Grasping my steering wheel as if I was strangling someone’s freaking esophagus, I followed her home. I hated her instantly. From the stupid perfect way her salon-style hair blew in the wind, to the way her stilettos didn’t tremble awkwardly as she walked like mine did if I tried to wear them. I hated that she looked so perfect, like a perfect porn star specimen, compared to the frump-styled bookworm nerd that I was.
I was never a violent person, but I really wanted to watch her being hit by a bus, and yes, I am ashamed of thinking that, but I did, and images of her flat on the ground instead of ‘riding my husband with her Triple P status’, made me feel a lot better.
I followed her all the way to a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and sat outside in my car as if I was on an episode of a new reality TV show, Whorehunters. I know I sound mean and petty, but it’s a natural thought process to blame the mistress, and not the husband first. If you don’t believe me, you’re lucky to never have felt it, then good on you, go hug your significant other. Mine is a devious, soul sucking, small dicked bastard, and his mistress is a whore. Period.
Then in a rash moment of morbid insanity, I rang her bell and invited myself in for some decaf coffee. Again, please remember, I was pregnant, emotional, hormonal, and hurt. There were no plans, no set thoughts. I just went and did, as if my life had gone on autopilot. I just went there and rang her bell, as if it was no big deal.
Aurora was more than happy to tell me all about their sordid affair, and completed the experience with a high definition video of her riding my husband like a fucking bronco bull, while someone else plugged up her various other orifices. She was also, somehow, hogtied. I knew David was occasionally into bondage and playing the dominant role lightly, but what I saw was pure sadistic. Not only did he enjoy hurting her (at one point, his entire arm was inserted somewhere up to his elbow), he ended the video by forcing the other man to excrete a bowel movement on her chest. Yes, you just read that right. It’s okay to cringe, because it’s definitely cringe-worthy. Gag a little if you have to. I was a freaking trauma surgeon and it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen. My face was in Aurora’s bathroom sink, instantly purging anything and everything from my stomach, while my husband’s mistress rubbed my aching back, trying somehow to soothe me. The entire time, she smiled and giggled like what she just showed me brought back fond memories for her. Now, I’m not one to judge people on their sexual desires, and if that got Aurora off, then that’s just awesome for her, but my husband? He was so controlled and soft with me, almost to the point of me feeling a bit bored with my sex life, but what I saw in that video was like another person.
Everything I had ever thought about my husband was a lie. Everything. We had been married for less than six months. We had one of those fast whirlwind courtships that lasted a year before we were married. I thought I knew him. I thought all wrong. I had been married to an extremely talented liar. Not once in our entire relationship, did I even have a glimmer of suspicion of him carrying on a secret affair. There wasn’t even a speck of guilt I could remember, and no strange warnings or dubious actions that I was aware of.
I wasn’t a naïve little idiot in denial, no, he was just that damn good at it.
That night, when his shift was over, he walked into our penthouse with all the televisions playing the video of them fucking. He laughed like it was a brilliant joke.
“Divorce,” was the only word I could say.
“No, thank you,” was his reply.
He sauntered into our bedroom and undressed, pulling this and that out of his drawers. I didn’t pay attention. The pretty little sky in my world was crumbling, raining down fake blue shards of glass that pierced my heart and instantly made me hate him. Fuck him and his no thank you. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need any man. And I certainly didn’t want a man that had a whole secret life that had nothing to do with me.
So, while his ego filled the room and his peacock feathers spread out, I smiled to myself and pulled out my duffel bag and started packing my belongings. He could have the penthouse apartment and furniture, the knickknacks and photos, the towels and every other material thing that was there. I just wanted my dignity.
But that wasn’t enough for him.
