* * *
Abby was clean and happy, though Bryce grew distant and angry as her pregnancy went on. The last few months he spent more time in Vegas on business than he spent at home. She wondered if he really had to be there as much as he had been. He obviously hadn’t been happy lately, despite her best efforts. She was sure it was work, and that once the baby came along, he would come around and love it and see that it was the right decision.
It didn’t go like that at all.
Abby gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and named her Ava after her grandmother. The first few months of the newborn’s life were fraught with a palpable tenseness in their household. The colicky infant was only fuel to the fire that had been smoldering for months. Abby had promised to be a great wife and mother, but the baby consumed her entire existence. She couldn’t do anything right in Bryce’s eyes. He wouldn’t sit for the meals that she cooked, wouldn’t come to bed with her, and would hardly look at the baby, let alone hold it or take care of it.
He snapped at Ava left and right, and finally one night, as the baby relentlessly cried for several hours, he lost it. “I HATE that fucking thing!”
“Bryce, don’t say that!”
The veins in his temples bulged as if his head might explode, while Ava screamed furiously in her mother’s arms, “We had a good thing, Abby, and this little... GOD, will you make it shut up!”
“I’ll bring her in the other room. I’m sorry, I just don’t know. What do you want me to do?”
“Forget it, I’ll go.” He stormed down the hall and into his office, slamming the door behind him.
Abby rocked and comforted the baby, but was really trying to comfort herself. Bryce was terrifying when he was angry.
That was the start of a bad night that got worse.
Hours later, with a three-month-old Ava still screaming, Abby had to put her down and lay out on the floor next to the crib just to close her eyes for a moment. While she never imagined sleep would come with a screaming child just a few feet away, having been awake for twenty hours, she was physically and mentally exhausted and passed out cold within seconds.
Her eyes forced themselves open some untold amount of time later. She was disoriented. It was the middle of the night. At least she knew that. She was awakened by the silence that her brain was not accustomed to any longer. She sighed and decided not even to relocate to her bed. That would require movement, and that simply would not do. Abby smiled as she poked her head up to do a quick check on her peaceful angel.
Terror quickly gripped her when she saw the empty crib.
Abby shot to her feet and nearly dove into the crib as she tossed a light blanket aside, though it was clear the baby was not under it. Where is she?
Just then, the faintest sound came through the door that led to the hall. It took a second for her brain to process what she was hearing. It was a muffled, high-pitched shriek filled with otherworldly terror. It was Ava.
Abby bolted from the baby’s room and down the hall where she burst through the door into her bedroom to find Bryce with his hand clamped firmly over the baby’s mouth and nose. All fourteen pounds of the infant thrashed from side to side, struggling to get free. Her mouth came free for a split second, and her little lungs released a screech that sent ice through Abby’s veins.
There were no words. No thought. Abby leapt onto Bryce’s back, tearing at his face with her fingernails. He screamed and violently shook her off as she sunk her teeth into his right shoulder.
As she hit the floor, Bryce commanded, “Stay down there! This ends tonight! I can’t take another fucking second of it. I’m losing my mind!”
Ava’s tiny eyes, like dark marbles, were opened wide with terror as Abby’s eyes locked onto hers. She launched herself at him again, trying to grab the baby and pry her from his grasp. He released his grip from the baby’s mouth and struck Abby with a powerful backhand that sent her reeling backwards, crashing into the dresser, as the thrashing infant slipped from his one-handed grasp and fell to the floor at his feet.
Abby hurled herself on top of the baby to protect her like a football player jumping onto a fumbled ball.
“Get up!” Bryce shouted.
Abby held fast, covering the screaming baby.
“I said get up!” he screamed.
Abby shook her head no, face buried in the carpet, arms wrapped around her daughter. She felt Bryce’s bare foot land with a thud in her side that knocked the wind out of her.
“I’ll fucking kill you both!” he screamed as he kicked her again and again.
