Sighing, her eyes just seemed to … drop, the moment the last five words left her lips.
“No …” she said, her voice breathless. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Kyle frowned, immediately becoming concerned. “Reanna—”
“No, shh,” she silenced him. “I can do it.”
Kyle shook his head, staring down at her now shaking hands, then back up at her. Don’t get him wrong, he wanted to know what was going on, but not if it meant Reanna having a fucking nervous breakdown. Maybe they needed to take a break.
“Reanna—”
“No don’t, Kyle,” she said through her clenched teeth, her eyes still lowered, and tears still falling rapidly from her eyes.
Kyle fucking hated it, seeing her cry.
“Baby …”
“Stop,” she stated sharply, giving a firm shake of her head.
But Kyle couldn’t understand what she was doing, or why she was trying to push herself. “Baby, we can—”
“They wouldn’t let me have her …”
The words just shot out of her mouth, catching him by surprise and rendering him silent. She didn’t look up at him, but she did finally start talking again.
“They said I was too young. That they didn’t like releasing minors to their eighteen-year-old siblings.”
“So you had to leave without her?”
Her eyes closed tightly as she nodded her head. “Yes,” she cried, her voice cracking. “They made me go. They kicked me out of the house the day I turned eighteen.” She swallowed, visibly trying to pull herself together. “I … freaked out. I didn’t know what to do, how to get her. I tried to fight. I called the social workers over and over, trying to get help, but nobody …” she shook her head. “Nobody would help me. I did everything they told me to, I had jobs, I had an apartment. It was only one bedroom, but it was plenty for the two of us. I could take care of her, but they wouldn’t let me …” She wiped her eyes, reopening them, but still never looking up at him. “I only got to see her when I went to her school. She’d always cry. Say she hated it there, that they treated her horribly with me gone. They took all of her stuff, all of the things I bought her, the food, blankets … So she told our social worker.” She sobbed softly. “She thought I’d be mad at her because she’d gotten scared, but I told her no.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t mad. But they were going to transfer her to another foster home … one far from where I was.”
“Did she ever go?” Kyle asked.
But in his heart he already knew the answer to that. No. And the reasoning was probably something she was ashamed of, which would explain her reluctance to meet his eyes.
But Kyle wasn’t having it.
If he had to force her to look at him, then so be it. He wouldn’t have her casting her eyes down to him as if she had anything to be ashamed of with him. He’d never judge her, nor make her feel wrong for anything she’d done in the past.
“Look at me, Reanna,” he commanded as gently as he could.
When she didn’t immediately do as he’d asked, he tilted her chin with his forefinger.
“Colomba,” he urged her again. “Look into my eyes when we speak, baby. Let me see you …”
His words seemed to give her the courage she needed, because her eyes lifted—slowly, but they did meet his—and the utter despair he saw in them nearly shattered his heart.
Bringing his hand up, he cupped her face. “Colomba …”
He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to continue, that she didn’t have to put herself through anymore heart ache, but he knew he couldn’t. Past the despair in her eyes, he saw her determination. Her determination to push through whatever was holding her back so that she could tell him her story. So that she could finally give him all of her, and that, he would not stop.
So he asked her again. “Did Tamara have to leave you, Reanna?”
This time, keeping her eyes locked to his, Reanna shook her head. “No,” she whispered, “she didn’t.”
Kyle nodded. “How?” he asked, preparing himself for whatever she said in response.
“Bryon …”
She said the name as if it explained it all, but it meant nothing to Kyle. It was just a name, but judging by Reanna’s shaky reaction to the sound of the name, Kyle could tell that name packed a lot of power to her.
“Who is he?” he asked.
More tears fell from her eyes. “My ex,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper.
Kyle nodded again. “Did he hurt you?” he asked, trying his best to keep his features relaxed when he did.
The task became harder and harder with each passing second. There was so much pain in her eyes, so much fear, Kyle could feel his anger rising just at the thought of some fucking bastard putting his hands on her.
“Yes.”
Her features tightened when she said the word, as did Kyle’s. But he still fought to keep his voice steady when he said his next words …
“Tell me …”
She tried to look down again, but one light tap on her chin, and her eyes came back to his. He felt her fingertip on that same scar again once she began to speak.
“He was a frequent customer at the little restaurant I worked at, and every time he came in, he requested me … I never minded. I knew he had a little crush, but he was nice, and he never left me less than twenty dollars as a tip, so I figured I’d hit the jackpot. I was making money, and all I had to do was entertain his flirting. It was no big deal to me.” She inhaled a shaky breath. “But one night, when I was working the night shift, he had come in, been my last customer. It was the night when I had found out that Tamara was leaving, so I was,” she shook her head, “a mess.” She nodded. “Of course, Bryon noticed, and asked me what was wrong … I didn’t think anything of it when I told him. I just figured why not, he couldn’t do anything to help me.”
She gave him a look that clearly said ‘guess what …’
“He could help you,” Kyle stated.
