by Korry Smith
“Madison?” She whimpered with wide, scared eyes. “Honey?”
She was looking to me and asking for my help. It was a slap in the face. Where the fuck was she when I needed her the most?
I pulled out my gun, aiming it with purpose and precision. “Hello, Mother.”
Chapter Nine
“Don’t say a word,” Alex said in a hushed voice and forced his way into the house.
Susan held up her hands, the sweat rolling down her forehead as she shuffled backward. My eyes shot towards their master bedroom. I could hear the shower going. Terry was unaware that we were there. That was good. He had a Smith and Wesson somewhere hidden in this house, and I didn’t want him to have time to get it. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would use it.
“Where does Terry hide his gun?” I asked, shutting the door quietly behind me.
Susan stammered. “I...I... don’t…I don’t know.”
She was lying. It was up to me to sniff it out. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where to start. Terry could have stashed it anywhere in this house. It was a daunting task, and to be honest, I didn’t have enough time to flush it out.
I kept my eyes on the bedroom as Alex led my mother to the living room and had her sit down on the couch. He positioned himself across from her on the coffee table. He looked at ease, pointing the gun at her, but she worried needlessly. The safety was on. I knew he had no intention of hurting her.
As much as she was a horrible mother to me, it was Terry he was after.
“We haven’t been properly introduced yet. I’m Alex,” he said, holding out his free hand to Susan. “Your daughter kind of owns me.”
I snickered and rolled my eyes at his easygoing attitude and cordial display. He was acting like we didn’t push our way into the house, and he wasn’t just holding a gun to her head. I’d noticed when things got tense, and with guns drawn, Alex was in his zone. He loved to toy with people. That’s what made him dangerous. When he shoots you, he will be smiling and laughing, leading his victim to believe they were friends.
She stared at his outstretched hand, distrustfully for a second, before gingerly shaking it. “I know who you are.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, his voice taking on a severe tenor.
The shower turned off, and I whistled, nodding my head at Alex, and pointing towards the bedroom. He got up from his spot on the table and gestured for me to take his place. I cocked my gun and lodged a bullet in its chamber. Susan recognized the meaning behind the sound but seemed unfazed by it.
Sitting down across from her, I pointed it at her forehead and right between her mascara-smudged eyes. “You don’t seem all that surprised.”
“I’m not.” Her face was steely and hateful. “I knew the moment the doctor placed you in my arms that you’d end up being nothing but a disappointment to me. And now? Look at you.”
Her words cut like a knife and tore a hole through my heart, knocking me back and disarming me. No matter how much I hated her, I wanted her love. The fact that she thought I was worthless since the day I was born was painful beyond anything I had ever experienced.
My hand was shaking, and the gun wobbled. Susan eyed it, looking for an opportunity to take it away from me, but I recovered. Locking my elbow, I pointed it at her more firmly.
“Yeah, well, you’re a disappointment to me too.”
“All right, fucker,” Alex said, coming into the living room with a wet and a semi-naked Terry. He was shirtless and wearing gym shorts. “Sit your ass down next to your wife.”
He pushed him towards the couch, and Terry came stumbling head first. I had to lift my knees up and into my chest to avoid him crashing into me.
Alex pulled the coffee table back a few feet, and I went sliding with it. The metal legs made a screeching noise against the tile. He came around and sat next to me, placing one hand on my leg, and training the gun at Terry with the other.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” Alex glanced over at me with a smirk. “All of us together, just shooting the shit. Granted, it’s not how I imagined meeting my girl’s parents for the first time, but then again, you fuckers don’t qualify as parents, do you?”
“You’re just digging yourselves into a deeper hole by coming here,” Terry sneered.
Alex shrugged. “I’m not concerned about the future. You see, you’ve made my life a tad more difficult than it needed to be with all your connections in the police department. I like your spin on the truth.”
“That shit was the truth and all of her doing.” He turned his hatred on me. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?”
“Hey, fucker,” Alex said, hitting Terry on the head with the muzzle of his gun and redirecting his focus away from me. “Don’t look at her. You are never to look at her again, do you hear me?”
“What do you want?” Susan cried. “Money? Take whatever you want and leave.”
Her victim act was convincing with the tears and hiccups, and if I didn’t know any better, I might have felt bad.
“No, we don’t want money. We want retribution,” Alex said simply. “It’s time to fess up and make amends. You should look at us as if we were your priest or pastor or rabbi or whoever the fuck it is you confess your sins to.”
“We’re not guilty of anything,” Terry said with an air of arrogance.
“Terry, Terry, Terry, let’s not add lying to your list. We don’t have that kind of time. You see, my girl and me,” Alex said, throwing his arm around my shoulders, “are going to Vegas. She’s never been there—"
“You’re disgusting,” Susan spat. “She’s seventeen! A child. What are you? Thirty? How dare you molest my baby!”
Anger overwhelmed me as I flicked the gun’s safety off with my thumb and then gently pulled back the trigger with a steady finger. “I’m your baby? Your baby? How dare you even say that!”
Alex’s hand squeezed my leg gently, bringing me back from the brink. He whispered into my ear, telling me that it was okay and not to let her get to me. His words were soothing, and I relaxed, easing my finger off the trigger.
