by Casey, L. A.
“Things are still hazy,” I lied, swallowing. “What happened if I wasn’t leaving you?”
He watched me with such intensity that it scared the shit out of me. I quickly realised that I couldn’t let him know that I remembered that he was a woman-beating, abusive piece of shit, because I didn’t think I would get out of the flat alive if he knew.
“Can you untie me?” I asked when he didn’t answer. “I can’t go anywhere with my leg, so can you just untie me, please? I can’t feel my hands.”
Anderson stared at me for a long moment.
“Please?” I pressed. “I’ll sit right here; I just want to be free. I promise.”
He got up, grabbed his steak knife and then walked back towards me. I held my breath as I eyed the knife, and when he put a hand on my shoulder so I could lean forward, my heart thudded in my chest. I released a breath of relief when I heard the knife cut through fabric. The tight binding on my wrists and feet suddenly fell away, so I pulled my hands around my body and rubbed my aching, raw flesh.
“Remember your promise.”
“I will,” I replied, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m staying right here.”
“I know you are,” he said. “You aren’t leaving me. We’ve spent years together, just the two of us. We’re in love.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In love? He couldn’t really believe that. He’d abused me until I was so filled with terror that he could control everything I said and did. I wanted to scream at him, to attack him, to inflict some sort of pain on him for everything he had put me through, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do a single fucking thing.
“So, what now?”
“Now” – he stood back up – “I finish my lunch.”
I watched him as he returned to the table, sat down and resumed eating his food like he hadn’t just knocked me unconscious and tied my wrists together to keep me from leaving him. After a few minutes of silence, I pushed myself to my feet and then sat on the sofa and groaned as my body melted into the cushions. I felt Anderson’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look at him. I was trying to think of what to do. My mind instantly went to Elliot. He was downstairs in the car park. Anderson had said I was only out cold for a few minutes. I was thinking of how I could get Elliot to come to the flat . . . but I was worried if I did that then Anderson might harm him.
I knew he was capable of it.
The back of my head ached and my wrists were sore, but nothing to the extent of what I should have been feeling. This was only a taste of the pain that Anderson could cause me, though he didn’t appear to be angry and that was how I knew that I was safe for the time being. My gut told me to keep him calm, but I also needed him to talk so I could find a way to get proof of what he had done to cause the crash that Bailey died in, and what he had done to me all the years I was with him. I shifted and felt something dig into the side of my right thigh. I tensed when I realised what it was.
My phone.
“Oh my God.”
My phone was in my fucking dress pocket. The loose material of the fabric made it hard to notice the pocket, Anderson obviously didn’t know this, or he would have taken it away from me. I looked around and couldn’t see my bag anywhere, so I knew he had searched it and taken it out of my sight.
“What?” Anderson said, his gaze on me. “What is it?”
I glanced at him. “My wrists are sore.”
“They’ll be fine,” he grunted. “The skin isn’t even chafed.”
I looked down at my red wrists and realised that he was right.
“They’re still sore.”
He didn’t reply, he just finished off his food and his wine. Then he proceeded to wash and dry his dishes like it was a regular day, and not like he was keeping me hostage in his home. It hit me then that Anderson was really deranged. Not just sick, but twisted and clearly evil. He had to have some sort of mental disorder to think what he was doing was okay. It was fucking crazy. He was crazy.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” he told me with a pointed glare. “I’m leaving the door open, so if you move, I’ll know, and I will not be happy.”
In other words, he’d beat the shit out of me if my arse left the sofa.
“My leg is sore,” I said, shrugging. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He walked out of the room and my mind raced with my options. I couldn’t call Elliot because he would come running and probably get hurt, and I couldn’t call 999 because I couldn’t speak to answer any of the questions they’d have. I had to think of what I needed at the current moment, and what I needed was Anderson verbally saying what he’d done on the night I left him. I needed proof. I hurriedly got out my phone and triple-checked that it was on silent. I turned the volume up so the microphone would pick up the words more clearly, then I opened the voice memo app, pressed Record and put the phone back in my pocket.
When Anderson returned, I groaned when I reached behind me and rubbed the throbbing spot on the back of my head. It really was hurting me, but I was trying to appear to be as little of a threat as I could – so I wanted to appear as weak as possible.
“I can’t believe you’ve attacked me, Anderson.”
He retook his seat.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, it’s why I gave you some morphine. Don’t you understand?”
I sat upright. “You could have killed me . . . you know I’m recovering from a brain injury!”
“That is the very reason I put morphine in your tea, so you’d just fall asleep.”
“Wait.” I felt my lips part as I realised just what he was saying. “You drugged me?”
I recalled him mentioning it when I woke up as well, but I hadn’t focused on it until now.
“Yes, but not very well. You’re still conscious. You said morphine makes you sleep.”
“Yeah,” I replied dumbly. “It does.”
“I should’ve used two capsules instead of one.” He shook his head.
I stared at him. “You drugged me and you hit me!”
“I didn’t want to hit you; I never want to hit you.”
