“Hell, give it time, Rosie! God knows better about these things than we do. We’ll have another baby again. Besides, the best part is trying. Huh, sweetheart? Come here and let’s…”
I push him away and try and grab ahold of any strength, any possible thing I can to keep the higher ground here, finally, before he pulls it away from me again and forces me up and down, back and forth like he always does.
“You don’t get it Michael. You never get it! You’re leaving. Soon! We don’t have time. Not when you will be gone for almost over a year, and when you return, Liam will be…”
“Don’t worry about that, just come here and let me hold you, Rose!” I hear his soft side again. The one that comes out and makes me trust him. Makes me believe that maybe I really am going crazy. That maybe he is right. He’s not cheating on me. He never would. But shit, I know what I saw. I know what I need. I can’t stand by and just let all this happen. Not anymore.
“Stop it! Stop trying to change the subject. I need this baby, Michael. I need what you can’t obviously give me after eight months of trying…”
He pushes me back against a wall and I feel his hard length painfully pressed against my upper thigh. “Stop?” He questions before grabbing my nightgown and ripping it up my lower stomach. I look in his eyes as my breathing quickens out of fear and see the demonic way his eyes have changed. “What you need is to shut the fuck up, Rose!” He hisses, before a sad whimper escapes my lips and I know what is coming next. He’s going to make me. He’s going to force me to and steal away every last bit of the truth I know. “Good thing I know how to make you,” He says, forcing me to my knees in front of him. “You think I am cheating?” He says above me, as he forces my mouth open with his thumb. “Do you want to know why a man cheats, Rosie? Huh? Why he finds another woman to warm his bed?”
I shake my head no just as he forces his length in my mouth hard, making me gasp out in pain from the way it hurts, burns, aches as my mouth wasn’t ready to take him. But the way my mouth responds only makes his half hard length grow to more painfully erect as I cry a little on the ground in front of him. “Because the bitch he has at home has gone crazy. Because the one he promised to love,” he says, as he pulls out, grabs my hair, and then forcibly pushes back inside my lips again making my head hit the wall. “Take care of, won’t let him take her, control her, use her like she used to. You want another baby, Rosie?” He questions as he takes what he wants, what I’d normally give another man, even him in the past, but what I can’t force myself to hand over willingly now.
“Well sweetheart,” I hear him hiss, before he pulls out and grabs me to my feet. “I’m game to try,” he growls as he spins me around, pushes my legs apart and forces himself inside me, making me cry out because I wasn’t ready to take him. My dry walls burning as he takes what he wants. What I don’t want to give as the visions of him with another woman sears its way through my mind and my heart breaks from all the hurtful things he has said to me over the years. “But if it’s a girl, I hope she isn’t as crazy as her fucking mother.”
Startling awake in a cold sweat, I look to my left and see Justin next to me. A peaceful look on his face that is the complete opposite of the way I feel inside. Slowly rising out of bed, I walk to the bathroom and quietly close the door before turning on the light switch. My hands shake as I look up in the mirror at myself and a reality I haven’t let my mind remember resurfaces and comes flooding back.
Crazy, just like your mother.
Michael was right. But as much as I try and fight it. As much as I try and tell myself I am wrong, that all of what I remember is just some bad dream time has warped into worse, I start to cry as I stare at my own reflection and words, memories, a hell I’ve forced away comes back and I finally find myself acknowledging the way things really were before Michael died. A nightmare, just like the one I am living, except as I stand there griping the counter so tightly I see my knuckles turn white, a small voice inside climbs above all the others, I escaped that hell. I don’t know how, but I did. And that little bit of truth makes me believe, makes me hope, as I stand alone and slump down to sit on the cold tile on the bathroom floor, that allowing myself to finally remember my husband the way he truly was, maybe, by some grace of God, we will make it out of this hell too.
Chapter 3
Justin
Sitting at a small table outside of a Cuban café a couple days later, I pick up my coffee and take a long drink, thankful for it after all night on the plane to get my ass here. Rose left a day before me and we didn’t have much time to do anything else but pack and get our asses to the safe house. The wall between us, the bridge I am afraid one day she’ll try to burn at both ends scares the shit out of me. And my own hell, the one that never fails to surface and drag me under with it begins to suck the last little bit of life, of hope I had left, out of my soul the more I let it. And Fuck, I’ve been letting it.
My eyes dart up the buildings around me. Colorful seemingly happy shades of yellows, pinks and turquoise, if colors could be happy, stare back at me as if taunting the actual reason why we are here. People rush back and forth in the streets, cheerful, calling out to one another as vintage cars pass by, men ride tourists around in the back of bicycle powered buggies, and fruit stands across the way are full of early afternoon crowds laughing with wife’s picking out necessities for later, pulling their children close behind them as they make their way through the large group.
My heart hurts, fills me with regret, punishing me for what is my fault. What always seems to be my fault. And fuck if the look in Rose’s eye the last night we were together, the one that I see she’s hiding, far back, locked away like her demons, doesn’t cripple me knowing I put it there.
Hopelessness. Fear. Anxiety. Things I swore to myself she’d never feel as long as she let me stand by her side.
