Since he’d come of age, no one had ever managed to push him this far. Being at such a disadvantage reminded him of the days when he’d been persecuted and humiliated, trampled over in all kinds of ways. The hot tea spilled upon his head, the cold and drafty woodshed, the relentless beating fists, the verbal abuse, the kneeling that lasted from the blazing afternoon into the dead of the night, the paucity of his meals. And connected to those days via a thousand inseparable threads was the face before him. But right now, that face’s owner stood beside a person identical to him, cradling his
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