Her face carried its own constellation of injuries, Lin Feng had been stronger than her, and his desperate strikes had left marks that would take weeks to fade. Her eye was swollen nearly shut, her cheekbone tender and possibly fractured, her neck bearing the marks where he'd grabbed her hair and yanked with strength born of survival instinct.
"Eat your breakfast," her cellmate said with false kindness, gesturing to the tray the guards had shoved through the slot. "Or don't. I don't really care. But you should know that refusing food here just makes everything harder."
Madam Chen couldn't have eaten even if she'd wanted to. Her stomach churned with nausea every time she thought about the fight, about hitting her own husband, about being forced to hurt him while strangers cheered. The memory played on repeat in her mind, the feel of her fist connecting with his flesh, the sound of his gasps when she'd accidentally hit his throat, the blood that had spattered across both of them.