“Do you want to know who else I fucked?” He asked, walking closer to me. He stood over me, so close and menacingly. I immediately looked him dead in the eyes. I wasn’t going to cower. Yeah, me, not the cowering type. “I fucked someone in the bathroom at our dinner party last week while you served our guests cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. I loved those little toasted shrimp things, by the way.” He laughed, then leaned his head down and whispered into my ear, “You heard me grunting and moaning and asked if I was okay, didn’t you?” He smiled. “It makes me hard as fucking hell to think that you’re going to wonder who it was I was fucking up against your bathroom wall, while you were a few feet away. The next time we go out together, or maybe the next time we’re at a hospital function, you’ll wonder if the woman across from you whispering into another’s ear is gossiping to her friends about how big your husband’s cock is.”
“Yeah, not going to happen. You see, I’m walking out that front door over there.” I made sure to dramatically point to it, in case he didn’t have the brain function to comprehend me. “And when I do, I will never… Let me say it clearer…NEVER give you another thought. Oh, and your dick isn’t big at all.”
“I didn’t even wash them off my skin before I sunk my dick inside you,” he seethed.
I vomited. I vomited violently in front of him and he laughed. “You make me sick,” I spit the words out with the last of the bile, and wiped my mouth clean with the edge of the bedspread that I would also be leaving to him.
Out of nowhere, the palm of his hand lay into my face like an oncoming freight train and left a wave of pain and fresh blood inside my mouth. “You don’t get to speak to me like that,” he barked, raising his hand to hit me again. Immediately, my fists were up ready to block another hit, one to protect my face, another to protect my unborn child.
“I’m not afraid of you, David. And, I’m not one of your little collared whores who will submit to you. If you want someone to heel to your will, buy a damn dog. I’m leaving.” Leaning on the bed, I straightened up, fists clenched and itching to hit him, but I needed to protect my baby. I was pregnant. I needed to be in a safe place, away from that animal. “And if you ever hit me again, I will fight back.”
Just as I reached the door, I heard it. The unmistakable sound of a magazine being pressed into its mag-well with a harsh metallic clack. The racking of the slide, as a bullet slid into the chamber. Metal glided against metal and clicked. It’s a sound that makes you stop, makes you paralyzed with finality, as you wait for the shot. For me though, it’s a sound that I turned my head towards, so I could look the ass-maggot in the eyes.
David’s Glock was steady, aimed right for my head. The only thing I could think about was my baby inside of me, and protecting her. I needed to talk my way out of this. “David…”
“You are my wife. I own you. I know every little thing about you, your fears, your wants and needs. I know what makes you dripping wet, Samantha. You like it when I make you dripping wet, right, Sam? You can’t go anywhere, Sam. If you do, I will fucking find you. I will hunt you down like a fucking deer and shoot you right between the eyes. Are you afraid of me now?”
Oh, my God, he’s crazy. “Yes, David. I’m…I’m afraid,” I stammered, blinking back tears as he touched the cold barrel of the gun to my throat. My pulse beat against the metal, moving his hand in small quick tremors. One small pull of the trigger, a mere six pounds of pressure, and my jugular would be blown to shit, and no one would find me, he’d be brilliant about it, I was sure. Feed his ego, but don’t let him see you cry. I refused to give him the satisfaction of watching my tears fall.
Ominous whiskey colored eyes gleamed and danced with the sight of my fear. The sick fuck was reveling in it.
&nb
sp; My husband, the man I once vowed to spend the rest of my life with, was a monster. I was shocked. And, don’t ask those stupid condescending questions people always think when they hear about a husband abusing his wife – Why didn’t you just leave? Why were you so weak? Didn’t you see it coming? There are no universal domestic violence guidelines. There aren’t any fucking abuse checklists that us girls sit around and learn about in a high school class, or an orientation of relationships 101. I had a strong sense of self. I had decent self-esteem. I’d fought in fucking wars and I’d seen and done things not many women ever did. And, I sure as shit didn’t see this coming.
It did happen all at once with David and me. I was in love with him, but I had a separate life than him. I had a career, an ambitious demanding career, and so did he. He never hit me, never got jealous, and never showed me anything but complete adoration. Until he didn’t… Little things changed at first, and you don’t see them at once, only in hindsight. Only then, when I stood with a gun to my throat and his finger on the trigger. Hindsight is a bitch isn’t it? It loves to come back and fuck you from out of nowhere.
