by Alice Ward
Take nothing.
I’d be able to find photos of Mama and my sisters on the internet. I’d be able to live virtually with my family on social media, so the pain of leaving those photos didn’t hit me very hard.
But CeeCee? I blew a kiss to the picture, finding it ironic that, of all the jewelry and expensive clothes in this stateroom, it was that photo of CeeCee in my arms that I’d miss the most.
“Goodbye,” I whispered and swiped at a tear lingering in the corner of my eye. Turning away, I focused on my escape.
Pressing one hand to my belly, I fought to not look up at the cameras dotting the hallway after I stepped through the door. The security staff would review the tape, I knew. I frowned at the thought. When they learned that I was gone, would my mother’s story of offering comfort to her ill daughter hold up to their questioning?
It had to. It just had to.
Which meant I needed to make my illness look real.
Praying for strength to do what needed to be done, I moved silently down the hall, being careful not to look sneaky to anyone watching even as I strove to be quiet. My legs felt watery as I moved down the stairs to the lower deck, watching for any staff who might see me. Fortunately, I appeared to be the only one out during that early hour.
The wind blew my hair in my face as I stepped out into the night. The salt of the sea was pungent, the lights of Monaco much closer.
A half mile.
I could swim a half mile with ease… in a swimming pool.
But I’d never done the same in the ocean. With waves and currents. Undertows. In the dark.
Statistics swirled in my head. My biology tutor had been fascinated with marine life, and I’d been quizzed on the animals of the Mediterranean Sea in depth.
The numbers roared through my mind as I staggered to the back of the yacht. The hand pressed against my belly wasn’t a false presence this time. I actually did feel quite ill. My stomach churned while my other hand clutched at the railing.
There were forty-seven species of sharks in the relatively warm waters, of which only fifteen were dangerous to humans. I looked over the side, searching for fins but could only see darkness beyond the sparkle of lights reflecting from the boat’s hull.
I’d have to take my chances. There was a possibility that there would be a shark in these waters, just waiting for a tasty princess to fall into its gaping mouth, but there was absolute certainty that another type of shark was waiting on the Monaco coast. A shark just as hungry for princess flesh.
When the railing bent ninety degrees, and I stood at the back corner of the yacht, I knew I had no more time to think of the creatures below. It was time. I couldn’t hesitate.
“Thank you, Mama,” I whispered as I bent over the side and wretched. To my surprise, I actually threw up, the acid burning my throat and mouth as it was expelled into the water.
My entire body was quaking as I did it again, but this time, when I bent over, I leaned over too far and tumbled off.
And as the water engulfed me, I had one thought.
Fuck you, Prince Vitalievich.
It was the first time I’d ever cursed in my life.
CHAPTER SIX
Xander
I sat in stunned silence as the story poured out of my son.
Apparently, it started with guitar lessons not long after they moved to California.
“He made me sit on his lap while he showed me how to play.”
Soon, Jet told him that they, “Could feel the vibrations of the music better if we were naked.” Later, Jet did “funny stuff,” like stroke the strings with his penis. “It was funny,” Kylian said, looking miserable. “Jet made everything funny. He joked about stuff.”
“Joked about sex?” I asked, the words like razors coming from my throat. Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for this conversation, but I instinctively knew that if I flipped my shit the way I wanted to, my son would never speak of it again. And he needed to talk about it. He needed to get it out of the cells of his body, let the secrets escape before they held him prisoner.
Kylian nodded. “He told these jokes and all these stories about when he was in the band. He let me have some of his beer and stuff.”
My mind screamed, the horror of what I was learning like pounding nails in my skull. My hands were shaking, and I pressed them down on my knees as I watched my son curl up into a ball on the floor. I tossed him a blanket when he shivered, and I longed to pull him against me, protect him now. Unlike the way I’d failed to protect him the past year.
“He gave you beer?” My voice cracked, and I cleared it. “Did he give you anything else?”
Dark eyes peered out at me from behind the veil of his long hair. “I’m not supposed to tell. He said that no one would ever believe me if I told. He said that my friends would say I was gay and they’d laugh at me if…” He hid his face behind his hands again.
I moved to the floor, wrapping my arms around my legs, coming down to his level. My vision was blacking out from the intensity of my anger and pounding heart. I needed to be on the floor in case I passed out.
“I think you’re very brave, Kylian,” I said, my voice barely escaping my throat. “This is a hard thing to talk about, and I’ve never been more proud of you in my life.”
He peeked at me through his fingers, and I forced my face to stay calm. “You’re not mad?”
Mad was a universe away from the anger boiling inside me right then. “Yes, I’m mad, but not at you. You did nothing wrong. Jet did. And I’ll make sure he’s punished.”
“How?”
I took a deep breath, pulled needed oxygen into my brain. “He needs to go to jail for what he did to you, Kylian. He’s an adult, and you’re a boy. What he did…” I shook my head, clawing my fingers down my beard. The pain was good. Needed. It helped me to focus. “We need to call the police and you need to tell them everything. Every single detail. Can you do that? Can we make sure he never hurts a kid again?”
