Parole

by Kathy Coopmans

  I stare at him in silence. The stillness from me is like an empty cavern to this man with no heart. I can see it sitting in the hole where it should be. Whispers of me not saying a word shackle him down more than he has me. He’s craving a reaction from me. When the time is right, he’ll get the only reaction I’ll give him the minute I slice his throat.

  I tilt my head and wonder just how much this man really knows about me and the things I can do. I’m not invincible, and he could easily kill me now. That’s not what he wants. He’s out to watch me squirm, to fuck with my mind before he sets me off with his devious plan.

  Naw, this man doesn’t know the real me. I’m street smart. An alley rat. And so is Adrian. If he doesn’t kill me, I will get out of here and come for him.

  “Poor girl is broken-hearted at the moment. All worried about getting her hands on our daughter. She’s quite banged up, too. Maybe not as bad as you, but she’s hurting. It’s a shame you didn’t hear how she spoke up to me, but you saw it, didn’t you? Imagined what was going through her mind. How she felt and what she wanted to know about you. I should thank you for teaching her how to be strong, should have fucked the feistiness out of her. Somewhere along the way, you must have given her a backbone, but I’m the man who's going to break her. Take away her life for what she’s done. She doesn’t belong to you. She never did, never will. Tara belongs to me. I bought her. Spent more money on having her than I have with every whore I own. I thought about leaving you down here to die before I left. Then I thought it would be rude of me not to say good-bye or to let you know that the FBI should have all the information I sent them on how you’ve been stalking my wife. A man who became obsessed with a woman who was only trying to help him bide his time.”

  He’s a Goddamn liar. He’s playing Tara and me. He has nothing to go on but his desperation. He fucked up somewhere, tying up what he calls loose ends before he runs off and takes her with him. He has no plans to set me up. His plan is to make me think he does. Fuck me, this is priceless. My guess is, somewhere along the way Tara had a big hand in whatever is happening. I knew she was hiding something else from me. This is it. But what she did to get him to become paranoid is what my foggy brain can’t grasp.

  God, Tara, what did you do?

  My heart rips as the visions of him hurting her run through my mind. Clove is there, too. All the horrible things I did to her won’t leave. It’s a repeated hell.

  I do my best to shake those thoughts away.

  I won’t, nor will I ever claim to own Tara. She needs to be free to figure out who she is. What I will acknowledge is, I owe her and every woman out there the will to escape from the hell they’ve fallen into, a hell they can’t crawl out of because men like Luciano treat them like a dog you train. To obey the master’s every command and abuse them until they have nothing left if they disobey.

  I made that oath the day I was released. It was a silent one to Clove. My way of traveling down a long road of forgiving myself. I’ll never reach the end, but I’ll keep traveling it until I take my last breath.

  “Go get my wife and bring her down here; it’s her turn to watch.”

  No. Every nerve ending in my body shuts down. “Go to hell, you rotten motherfucker. You stay away from her, and you keep clear of my family,” I snap. Jesus Christ, I’ve failed her. He’s going to bring her down here and force her to watch them torture me more or finally kill me. My promise to keep Tara safe means nothing if I can’t get out of these damn chains before that happens. I have no control over the man who has her until I do. Fuck, what she must be feeling right now. Frightened out of her mind and wondering what to do. She needs to find her daughter and forget about me, that’s what she needs to do.

  I refuse to give him any more than those words. He might think he’s breaking me down, scaring me by mentioning my brother and bringing her down here, but I’ll be damned if I break. I’m not built to buckle in front of a coward who can’t get his hands dirty.

  My fear isn’t coming from what they will do to me; I’ve been tortured my entire life. No, my fear is the sheer terror I’m afraid I’ll see in Tara if she sees what they've already done and what they’ll do.

  She will experience endless agony and guilt if she’s stuck remembering seeing me in pain. If I do get out of here alive, I’ll make sure he chokes on every word he said.