A church bell rings before counting down the time of day and my eyes rise and take in a gentleman across the street. An older Spanish man. His face wrinkled, his life slowly slipping away, just like I feel mine is. I hold his stare for a moment, mesmerized by the wisdom pulling at me, drawing me in as I look further into his eyes. He sees it. The hurt. The pain. The struggle. And I wonder just how he knows? What has he been through in his life to recognize the demons I’m wrestling with? He smiles. A slow smile that starts at the edge of his lips and then rises all the way to his eyes. And as I watch in amusement almost, I can’t help but think if this man can smile, if he can battle and wrestle with the impossible, finding happiness in this thing we call life, then maybe we can too, once this is all over.
“Cuidado,” I hear someone shout at my left before a horn sounds making a couple people jump at a nearby table. I look over just in time to see a man stalking towards me, hat pulled low and a suit fitted to him like a second skin with cuff links that blind when they catch the light.
Fucker never cared what other people thought, don’t know why it shocks me he still doesn’t, even on the streets of Cuba. But as my eyes raise and I take in a few of his men, some on building tops behind him, some standing on corners nearby, I smile like the man across the street and can’t help but laugh as the bastard I used to call one of my closest friends quickly approaches and takes a final few steps towards my table.
“Stupidi lavoratori,” he grates out, speaking about the worker on the bike he just passed as he looks down and brushes some dirt off the shin of his slacks. “Last time I was in Cuba, I swore I’d never fucking come back.” He takes off his hat and throws it on the table before unbuttoning his suit jacket and taking a seat. I look across the way and see the old man from before is gone. My brow furrows trying to think how he moved that fast. How he was here one moment and then gone the next. But isn’t life like that, and the whole point in it to grab ahold of the precious moments we have and make them count? I hear Leo next to me order a waitress to bring him a coffee and quickly push the older man out of my thoughts as I bring my attention back to the matters at hand.
“Last time I was in Cuba,” I slowly say as I lean back in my seat a little further and let my eyes wander around the street in front of us once again. “I promised you we’d never have to come back. Remember? Funny how life likes to play sick jokes on you just a year or so later.”
The waitress brings him his coffee and I can’t help but notice he waves the beautiful Cuban girl off like she is one of his men when she is done giving him what he asked for. Someone who brought him what he needed and now he has no use for. It strikes me as odd for all of two seconds because Leo never refuses a gorgeous woman, before my eyes fall to his hand holding his cup and I smile noticing the bastard has a ring on a very important finger. Well I’ll be damned. I am about to ask about it when he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out, flinging it at me across the table.
“Recognize her?” He whispers, as trepidation begins to slither its way up my spine. I take the photo in the center of the table and pull it closer, my eyes adjusting to the woman in it and the boy she is holding tight at her side.
No fucking way!
“My men took that a few days ago. I didn’t believe it at first when they called shortly after I put them on this assignment and told me. I said bull fucking shit. That bitch is dead. I saw it with my own two eyes. Hell, you’re my fucking witness, J. But the more they described her, the more I got this damn bad feeling in my gut, and I told them to send me proof.”
My hands shake as I hold the photo. A million emotions and hell even more questions swirl in my mind as I glance up and look in his eyes. He gives me a sad look. One that makes me feel pathetic, before reaching in his jacket pocket again and pulling out another photo.
“She’s not alone, but we can’t get a good ID on who she is working with either. She’s only taken him out of the compound they live in once. The day these photos were taken. I think my men spooked them and she hasn’t left again since.”
I pick up the second photo. One taken at the entrance of the place where Liam is being kept. I stare at the figure of a woman I knew well, even though to anyone else they could barely make out her face as she is turned to the side. But there is no mistaking it is her. She is someone I trusted with my fucking life before she blamed me for shit that never happened, shit I was never capable of, and like a fool I believed her. A few days later, she was murdered, right in front of my own damn eyes. Or so I fucking thought, but as I hold the two pictures in my hands and I remember the day I thought I failed her, watched as another soul was taken from me because of my fucking curse, I realize just how wrong I was and how much I should have always trusted the man across the table from me.
“La puttana,” I hear Leo whisper under his breath as he takes a sip of coffee. Calling her a whore, bitch, slut in his native tongue. Once upon a time I wouldn’t have allowed it. Not too long ago I would have stood up to him, said fuck who he is and the fact that he could make me disappear with just a snap of his damn fingers. I would have fought for the only woman I cared for since Charlette, the one I didn’t, couldn’t, believe his warnings against. But as his anger flares and the truth stares me in the eyes, I finally see how right he was and how blinded I let myself become. “I fucking warned you, J!” He hisses as his temper gets the better of him and he slams his cup back down on the table a few moments later. “What says this woman you trust now isn’t part of this bullshit?”
My eyes fly up and a familiar feeling fills me inside. One that he provoked in me many times before. Fight. Because in life, that is the only fucking option you have. You fucking fight. For what matters. For what you believe in. For who you love. For those damn precious moments that are gone to quick. And right now, the man across from me is provoking a war he doesn’t want to start.
Or does he?
