Chapter 31

My body aches all over and there’s a persistent burning sensation in my side.

Colby is trying to talk to the children and growing increasingly frustrated when they won’t calm down. A woman I don’t recognize is trying to reason with him.

“You’re scaring them,” she says.

“Get them out of here, then,” Colby replies. “There’s a bedroom upstairs, just stay there.”

“Baby, they wanna be with their Mama.”

“I said take them upstairs!” he snarls.

I remember that thundering tone all too well. I was under its control for so long. I hear the sound of receding footsteps.

“I wanna be with Mama!” Luna cries out.

“Mama! Mama!” Sammy yells, his sweet voice trembling with emotion .

“It’s ok babies, it’s all going to be ok,” I tell them.

“Mama’s gonna be with you soon,” Colby says. “Just go with Miranda, you’re gonna be okay, I promise.”

He’s lying. He still lies through his teeth. What else did I expect? It’s his nature. Deceitful. Miserable. Manipulating. Always working hard to look like the smartest person in the room yet always failing. Silence falls in the absence of my children, but I cling to the hope that whoever Miranda is, she’ll be kind and keep them safe. As safe as they can be in these wretched circumstances.

“All you had to do was come home, you stupid bitch,” Colby mutters.

He looks like hell. He hasn’t slept in days, judging by the dark rings around his eyes. He’s likely been living on coffee and cocaine, day in and day out, because I know this man better than he knows himself. He’s probably drinking a lot too. Uppers and downers. Whatever he can get his hands on to soothe his nervous system but he’s still a mess. He will always be a mess.

“What are you doing, Colby?” I manage, trying to sit up though unable to. “Your goon fucking tasered me.”

The baby. Oh, God, what if he hurt my baby?

My heart stops for a second. I glance down. There’s no blood. No discomfort in my pelvic area whatsoever. I just pray that my baby is unharmed.

“You left me no choice,” Colby says, coming closer to the bed I’m half slumped on.

“Stay away from me,” I snarl as he approaches with way too much determination .

“I’m your husband, Helena. I’m not gonna hurt you,” he gasps as if I’m insulting him. I can’t help but chuckle bitterly as I manage to pull myself up into a seated position. He looks at me with slight confusion.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Have you forgotten?” I ask, albeit rhetorically. “The diner you burned down? The physical abuse? You tried to choke me to death!”

“Because you won’t listen!” Colby insists. “All the times I begged you to just be a good wife, to know your place, to raise our children and keep your mouth shut—”

“To wear longer dresses. To cook your food a certain way. To keep my head down, and your mother happy,” I irritably cut him off. “Fuck you, Colby. I’m not going back to that horror show ever again.”

His hand comes down hard. He smacks me across the face. My cheek stings but I refuse to cry in his presence. I refuse to let him know precisely how terrified I truly am. He feeds on my fear with pleasure. I need a different angle here; I cannot rebel against him any further. He will flip out and hurt me even worse.

“Colby, I’m the mother of your children,” I say with a trembling but calm voice. “What example are you setting for Luna and Sammy?”

“That a wife needs to know her place.”

I shake my head. “I’m not your wife anymore. The divorce was finalized six months ago.”

Colby sighs deeply. “We’re married until I say otherwise, Helena. And I have no intention of letting you go. I’ve already lost you once.

”

“You’ve lost your mind, you know that?”

That earns me another slap. This time, however, it only fuels my resolve. Either I’m getting used to the pain, or he didn’t put that much effort into it.

“You ungrateful bitch,” he hisses, his face red with fury. “If only you’d been a good wife, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Colby, for the love of God, you hurt me. You’re still hurting me. Why would I want to be with a man who hurts me?”

“You took a vow! Together until death do us part.”

He’s about to hit me again but I wince in anticipation. He pulls back and takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“You bring out the worst in me when you act like this,” he says. “If only you would understand, Helena, that things don’t have to be so difficult for us.”