“But yet you always do hit me.” I glared at him. “You’re the reason why waking up in a hospital felt familiar to me when I awoke from my coma . . . each time I woke up in a hospital, it was because you put me there.”
“Me?” Anderson jumped to his feet. “I had no choice but to discipline you! You never listen to me, when all I want to do is protect you!”
I clenched my hands into fists to keep myself from screaming at him.
“Protect me?” I repeated with a slow blink. “You protect me by physically damaging my body? Is that it? You almost killed me, and you did succeed in killing Bailey. Anderson . . . you killed her.”
My voice cracked as the weight of my words took hold. Anderson had caused Bailey’s death; he was the reason we were so scared that night. He’d caused every single thing.
“I didn’t mean to cause the crash, but she took you from me!” His hands shook as he spoke. “I just wanted to get to you, I didn’t think she’d drive so fast to get away from me.”
I lifted my hands to my face.
“She was only twenty-one,” I said. “She had her whole life ahead of her!”
Anderson didn’t reply but I didn’t expect him to. He was deflecting the blame of the situation on to me and Bailey, and he wasn’t going to take accountability for what he’d done because he didn’t care. I wasn’t sure he felt real emotions, not like a normal person did. All he cared about was having me under his spell.
“Why do you want me?” I asked, dropping my hands. “What the hell could you possibly want me for?”
“Because you’re my best friend and my wife. I love you, Noah. I’ve always protected you from Elliot, from your parents, from everyone who has ever hurt you.”
“Anderson, you were the one who hurt me!”
“To protect you.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “If you went back to him, to your parents, you would have killed yourself.
They caused your depression. You’re still alive because I protected you. I helped you. You see that, right?”
I didn’t see what he wanted me to see; I saw what he was trying to do. He was trying to manipulate me by making me feel sorry for him, to sympathise with him and accept that he hurt me to protect me. I may have believed that once upon a time, but not any more.
“I can’t remember being your wife, so why do you still want me?” I pressed. “Why?”
“Because you’re mine,” he growled, lowering himself back down on to the chair. “I’ll never let you go.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. I needed to keep him talking. His mood swings were startling. One second he was trying to be gentle, and the next he was firm and had anger blazing in his eyes.
“If I’m yours, why didn’t you try harder to see me at the hospital? Why did you only come to me twice?” I quizzed. “Why wait until I came to you?”
“Because your parents and that piece-of-shit ex of yours got to you first,” he replied, his voice so low it sent a shiver of fear up the length of my spine. “They never liked me. None of them did. At the start, I was extra nice to them. I wanted them to like me because it makes things easier when people like you . . . but none of them ever did. It’s why I stopped you from having any involvement with them.”
I lifted my hand to my mouth. “You stopped me from seeing them because they didn’t like you?”
“Because they would have had influence over you,” he corrected as I dropped my hand. “We would have never been able to be together the way we wanted if everyone from your life was sticking their noses into our relationship. You didn’t need them . . . don’t you see, baby? You only ever needed me. I take care of you, I protect you. Me, not them – and not him.”
He words felt like a pile of bricks weighing me down.
“When I met you,” he continued. “I didn’t know you were the one for me, but when we started talking, I saw that we were meant to be together. I wanted someone for my own, someone I could love deeply, and I found that in you. You love me, Noah. You do.”
My gaze bored into his. “It’s ownership, not love. You don’t hurt someone you love, not in the ways you’ve hurt me.”
He didn’t reply, he only watched me.
“I’m scared of silence because of you.” I clasped my hands together. “I remember the night of the crash . . . you beat me badly. I remember you were glad of the blackout the night I left you. You wanted things silent so you could hear nothing but my cries.”
“So you could hear them,” Anderson corrected. “So you could hear yourself be disciplined for your actions. You never understand that I do what I do for your own good, Noah. Please, believe me.”
My body began to shake.
“I won’t be like that again.” I lifted my gaze to his. “I won’t be the shell of a woman you want. You can beat me until I’m dead. I don’t care, I won’t be that woman.”
Anderson nodded his head slowly.
“I know,” he answered, surprising me. “You’re a different Noah from when I knew you; you’re strong of mind. I knew when you first looked at me in the hospital that you were lost to me.”
I frowned. “Then why keep me here? Why do this?”
“I said you were mine.” He got to his feet. “You’ll be dead, but you’ll still be mine. You’ll never be his. Ever. I told you in the hospital that this would all be over soon. I meant it. We’re going to be together forever. Just you and me, the way it always should be.”
I sucked in a breath when he pulled a piece of white material from the drawer of the coffee table and advanced on me. I screamed, but a punch to the face silenced me as blood filled my mouth and dribbled down my chin. Anderson made quick work of tying my wrists together once more, followed by feet. He pushed me on to the floor, and I stared at him as he reached behind the sofa and produced a jerrycan. I sucked in a breath and was about to scream, but one look from Anderson kept me silent. I was frozen as he uncapped the can, and the fumes of petrol stung my nostrils.
