Page 3 of Where Sinners Repent

With powerful hands, he twists me, pushing his crotch against my ass. Kitty sits just a metre away, waiting for me. So close.

I fall against the table, reaching. Not close enough.

Defeat, unlike anything I’ve ever felt, washes over me. She’s too far away.

“You’re not going to recognise yourself when I’m done with you,” Jacob snarls. “I’m going to fucking destroy you.”

This time, when I sob, tears fall. Because I believe him.

My tights are no match for his hands, as he rips them past my ass. The feeling of one less layer between us fuels my fire again. With everything, I jolt towards Kitty, the faded wood glowing like my salvation.

This time, my fingers graze the handle, closing around the splintered surface.

He’s not expecting me to fight back. I never have before.

Little does he know, I’m not the same girl he tormented all those years ago.

I’m not Roxanne anymore. I’m fucking Roxy.

My arm twists back. Wood cracking bone echoes in my studio. It makes the most satisfying, delicious thunk. He stumbles back in shock, eyes blinking. It gives me room to face him, cocking Kitty over my shoulder with both hands, and slamming her straight through his ugly fucking skull.

Like a sack of useless potatoes, he drops to the ground. Unconscious with one hit.

I want to laugh, so I do.

A maniacal, strangled sound at seeing one man who almost ruined me, on the ground, knocked out.

By a girl with a baseball bat named Kitty.

My breaths come out in short, quick bursts as I cock her over my head and drive her into Jacob’s face.

The corners of my vision turn a dark crimson. The same colour that leaks out of his nose and mouth.

I hit again. Hit the man who thought he could touch me with zero consequences. The man who saw a small girl and thought she was weak.

Maybe I was...

Right now, I feel nothing close to the word.

“Fuck you!” I scream through gritted teeth. My arms burn as I bring the bat back down to his face, a sickening crunch of bones following. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

I hit. And hit and hit and fucking hit.

I continue to hit him until I feel blisters forming on my hands. I continue to hit him until Jacob no longer looks like Jacob. And I continue to hit him until blood stains the dark floors of my studio and the smell of piss and blood makes me dizzy.

Only then do I stop.

Only then does realisation set in.

I killed him. I killed Jacob in the harsh light of my studio.

I only come back down to earth a fraction, but it’s enough to know that I’m royally and totally fucking screwed. Hugging a bloodied Kitty to my chest, I fall against the table, shivering with adrenaline and dread.

I can’t take my eyes off the lifeless lump on the floor, in fear that he still might rise and continue to torment me.

Without bothering to walk around the growing pool of blood, I reach for my phone.

Only one person can help me. The one exception I made when I vowed to stay far fucking away from the life of violence and motorcycles, even though I knew she was right in the middle of it. I thought I could pretend that part of her life doesn’t exist.