He glares at me before a mischievous smile spreads across his smug ass face. “The stunt you pulled a few years back almost got most of my men killed, hell almost got me put six feet under too. You lost more that day than just that woman staring you back in the fucking eyes in that damn photograph, J.” I quickly stash the second photo, the one with her face barley visible, in my own pocket as my jaw clenches and I look at the top of the table and watch as Leo picks up the first picture, the one where you can clearly see her looking straight at the camera and watch as he studies it. I don’t know how I am going to tell Rose about this. Shit, I wouldn’t even know where to start. But she is not part of this, Rose is innocent. Leo has it all wrong. She could never fucking be, and hell if he keeps this shit up I’ll gladly remind him of just how brutal my fist feels against his damn face when he talks about the people I love.
“Drop it!” I hiss out in warning. But the prick continues.
“Drop it?” He questions with a sinister laugh before putting the picture back in his pocket. “Fuck you forgot who you are dealing with, Amico. I don’t fucking drop shit, not even for you! The history between us has taught me that fucking lesson.” He leans across the table and waits for me to look up before continuing. “This la donna better be worth it, J. Or this time, if she ends up the same, just another puttana playing with your fucking balls while you risk the lives of everyone involved, I won’t stop from putting a bullet in her myself and making sure she’s fucking dead before I pull the trigger again and put another one through your thick fucking skull.”
My feet shoot to standing as rage takes over every part of me, but the man across the table just laughs before slowly rising himself. I’m about to speak when he throws some money on the table, places his hat back on his head and motions for me to follow as he starts to walk off down the street.
The anger inside still boils as my feet reluctantly begin to do as he says. Fuck, if he wasn’t my only damn hope in this fucked up mess I wouldn’t follow him anywhere, but like a man on the brink of death, holding onto the last chance at life, my feet fall in step behind him.
“Relax,” he laughs as we come to a corner and wait for a few cars to pass. “You think I wouldn’t check into her, her kids, family, especially after the last time I ‘took your word’ for a woman being clean. From what I can find out, you’re telling the damn truth, but shit if you better not pray it stays that way. For you, her and those damn kid’s safety.”
I look up as we cross the street and see his men start to move. Keeping a tight perimeter on us. “So what now?” I ask as we make our way across the intersection and keep walking.
“Now?” Leo sternly says, as he stops walking abruptly before a car pulls up at our side. “We fucking take care of it. Once and for all. And this time, we make sure the jobs done right, Amico. No fucking witnesses. No excuses. No questions asked. Capire?”
I nod. I understand. It’s the way it should have been from the damn beginning, at least this time I’m not damn blind to it. He climbs in the car and motions for me to do the same. As we pull away from the curb, I watch as the life around us rushes by and a past I never expected has come back to haunt me and possibly steal any chance at a new life away before I ever got the chance to really start living again.
How the hell am I going to tell Rose?
*****
Rose
“I never thought I’d get married and my wife wouldn’t fucking work,” I remember Michael saying as he forcibly packed his bag on the edge of our bed before leaving for the station one morning towards the end. His end. The end of it all and the beginning of a new nightmare I just barely found myself waking up from before I was dragged under again.
My eyes close and I clutch the towel in my hand harder. The one I am using to clean the tops of every damn surface in this house in Cuba to keep myself from actually completely losing my mind as I wait. For what? A savior, a deliverance? To wake up from this damn nightmare?
My eyes open again and I grab the can to my right and spray some more polish onto the wood in front of me. My jaw clenches as my memory drags me back with it once again and I force myself to keep dusting.
“How am I supposed to work? You are gone most of the time. And we have Liam and…”
“Fucking figure it out, Rose! Shit! I never thought I’d have kids either, but here we are. What will you do if something fucking happens to me one day, huh? If I get injured or worse. Then your ass will be forced to get a damn job. Hell, if I can do it, you can fucking do it. Stop hiding behind the damn kid and be a fucking adult!”
My hands pick up their pace as I quickly, angrily, wipe the surface in front of me before turning and stomping towards another side table nearby. Work? I did fucking work! Every damn day. Taking care of his kids. His house. His life. So that when he came home he didn’t have to lift one damn finger!
“Forget it!” I remember he huffed, as he flung his bag onto his shoulder and made his way to the door, leaving me sitting on our bed a trembling mess from the inside out wondering how I could ever make him love me, cherish me, like he once used to instead of looking at me like the baggage he suddenly did. “Every time you’ve tried to work in the past, your attitude about ‘having to’ is more hassle than it’s fucking worth. You hate to work. And I hate dealing with that shit almost more than this!”
I do work, I wanted to shout, don’t you see. I’m exhausted every damn day from the amount of work I do do! But instead I just stared into his eyes, pleading that he see me the way he once used to. Like he did when we first fell in love and he couldn’t get enough.
If you had worked, maybe your husband would still be alive. I hear the voice say in my mind, a thought that quickly worms its way into my soul and makes my hands start to tremble. Maybe then he wouldn’t have left all the time. Cheated on you. Saw you different as time turned to years and you changed from the youthful girl into an overweight housewife.
Awakening Page 4