“Anderson,” I whimpered. “Please, don’t.”
He ignored me as he splashed the fuel around the room, then he went down the hallway and I heard the petrol sloshing around as he dispensed it in each room. He hadn’t poured it on me or on the part of the sofa I was near, and I wondered if he planned to do that last. I leaned forward to watch him and was gobsmacked when he went outside the flat and splashed fuel on the walls all the way down to the elevator. When he reached the door of his flat, he produced a lighter, flicked it, lit a newspaper and dropped it in the hall. The fuel on the ground ignited instantly, and it spread like wildfire down the corridor.
“Anderson!” I shouted. “Please, just talk to me. We can figure this out, things don’t have to be this way.”
“We can’t,” he snapped as he came back into the room. “I sensed the change in you the night you woke up and in the times when I finally got to speak to you. You made eye contact with me and questioned me . . . two things that you knew never to do. I touched your wrist and you still did all of those things. I knew your parents and that McKenna prick would never let you go this time, so I made a promise to myself that if I couldn’t have you then no one could.”
I began to cry.
“What does touching my wrist have to do with anything?”
“It was always a warning between us,” he explained. “When we were out in public and you behaved in a manner that I didn’t like, I would touch your wrist and you knew to stop whatever you were doing. I’ve kept you safe so many times by doing it.”
Horror filled my mind as I remembered all of the times that he’d touched my wrist when he came to see me in the hospital, and stared at me while he did it. He was trying to see if I had any memory of its significance so he could control me once again. I was flabbergasted.
“Anderson, please!”
“We’ll go together,” he assured me with a smile. “The smoke will kill us long before the fire touches us. I’m gonna carry you to our room and we’re going to go to sleep together one final time. Just the two of us.”
“You’ll kill other families on this floor, maybe everyone in the entire building!” I snapped, trying to make him see reason. “You’ll kill people.”
“They’ll get out,” Anderson said. “Don’t worry about them.”
I jerked my attention to the front door when I heard screaming and shouts. I heard fire alarms go off, but the emergency sprinkler systems never kicked in. Anderson saw me looking at the ceiling and laughed.
“The sprinklers have been broken from the second floor up for the last week now. They’ve been out daily trying to fix the problem, but they haven’t been able to do anything about it yet.”
His words were so exact that it made my skin crawl.
“Did you somehow disable the system?”
“Maybe.”
He was crazy. He was a raging fucking lunatic.
“I can’t believe I ever felt sorry for you.”
Disbelief was all over Anderson’s features.
“What?”
“During my time in the hospital I felt sorry for you – I felt like I was awful because I didn’t know that you were my husband. I thought I was being cruel because I didn’t want you,” I said with a look of disgust. “After seeing the true you, and how completely worthless you are, the only reason I stayed with you was out of fear. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. You’re a pathetic loser who beats me when things get tough; you may have broken my body and even my mind for a time, but no more. You have no hold over me any more, Anderson. You’re a fucking joke.”
His face turned a blistering shade of red as he reached down and grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me by my head out of the sitting room, down the hallway and into the bedroom. He was shouting, cursing and kicking my back along the way, and when he finally released me, he picked me up and threw me on to the bed. I sat up in time to watch him flick his lighter again and throw it out i
nto the hall. A spark ignited, then flames spread.
I saw a wall of fire for only a moment before he slammed the door shut.
I reached for the lamp next to me, and threw it at him when he dove for me. It smacked off him but didn’t slow him down. My screams were so loud that Anderson ducked his head to escape the shrill sound. When his hands closed around my throat, he stopped the sound – and my breathing – instantly. My hands went to his face and I dug my nails into his flesh, making him roar. But he never let go of my throat, and the pressure made me feel light-headed. I felt my hands drop away from Anderson’s face as my chest burned for air.
Black dots danced in front of my vision and I stared up at Anderson, whose black eyes were wild and misted with fury. I was about to close my eyes and give in to the sleep that beckoned me, but one second Anderson was on top of me and the next he wasn’t. I sucked in air greedily and began to cough as pain stung my throat. My body felt like jelly, but when I turned my head to the side, I didn’t see Anderson. I saw him.
Elliot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ELLIOT
“Keep going down!” I shouted up the stairwell as I rushed past people who were descending at a rapid pace. “Keep your children and pets in your arms to avoid losin’ them. Do not come back into the buildin’!”
I wasn’t sure if people were even listening to me, but I repeated the message three more times. I only stopped when I passed the third floor and the scent of smoke touched my nostrils. I hurried up to the fourth floor where I knew Anderson lived, and yanked the door open.
“Fuck!” I snapped.
Flames filled the corridor all the way up the walls and to the ceiling. I looked from left to right and spotted a rack of four large fire extinguishers. I grabbed the one in the middle, undid the safety clip and then checked the label to make sure it was the extinguisher I needed. I could smell petrol in the hallway; I needed to smother it with carbon dioxide otherwise the fire would spread.