  “Now, that is a saying I can agree with. We all live in some sort of hell, don’t we? Life is pure hell. You of all people should agree. The poor boy no one loved. The man who stole from his own flesh and blood. Hell is going to welcome you. I’ll see you there, but not before I make Tara’s life a living one. You see, I have something she loves more than she does you. I have our daughter, and Tara knowing this is all she needs to make her live out the rest of her days in hell. I warned her, Trent. Warned her many times not to double-cross me, yet she did. I’m going to fuck her senseless. Take what’s mine. And when I’m done getting from her what I want, I’ll send her to live in hell with you. Worn out and used. She’ll be as scared as you are.”

  I’m not even going to ponder on his insult about her loving her daughter more than me. I would hope she does.

  I’m acting out my best here trying to remain calm. Tara has to be frantic if what he’s saying is true.

  This situation reminds me of my father. The way he snatched me from my mother and stripped my brother and me of our right to bond. My mother suffered for years without me, while he corrupted my mind. Brainwashed me until I became obsessed with money. With hating my brother for having something I wanted.

  That time in my life pushed me over a cliff that never had an ending for me to crash into. I floated through the darkness for years. Jesus Christ, I cannot allow him to taint a little girl’s mind to become a man like him.

  My body shakes, and my stomach churns as I hear feet shuffle at the top of the stairs.

  “Fuck,” someone growls from upstairs. My pulse is thrumming rapidly at the side of my neck when a gun goes off and Tara’s scream tears across the walls in this room. Luciano’s eyes go wide. He turns, bolts out the door, and leaves me here suffocating on my thoughts.

  All I can think of now is, was that gunshot was meant for Tara?

  Once again, I turn my head toward the muted screen in front of me.

  Motherfucker, I’m never going to escape this hell.

  Chapter 10

  TARA

  Pain comes in many varieties. It isn’t just the burning and stinging sensations that cripple your body after you’ve had the shit beat out of you. It’s the lack of companionship, the knowledge of being alone, and it’s also formed in the kind of love you feel for another.

  I never knew what love was. Not until I heard my daughter cry.

  All I wanted was to drink in her smell. One moment with my little girl was all I had. He never gave me the time to let her wrap her tiny fingers around mine. To let me see her eyes or watch her take all those big gulps of air for the first time.

  The entire time I was pregnant, he led me to believe he didn’t want children. Claimed he didn’t have the time to spend on raising one. He reminded me daily that I wasn’t keeping her, but I had hoped when he saw her, he would fall in love and change his mind.

  He did none of those things. He told them to take her away. And just like that, she was gone.

  I cried and cried, screamed for him to get her back. He stood by the door and watched me fall apart, and I haven’t been the same woman since.

  I brought this upon myself. I deserve to carry these tortured feelings and have them weigh me down for the rest of my miserable life. I welcome it. I crave the pain. The pain is what’s going to get me out of here.

  I allow one silent tear to escape from each eye. They roll down my cheeks and land in my tangled hair.

  “You took the only good thing I’ve ever done away from me. You’ve made me what I am today. Molded me into a woman I can barely look at. I hope you're proud of your actions, you psychotic motherfucker. I’m coming fo
r you, and when I catch up, you won’t be proud anymore. You’ll be more afraid of me than I ever was of you.”

  Luciano is a sociopath. He’s a stone-cold master manipulator who derives a plan and pushes the dirty part of the job off onto others. Except, he never lets anyone come remotely near me. He keeps them close, their beady little eyes always watching. But to speak, to look when they aren't supposed to will cost them their lives.

  I lie here wondering if it costs my bodyguard his. My heart would hurt for him if it did. He sacrificed for me. Luciano doesn’t know this, but he begged me many times to leave; I just couldn’t. Not until we found out where Nola was. But we never did. Luciano kept her whereabouts locked up tight. We tried to find her, tried to follow Luciano around to see if he would lead him to her. He never did. It was if she never existed, and then the day came when I couldn’t stay anymore. They were going to make their move and wanted me gone, but then suddenly Luciano decided to take me with him, and our plans changed. I begged Eric, my bodyguard, to tell me why he wasn’t going to stop us from leaving. We had enough evidence to put Luciano behind bars. All he would say was to trust him, and so I did, and now it’s quite possible he’s dead because of me.