He turned back to our hostages and smiled. “I’m glad you brought that up, Susan—can I call you Susan?” She stared at him defiantly. “Good. Now, Susan, you bring up a fascinating point. I am older than Madi by ten years, and you’re right, it’s wrong. I should know better, but I’m not her fucking father like this piece of shit. Do you know what your husband was doing behind your back?”
“This is ridiculous.” Terry laughed nervously, glancing sideways at his wife. “Don’t answer that, sweetie.”
“Terry,” Alex chided. “You’ll get your turn.”
God, he was sexy.
There was just something about Alex. It was hard to narrow it down to one thing. He had model-like good looks, with his lean, muscular six-two frame, but added a bit of danger and rough edges with all the tattoos and piercings. He had this madman quality: crazed and unhinged, on the verge of explosive rage. Alex was intelligent and thought genuinely, and I ached for him when he was all diplomatic and deadly while pointing a gun. My guy took great joy in what he was doing, but all I kept thinking about was showing him into my childhood bedroom and defiling him.
During all this tension, I had to bite my lip and cross my legs to combat my arousal.
It was that bad.
“Susan,” Alex said, waving his hand for her to speak.
“What?” she asked, eyes unfocused and dazed.
My mom wasn’t even paying attention. Her daughter was holding a fucking gun to her head, and she couldn’t care less. It was just another example of how heartless and cruel this woman was.
“Did you know that your husband was trying to screw me?”
She stared, completely unmoved and apathetic.
The seconds ticked by at an agonizing rate.
“Did you?!”
“No,” she answered.
My body sagged, depleted of everything I had, and I’m not sure what I wanted her to say. If s
he showed me some acknowledgment that she had known about Terry but chose to ignore it, I could live with that. It would have been something, but her avid denial was just another direct blow to my already damaged heart.
Alex rubbed my back, sensing the hurt, and even though my mother didn’t love me, I had a feeling that the man next to me did. That should have been good enough.
“Are you assholes going to start being honest with me or do I have to fucking beat that shit out if you?” Alex asked, looking back and forth between them.
“I don’t know what you want from me!” Susan huffed, throwing her hands up dramatically. “I believe my husband over my...he’s a good man.”
She believed her husband over her daughter. That was what she was going to say.
I knew it.
Alex knew it.
Everybody knew it.
I closed my eyes and tried to keep my cool, forbidding myself to cry. They didn’t deserve my tears. No, they earned my fury, my vengeance, and finally, my truth.
That’s when I snapped.
“He’s not a good man!” My voice got higher and louder as those memories rushed back to me. “At first, he would sneak into my room to watch me sleep. Then he would touch himself as I showered.”
“She’s lying,” Terry grumbled as Alex wedge the barrel of the gun forcefully into his mouth.
“Go on,” Alex said, making circular motions on my back.
I took a deep breath and continued. “Each day, he would get braver and braver, until last spring, where he forced me down on the bed and put his hand between my legs. That’s why he got that vase to the skull. Your husband was going to rape me, mother.”
Alex slacked his aim, stunned by my confession, and took his attention off our hostages. “Jesus, baby.”
Then like a hot stinging explosion, Terry slapped me across the face. “You little bitch!”
It burned through my flesh and all the way down to the bone; paralyzing me into silence.
“Motherfucker!” Alex erupted as he swung, hitting Terry in the left temple with the butt of the Colt, sending him flying off the couch and to the floor. My guy saw blind rage, jumping on top of Terry’s chest, and continuing to deliver heavy blows, one after another, to his face.
“Noooo!” Susan cried and lunged at him.
I blocked her path, tackling her back on the couch and covering her mouth. “Be quiet! Don’t move.”
She followed my instructions with Stepford wife obedience, but her eyes stayed wide and frightened. I listened as Alex cursed, repeatedly, and beat the shit out of Terry. The wet, mushy noise of meat pounded by a mallet went on forever. The gasping, slurping, and grunts got slower and slower. When the intense hammering stopped, I’d looked over my left shoulder, and found Alex kneeling over Terry with his fists bloodied and clenched at his sides.
My stepfather was unconscious, his face completely mangled, and to the point of being unrecognizable.
“Alex?” I called softly.
He looked up at me; his eyes were dark and unapologetic.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
He shook his head.
I nodded, feeling some relief that Alex didn’t kill the man. Looking back down at Susan, she was sobbing uncontrollably. The tears streaking down her cheeks were soaking my hand as I clasped it tightly over her mouth. I pulled it away slowly, staring into her eyes.
“Mom, why didn’t you protect me? Why didn’t you care? I’m your daughter,” I said, the sadness and longing seeping into my voice.
She glared up at me and sniffed. “You’re not my daughter.”
“Yeah,” I said, removing my body’s weight from hers. “I’m starting to see that now.”
Alex was standing over me with his arms open. I rose to my feet and fell into him. He hugged me tightly, whispering in my ear and telling me how everything was okay. Terry and Susan would never hurt me again.
I love you, Alex.
I Love you.
I’m so in love with you.
