by Krista Lakes
I slam the phone down on the counter. I'm angry now. Angry and terrified. All I want to do is scream and then hide under a rock and die.
I crumple to the floor, rocking back and forth in tears. How can I expect Dante to protect me from John Norwood? Even though Dante's rich, and his mother is obviously someone to be reckoned with, John Norwood brought his company to its knees in a matter of hours. He could have seriously hurt my baby. I'm angry and frustrated and I don't know what to do.
Tears fall on the floor, but I just scrub them away with bleach. I wish I could bleach everything and just start fresh. But my life is never that easy.
A knock on the door surprises me. The windows are dark and twinkle with the lights of the city. I've been scrubbing for hours and lost time completely.
I stand and go to the door. I can see Dante through the peephole and I instantly am flooded with guilt. I forgot about dinner.
Dante smiles as I open the door, but it quickly fades as he sees the destruction I've wrecked on my apartment. It reeks of bleach and everything is tossed and scattered in my desperate attempt to erase any essence of Mr. Norwood.
“What happened?” Dante asks, looking around the room. I realize I've gone a little insane.
“I saw a rat,” I lie lamely. It's the best excuse I can come up with. I don't want Dante to have one of Norwood's accidents. I couldn't handle it right now. “I hate rats.”
Dante chuckles, apparently finding my neurosis endearing. “Why didn't you just call an exterminator instead of dousing your building in bleach?”
“I take care of things myself,” I tell him. I wince a little. That's what got me the bruises in the first place. I feel the universe trying to show my a lesson, but I push it away. “Let me go get dressed and we can go. It'll just be a minute.”
I hurry to the bathroom and pull out a freshly washed black dress. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I should put on makeup, but the bruises already ache and I don't want anything near my stitches. I pull my hair up into a tight bun and just put on enough eye makeup to make me look human.
I hear him lean up against the wall outside the bathroom door. “I have good news. The lawsuits are being dropped and the article for the Times isn't going to hit the papers,” he says. There's palpable relief in his voice.
I freeze and my breath catches.
“You okay?” Dante asks, peeking around the door. His blue eyes are full of concern I don't deserve.
“Just caught a bruise,” I lie. I smile, but inside I'm drowning. Mr. Norwood's threats are real. He wasn't bluffing. It wasn't just random chance that those things happened to Dante. Mr. Norwood caused them. I want to run and hide, but instead I just put on my work face and step out of the bathroom. “I'm ready.”
The car ride to the restaurant is quiet. We sit in the backseat of a limo, our knees touching and not much else. I am lost in my own thoughts. I look out the window. The sky is clear with the lights of the buildings like tiny daggers digging into the sky.
Stepping out of the car at the restaurant makes me gasp. The cold burns in my lungs. I hate the cold so much.
The lobby is quiet, filled with warmth and soft tinkling music that is supposed to be soothing. If anything it irritates me further. My fingers tingle from the warmth after just the short walk outside.
A woman gasps. Heads turn and look at me as we walk toward the hotel restaurant. For the first time in years, I'm self-conscious of my appearance. I'm naked in front of their eyes and it terrifies me.
“What's wrong?” Dante asks, nearly running into me as I stop dead in my tracks.
“Everyone's looking at me...” I whisper, glancing around and the judging eyes.
Dante tips my chin up with his hand. “Everyone is always looking at you,” he says. “You're too beautiful not to look at.”
I pull my head from his grasp and shake my head. “They're not looking at me. They're looking at my bruises.” I feel ugly. Broken.
I don't want to be treated like I'm made of glass, but at the moment I feel like I might be. And Dante is looking at me like I have a giant crack running down my center that might make me shatter at any moment.
My shoulders sag. I won't be good company tonight. Not after the past two days.
“I can't do this tonight, Dante,” I say, defeated. “I'm sorry. I'm just going to go home and go to bed.”
“Are you sure?” Dante asks. From across the lobby I see a woman whispering to her friend and looking at me. I can't decide if I want to burst into tears or go beat the shit out of them.
“Yes. You go have a nice dinner with your family,” I whisper, looking at the patterned marble floor. “I just need a good night's sleep.”
“I'll come with you,” he says.
I shake my head. “I just want to sleep. And someone needs to have dinner with them. I know these things are important. Tell them I say hello and make me sound good. I promise I'll be okay.”
Dante frowns, and then he sighs. “Okay.” He kisses the top of my head. It's a tender gesture, but it's not what I need right now. “Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”
I force a smile and touch his cheek. He's shaved and smooth. “I will. Thank you.”
I turn and walk back to the limo. Luckily, it hasn't left yet and I'm able to crawl into the backseat and curl up in a ball. “Take me home, please.”
I stare out the window at the bright lights against the dark sky. Everything hurts. My hands go to my stomach and I cringe at how close it came to hurting this child growing inside of me. I used to be safe here. How could this have happened to me?
