Loved Me, Then Destroyed Me

"Heh. This guy's tougher than he looks."

A woman's voice rang out, edged with mockery. Then, a sharp pain tore through my left leg. The agony hit so hard that I couldn't hold it back anymore. A low groan slipped out.

"Oh? Finally making a sound?"

Another woman spoke up, her voice tinged with amusement.

I forced my eyes open.

The woman in front of me wore heavy makeup, her face lit with a twisted kind of excitement. She held a red-hot iron rod, waving it lazily in front of me before driving it straight into my chest.

"Argh!" I screamed.

It felt like my chest was burning through from the inside out, the heat spreading along every nerve.

"That's better. It isn't fun if you don't scream."

She smiled, satisfied, then pressed the rod into the other side of my chest.

I clenched my teeth, fighting to stay silent. I knew the more I reacted, the more they enjoyed it.

So I endured it, quietly, praying it would end soon.

My tendons had already been severed. I lay there like a torn rag, completely at their mercy.

"Which one is this? Have we used eight methods yet?"

My wife, Janice Frost's, voice came through, clear and distant, just like always.

"Seventh," her mentor replied, a trace of hesitation in his tone. "Do you really need to recreate everything this precisely? You know it was Samuel who saved you back then. Why are you insisting on repaying Tim instead?"

My lashes trembled.

During a landslide years ago, I was the one who dug her out of the rubble with my bare hands, carried her to safety, and collapsed from exhaustion.

When I woke up, she insisted Tim Jenkins had saved her.

No matter how I tried to explain, she never believed me.

So it wasn't that she didn't believe me; she just chose not to.

"Marrying Samuel already betrayed Tim's feelings. I don't want him to go through something like this, too. A man's life is ruined if he goes through this."

Janice let out a quiet sigh, her voice heavy with guilt and helplessness.

Lying on that filthy wooden board, I started laughing. Tears slipped down the sides of my face.

She knew exactly what this would do to a man, and she still chose to do this to me. She kept saying she loved me, yet she pushed me into hell with her own hands.

Didn't that count as betraying me?

A sharp pain twisted through my abdomen. I gasped for air, but blood kept spilling from my mouth.

The man, across from me, panicked.

"What's wrong with him? He's not about to die, is he?"