Kylian stared at me for so long and so hard… and so fearfully… that I was certain he was going to tell me no. Then, he began to cry, and when I pulled him into my lap and began to cry too, we just held each other for the longest time.
I’d failed him.
I’d failed my son in the most miserable way possible, but I wouldn’t fail him again.
“I love you, Kyl,” I said into his hair. “Can we call the police? Get this over with?”
He looked up at me, tears and snot dripping down his face. I used the blanket to wipe it clean and pushed his hair back from his eyes. “Do I have to go back there?” he asked in a small voice.
“No!”
The word burst out of me, louder than I’d intended, but Kylian only nodded and relaxed against me, a shudder running through his slim frame. “Then it’s okay to call them.”
When the police arrived, I met them at the door, then sat in the living room while Kylian told them everything. The games they played, the ways Jet teased him into doing things that were sexual.
Then Jet wanted him to do more things. Worse things. “Things I didn’t want to do.”
“Like what?” the officer asked gently while I sat there, trying to remember how to breathe.
“He wanted me to blow on his, you know…” My son wiped his nose with his sleeve, his face growing redder. “He said it would make a noise like a trumpet.”
That was when I couldn’t take it anymore.
There was a saying about “seeing red” but I’d always thought it was only an expression until that moment. But I saw red, and my entire field of vision pulsed with it, in rhythm to my rapid heartbeat.
I pushed to my feet and headed toward the door, grabbed my keys and was gone before the officer could stop me. I drove like a madman to my ex-wife’s mansion and up through their yard, not stopping until the front of the SUV was pressed against their front steps. I pounded on the door and the glass on either side of it, using my shoulder when it wouldn’t open. Kicked at the knob.
“What the hell, man?”
The bastard was wearing only boxers, his hair like strings across his face. Blue lights coming up the drive reflected off his pale, skinny body, and he crumpled like a broken doll when my fist connected with his chin.
Vaguely, I heard Danielle screaming for me to stop as I punched and punched, then strong hands were dragging me away, cuffs chaining my hands behind my back as I spit at and cursed the bloody man at my feet.
I was ushered into the back of a police car as I watched other police cars scream to a stop in the driveway, then later, an ambulance pulled up to the door.
I was numb as I watched the bastard being wheeled out on a stretcher, an IV bag hanging over him. The bastard wasn’t dead, I knew. But his face would never be the same. Maybe I should have left it intact. I’d heard rumors that the inmates liked the pretty boys better.
It came as a surprise when I wasn’t arrested. From what the cops told me, I’d been cuffed and stuffed into the back of the car for protective reasons. “You don’t want to be the one in prison, Mr. Armstrong,” a detective told me as he removed the cuffs. Someone drove me back to my apartment… to my children, who were safe with the officer who’d stayed behind.
By some miracle, Kenzie was still asleep, but she’d always slept like she was in a coma.
When I walked back into my living room, Kylian looked at my bloody fists, then up to me. “Did you get him?”
I pulled him into my arms, kissed his hair. “Yeah, I got him.”
He hugged me tight. “Good.”
Yeah. It was good, if there was any good in this horror flick I’d found myself in.
But it wasn’t over, and it wouldn’t be over for a long time, I knew.
The next day, Jet was arrested not only for the molestation of his stepson, but for over two thousand counts of child pornography possession found on his computer. There would be more charges later, the detectives thought, but that was the initial findings. And it was enough to put him away for years, on the pornography charges alone.
The police also questioned my daughter, who answered the questions with wide eyes, but it appeared that she’d escaped the clutches of the man her mother had married. The man still in the hospital from the beating I’d given him. The same hospital we’d taken Kylian to, so that medical staff could give him a thorough physical.
It was there that Danielle had come storming into the exam room. Her reaction had been a surprise.
If she’d known about Kylian’s abuse, she refused to say, but she did what she always seemed to do… blamed others.
Instead of telling her son how sorry she was for bringing a predator into his life, she blamed Kylian. She was drunk at the time, so she might not have meant it, but when she screamed at him, calling him a “little liar,” it didn’t matter how much alcohol was in her blood.
I vowed that she’d never be alone with either of our children again.
When she was arrested for driving under the influence and public intoxication, I immediately filed for and was granted emergency protective custody.
I’d spoken to the principal of Kylian’s school and explained the situation. As there was only four days of school left before summer break, it was decided that he’d be excused. And although his grades had fallen to mostly Cs by the end of the semester, he would still be able to pass to third grade next year.
When I drove the kids back to the mansion, two officers accompanying me to gather their things, Kenzie went inside, but Kylian didn’t. “I don’t want to go in there ever again.”
I nodded. “What do you want me to get from your room?”
He met my gaze. “Nothing. I don’t want anything from there.”
So, I helped Kenzie pack her things, tried to answer her millions of questions in a way she would understand.