“Stop it! You’re crazy!” Abby pleaded.
Just then, two of Bryce’s men came running into the room. They were used to hearing the baby’s constant crying while they spent the night guarding their boss’s door, but knew that something else entirely was going on behind the closed door tonight. Expecting to find Bryce fighting off an assassin that had somehow snuck past them, they ran into the room, guns drawn, and were stunned to find him kicking his wife lying in the fetal position wrapped around the baby.
“Boss!” Donny shouted without thinking and grabbed him by the shoulders to pull him away from Abby. He was the smaller of the two men, but having surprised Bryce, he was able to tear him away.
Bryce had never heard them come into the room. He looked from one to the other, then down at Abby. She lay sobbing, gasping for air, eyes welded shut and holding fast to the hyperventilating infant in her arms.
Looking back at Donny, he said, “Clean up this fucking mess. You,” he said, pointing to the other one, “bring the car out front.”
Donny knelt down as Bryce left. Alone in his boss’s bedroom with his beautiful wife, he had a fantasy that had crossed his mind before but never under these circumstances. He was ashamed of himself for even letting a romantic thought enter his mind right now. He leaned close and put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright, Abby. He’s gone.”
It took a couple of minutes, but Abby eventually composed herself. Ava had mercifully passed out from exhaustion.
Donny left the room for a second, but returned with a warm, wet facecloth and held it out to her. “Here, sit up. Let me help you.”
As he held her shoulders to help her sit up, she gasped in a little pain, but managed to right herself and sit up, leaning against the bed.
Donny sat down next to her and used the facecloth to gently clean Ava’s face.
Abby quietly said, “That’s OK, I’ll do that.” She took the facecloth from him and looked down at her daughter in her arms. She had scratches on her face from trying to tear her father’s hands from her mouth with her own tiny hands. Though she was passed out, she still occasionally gasped for breath. Abby looked toward the heavens and burst into tears.
* * *
Safe in Robert’s island estate home, Abby opened her eyes and sat up. Her heart was pounding out of her chest, and it took a moment for her to realize where she was. Was that a dream? As Dr. Lee’s words from earlier came back to her, warm tears streamed down her face like the floodgates had opened. As realization set in, she suddenly felt warm all over and vomited into a well-placed bucket that had been placed on her lap.
“It’s OK, Abby,” Robert said as he rubbed her back. “It’s alright. You’re safe now.”
Abby wiped the corner of her mouth and lay back down on her side, curled up into a ball as her tears flowed freely and soaked the pillow.
Notwithstanding the tears, she spoke in a clear, firm voice, “Put me back under. I need to know she is safe.”
19
AVA HAD GROWN into a beautiful little girl. Abby watched her run around the playground with the rest of her kindergarten class. Something in Bryce had snapped that frightful night almost five years ago. He was never the same again.
He was distant from their daughter, choosing to often outright ignore her existence. He despised her and often pined that they should send her away and get back to the way things were. Abby hadn’t slept a full night in five years, wak
ing up two and three times to check on her, particularly if Bryce wasn’t in bed. She spent her life fearing that Bryce would snap again. He was more controlling, and often went completely off the rails if Abby disobeyed him in the slightest. She suffered more than one black eye at his hand, but she kept Ava safe. She never left her side.
She knew she should leave him, but she was trapped. Bryce owned Chicago. There was nowhere she could run, and no one she could turn to for help.
As much as Bryce ignored his daughter, Abby still did her best to keep him distant from her. She never left her alone with her father. On occasions when they were all home together, she ate her meals separately with Ava, played separately with her, and watched movies separately with her. She basically acted as Ava’s nanny and kept her out of Bryce’s hair whenever he was around. She refused to even give Ava the opportunity to disobey him and suffer his wrath.
Except once.
Just a couple of months before Ava’s fifth birthday, they had a particularly terrible version of the fight that played out on a weekly basis in their household. It always ended the same way – with Abby quietly crying and holding an icepack to her cheek, or eye, or ribs, and Bryce storming out the door.