  I sigh and wince. The pain in my heart hurts more than my bruised body.

  The public doesn’t know Luciano the way I do. The second he leaves our house, he becomes a different man. He’s polite, attentive, and matches the description the news describes him to be. An easy-going man with a passion for abiding the law. I laugh. If they only saw the conspiratorial facade of the man who spews words that cut you down, the man who knows how to drive the reasonable doubt into a person’s mind that makes him dangerous whether he’s inside the courts or out. They would all crumble. That’s how the world sees my husband. Mister Noble and Kind.

  He hides his true self from the public like a snake protecting its head within the tight confines of its coil. He shows no warning he’s a man full of evil intentions, shows no hint of the out-of-character man he really is when he leaves his day job and returns home to count his money, dish out orders, and relish in his second job. The one he thought he hid from me.

  Luciano doesn’t care about anything except his passion for power. I know things about him, things he didn’t think I did.

  And unlike the men who work for him, the ones who hide behind a congenial mask of terror because they are afraid to die, I pulled my own mask off and dropped it on the floor a little over six months ago. And I’m doing it again. Because I am done, I am so done with everything there is to dwell on over that man. I’ve spent enough time stuck in my own head with my monotonous, repetitious thoughts about him. He doesn’t deserve to be in my head anymore.

  I wince while pushing myself up off the floor, his truth and lies alternating through the thick, murky confines of my mind. I honestly think he doesn’t have a clue to the weight in which they are now controlling me. Only I do. They strike me in my bitter soul. And as I stumble forward, grab my suitcase, and make my way to the bathroom to clean myself up, the resentment shoots through me harsher than the pain.

  He placed one foot over the line when he forced me into living a life that wasn’t real, wasn’t right by any means. He jumped right over it when he spilled his truth. Luciano may not know the true meaning of love, but I sure the hell do. It’s the love I quench for my daughter. The love I desire for Trent. Two different kinds of love that I will not live without.

  “Fucking liar. He might have Trent here, but I’ve been plotting this escape a lot longer than he has.”

  I strip out of my clothes and wash up, doing my best to avoid looking in the mirror. I fumble through my suitcase looking for a pair of leggings and a T-shirt, and that’s when I feel the cold, hard metal I forgot Adrian’s cousin gave me.

  “You didn’t find out everything, Luciano.” I place the gun on the vanity, slowly drag the leggings up my legs, and cry out when I raise my arms to place the shirt over my head.

  I inhale deeply; my uneven breathing becomes a startled gasp when the answer to where my daughter is comes to me.

  I stop what I’m doing, grab hold of the ledge on the sink, and stare at the woman I could never really see until now.

  “This is not your fault. Do you hear me? He has her; she’s here. I can feel her,” I mutter. The spinning of my head, the bruising of my body slowing my movements as I finish cleaning up, stuff my soiled clothes in the trash, and make my way to the door while tucking the gun in the back of my pants.

  “You brought her here, Luciano, because you trust no one completely but yourself, and wherever it is you’re running off to, you are bringing her. I’m going to find her. This is what you wanted me to trust you with, isn’t it, Eric? You knew where my baby was before you told me to get out of here. Oh, my God.”

  When my mind sifts on, and my feet continue slowly forward through the door and down the hall, another strange notion creeps through my veins and knocks more sense into me.

  “I know who has her.” Why is this all coming to me now? Debra, his longtime faithful secretary, is the only person I can think of who he would trust to take care of Nola. He wouldn’t dump her with a stranger or have one of his whores take care of her for fear they would blackmail him—or worse yet, run off or possibly sell her themselves. “I’m going to put a bullet right through your head, you psychotic piece of shit.”

