Chapter 81 When Fear Recognized Itself!

Chapter 81 When Fear Recognized Itself!
Saintilia POV

I stood near the doorway, pretending not to notice, but the air in the room had changed. Whatever lived between them had entered with Jacob and taken a seat at the table.

His invitation left me confused. After all his warnings for me to stay away from Jacob, his sudden hospitality felt strange. What seemed even more suspicious was that Emilio immediately offered him a drink. It was a calculated gesture. With free liquor in front of him, Jacob had no reason to leave. He settled in, and the two men began to talk, with Jacob never once reaching for his wallet.

I served dinner earlier than usual. It was important to put something solid in their stomachs before the drinking grew worse. As the evening deepened, they kept drinking without pause. Their game of dominoes grew louder, the tiles slapping against the table with sharp cracks that cut through their laughter and taunts.

But the easy friendliness I was used to seeing in Emilio was gone. In its place was something colder, a quiet tension that hung in the air like a gathering storm. His earlier warmth had shifted into something that made the back of my neck prickle with unease.

In the middle of it all, Emilio turned to me with his usual air of command. He told me to go to the cockfighting house and have the keeper send over a few more bottles. I knew the routine. When I arrived, the keeper did not ask for details or permission. He simply nodded and asked, “How many?” He was used to seeing me come with these requests.

It was widely understood in the village that I was under Emilio’s protection. Wherever I went, his name guaranteed a certain level of respect, and sometimes fear. This was one of the undeniable advantages of living with him.

Back at the house, Emilio and Jacob drank relentlessly. Emilio held his liquor like a rock holds back the sea, steady and unmoved. But Jacob was coming apart. His laughter grew sharp, his words edged with a slow-burning aggression. What unsettled me most was that Emilio seemed to encourage it, pouring drink after drink, his gaze cool and watchful.

By the time the last bottle was empty, Jacob was slumped in his chair, muttering. Emilio was in no state to walk anyone home, and with one sharp look, he made it clear that I was not to take Jacob myself. Left with no good choice, I went to fetch the one person who could manage him safely: his wife, Celia. She needed to come and bring her husband home.

When I returned with Celia, the air inside the house felt heavier than before. Jacob lifted his head when he saw us, his eyes unfocused and glassy. Then, without warning, he reached for me.

“Titi,” he slurred, pulling me toward him. “You are so beautiful. I love you.”

His arms closed around me with clumsy force.

For a moment, I froze. It was so unlike him, so sudden and wrong, that my body did not know how to react. Then I became painfully aware of Celia standing there, watching her husband hold me in a way he had no right to.

I tried to pull away.

Celia’s face hardened. Whether it was jealousy, humiliation, anger, or something deeper, I could not tell. But before I could free myself, her hand flew through the air and struck Jacob hard across the face.

The sound cracked through the room.

For one breath, everything stopped.

Then Jacob swung back.

I was stunned by what I had just seen. It revealed a side of their marriage I had not known existed. But when Jacob threw his arm around my shoulders earlier, it was not affection I felt. It was a trigger. My mind flashed back to a darker time, to that same sickening feeling of being trapped. A cold recognition settled in my stomach, sharp and familiar, like déjà vu.

I knew the look on Celia’s face. It was not just anger. It was the hollow exhaustion of someone living with a constant threat. Emilio had not raised a hand to me in months, but I knew better than to mistake silence for safety. He likely thought he had broken me in, that I had learned my place.

Let him believe that.

His illusion was my best weapon, and time would prove which one of us was truly tamed.

Emilio stayed at the table, taking slow sips from his glass. To anyone else, he might have seemed calm. But I knew that stillness. A knot of fear tightened in my chest. Jacob was in deep trouble. Emilio never forgot a slight, and he collected debts with cold precision. Jacob’s behavior tonight would come at a price. The fact that Emilio already watched us with a jealous, suspicious eye only made things worse. I did not know what he was planning, but I held myself ready for whatever was coming.

Then I looked away from Emilio and back at Jacob.

His hand was no longer raised to strike. It was closed around Celia’s throat.

This had gone beyond drunken anger. There was a chilling intent in his grip. Without another thought, I stepped forward and wedged myself between them, pulling Jacob’s arm down and away from her neck.

Jacob threw me off him. As I stumbled back, my hand grabbed at his shirt to break my fall and tore the sleeve. The fabric ripped cleanly, exposing his arm.

My eyes locked onto it instantly, not out of curiosity, but out of fear.

The world seemed to shrink down to that single exposed patch of skin.

There, on Jacob’s arm, was an ugly scar. It was not a clean, pale line, the kind a simple accident might leave behind. This was raised and rough, a hard ridge of discolored flesh that looked as if the wound had been left to fight for itself. The skin had healed badly, forming a thick, uneven mark that made my stomach turn cold.

I had no idea how he had gotten it, and this was certainly not the time to ask.

In his drunken fury, he probably would not have remembered the story of it anyway. But what happened next truly astonished me. It was a movement so small, yet so strange, that it stole the air from my lungs.

Even as Jacob remained a threat, Celia moved.

Her hand did not fly to defend herself. She did not claw at him or shove him away. Instead, she reached for the torn sleeve and pulled the fabric back over his arm, hiding the scar from my view.

She was trying to conceal it.

Even in the middle of the violence.
Why would a woman being attacked by her husband rush to hide his scar?

What could possibly be more important than her own breath?

Continue..........