“If only you would understand that I don’t want to be with you anymore,” I reply. “We tried. I’m clearly not the right woman for you, Colby, and that’s okay. I tried so hard to be the woman you wanted me to be and it didn’t work out. Why can’t you just let me go?”

Colby comes close again and I hold my breath for a minute, anticipating the worst kind of rebuttal. Instead, he kneels before me and places his hands on my thighs, fingers digging into my flesh. It’s a possessive and pleading gesture. He’s trying to convey multiple things at the same time. His mind must be a crumbling disaster at this point.

“I can’t let you go. You belong with me,” he says. “All this time that you’ve been away, I haven’t been myself.”

“Is that why you tried to kill us?

”

“Okay, I admit, I was out of line there,” he replies, as if all he did was leave the trash overnight. “But you have to admit, Helena, you haven’t made it easy for me to reach you.”

“You obviously knew where I was. Why couldn’t you just walk in and talk to me?”

“Would you have stayed put? Because I reckon you would’ve run screaming.”

I smile subtly. “So you admit that I have every reason to be afraid of you.”

“You’re twisting my words,” he says, his jaw clenched with unbridled anger. I need to steer him back in the calm zone, if only to buy myself a little bit more time until I figure out what to do next. That’s all I need, time to find a way out of here. To save my children from this monster.

“I’m sorry,” I try to appease him. “I’m angry and hurt, too. Luna and Sammy almost died in that fire.”

His lack of emotion startles me, but I take deep breaths and hold on to my composure. I cannot fail. “It wasn’t my intention. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says.

There’s CCTV footage that can tell anyone what he was thinking in horrifyingly precise detail. Colby is well aware of what he did. He just thinks I’m some kind of idiot. He still wants to be the brightest bulb around. He simply cannot acknowledge that he can’t fool me, not anymore. The ship has already sailed and he can’t accept that.

“Do they know?” Colby asks, seemingly peaceful.

“Know what?” I pause, then pick up on his frazzled thoughts. “Do Luna and Sammy know that you started the diner fire?”

I wait for his nod. “No. I did my best to keep them out of earshot for any conversation involving your name.”

“Do they miss me?”

“You saw them just now,” I shoot back. “Do they look like they miss you?”

“They don’t love me,” he mutters, briefly glancing away.

“They’re scared of you, Colby,” I say, slowly leaning forward. “I know you didn’t want to hurt me the way you did but they saw you do it. They saw us together, back at the house, when we were supposedly a family. They may be children, but even they can tell right from wrong.”

He gets up with a furious huff and turns away, choosing to face the window for a moment. “You turned them against me!”

“No, Colby. I did my best to stay neutral but I couldn’t lie to them, either. Luna remembers everything you did, how it was. Sammy’s a little younger but he worried whenever he saw me crying. He understood that when I cried, it meant Daddy did or said something bad. The children saw everything, okay? I didn’t have to turn them against you. You did that all by yourself.”

“It’s gonna be different from now on. I’m gonna change,” Colby declares. “I know what I need to do, Helena. Things will be better this time.”

My blood runs cold. I don’t like the way he’s talking. There’s an underlying tone that sends shivers down my spine. A sort of calm before the storm, the kind of storm that gets people killed in order for Colby to get what he wants. “What do you mean?” I ask with caution .

“It’s those firefighters. They’ve put nonsense in your head, in the kids’ heads. I’ll deal with those fuckers, once and for all. And then we’ll be a family again. You’ll see.”

“Colby, the cops are looking for you. The FBI is looking for you.”

He laughs wholeheartedly, as if I’ve just told him the greatest joke he’s ever heard. “Oh, babe. Like I give a shit about the cops or the feds. Have you forgotten who I am?”

“You are not invincible,” I remind him. “And I’m not sure your mother can protect you this time around.”

In the blink of an eye, he crosses the room and grabs me by the neck, squeezing so tightly that my windpipe almost gives out. “My mother has done more for me in the past few months than you ever did in your entire miserable life, you cheating whore! What, you think I didn’t know about you and the firemen? What was it like, Helena, taking so much cock in one sitting, huh? Is that what was missing from our marriage? I’ll have you gang-banged on a daily basis if that’s what you want.”

