Page 1 of Ravaged From Fate

PROLOGUE

CASPIAN

I wake up in the middle of the night, and I know that something is wrong.

Very wrong.

Talking.

Multiple people.

Raised voices echoing outside my door.

In the darkness of my little bedroom, my ears prick up to the sound of a verbal fight. The owners of the sharp voices float around the house outside my room; I can hear their footsteps passing through the living room, and then the kitchen, and then the hallway so close to my door. My mother’s house that I know so well practically tells me where they are, even in the middle of the night, which is to be expected seeing as I’ve been raised in between these four walls. I know every floorboard and every doorframe of this place.

And I know that something is wrong.

A vicious argument is brewing between the voices. Something deadly serious.

They drift into my mother’s room next door with no regard for whether or not I can hear them; muffled sounds that easily break through the thin wall dividing her room and mine.

An adult argument: something that terrifies me.

What do I do?

Stay in my comfy and safe bed or find out what the hell is going on?

There’s a shout from the room. A yell of some kind.

I sit up.

Screw this comfy bed.

I’m only ten years old, but my heart is telling me I’m the only one who can deal with this. Especially since my mother is involved.

She needs my help.

I rip off the bedcovers and rush to my door. I peel it back and march into my mother’s room.

There is a man I do not know on the bed with his hands around my mother’s neck.

Mom…

Both adults – the strangled and the strangler - turn to look at the little boy who’s entered the room.

“Caspian…”

My mother breathes my name. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t yell. She can’t do either when the life is being squeezed out of her by this stranger between his manly fingers.

He regards me with a snarl of indifference. I’m nothing more than a little boy. And then he spins back around to the woman he’s choking.

“Nagging bitch,” the man says in a low pitch to Mom. “Bringing your son in here. He’s gotta witness this now.”

He’s got balding dark hair. A scar running down the back of his neck. A three-day stubble. Lips that have never smiled warmly in his life.

And, to a ten year old boy, he is absolutely terrifying.

I’ve never seen this man before in my life, but I don’t need to in order to understand who he is. Another man in a long parade of men Mom has turned to in the last few years to fulfill her basic need for love. I might not understand that need – not as a child - but I know well enough what consequences that need of hers has brought to both her and me. Consequences like this man, and many others like him. This man is nothing new.