Chapter 9 - The Fall of Travis
```text
The entire room fell into dead silence.
The officers paused, waiting. Derek stood silently behind Lena like an immovable wall of stone, his eyes daring Travis to make a single twitch.
Lena walked forward. Her bare feet stopped just an inch away from the wooden baseball bat lying on the floor.
She looked Travis dead in his bloodshot eyes. There was no more fear in her gaze. No more trembling. Only a cold, crystalline disgust that made Travis visibly shrink.
"You never loved me, Travis," Lena said, her voice clear and completely steady. "You loved my father’s name. You loved his legacy. And you thought because I was quiet, I was weak."
"Lena, please..." Travis whimpered, his arrogance entirely evaporated. "We can fix this. Don't let them take me. Think about our vows!"
"Our vows said 'in sickness and in health,'" Lena whispered, her eyes flashing with pure fire. "They didn't say until you poison my father and raise a bat to my head."
She turned her back on him completely.
"Take him out of my sight," she told the detective.
"With pleasure," Detective Miller replied.
Two burly officers grabbed Travis’s arms. When they twisted his injured arm behind his back to snap the cold steel cuffs onto his wrists, Travis screamed in agony, thrashing and cursing.
"You'll pay for this, Arthur! You're an old dying dog! Lena, you're nothing without me! You hear me? Nothing!"
Derek took one heavy step forward. He leaned down directly into Travis’s ear as the officers dragged him toward the door.
"Every guard in the state penitentiary knows my unit, Travis," Derek whispered in a low, gravelly tone that made Travis’s bowels turn to water. "I suggest you learn how to sleep with both eyes open."
Travis went instantly silent, terror finally choking out the last remnants of his fake bravado as he was dragged down the front steps into the flashing police lights.
👉 How did Lena and Arthur reclaim their lives after the monster was put away?
May you like
```
***
