I stand still. Arms at my sides. Hands fisted. The phone is still inside one. He draws his arm back and delivers a blow so fierce that it momentarily blinds me, sending my head jerking backward.

“I trusted you!” I’ve barely turned back to him when he does it again, this one catching my temple, making the room spin before I can straighten to take the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that.

“I trusted you, and what did you do? What the hell did you do but betray me!”

My ears ring, and I taste the copper of blood when the next blow to my gut has me doubling over.

“Nothing to say for yourself, you fucking bastard?”

The phone falls to the floor, and I clutch the desk to straighten and face him again.

“Say. Something!”

What can I say?

“Fucking talk, you goddamn bastard!”

“You’re right.” It’s all I can muster because what else is there? I deserve his wrath. I deserve to be punished. That lashing I took in Mercedes’s place, it was all a part of this. If I ever believed otherwise, I was a fool. A liar.

He looks at me for a long, long minute, and I see the betrayal in his eyes behind the rage. The pain of learning the truth about someone you thought was better than he is.

I swallow the bile in my throat and open my arms to take more.

And he delivers.

Gripping my collar and hurling me toward the wall, we send a lamp crashing to the floor, the table toppling. He strikes again, the other side of my face this time.

“Fight. Fight you fucking bastard.”

“No.” The sound is garbled, bloody. “I won’t fight you.”

He strikes again and again and again, sweat dripping down his face. He’s out of breath when he finally stops and stumbles backward. His knuckles are red and raw, and my blood is splattered across his shirt. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with his arm.

“How could you?” His voice is broken too. It’s pain I hear now.

“You’re right.” It takes all I have to look him in the eyes. “I betrayed you.”

That seems to send a wave of fresh energy through him, and he begins his attack anew. I don’t know if either of us hears the screams for us to stop. I don’t know when either of us realizes Mercedes is in the room.

“What are you doing?” She’s screaming, wild, her eyes wide, face streaked with tears. “Stop! You’re going to kill him.”

I look at her. She’s behind Santiago, trying to pull him away. He has one hand on my shoulder to keep me up against the wall as he pounds my middle. My ears ring from the earlier hits, and I’m not sure my hearing isn’t delayed.