Susan scrambled from the couch and pushed passed us, falling to her knees beside Terry. She was wailing and crying over him, staining his chest with her tears. She wiped the blood away from his face with her robe, only managing to make his cuts bleed even more.
“It’s time to go, kid,” Alex said, disentangling his body from mine, and going up to Susan’s purse. He searched through it and grabbed her cell phone. He threw it on the floor and busted it apart with the heel of his boot, shattering it to pieces.
“Get out!” Susan was lying on Terry’s chest, her head going up and down from his steady breathing.
Alex busied himself, uncovering two more phones in the house. He broke those into tiny pieces and efficiently disabled that lifeline. If Susan wanted help, she would have to go next door to call the police. It would buy us twenty minutes.
“Come on,” Alex said, taking my hand, and pulling me towards the back door.
We jumped over the backyard fence that led on to the next street by the district mailboxes. I saw the top roof of the gas station up ahead. The sun was bright above us, like a spotlight, giving the world eyes to see the criminals as we ran back to the car. I prayed no one was watching. The Chevelle was standing alone, and when we got in, neither of us spoke as Alex started up the engine and pulled out slowly.
“Hey…” Grasping his hand tightly and holding it to my chest, I wanted him to know in that one gesture, I was never, ever going to let him go. The trip back to my home left his fists scarred and damaged, but to me, he was ten times more beautiful. “Thank you.”
One of these days, I’ll have the courage to tell Alex what I’ve been saying in my head all this time.
“You’re welcome,” he said, lifting my hand up and kissing it.
The truth of what we learned was a hard pill for me to swallow and it ended up tearing my heart apart into millions of fragments. Did I find closure? Yes, but what was it worth? All it did was solidify Alex and me as fugitives.
We were on the run now.
Three and half hours later, we were a hundred miles north of Flagstaff at some random, folksy restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Sitting on the hood of the Chevelle with Alex standing in between my legs, I was treating the cuts on his knuckles with unscented baby wipes. His hands were slightly swollen and red, and he clenched his jaw as I cleaned off the dry, crusted blood.
I cringed, hunching my shoulders. “Sorry.”
“I’m such an idiot for bare-knuckling that asshole’s face,” Alex said, wincing in pain. “I could’ve broken a few bones.”
My eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“It’s happened before. Usually, I try to use the handle of my gun to beat a guy’s face in, but that fucker unhinged me. I just wanted to kill him.”
The memories of the last few days blurred together, making it difficult for me to reflect on them. Today was no different. It just seemed surreal, like a vague dream.
“You know, that visit of ours didn’t solve anything,” I said, dabbing his cuts with some ointment.
Susan and Terry would continue to live their lives with no remorse for what they’ve done to me.
“It wasn’t meant to,” Alex said.
“Then why even go? All it did was make things worse for us.”
“We’re in the same predicament we were in before we went over there. It’s like being grounded and sneaking out of the house,” he said, dismissing my concerns. “Why worry yourself about it? You’re already in trouble.”
“Stacking on criminal charges is different from being grounded, Alex.”
“Oh, it’s the same. Trust me.” He winked and slid his hands up my bare thighs. “Bottom line, I just wanted you to see that those fuckers weren’t worth your tears. I didn’t think you wanted them dead, and so, I just did the next best thing. I stuck a gun to their head and made them listen to you.” His carefree, easygoing attitude turned into a hardened scowl. “Then that fucker had to go and hit you.”
The hatred he ha
d for Terry and Susan matched my own. His fierce devotion and protection was a constant reminder of how lucky I had been to stumble upon Tommie, and for whatever reason, him wanting me dead and sending me on that suicide mission to steal Alex’s car.
It was destiny, some people would say.
If I were smart, I wouldn’t even be there in the middle of God knows where with my criminal boyfriend, but as I stared at his full, unnaturally red-hued lips, I realized intelligence was severely overrated.
So was showing mercy to the enemy.
“Who said that you couldn’t kill them?” I asked, peeking up at him as I wrapped his hands in gauze.
He nodded, and I could tell he wasn’t paying attention to what I said, but when it finally did register with him, his head snapped up. “What?”
“I never said that you couldn’t.”
“But you stopped me,” he sputtered, searching my eyes, and trying to find a contradiction to my words.
There was none. I was dead serious.
“When did I stop you? In front of the police station? Of course, I did—Jesus, I didn’t want you going to jail.” I kissed him on his pouting lips. “I kind of like you.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “We need to discuss what’s doable and not doable in this relationship.”
“I think anything goes with us,” I said, throwing my legs around his waist, and crossing them at the ankles.
He raised an eyebrow, still skeptical. “You’re just saying that to tease me.”
“Why do you say that?” I leaned over and whispered into his ear. “Do my questionable morals turn you on?”
“Everything about you turns me on,” he said, grabbing my hips, and jerking me into him. “But this blood-thirsty side of you raises the ante.”
As he kissed me on my neck, I tilted my head to the side to give him better access. The feel of his lip ring grazing over my sensitive skin affected me beyond words, traveling through my body and smacking me hard down below.
“I used to be such a good girl too,” I said in a breathy moan.