“Oh… God… Colby… Stop,” I gasp out, trying to pry his fingers off my neck so I can breathe.

“You broke your vows!” he snarls, then throws me back on the bed. “It’s unforgivable.”

He is rambling and switching gears so fast it’s hard to keep up. He is unpredictable, and I don’t know how to handle him anymore. One minute he’s calm and somewhat soft, the next he’s spinning out of control and itching to hurt me. If we keep this up, I will not survive past midnight, and judging by the reddish sky outside, midnight isn’t that far away .

“Colby, please, we have to reach some sort of reasoning here,” I say, on the verge of tears. “I am a divorced woman, a free woman. The kids and I felt safe—”

“You had a husband!” he shouts.

There’s no reasoning with him, that much is obvious. I have to try another approach. One that makes my stomach tighten with disgust but is necessary. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I say. “Please, Colby, forgive me. It was foolish. I was angry and hurt.”

He stills.

It’s as if all his rage has suddenly dissipated. There’s a warm twinkle in his eyes. A softness I haven’t seen in ages. This man is off his rocker. He’s miles away from sanity, and I need to get miles away from him. Clearly, the only way that’s gonna happen is if I get him to relax. If I stop arguing, if I stop fighting him altogether.

“I’m sorry,” I say it again. “Please, let’s just… let’s talk, let’s figure this out, together. Maybe we can make it work after all, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

“Don’t you see, Helena? That’s all I want. You. Back with me,” he sighs, his shoulders dropping. “It’s why we’re here. It’s why I’m going to make sure we stay together this time.”

“You don’t have to make sure, I mean, you said it yourself, I’m here, we’re here. Let’s just make it work.”

He shakes his head decisively. “Oh, no, those guys won’t leave us be. That’s your fault, but I’m gonna fix it.”

“What do you mean?” Dread comes over me in icy cold waves, but I measure my breaths and do my best to keep him from seeing how terrified I am. I know what he’s capable of. “Colby, what are you planning to do?”

“I’m just going to finish what I started,” he says. “The warehouse thing got out of control so fast. I need a more controlled environment. I just need them to die, really. And then we’ll be able to pick up where we left off.”

“Colby, are you talking about the fire that killed over a hundred people and left hundreds more with scars and nightmares for life?” I manage, the full picture coming in hot and clear, hitting me so hard that I can barely breathe. “Did you start that fire?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to.”

“You killed all those people!” I scream, losing control as grief cuts through me like a red-hot knife. “Colby, you murdered innocent people. For what? What did you intend to gain from that?”

That’s it. The fuse is lit.

“Shut up!” he snaps and comes at me with a heavy swing of his left hand.

I anticipate the pain before he even hits me. My body takes over and I find myself cowering, arms over my head and knees up to my chest as I cry out in desperation. “Please, stop hitting me, I’m pregnant!”

The hand never comes down.

Time stands still for the longest minute. I’m stuck in this position, unable to look up as I await the incoming pain. The blow that might draw blood from my lips or break bones in my face. But it never happens. When I realize it’s not coming, I finally look up to find Colby staring at me, his eyes as wide as saucers. His lips are parted and quivering in shock.

Hell, I can almost hear a motherboard in his brain crackling, short-circuited by unexpected information. I want to smack myself for saying it, but I couldn’t take another blow. I couldn’t put my baby at risk.

“You’re what?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.

“Pregnant,” I mumble. “Please, don’t hurt me anymore.”

I don’t know what to make of his reaction because there isn’t one. He’s just standing there, inches away from me, unraveling in slow motion as he tries to wrap his head around this new nugget of truth. He knows that it’s not his. He’s probably wondering which of the Danson brothers is the father.

I regret my decision to tell him, and now I’m expecting the worst.

Colby is out of his mind, a loose cannon capable of unspeakable atrocities, as he has so clearly demonstrated one too many times.

And I may have just pushed him over the edge.