Reanna nodded her head. “He was an attorney. One with a lot of connections, a lot of money, and best of all he was thirty-six years old.”
“And he offered to help you, an eighteen-year-old kid, for what?” Kyle asked, instinctively knowing that there was indeed a price.
Hesitating to answer, Reanna’s brows furrowed into a frown as a sob fell from her lips. “He offered me everything I could ever want, but none of it mattered to me. I just wanted Tamara, and he said he could make that happen.”
“And did he?”
She nodded. “Yes …”
“And what did you have to give him in return, Reanna,” he asked again, realizing she’d dodged the question.
Sniffling, she wiped the tears from her eyes. “Me.” And this time Kyle didn’t respond, he just allowed her to continue. “I had to marry him … be his wife, take care of him …”
Kyle’s jaw tightened.
“… and in return he’d get my sister out of the system. Give us a nice home, money, and he’d put Tamara in a better school. A private school. She was nearly sixteen at the time, so of course, I took his offer.” She swallowed again. “A few weeks later, Tamara and I were moving into his penthouse in Jersey, and a week after that, he and I got married at the court house. Tamara was upset, I could tell, but I kept telling her that it was the only way… And it was, at the time.” She looked back into his eyes. “There was no other way. I had tried everything … Bryon was our only chance, and it had worked. All of it. It had given me exactly what I wanted. A home for us to live in together, a school that Tamara loved …” She smiled slightly. “She excelled, made friends, joined clubs; she had everything I wanted her to have.”
“And what about you?” Kyle asked. “What did you have?”
She blinked, staring in to his eyes with a blank expression, even as the tears continued to fall down her face. “Everything that I went through as Bryon’s wife, I would go through again if it meant that my life would end up the way it has, Kyle.
>
“I regret it, my decision, but I wouldn’t change it. I’d rather live with regret, with the pain, because I love the way my life has turned out.” Her chest rose with a deep breath. “Bryon hit me, often. For …” she shook her head, “everything. If I went out without his permission, if dinner wasn’t completely finished when he came home; if other men looked at me, if I talked back to him, or resisted doing something he told me to, he would beat me … sometimes until he knocked me out. If I passed out he’d just leave me on the floor of our bedroom, if I didn’t, he’d drag me to our bed and rape me. He got off on it.” She paused for a moment, her eyes moving away from his as she stared off into space. “He loved hurting me, I could see it in his eyes. He loved hearing me beg him to stop, tell him it was too much, that he was going to kill me. He loved choking me, watching the blood pour out of my mouth, while he jammed himself inside of me.” She looked back into his eyes. “And I let him do it … I kept him happy, I hid what he was doing to me from the world, from my sister. I hid the bruises, made excuses for the ones I couldn’t hide. I made sure she never saw him do it. I’d always run to our bedroom where I knew she wouldn’t be able to hear us …
“So many times I wanted to leave. I wanted to run away. One day I even packed our bags, waited for Tamara to get home from school so that I could tell her, and we’d be gone by the time he got home from work, but then she’d come home, happy, going on and on about how she’d made the honor roll, joined this club and that club, and of course, I knew that if I had just … told her what Bryon was doing to me, she would have gladly left with me, and switched schools, but …” She paused again, her breath catching, before a sob escaped her lips. “I couldn’t do that to her.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t take away her happiness. So I stuck it out. I took the hits, I endured the rape, being his slave … I told myself that it was fine. As long as Tamara was safe, it was fine; as long as she didn’t see what was going on, it was fine. But …” Shaking her head again, she averted her gaze. “But then it just … wasn’t fine.”
“What did he do?”
“He looked at Tamara,” she whispered, her bloodshot eyes full of despair.
Kyle frowned, confused. “He looked …”
She nodded. “Yes,” she cried. “The same way he looked at me when I had been a waitress. I saw him just … staring at her, like she was his for the taking, anytime he wanted her …” A deep-rooted anger filled her eyes. “He looked at her, he lusted for my little sister, and I caught him. He knew I caught him, too, because he looked at me, then he smiled.” She nodded. “That’s when I knew …”
“Knew what, Reanna?”
“That he wanted my sister, too, Kyle,” she cried, her voice slightly raising. She brought her hand up and sunk her fingers into her hair. “And in my mind I saw it. I saw him doing to her what he was doing to me. I saw him beating her, making her live just to please him, raping her, abusing her emotionally, and I saw her quitting high school, doing drugs to numb the pain. All of these things that hadn’t even happened!” She shook her head. “I saw them in my head and I …” She let her hands fall to her side. “I’d had enough. Enough of him.” Wiping the tears from her face, she straightened in his lap. “I thought of what I wanted to do before I did it. Gave myself time to talk myself out of it,” she shook her head, “but I couldn’t. I wanted to do it.” Her eyes watered as a laugh devoid of humor fell from her lips. “And I’ve never admitted it before now, but I did.” She nodded. “I wanted him dead. For everything that he did to me. For everything that stupid look suggested he wanted to do to my sister. I wanted to make him pay, and didn’t want to be his fucking wife any more. This was the only way.”
