The Sinner of Mute

The warehouse stilled. 

Lucien’s cigar paused inches from his lips. “Repeat that.” 

Oleg smirked. “I said—” 

The bullet tore through his knee before he finished. Oleg collapsed, howling, blood pooling beneath him.

Lucien holstered his pistol, smoke curling from the barrel. “You spoke to her. You looked at her. That is the price.” 

Sorina stood motionless, her breath shallow, her fingers trembling at her sides. Lucien gripped her waist, pulling her against him. “You see, dulcețea? Even rats know better than to touch what’s mine.” 

He nodded to Alejandro, who dragged Oleg to a steel table bolted to the floor.

Straps secured his wrists and ankles. Lucien pressed a scalpel into Sorina’s hand, closing her fingers around the handle. “Cut out his tongue.” 

She recoiled, but he held her fast. “Do it,” he murmured, lips brushing her ear, “or I’ll carve you instead.” 

Oleg thrashed, gagging on his own blood. “Bozhe moi—!” (My God—!) 

Sorina’s hand shook, the scalpel glinting. Lucien covered her fist with his, guiding the blade to Oleg’s mouth. “Slowly,” he instructed. “So he feels every millimeter.” 

The metal pierced flesh. Oleg’s screams dissolved into wet, choking gurgles.

Sorina’s vision blurred, tears splashing the table, mixing with blood. When it was done, Lucien held up the severed tongue with tweezers, admiring it like a jewel. “A token,” he said, dropping it into a specimen jar. “For his buyers.” 

He turned to Sorina, wiping her bloodied hands with a monogrammed handkerchief. “You did well,” he said, as if praising a dog. 

She stared at the jar, Oleg’s tongue floating in formaldehyde.

Lucien dismissed the men, leading her to the sedan. Inside, he cupped her face, his thumb smearing a tear. “Every time you defy me,” he whispered, “I’ll make you my knife. You’ll carve your own hell. Understand?....and this was just a trailer for you to remember before you dare to think of defying me.” 

She nodded, hollow. 

“Good.” He kissed her forehead, tender as a lover. “Although I brought you here to show you what kind of business I do...but that BASTARD had to ruin the day!!”

As the sedan pulled away, Sorina watched the warehouse shrink in the rearview.

Oleg’s men loaded his maimed body into a van, their faces pale with terror. 

Alejandro met her eyes in the mirror. For a heartbeat, she saw it—pity. Then it vanished, replaced by the void. 

Lucien’s fingers laced through hers, possessive, final. “You’re just perfectly Mine. Anyone dares to even look at you with their dirty eyes will face something even worse!!” 

The house was silent, save for the distant hum of the security system and the hollow drip-drip of a leaky faucet in the en suite bathroom.

Sorina knelt on the cold marble floor of the kitchen, her ivory lace gown streaked with bleach and blood—Oleg’s blood, crusted under her nails.

She scrubbed the tiles with a bristle brush, the chemical sting of cleaner biting her nostrils. Scrub. Scrub. Scrub.

The rhythm was a mantra, her knuckles raw, her split nails leaving pink smears on the grout. 

Lucien had locked her in three hours ago, his parting words still coiled in her ear: “Clean your mess.” She wasn’t sure if he meant the bloodstains or herself. 

Her hair hung in a tangled curtain, half-obscuring her face.

The serpent pendant lay heavy against her chest, its chain chafing the fresh bruises Lucien had left when he’d gripped her throat in the sedan.

She’d torn the gown’s sleeves off at the shoulders, the fabric now resembling a burial shroud more than a dress. 

Scrub. Scrub. Scrub.

But the blood wouldn’t fade from her memory. What had he made her do ?!! Just why?!

She was doing everything to not think about that horrible event that was forced upon her hours ago in the dock.

She wanted to forget but it was hard.

Her life had become a circus where she was a circus animal and her husband was the ringmaster.

--- 

Her mind frayed, slipping into memory. 

The night when he had taken her virginity and he was no near gentle. That night was like a nightmare for her due to the amount of she had to endure.

She’d been in the bedroom, the second night of their “wedding.” Lucien had dismissed the guards, poured a glass of bourbon, and watched her undress with the detached interest of a man appraising livestock.

She’d worn the lace negligee he’d chosen, her hands trembling as she fumbled with the straps. 

“Faster,” he’d commanded, swirling his drink. 

When she hesitated, he’d crossed the room and ripped the lace apart. No kisses. No words.

His hands were clinical, mapping her body like a conqueror claiming land.

She’d bitten her lip raw to mute her cries, her tears soaking the silk pillow. He’d laughed, low and cruel, when she bled. 

“Virginity is a currency,” he’d said, biting her neck. “Spent.”

--- 

Sorina gagged, the memory sour in her throat. She went to the sink, She splashed water on her face, the mirror reflecting a stranger: hollow eyes, lips cracked from biting back screams, the pendant’s serpent grinning atop a lattice of bruises. His masterpiece. 

To drown the silence, she turned on the radio. A mariachi ballad warbled through static, the singer lamenting a lost love.

Sorina mouthed the words, her voice still a prisoner in her throat. “Volver, volver, volver…” (Return, return, return…) 

But there was no volver for her. Only forward.