over and over, but she refused to let the words take full shape. If she spoke them aloud, they might become real.

They sat in the back of the black SUV, gliding through the city toward home. The partition was up, granting privacy, but the silence between them was so thick it could be cut with a knife.

She had been discharged a few hours earlier. After the doctor left with his gentle “Congratulations,” she had opened her mouth to speak to Ravial—to ask what he was thinking, to say anything—but he had already pulled away. He muttered something about fetching her discharge papers so they could leave. The door closed behind him before she could even say his name.

Now, in the car, the memory of that swift exit looped in her mind.

She stared at her hands folded in her lap. The hospital bracelet still circled her wrist; she hadn’t asked them to remove it. Her shoulder throbbed beneath the fresh bandage, but that pain felt distant compared to the one blooming deep in her chest.

She blinked hard, but the tears pressed forward anyway. She hadn’t forgotten. She could never forget.

The illness.

The diagnosis the doctors had given her months ago: “a few months left.”

She had tried to accept it, even made peace with it in quiet moments.

But now there was a child.

A life growing inside her.

And her own life was already on borrowed time.

She could die with the baby still in her womb.

She could leave this little one without ever holding them.

She could leave him—her Ravial—with or without a child, standing over a grave.

That was why he was so quiet. Why he had pulled away. Why the air in the car felt like it was suffocating them both.

She bit her lip until she tasted blood. Then she turned her face to the window and stared up at the sky—gray, indifferent, endless.

Papa God… why?

The question burned in her throat. How could He allow this? He knew her fate. He knew every day already numbered. So why plant a seed of life in her now, when her own was about to be cut short? Why give her this joy only to tear it away?

She didn’t realize the first tear had fallen until it struck her clasped hands. Then another. Silent at first—just warm tracks down her cheeks.

Then the dam broke.

Her chest heaved once, sharp and involuntary, and a sob ripped out of her—raw, ugly. She tried to swallow it back, but it was too big, too heavy. It clawed up her throat and escaped in a broken wail.

She curled forward, arms wrapping around her middle as if she could hold herself together. The sobs came faster, harder—deep, wrenching sounds that shook her whole body.

Each one felt like it was tearing something vital loose inside her. She cried for the baby she might never see grow. For the life she might never finish living. For Ravial, who would have to bury her and their child—or raise their child alone. For the unfairness of it all. For the love she had finally found, only to fear it would end in death.

She cried like a child who had just learned the world could be cruel. Like a woman who had just realized she might never be a mother. Like someone saying goodbye to every tomorrow she had not dared to dream of, yet still hoped for.

And then—suddenly—strong, warm hands wrapped around her waist.

She was lifted effortlessly.

Ravial pulled her across the seat and settled her on his lap, one arm banding around her back, the other cradling the back of her head.

He pressed her face gently but firmly to his chest, right over his heart. His shirt was soft, carrying his scent, wrapping around her like a warm cocoon.

He said nothing.

He just held her.

One hand stroked slow circles over her hair. The other kept her anchored against him so tightly she could feel every beat of his heart—steady, strong, alive.

Her sobs grew worse at first—muffled now against his chest, but no less violent. She fisted his shirt in both hands, clinging as if he were the only solid thing left in the world. Tears soaked through the fabric. Her whole body shook with the force of it.

Minutes passed. Maybe longer. She didn’t know. Time blurred in the storm of grief.

Finally, the sobs slowed—still deep, still painful, but quieter. Hitching breaths. Shuddering exhales.

She pressed her cheek harder against him, listening to the rhythm beneath her ear.

“Mi Ravial…” Her voice was wrecked, barely more than a whisper.

She swallowed another sob.

“Mi no strong enough. Mi no fit… mi no fit stay long enough to hold dem. To tell dem how much mi love dem. How much mi love yu.”

Her fingers twisted tighter in his shirt.

“Papa God give mi dis gift… but He goin take mi away before mi can open mi eyes an see dem face. Before mi can sing dem lullaby. Before mi can teach dem how to pray.”

She drew in a ragged breath.

“Yu goin have to do it all alone. Yu goin have to tell dem about mi. Yu goin have to be mama an papa. An mi no wan yu carry dat pain by yuself.”

She lifted her head just enough to look up at him—blindfold still in place, jaw tight, mouth a hard line. But she could feel the tremor in his arms, the uneven rise and fall of his chest.

“Mi sorry,” she whispered, tears still falling. “Mi sorry mi body no strong. Mi sorry mi no go get to grow old wit yu. Mi sorry mi bring yu pain instead of joy.”

She pressed her forehead to his collarbone, voice cracking on the last words.

“But mi love yu. Mi love our child already. An mi wan stay. Mi wan stay so bad.”

Ravial still didn’t speak.

But his arms tightened around her almost painfully. He buried his face in her hair and breathed deeply, his body trembling.

He just held her tightly, chest rising and falling unevenly against her cheek. For the first time since she’d known him, she felt the full weight of his fear—not the cold, controlled posture he usually wore, but something raw, human, terrified.

