Chapter 1682 The Queen And The Soldier:>12
- "I was twelve when it happened. A stuh-... strange age. Normally kids that old don't get adopted. But this couple said that's why they did that. Because no one else would. Worked great on our caretakers at the time. The man . . . I duh-... didn't like him from the word go, but hey . . . it was a family. The mother . . . she was dead inside. You could just tell she didn't care about anything anymore. They had adopted two other girls, both when they were twelve." Shannon stopped and swallowed a gulp of air. "The real reason, it tuh-... turned out was that twelve-year-old girls turned into thuh-... thirteen year old girls, and that's when the 'man' of the house considered them 'ripe.'"
- Sandra wanted to throw up. "He didn't . . ."
- "No," Shannon said, "but he tried. Took me down into the buh-... basement for my 'birthday present.' Once I figured out what was going on, I fought back. I'd been taking Karate and self-defense at a local kuh-... community center since I was little. I doubt either of the other two girls he had adopted had any ability to defend themselves. But I did. At one puh-... point, I managed to break one of those high basement windows and scream for help. I saw an elderly couple rushing back into their house. I knew they would call the cops. I thought I would be all right. But I'd luh-... lost sight of the man. He hit me in the head and knocked me silly. Then he took off his belt . . . it had a huge buh-... buckle on it . . . and he started to beat me. That thing left huge cuts down my back where the buckle-hook caught me. I couldn't get away. Then I heard the door upstairs being buh-... busted down and these two patrolmen who had been in the area when the emergency call went in came down. I remember turning my head and looking at them. One of them was Chinese, which for suh-... some reason caught me as odd. Both of them looked so muh-... mad . . . I thought they were going to shoot the guy. But he wuh-... went away for a long time after that, and I went back to the orphanage. I didn't want to leave with another family after that. Being adopted meant nothing but pain. The doctors did their best, but they said the scars wuh-... would never completely go away."