Something Beautiful

Chapter - 40

"Mingyu, can you hear no? Up, buddy!"

Trying his hardest, Mingyu obeyed the command given in a whisper and then slowly tried to open her eyes. A bright white light entered from the small hole in the upper wall, blinding his eyes, while the pain again made him fall unconscious.

When Mingyu regained consciousness, the days had changed again and he stared at Minghao's grim face, one of the other captives from the Lancester ship he had not seen since they were taken off the ship three months ago.

"Where am I?" mingyu asked and felt blood seeping out from her broken lips.

"In hell" said the Chinese grimly.

"In French dungeons, to be precise."

Mingyu raised her hand and found her hand tied with a heavy chain. His eyes followed the direction of the chain and he saw that the chain was nailed to the stone wall then with a pushy eye, trying to remember why he was chained while Xu Minghao was not.

Understanding Mingyu's confusion, the friend said, "Didn't you remember? The chain was a gift for you for punching a guard and breaking his nose, plus you almost broke the vein on his neck with the guy's own knife when they brought you here this morning."

Mingyu closed his eyes, but could not recall him ever hitting the guard. "What's my gift?" her tanya, her voice raucous, sounded foreign in her own ears.

"Fractured three ribs, battered face, and some pretty severe injuries to the back."

"Good," Mingyu growled. "There's a special reason why they didn't kill me instead of torturing me?"

Mingyu's cold and indifferent tone of voice made Minghao laugh in admiration. "Damn it, but you blue-blooded English royalty never winked in fear, did they? Stay calm, just like everyone else said." Stretching his hands back, Minghao doused him into a pail of bad-looking water, threw away as much moss as he could floating on it, then thrust the bowl into Mingyu's bloody lips. Mingyu gulped down the water, then spat it out in disdain.

Ignoring Mingyu's reaction, Minghao pressed the bowl back to the weak man's lips and said, "I know, I know, it doesn't taste as good as your favorite wine, and the place is not in a clean, fine crystal glass, but if you don't drink it, you take away the guards' chance to kill you, and then they'll turn their disappointment on me. That wouldn't be fun."

Mingyu's brows furrowed, but he saw the man joking, so he drank a few sips of that musty, disgusting liquid.

"Well, that's better. You do love to look for it, Man," the man continued lightly, but he anxiously wrapped Mingyu's chest with a piece of cloth torn from his shirt. "You don't have to get hit if your mother teaches you to be polite to two men with guns and knives, and they're obviously in a more favorable position."

"What are you doing?"

"Try to keep your ribs from moving. Now, trying to answer your question about why they didn't kill you, the Frenchmen are trying to keep you alive because who knows the British managed to catch one of their officials, I heard one of the officers say that you're the ace they're gonna use if they want to barter a prisoner. Of course you don't do your job, which is to stay alive, if you keep insulting the guards and don't politely steal their guns. From your face, it looks like I didn't have a hand in transporting you from the sea and onto the French ship that brought us here."

"What's so bad do I look like?" mingyu asked unenthusiasticly.

"I dare say that if you get hit like this again, your two women won't be as crazy about you as they were when you left them."

Unconsciousness again wrapped her tendrils around Mingyu's body, trying to pull her back into the darkness, and she resisted, preferring to feel unbearable pain. "Whose two women?"

"I think you know better than I do. Her name is Una. Is she your wife?"

"And Lisa?"

Mingyu blinked, trying to clear his foggy brain. Lisa's. Lisa's...

"Little boy" he said as the same shadow of a dark brown haired girl unsheathed the swords of twigs dancing before his eyes. "No," he whispered regretfully, while his life flashed swiftly before his eyes. A futile life of empty affairs and immoral acts, a meaningless life culminating in her hilarious and hasty marriage to a dazzling woman who only once shared a bed with her. "She's my wife."

"really?" minghao asked, looking impressed. "Have a mistress, wife and child? The one who has everything."

"No," Mingyu corrected with nanar, "I have no children. One wife. Some mistress."

Minghao smirked then stroked his dirty chin. "I don't believe it. I admire people who enjoy life. But," he continued with a surprised look even though he did not want to, "some mistress?"

"No," Mingyu corrected as she gritted her teeth against the pain, "not at the same time."

"Where have they been holding you all this time? I haven't seen you since the French dropped us off their ship three months ago."

"I get personal accommodation and special attention" replied the cynical Mingyu, which meant a dark hole under the dungeon where she was held after being tortured and beaten to the point of being almost insane in pain.

His cellmate stared at Mingyu's battered body while frowning, but he tried to keep his voice light. "What did you tell those French people that they hate you more than I do?"

Mingyu coughed then gnashed her teeth against the chest-piercing pain. "I told them my name."

"And?"

"And they remembered," he gasped, trying to remain conscious, "the events in Spain."

Minghao's eye brows cluttered in confusion. "They did this to you because of something you did to them in Spain?"

The half-conscious man nodded slightly, his eyes starting to close. "And because they still think I have information. About the military."

"Listen Mingyu," said Minghao desperately, "you murmured about the escape plan when you arrived here a while ago. Do you have a plan?"

Another weak nod.

"I want to come. But Mingyu, you must have died if you were beaten like this again. I mean it, Man. Don't you piss the guards off anymore."

Mingyu's head drooped to the side when he finally lost against an unconsciousness.

While crouched down, Minghao shook his head in despair. The French warship had lost many of its crew in the war, so the captain used them as a boost to his ship's lack of crew. In just a few days, there were already some who died from his injuries. Minghao wondered if this cellmate of his would be the second victim?