She clung back just as hard, her sobs slowly quieting into hiccuping breaths, until the car eventually slowed and turned into the estate grounds.

Ravial carried her inside without a word, past the staff, past Avery and Alyssa—his expression forbidding anyone from approaching—and went straight to their bedroom. He laid her down on the sheets, then lay beside her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling the covers over them both.

He stayed like that for a long time, embracing her. She held him just as tightly, still crying softly, and he allowed it—still saying nothing.

Watching her breathe.

Watching the slight rise and fall of her stomach where their child slept.

Then, quietly—so quietly she almost missed it—he whispered:

“I will not let you go.”

It wasn’t a promise.

It was a declaration of war against fate itself.

Ravial walked into the underground warehouse, his entire posture screaming danger. Every one of his men gave him a wide berth. They could feel the rage rolling off him in thick, black, suffocating waves. His face was a mask of stone, blindfold perfectly in place, but the air around him felt colder, heavier, the shadows themselves recoiling.

He moved like a predator who had already decided the kill was inevitable.

He stepped directly in front of the single metal chair bolted to the center of the concrete floor. A man was tied to it—wrists and ankles bound with thick black zip-ties, mouth previously gagged with duct tape that had been ripped off earlier and now dangled from one cheek.

Jim’s heart slammed against his ribs so hard he thought it might crack bone.

The last thing he remembered was Leitana—sweet, soft-spoken Leitana—turning into something impossible. Her body moving too fast, too strong. His men flying into walls. Then her small, delicate hands around his throat. The world tilting. Pain then darkness.

He woke up here. Hours? Days? He didn’t know. Only that the room smelled of mold, old blood, and fear—his own fear, sharp and sour.

And now Ravial Ashbourne stood before him.

Jim’s mouth worked, dry and useless.

“S… sir… what’s going on?”

Ravial said nothing.

He simply cocked his head to the side—slow, terrifying.

Jim’s voice cracked higher. He realized Ravial already knew everything. His best chance to leave alive was to confess—but also lie.

“I… I didn’t touch her, not really, I swear. It was just… just business. I didn’t mean—”

Ravial’s voice cut through the babbling.

Devoid of anything that could be called human.

“You put a bullet in my wife.”

Jim flinched as if slapped.

“I—it was a mistake. I’m so sorry, sir, I—”

“You put a bullet in my wife,” Ravial repeated, softer this time, almost conversational—as though he couldn’t comprehend the audacity of this lowlife.

Jim’s stomach dropped through the floor.

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me…”

Ravial stepped closer.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

“You hurt what is mine,” he said, each word cold and emotionless. “You made her bleed. You made her cry. You made her believe—for one moment—that she might leave me. So preposterous, given the fact that she would never leave me.” The last sentence emerged unhinged, terrifying. Jim started shaking.

“Please… please, I’ll do anything. Whatever you want…”

Ravial reached out slowly.

One gloved hand caught Jim’s chin, forcing his head up.

“I do not want anything,” Ravial said softly.

His thumb pressed against Jim’s lower lip—almost gentle.

“I want you to feel what she felt, but a hundredfold.”

Jim’s eyes darted wildly around the room, searching for escape, for mercy, for anything.

Then Ravial lifted his free hand.

A flick of his fingers.

The lights snapped on—harsh, industrial fluorescents flooding the side of the room.

Jim’s gaze followed.

Bile surged up his throat so violently he gagged against the ropes.

His two men—the linebacker and the scarred one—lay sprawled on the concrete in the far corner.

They were not simply dead.

The linebacker’s thick arms were twisted backward at angles that defied human anatomy—elbows bent the wrong way, forearms snapped like dry twigs and folded tightly against his own back.

His chest was caved in, ribs visibly crushed inward as though something immense had stomped down with impossible force. His face was unrecognizable: jaw unhinged and hanging loose, teeth scattered across the concrete like broken dice, one eye popped from its socket and dangling by the optic nerve against his blood-slicked cheek.

The scarred man was worse.

His legs had been folded upward—knees bent backward until his heels pressed against the small of his back. His spine arched in a grotesque, unnatural bow, vertebrae protruding through split skin like jagged white teeth. His arms were missing below the elbows; the stumps were ragged and torn—not cut, torn—as though ripped away by bare hands. Blood had pooled beneath him in a wide, sticky halo, already congealing at the edges into dark, viscous rings.

Both men stared upward with empty, glassy eyes—expressions frozen in the exact moment ultimate terror took them.

“WHAT THE FUCK,” Jim screamed, the words dissolving into a retch as he vomited violently onto his own lap, heaving and choking on bile.

Ravial released his chin.

Jim’s head dropped forward, strings of vomit dangling from his mouth, body shaking uncontrollably.

“You see,” Ravial said quietly, almost gently, “I didn't afford them time to scream.”

He stepped back one measured pace.

“But you… you will not get that courtesy.”