“Where’s Mommy?” she asked, tears spilling down her face.
“She went on a trip,” I told my little girl, knowing my ex was actually sitting in a jail cell waiting for her preliminary arraignment. “And you’re going to come live with me.”
She cocked her head to one side. “At your apartment?”
I sat down on her bed. “No, honey. Back in New York.”
She studied the stuffed elephant she was holding. “Is Mommy coming too?”
I shook my head. “Just you, me, and Kylian.”
“For how long?”
I watched her place the animal in the box. “How does forever sound?”
She frowned. “It sounds like a long time.” She studied me with those blue eyes. “Daddy?”
I held out my arms and she climbed onto my lap. “What, sweetheart?”
“What’s wrong with Kylian?”
I exhaled and tucked her head under my chin as I considered the question I knew was coming. She was only four, but she wasn’t stupid. Children had an uncanny way of picking up on the vibes around them, and my smart little girl had done just that. She knew something was wrong.
“Jet hurt Kylian, sweetheart, so that means you can’t live here anymore.”
She pulled back and looked up at me, a frown on her face. “Hurt him? When?”
It was a relief that she didn’t know. Hadn’t experienced any of it herself. “Lots of times.”
“Is that why Kylian cried?”
My heart squeezed. “Yeah, it’s why Kylian cried.”
She nodded. “Is it why Mommy cried?”
I stroked her hair. That was something I still didn’t understand. Might never be able to understand. “I don’t know why Mommy cried, honey. I was…” my throat clogged, and I cleared the emotion away, “gone. I shouldn’t have been away, but I promise not to go away again.”
I watched her search for her next question. “So, it’s Mommy’s turn to go away?”
Pressing my lips to her forehead, I nodded. I didn’t have details on that either, but if I learned that Danielle even suspected the abuse and did nothing, she’d never see these kids again.
“Can I take my tricycle?”
The tension drained from my limbs. “Yes, you can take anything you want. If we can’t take it today, we’ll have it shipped to New York.”
She placed a finger in her mouth, sucked on the tip. Then she smiled. “Can I have a puppy?”
I did something I thought I’d never do again. I grinned.
Gazing down at the little opportunist, I nodded.
“Yeah. A puppy for sure.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Maddie
From the small window of the plane, I watched Earth grow larger, and in the distance, I caught my first glimpse of New York.
I clasped my hands together. Even though it had been many hours since I’d thrown myself into the sixty-five-degree water of the Mediterranean, I was still cold, and the jeans, the I Luv Paris t-shirt, and hooded sweatshirt with the Eiffel Tower on the front did little to seep the chill from my bones. The woolen béret had made my scalp itch so I’d taken it off about an hour into the flight. But I hadn’t taken off the tortoiseshell glasses. They continued to be perched on the bridge of my nose.
Things had gone exactly as my mother had planned. I hadn’t gotten eaten by a shark or even stung by a jellyfish, but I’d been shaking with cold by the time I’d swum to the GPS location the watch told me to. There, a man had been waiting for me with a blanket and large canister of hot tea. He bundled me up and stuffed me into the backseat of his car. We’d driven that way until dawn began to brighten the sky before the car stopped and I found myself in front of an old motel.
Inside a dingy room, the man handed me two boxes of hair coloring. “You need to use this one first or else I’m told your hair could turn green.” I looked at the pre-pigment and carefully read the directions. Green wouldn’t be good for going incognito. I was relieved when, after using both boxes, my hair was a dark chestnut brown. And I was surprised with how completely different I looked, especially when I also changed the color of my eyebrows and swept black mascara over my pale lashes.
“It’s very good,” the man said when I finally came out of the bathroom. He never told me his name, and I never asked. I tried hard not to look at his face. If I were caught and interrogated, I wanted to be honest that I’d never seen the man who’d “kidnapped” me clearly. I’d never forgive myself if the person who was risking so much to help me was harmed.
The entire experience had felt like a dream. Seeing myself as a brunette for the first time. Using the makeup I was given to change my appearance. Pulling on the jeans… the first pair I’d ever worn. The souvenir looking clothes that were to be part of my cover. So much was unfamiliar.
“You must slouch,” the man told me after I was dressed. “It’s not enough to change your appearance, you must change how you carry yourself. You must not only change your accent but the tone of your voice. The way you look at people. Your expressions.”
In the little time I had before needing to travel to the airport, I practiced my walk, the way I spoke, and even the tilt of my head until the man nodded. “Good enough.”
The airport itself had been terrifying. I kept expecting someone to stop me, to recognize me. But they didn’t. Acting like a wide-eyed American tourist seemed to have worked. The man had told me to hide in plain sight, meaning that I would draw more attention to myself if I attempted to cower versus acting like a normal girl.
So, I smiled brightly, gushed about how beautiful everything was in Europe, and nodded politely when the security guard asked if I was going to miss it. I didn’t do anything overt to attract attention, but neither did I hide.
I bought a Coke in the gift shop. It was the very first soda in my life.