“How dare you?” Bryce fumed. “I give you and that little bitch everything you have. You’re nothing without me. A worthless coked-up stripper. Is that what you want? You want to go back to the way things used to be before you met me?” He raised his hand to strike her. It appeared that the left side of her face was the target this time, but a small voice coming from behind surprised him and made him stop.
Ava, all forty-two inches and thirty-nine pounds of her, said in the sternest voice a four-year old can muster, “Leave my mommy alone.”
Bryce turned to see her. He didn’t smile. He didn’t see a cute little girl in pink footie pajamas trying to act like an adult. He saw a disobedient person that he owned. He saw the same person who destroyed his perfect life and his perfect wife. He seethed, “What was that?”
Abby gasped. “Ava, go back in your room. Go to bed.”
“No,” the little girl said defiantly. She stood her ground and looked at her father. “Stop hurting Mommy.”
Her courage turned Abby’s stomach and made her hate herself for putting up with Bryce and exposing her child to this for all these years.
Bryce took one step toward Ava. He clamped his large right hand around her throat and lifted her tiny frame by the neck as if she weighed nothing. “Say it again!” he spat.
God bless her, she tried. She looked him dead in the eye and spoke, but didn’t get past the word, “Stop...” before he tightened his grip around her airway so hard that the words choked in her throat.
Abby jumped to her feet and pounded on Bryce with clenched fists. “Put her down!” she screamed.
He shoved her to the ground with his free hand and turned back to Ava. Her hands were wrapped around his wrist, trying to loosen his grip. He brought her nose-to-nose with him and said, “Don’t ever speak to me like that again.” With one hand he threw her down on the hardwood floor, in Abby’s direction.
As Ava gasped, catching her breath, Abby gathered her up in her arms and ran from the room shouting, “We’re leaving! That’s it!”
“Like hell you are,” he roared.
Abby was running down the hallway, but he effortlessly caught her and threw her into the wall, Ava still wrapped in her arms.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said. “Go lock yourself in the little bitch’s bedroom and don’t come out until I tell you to.” She quickly went to run into Ava’s room, but he shoved her back hard against the wall. “If you ever try to leave me, Abby, I will end you. But I’ll kill her first and make you watch. Got it?”
Abby clenched her eyes shut and nodded, willing him to let her go. When he did, she ran with Ava into the bedroom and slammed the door. Locking it behind her, she leaned back against it, clutching her terrified toddler to her chest as she slid down to the floor. “I won’t let him hurt you, baby. Never, never! I’m so sorry.”
Watching Ava run around the playground now, months later, a tear still came to her eye thinking about that night. She couldn’t escape him. How long before he lost it again? For the first time, she gave serious thought to his suggestion of sending Ava off to boarding school. If Abby couldn’t save herself, at least she could save her daughter.
* * *
Abby sighed as she put her coffee cup down on the counter. “I just don’t know how to do it, Donny.”
Ava was watching cartoons in the den while Abby sat at the kitchen table with Donny for a late-afternoon coffee. He was different than the other men Bryce kept on his payroll. He didn’t have that soulless killer look in his eyes. Ever since that night five years ago when he pulled Bryce away from Abby on their bedroom floor, he had made it a point to stay in close contact with Abby, though this was not widely known in his circle.
He never stopped by for an overt personal visit unless his boss was out of town, but he often checked in with her on the phone. He also made excuses to stop by for one reason or another a couple times a week, though usually with the cover of needing to speak with Bryce about something. Of course, Abby knew he was just trying to keep his eye on things and make sure she was OK.
“It’s boarding school, Abby. Parents do it all the time. You guys have the money, and you have to get her out of here. I know it’s tough, but it’s the best thing for her. You know that.”
“I know.” And then Abby laughed. “I’m a lost cause, but at least I can give her a fighting chance, right?”