I’ve seen him belittle and demean the sweetest nurses and orderlies at the hospital. I’ve watched him once, and only once, get jealous and snap my cell phone in half, when a fellow soldier called me while on leave in the city wanting to get together for coffee. It was little things that became clear and pronounced that very minute. Just a handful of tiny things and the rest was a perfect husband, or at least the facade of one.
“Take off your clothes,” he demanded, sliding the gun up my cheek to stop on my temple. A hundred panic filled scenarios filled my mind, the loudest one being him forcing himself on me, and I, Lorena-Bobbitt the motherfucker. Yes, in a heartbeat, I would bite that dick right off. The shock and sheer pain he’d be in would give me plenty of time to get to the door. I prayed like hell he’d put the gun down, Because other than the Bobbitt situation, I couldn’t fight him. The gun was too close, and the life of my baby, too precious.
“Take off your fucking clothes!” he roared louder.
Now, there’s a huge fucking difference between taking off your fucking clothes, and trying to outsmart him, and outright dying at the hands of a madman, so I just did what he said. Because seriously, if I refused him, was that the way I want the world to find me in the end? No, sorry, that’s not the way I want my story to end. Let’s go for what’s behind curtain number two. I get it, I truly do, the thoughts that are running around in your head right now: Run! Fight! Kick him in the dick! Let me express again what the scenario was. There’s a gun wedged hard against my temple. I feel the cool metal of it. I can blatantly see the safety is NOT on, and the magazine is clipped in and probably fully loaded. Like I’ve said before, it takes only SIX pounds of pressure against that little trigger, and then my brain will collide with the wall. I could shove him away hard, he could move that trigger softly, BOOM, my baby is going to die, and my brains would need to be scraped off the walls. I can’t even think about the possibility of losing my unborn child. I happen to like my brains, as they’ve been with me for thirty-two years, and I have trained them and exercised them to almost genius fucking status, and I want to KEEP them inside my skull.
Still don’t agree with me? Then, let’s probe the crazy that is my husband. I had watched a video of him with another woman, and his reply to the whole thing was to laugh, tell me how he’d screwed someone else, and complimented me on my damn toasted shrimp. He told me he would kill me. Told me he owned me. Oh, and let’s not forget the bigger picture here. Try to envision it with me, okay? HE’S GOT A GUN, FULLY LOADED, TO MY HEAD. Most twisted part: he’s fucking smiling.
The butt of the gun moved in a quick violent motion, and my world went black. God only knows how long I was out for.
An indescribable scorching pain along my pelvis and across my lower back was what woke me. When I looked down at my body, my eyes blurred instantly, and I was gasping at air to stifle the shrieks of pain that were bubbling in my throat.
What I saw almost killed me.
Beads of cold sweat exploded across my cheeks and forehead.
I couldn’t believe what I saw was real.
He branded me with his name. My skin, it burned, and I’m panicked and sick. Blisters have formed in the shape of the name David, and I feel the intense throbs of pain pulsing and screaming at me. The burn had extended through my epidermis and into the dermis, its second layer, and I moaned out in agony, because I knew I would have these scars for the rest of my life, however long that might be. My stomach was rolling…and then I felt them…
The cramps… My body felt beaten, but my stomach felt wrong. It felt so wrong.
Looking around, I found myself lying on my bed, still naked, cold and shivering, with a thick layer of sweat pouring out of my pores. The muscles of my lower back and stomach were convulsing, and there was an intense cramping and clenching of my uterus.
Oh, God. No, please, please don’t take my baby.
In the blur of my eyes, I saw David as he sat at my desk with the papers from my bag strewn all over the floor…he knows I know… The way he looked at me was sickening. If I doubted before what I had found about SamMatt Pharmaceuticals, there was no doubt now. Those papers were his, and what was on those papers would put me in jail for the rest of my life, yet I was totally innocent. The huge offshore bank accounts with my name on them were all his. He framed me, set me up, all that time, so he could steal millions of dollars from my father’s hospital. Aurora was telling me the truth. He never did love me.