  “Stop right there.”

  I do as I’m told. My heart crashes from the sight before me. The pain in my chest is ten times worse than anything I’ve felt before.

  “Give her to me, you bitch,” I seethe. My whole body is shaking as I stare into the wide blue eyes of my daughter. Her short baby-fine hair full of the darkest ringlets I have ever seen. A pink rabbit is clutched to her chest, and her head is resting on the shoulders of the woman I want to drain the life out of.

  I have to believe she feels our connection as she stares at me. I have to, or I will crumble to ash.

  There will be nothing left of me if she never finds out how much I loved her, because I know this is all a trick. Luciano has his hook in me; he’s reeling me in. Knows I want my daughter more than anything in the world. And that right there is what has me shuffling forward to where I’m within arm’s reach of touching the most precious little girl I’ve seen.

  I’m in awe of her. She is such a sight to see. My little baby girl is here. God, it’s her. I want her in my arms where she belongs. I want to smell her, tell her I love her and I never wanted to give her away.

  “I have strict orders not to let you hold her. Besides, she’s extremely shy with strangers,” the woman whom I’d love nothing more than to put a bullet through her head speaks, her features showing no remorse at all for what she’s done. I hate her. Hate everyone in the world who had a hand in this.

  “Do you really think you can hurt me any more than you’ve already done? I’m a stranger to her because of people like you. Hello, Nola. I’m your mommy.” I ignore Debra, stick my arms out for her to come to me. My fingers never wanted to touch someone the way they do her. I want to soak her in, get lost in her innocent scent, and run as far away from here with her as I can.

  “Do not take another step. And you should know her name isn’t Nola. It’s Bridget. And you have no idea how much I want to hurt you. If it were up to me, I would shoot you myself. Goddamn men are the weakest creatures of them all. Never understood what Luciano saw in you in the first place. Up until the day he met you, he obeyed me. I raised that boy to take what he wanted, and he wanted you. That’s all going to change now, though, isn’t it? You are no longer pure to him. No longer untouched by another man. And you’ve put him in danger of risking everything he’s worked hard to achieve by making him go get you and your lover.”

  At first, her words make no sense, but as the agony carves into my skin, cutting through my muscles and sawing into my bones hearing the name Bridget, the more they do. It was Luciano’s mother's name.

  Why in God’s name would he change her name? I
signed the birth certificate, saw the nurse take it away with my own two eyes.

  Oh God. I feel light-headed. If what my gut is telling me is true, this game is more corrupted and disturbed than I ever imagined.

  “Why would you do this to her, to me?” I prod, desperate to get to the bottom of this. Debra was always kind to me. Always talking about her son and how proud she was of him, the things he was doing with his life in spite of having a father who never came around. I can’t believe this. Nola was right under our noses the entire time. We checked Debra out and found no traces of her being involved with anything.

  My mind fogs up, and my eyes feel heavy with tears. I feel my lip quivering; I try to hold it back, I try to swallow my tears and not let her see I’m losing it, but my will is too weak. My eyes itch and burn from holding back my tears, and my throat is getting tighter with every sharp swallow. I wish I could push my emotions down so deep that I could forget them, but I can't. So, I start to cry. Luciano brought Nola here for one reason. He wants me to make a choice between her and Trent, and if I choose wrong, he’ll kill me.

  For as long as I live, I will never understand why life has to be so cruel to some and carefree for others. Some who wish for one slice of happiness end up dying without even knowing what the word means, while others, those who rob a person blind, steal away their sanity, live a life overflowing with it. I will never pull my head out from under the rock of the way our world turns.

  “I’ve done all this because I love him,” she claims, sounding sincere; it’s the way she says those words that send a desperate chill racing up my spine. My head rattles as the sick truth shines triumphantly in her eyes.

  And now I see why she would be proud of her son. He’s as twisted up in his head as she is.