“You killed him …”
“I murdered him,” she wept, almost hysterically. Her body shook as she brought her hand to her chest. “I murdered him. I murdered Bryon, and I lied to … everyone.” She counted them off on her fingers. “I lied to the cops, to my sister … to myself. I told them he came at me, he was beating me, and he almost killed me. And why wouldn’t I? I had the scars, I had the bruises, the evidence of rape obvious between my legs! The emotional fucking damage, the perfect scene for a plea of self defense … And I used it!” With shaking hands, she wiped her eyes again. “I used everything. Told them I was afraid and that’s why I’d brought the knife to bed that night. Told them he’d hit me, raped me again that evening. And it’d all been the truth except for one thing … I didn’t stab him until after he’d fallen asleep.”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“It does,” she cut him off.
Kyle shook his head. “He hurt you …”
“And I should have called the cops.”
“So what, Reanna?” Kyle asked sharply. “So the fucker could get himself out and come after you?” He shook his head. “Fuck no!”
“Good people don’t do what I did, Kyle! I should have told somebody.”
“You did what you had to do!”
“No I didn’t,” she screamed, still weeping hysterically. “There was another way! I could have done things differently. But the fact that I chose to handle him the way I did …” Her head shook back and forth as she continued to weep softly. “I proved to myself that I’m just like my parents.”
Kyle’s eyes widened slightly. “What?” Now her distress made much more sense to him.
She didn’t want to be a murderer.
“No,” Kyle said, immediately embracing her in a comforting hold. “No, colomba.”
“Yes I am. I’m a murderer.”
“Ascoltami donna. Ascoltami.” He released her from his embrace, then brought his hands up to cup her face. “Listen,” he commanded, staring deeply into her eyes. “Is this why you’ve held on to this secret for so long, baby? Why you’ve been torturing yourself?”
She nodded in response, a cry falling from her lips. “I don’t want to be like them, Kyle.”
“But you are not like them, baby.”
“Everyone in this whole freaking country is just waiting for the moment when Tamara and I do something to prove them right.”
“You are not a murderer.”
“But, Kyle—”
“I am a murderer, Reanna.”
That got her quiet, which was his exact intention.
Taking his hands from her face, Kyle grasped her hands in his then placed them to his heart. “I may not be a soulless monster like your parents were, but I am a species of monster. I have murdered some very … not nice people in my life time, baby. Hell, I am a ‘very not nice people’.”
Her lips twitched a bit. “I think you’re nice,” she whispered.
Kyle chuckled softly, bringing her hand up to his lips for a kiss. “That’s because I am nice, colomba. To you …”
“And I don’t think you’re a monster either,” she sniffled. “I kid around with you, but you’re not even close to being a monster in my eyes.”
He held her hands tighter to his heart, finding her words surprisingly touching. “But I am a murderer, Reanna.” He nodded. “That I am,” he sighed. “And you are not.”
She looked as if she were about to say something, but Kyle quickly stopped her.
“I know a killer when I see one, baby. Trust me …” Lifting her hand from his heart, he brought her arms over his shoulders, where she locked them around him, then he wrapped his back around her waist. “You protected your sister, and ensured your safety, and divorce, from a man that sought to harm you. If you hadn’t have done it first, he’d have done it to you.” He shrugged. “In my world, we call that survival.” His lips curved into a slight smile. “I think they may call it that in your ‘good people’ world, too.”
There were no words to describe the warmth he felt inside of him when she gave him the smallest smile. And this time, it reached her eyes.
“The ‘good people’ world?” she asked, her brows furrowing slightly.
Smiling, Kyle nodded. “That’s what men like me call the world you live in.” It wasn’
t the only name they called it, just the only one he’d be sharing with her.
“Okay …” She bit her gorgeous lip as she nodded her head. “Well,” she whispered, “what do you call your world?”
He chuckled again, tightening his arms around her. “Organized,” he answered, shooting her a quick smirk. “Or if we’re feeling cocky, we’ll call it the ‘underworld’.”
“That’s scary.”
Kyle laughed. “Scary.” He shook his head. “This doesn’t seem too ‘scary’ does it?”
Her brows rose. “Are we in the underworld? Right now?”
Aww, she was adorably amusing right now.
He should have probably told her that every second she was with him, she was indeed, technically in the ‘underworld’, but he wouldn’t worry her mind with such minor things. She was well protected, and he’d never let her see anything he didn’t want her to.
So, deciding not to answer her question, Kyle leaned forward, giving her a slow, lingering kiss instead. He closed his eyes, reveling in the feel of her soft lips, of the velvet silk of her tongue moving so perfectly against his. He moaned, pressing her even closer to his body, loving when she became lost and her arms tightened around his neck. This was … everything. The connection he felt with her felt deeper, it felt stronger, and it amazed him, the effect her opening up to him had on their already solid bond.
Dangerous Beauty: Part Four: Beautifully Broken Page 26