I could feel it then, the life of my child seeping out of me. I felt her leaving me and I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t keep her safe. I felt my heart just dry up and shrivel, harden, and die.
The monster turned his face in my direction, gun still pointing at my head, “What the fuck did you do? You went through my private belongings. This is the end of you. Do you understand that you just killed yourself, baby? I can’t let you live after this.”
“David. Take me to the hospital. The baby. The baby,” I cried.
“Baby’s gone. I took care of that while you were asleep. That should have been a blowjob, anyway.”
What?
No.
No.
“No. No, David, no-no-no-no-no-no,” I sobbed. “Oh, God. What did you do? What did you do to me? What did you do?”
His face was in mine instantly with the gun held to my chin, “What else did you see? What else did you take?”
Red blood spread across the sheets underneath me, my uterus convulsed in pain. “Everything,” I hissed. “And I made five copies of each. You’ll never find them, but if something happens to me, everyone will.” I smiled. “Oh, and check your secret accounts, dear. All that money you stole from my hospital? It’s gone, you fucking piece of shit.”
Chapter 3
Rage.
Samantha was visibly shaking as she whispered her story.
I should have killed him.
The sick part was that I knew there was so much more to this story, and she was completely spent just telling me this much. I knew this was overload. I knew what she was feeling. I knew she could see the images thick and visceral - real and solid right in front of her, because as she spoke, her emerald eyes followed the ghosts of the things that haunted the room.
“Okay, Sam. Enough for tonight, love, I can’t let you suffer through this again. I…we’ll talk again, more, but you need a break.” I held her in my arms and kissed her on the temple, the one that I knew still felt the lingering apparition of David’s gun. “I promise you, I will never let him hurt you again.” Lifting her gently, I carried her into the bathroom and placed her softly on the chaise lounge.
I ran a bath for her as she sat and stared blankly at the ceiling. The look in her eyes was so broken and full of agony, it made me want to rip someone apart. Taking out all her soaps and scrubby shit, I placed them in order along the edge of the steaming tub. I knew what she needed after let
ting that filth out, I knew Sam; she needed to clean herself, rub herself raw with apples and fucking cinnamon. “I’m sorry I pushed you to talk today, but the thought of you being sick killed me. I know talking about him makes you feel dirty, baby. Go ahead, wash him off your skin.”
Her vacant eyes still stared up at the ceiling.
Holy fuck, Sam lost a baby. I had to stop her from telling me more. Fuck, I just want to watch him die. Really slow. All I saw was red.
Closing the door, I left her in the bathroom and stormed into my den. I tried every fucking anger management piece of shit step the doctors had shoved down my throat for the last four months, but NOTHING helped. Explosive rage tore through me and I completely snapped.
I could only vaguely remember any of it.
It started like a little knot of venom in the pit of my stomach and began eating its way through my body, taking control. A surge of heat traveled over my skin, making me sweat instantly, and my heart was slamming painfully against my chest, pounding too loud for my ears to take. “BLOODY FUCKING HELL!” I roared, screaming a string of harsh words in my rage until my throat burned and my words ran dry. Slamming my fists over and over again through the drywall, breaking holes and tearing the flesh of my knuckles until I saw my own blood. That’s what I was going to do to the motherfucker’s skull when I caught him. The fucking doctors were going to have to remove my fists surgically from his internal bloody organs, just to bury the cocksucker. My knuckles burned, stung, and split over and over again as I repeatedly slammed them into everything. Cartilage snapped and cracked, bones splintered and popped. Yet I felt only numb blinding rage. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear pounding on the door, muffled voices yelling my name, but I was too far-gone. I wished David was standing in front of me. I wished that I could hurt him every day for the rest of his life. I wanted to see him bleed and I didn’t care about consequences. I just needed to see the cuts, rake my fingers across his broken flesh, and indulge in the crimson spray of his suffering. I wanted to burn her name across his forehead and watch it bubble and hiss with the blistering flames. I wanted justice. Revenge.
Cold-Blooded Beautiful (The Beautiful Series) Page 4