I remember how Norwood had treated me special once. He'd given me gifts. He'd taken my mother to expensive restaurants and always went to her concerts. I could see now how meaningless the trinkets of his love had been, and just how many bruises she had covered up for him. She'd tried to spare me the worst of it, but she wasn't hear to protect me anymore. I was so naive, and he had been so cruel.
The baby. I remember the flash of happiness when I found out. I still needed to tell Dante. I had gotten so caught up in cleaning my apartment and hurrying to dinner, that I hadn't had the chance. I closed my eyes and sighed.
The driver stops at my building and I run up the stairs. I'm going to make a cup of tea since I can't have wine and cuddle into bed and try to forget everything. Tomorrow I can come up with a plan. Tomorrow I won't feel so fragile and weak.
I open the front door, step inside, and nearly have a heart attack. Mr. Norwood is standing in my living room admiring my piano. One of Mr. Norwood's thugs closes the door behind me and blocks my escape.
“You're back early. Mr. Russo just not have the stamina for you?” Mr. Norwood turns with a wicked smile cracking his face.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I wish I had some bravery left in me, but seeing him here makes me feel two feet tall and weak as a kitten. I reach for my panic button only to find I don't have it. I must have left it in the limo.
“Coming to see you, of course.” He motions with his hand around the apartment. “I admired your apartment earlier, but I must say that the smell of bleach is not a welcoming scent.”
My heart is pounding like a scared rabbit facing a wolf. “What do you want?”
Mr. Norwood crosses the room in two easy steps, taking my chin in his hand and forcing me to look up at him. “I can still see the defiance in your eyes. You think you are going to come up with a way to beat me. A way for your beloved Dante Russo to save you. You need to be taught otherwise.”
He flings me away and I tumble to the floor. “I wouldn't...” I whisper, but I know as well as he does it's a lie. I'll never stop fighting.
“You are mine, little Cara. There is no escape from me.”
He turns his back to me. There's a sledge hammer leaning up against the piano that I hadn't noticed before. He picks it up. Immediately, I know what he's going to do.
“No.” I say, in denial of what I already know is going to happen. “No, no, no,
No, No, NO,” I scream, trying to get to my feet. His thug grabs my arm and keeps me in place. I might have been able to wrench free, but I couldn't take my eyes away from the scene in front of me. Panic, rage, fear, and horror splinter through my core all at once as Norwood brings the hammer down on the shiny black surface of my beloved piano.
I beg and scream as he keeps swinging that horrible hammer at my piano. The keys clang and the strings make horrible death cries with every violent strike.
The piano is my connection with my mother. It's how I bridge the gap to heaven and feel her with me. With every smash of his hammer, my connection is broken yet again. Twice now he has killed my mother.
The bodyguard releases me and I crumple to the floor. There's no sense in trying to stop him now, the piano is ruined beyond repair. Mr. Norwood drops the hammer into the rubble of my dreams and wipes the sweat from his brow with one of my drapes.
“Now be a good girl, or I'll have to come back.” He pats me on the head like a dog.
I don't know how to be the good girl he wants, just that he wants me to try and fail. I know he's just going to keep punishing me, never stopping and never telling me what to do to make it stop. It's part of the pleasure for him. He can always change the rules to make me disobedient, no matter how hard I try to behave. He did it to my mother.
Mr. Norwood looks around, pleased with his work before walking out the front door and leaving me alone with my ruin. I hear his footsteps on the stairs as he leaves me. He knows there's nothing I can do against him. I won't call the police. I won't call Dante. I have no recourse to his destruction.
At least he didn't hit me this time. My baby is safe.
I pick up a white piano key, holding the marred beauty in my hand. Something inside of me breaks. Something that has never broken before, not even when my mother died. The darkest emotions I've ever felt have never even come close to what I feel at this moment.
Anger bubbles through me. He threatened my child. In threatening me, he threatened my baby. I will not tolerate this. I will not let him do this to me.
It is war now, and I am a mother bear on the attack. I now understand my mother's fury.
I stand up and look around with a detached sense of calm. I am in the eye of the hurricane of my anger.
The piano is destroyed. There is no way it can ever be rebuilt.
Luckily, he didn't destroy the small bookshelf with all my sheet music and Nan's bible. It still stands next to the shattered remnants of my piano like nothing ever happened.
A piece of the piano collapses, making a terrible snapping sound. I watch in slow motion as a piece of it slides directly into the bookshelf. Nan's bible wobbles and then falls to the floor.
“You need to punish me more?” I ask into the universe. “That wasn't enough for you?”
The universe doesn't respond.
Chapter 25
I stand in the middle of my destroyed room and wonder what I'm supposed to do next.
I'm not sure who I should call first. Dante? Ethan? The apartment manager? I think that I'll be staying at Dante's place tonight.
Just standing here doesn't do anything, though. I hate seeing Nan's book on the ground. It's always been in a place of respect. Leaving it on the floor feels wrong. I quickly walk over and pick up the heavy book.
A picture falls out of it.
I tuck the book into the crook of my arm and bend over to pick up the picture. It's of my mother, only it looks like something from a crime TV show. She's wearing only her bra and standing against a white background. There are bruises up and down her arms and on her ribs.
