Ruthless Salvation

34

As soon as I was close enough, Damyon turned and led us out to his waiting car. What else could I do but follow? I had no friends or family here and no way to escape. The only thing I could do was try with everything I had to smooth this over. But how did I do that when all I wanted to do was scream at him and launch accusations? He’d planned this. Not last night or even last week. He’d planned this months ago when he’d first taken the passport.

We rode home in silence. It was the most suffocating, oppressive silence I’d ever experienced—like diving deep below the ocean’s surface where the pressure pounded in your ears and made your lungs burn.

Damyon carried my suitcase into the house and left it by the stairs.

More silence.

I was about to haul the thing to our room when my heartbreak got the better of me. I turned tear-filled eyes to the man I’d given my heart to and whispered, “Why?”

That was it. That was all he needed, like a tiny tripwire detonating a bomb.

“Why? Because you belong to me,” he screamed. His voice bellowed throughout the house and rattled my bones.

He charged forward. “I told you I would never let you go. Did you think I was joking?” His ice-blue eyes had always looked striking, but now I realized they were a warning about the soulless monster lurking inside him. The physical embodiment of evil.

I shook my head frantically, trying to save myself from the quicksand tugging me under.

Damyon’s hand clamped viciously around my throat. “How dare you try to leave me. No one disrespects me like that. No one!” he shouted, his angry breath searing my face.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

Terror seized hold of me in a way I’d never experienced. I tugged at his fingers and mouthed the word, “Please,” over and over and over. But it was no use.

The demon inside him had control with no plans of letting go.

My lungs felt drenched in hot oil. Black dots spotted my vision, growing larger by the second until I could barely see.

This was it.

This was how I died.

I knew it with a certainty as strength fled my muscles, then I was in the air, flying. I’d welcomed the hereafter, except instead of a bright light, there was only pain. My body crashed against something impossibly hard, then darkness.

I DIDN’T KNOW what was worse, waking up to an excruciating headache or having the man who’d caused it hold me tenderly in his arms. I didn’t want to face him—to face my situation. I cursed my luck for not hitting my head hard enough such that I didn’t remember what had happened.

Forgetting would have been so much easier. But I did remember, and there would be no forgetting anymore.

What on earth was I supposed to do? The question alone made my head pulse. My body tensed against the pain, alerting him to the fact that I had woken.

“Moya milaya Alina, I am so very sorry.” My body shook with uncontrollable sobs.

“You have to understand how much you hurt me. I cannot stand the thought of you leaving me.” His words intensified my sobs, which tightened the vise around my skull. Nausea churned up a riotous storm in my stomach.

“Oh God.” I clamped a hand over my mouth and wriggled out from his hold.

He reluctantly allowed me to scurry away, and I made it to the bathroom just in time. Over and over, I heaved into the cold porcelain toilet.

Damyon was there in an instant, holding my hair back and murmuring soothing words as he rubbed my back.

My Damyon was back—the Damyon I’d fallen in love with—but there was no comfort in it. Not this time. The flip of the coin from one persona to the other only made me feel worse. Betrayed. How could someone so kind and compassionate be such a monster? How could a man claim he loved someone, then hurt them so vindictively?

It wasn’t right. Something inside him was broken beyond repair.

“You hit your head pretty good.”

I didn’t hit my head. You slammed me against a wall. There’s a difference.

I nodded, knowing I could never say the words aloud.

“Sometimes a bump on the head will do this. I will have the doctor come by just to be safe.”

I felt the tiniest modicum of comfort. His doctor was old but kind. I’d seen the man a couple of times to get my birth control shot renewed.

I peered down into the clear water of the freshly flushed toilet and stilled when another round of nausea roiled in my belly.

The nausea was from the headache, right? I couldn’t be…

As if in answer, an ache radiated from my right breast. They’d been extra sore lately, and my bras had seemed snug almost overnight.

Sweet Jesus, no.

I couldn’t be.

I’d had a shot only a month ago. My bleeding was irregular, but that was always the case with the shot.

Please, God above, let this reeling nausea simply be a concussion. Don’t let me bring a child into this mess.

An hour later, the doctor stopped by and cleared me of any serious injury. There was no way he could have missed the horrid purple bruising around my neck, but he acted like it wasn’t there.

I felt oddly embarrassed, which then triggered a slew of other negative emotions—primarily self-loathing. How dare I be embarrassed? I was the victim here. If anyone should be embarrassed, it was Damyon for what he’d done or the doctor for ignoring what was so obviously wrong. But neither of those things would change. This was my new reality, and if I didn’t like it, I’d have to find a way out.

But first, I had to know the full extent of the trouble I was in.

Two days later, I did something I never thought I’d do. I shoplifted a pregnancy test. I didn’t want to take it back to the house, so I asked my escort if we could pick up lunch, then begged off to the restroom. Thank God it was a single water closet with a lock. I didn’t think I could do this with an audience.

I set the activated test on the edge of the sink and stared deep into the reflection of my eyes.

Time to be strong, Stormy girl. No room for fear or doubts from this moment on.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. The last I’d cry for a long time.

Two pink lines emerged on the test strip.

I was pregnant, and this was no longer about me anymore.