Donny shook his head. “Don’t say that about yourself. You need to get out of here, too. You both do. Bryce is a lunatic.”
“Watch it,” Abby said. “That’s my husband you’re talking about.” Abby chuckled, but Donny didn’t see the humor.
“I’m serious.” He put his hand on her shoulder, “You know I’m here for you, right?”
She shook her head. “You’re a great guy, Donny. You’re not like the rest. What are you sticking around for me for?”
“We’re gonna get you out of here, I swear. Both of you are gonna start over.”
“How?” Abby was frustrated. “How does that happen? He’ll never let me go unless I’m dead. He can’t.”
“You’ve got resources – use them.”
“Don’t insult me. What resources? I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. I don’t even have a fucking credit card in my own name that he doesn’t know about. I don’t know how, but he completely trashed my credit. I’ve got nothing.” Abby stared at Donny with blank eyes, If only you knew what I know, Donny, you would understand why he’ll never let me go. Tears rolled down her cheeks at the thought.
“Hey,” he said quietly, “you’ve got your brains, and you’ve got me. We’ll figure it out. We’ll get you outta here.”
Abby smiled and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t mean to insult me. You’re a good man. Too good to be in this business. You know he’d kill you if he knew you were here now. Can you imagine what he would do to you if you helped me and Ava leave him? You’d be a dead man. We’d all be dead. We can’t hide from him.”
Donny thought about that. He had something to say, but wasn’t sure how to say it. Abby could read his face, though. “Oh, just spit it out already so I can tell you it won’t work, and we can move on.”
“OK, hear me out. You can’t go on the run with a kid, I get it. But...”
“But nothing! I’m not taking off and leaving Ava behind, no way.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you both go in separate directions. Send her off somewhere. Somewhere he doesn’t know about. I dunno. Tell him she went right when she really went left, but don’t tell him the truth. He’ll be so happy she’s gone, he won’t care where she is. Once you know she’s safe, you hit the bricks. I can set you up; you can disappear, Abby.”
She stared into his dark eyes. “You want me send my child off
somewhere to fend for herself without me? Are you a lunatic?”
“There’s gotta be someone, Abby. Someone you trust. Someplace you can send her far away from here.”
“Without me? How long am I supposed to live like that? Without my baby?”
“Just until you can join her.”
“Until I can join her? How do I do that? Oh, I know. I’ll use fake ID’s that you get me, and money you’ve got stuffed under the mattress to get me there. Only problem is that Bryce knows everybody you know! You get me a fake ID, and he’ll know about it before it hits your hand. Then we’re both dead. Damn, all three of us. I can’t take that chance.” She shook her head. “I know it, I just know it. He hates her. He’s hated her since the minute he found out about her, and someday he’s going to kill her.” Her eyes welled up at the thought.
“He hates her, but do you really think if she left he would give a shit where she went?”
Abby shook her head no. “But what do I do? Live without her?”
“Think about it. Ask yourself what you want more. Do you want to be with her, here, in this life? Or do you want to send her off into the world with half a chance to have a decent shot at a good life? Think about it. You know the right answer.”
She shook her head no, but in her heart, she knew the right thing to do. “You’d better get out of here before someone sees your car out front.” She stood and gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek before he said goodbye to Ava and walked out the door.
Abby stood at the window watching him get into his car. She had no idea how he ever got mixed up with Bryce. But then, anyone who knew her a few short years ago would say the same thing about her. Everyone has their demons, and right now, Abby was living with hers.
* * *
Who writes letters anymore? No one, Abby thought. But she had no choice. After her heart-to-heart with Donny, she decided to reach out to her estranged sister. Bryce had no idea she existed. Abby and her sister had stopped speaking years before she met Bryce, and she never spoke about her family at all. Her sister was the only person Abby could think of that she would trust with Ava.
Escape, the Complete Trilogy Page 38