I turn over the picture and see her neat handwriting.
The date. A listing of the bruises in the picture and the name of the man who gave them to her and how. John Norwood.
My hand starts to shake. It's proof that he hurt her.
I frantically open the bible and find more. There are journal entries in her handwriting detailing the things he did to her. There are the doctor's notes with every injury and date. There are receipts to restaurants and venues showing that they were together.
My knees give out and I crumple to the floor. I stare in disbelief at what my mother has left me. It's everything I need to open an investigation to him. There's proof that he hurt her. It wouldn't take a leap of logic to believe that he killed her in a fit of rage and then made it look like an accident.
I flip through the pages, trying not to look too closely at the photos, yet wanting to see my mother's face just one more time. I make sure to keep everything as neat as I can.
Being in a slightly illegal business, I don't like going to the police, but today, I can't wait to give them this. With this, I have a chance.
I come to the last page of the bible. Tucked just inside the cover, I see a piece of paper with my name on it. I swallow hard, my heart in my throat.
She wrote this one for me.
My hands shake as I trace her neat letters across the page. It was with me the whole time. I had a letter to me from her sitting in my living room the entire time I was missing her.
I almost didn't want to open it. I didn't want to read the final words because I would never get the chance to read them again. There would be no more secret notes after this one. My mother could only reach up through the grave so many times.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I center myself. And I open her letter.
* * *
Dearest Cara,
If you're reading this, then something terrible has happened.
For that, I am so sorry. These are burdens that no one, especially not a child as sweet as you, should ever have to bear. I have tried to shield you from this as best I can.
John Norwood is not a good man.
I thought the first time he hit me it was an accident. The second, I knew that he enjoyed the power. I tried to leave then. He nearly killed me.
He said if I ever tried to leave him again, he would kill me. He would kill me and take my daughter. I cannot allow that.
I knew that if I was going to have any chance of escaping him, I had to have proof. I had to be able to show the kind of monster that he was to anyone who looked. I documented everything and put it here in this bible.
I want us to escape this life. I want you to be safe.
I hope that you are reading this because I simply forgot to take it out of Nan's bible. I hope that this time in our lives is nothing but a dark memory.
Know that I love you. I will always love you. The player may stop, but the music always lives on.
* * *
I love you, Cara.
I hope I can keep you safe.
* * *
Love,
Mom
* * *
Tears well up in my eyes. The letters blur and I quickly shut the letter into the book. I don't want to cry on anything and smudge it. I hold the book to my chest, hugging it tightly. This is my mother's words to me.
I have a weapon now.
Hope fills me like light from the dawn. I have a chance. My mother died protecting me. I will do anything possible to protect my child.
Fury fills me, but now I have a way to channel it.
I stand. The piano is destroyed, but I'll get another. I'll play again. This is not the end to my story, no matter how much Norwood wants it to be.
Chapter 26
It's snowing. The storm came in without me realizing it. Soft white flakes float through the air, coating everything in a silent blanket.
It's pristine. It's clean. With the snow covering all the danger and soot of the world, I can believe that things will work out. That there is a chance that I can bring this child into a beautiful world.
I stand outside on the street looking up at Dante's apartment. The light is on, so I know he's home.
It's time for me to tell him.
It's in the same building as his office, but higher up. I wave to the doorman. He doesn't question me this time. I ride the elevator, tapping my toes nervously.
I don't know how he's going to react to the news that he has a child. I don't know if he even wants kids.
I know that he'll still marry me for the sake of our families, but I want us to be happy. I don't want to have a marriage of convenience. I want one that has love. I didn't know that until recently, but I do now. I thought I would be happy with just a marriage, but now I know I want love.
I want us to be happy.
I swallow hard as the elevator doors open. I step out. Everything is quiet.
I walk along the worn carpet to the door I know is his. My steps are muffled, but I still leave wet footprints behind me. I stand up straight, take a deep breath, and knock on his door.
“Cara?” He smiles as he sees it's me. His hair is messy and he's wearing an old t-shirt and pajama pants. He looks comfortable. The TV is on some old science fiction TV show. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.” My hands are shaking. I don't know if it's from Norwood, the piano, the pictures, or what I'm about to do. Maybe all it.
His expression turns worried, but he holds open the door to let me in. He quickly turns off the TV and motions to the couch for me to sit down.
I sit gingerly on the edge. I'm a bundle of nerves. I want him to hold me and tell me I'll get a new piano. I contemplate just telling him about Norwood and waiting on the baby.
But, I need to tell him. I need to get these secrets out of me. If he's going to marry me, then we need to be a team.
“What's wrong?” he asks. His dark eyes are troubled. I realize that what I've said sounds like a breakup speech.
“There's two things,” I tell him. I flash a nervous smile. “And I need your help with both of them. I need you to back me up and be my strength.”
A little of the apprehension leaves his face. “So you're not about to break up with me?”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
He sighs with relief. “Good. I think I could handle just about anything else.”