by Ivy Fox
“Fucking bitch!” he yells, no longer cool and collected, while I get myself up to my feet and step away. My ire is so vast that seeing him on the ground like this gives it more fuel to burn. I kick him in the face, forcing him to fall on his back, and keep kicking him with blow after blow until I can hear each bone breaking in his body, the same way he broke mine.
“No, Ben. You’re the only bitch I see here!”
Kick.
“You think you can come to my house and threaten my family and me?!”
Kick.
“That you can intimidate me into telling you where my son is so you can steal him from me?”
Kick.
“Hit me, abuse me, attack me, and believe you can get away with it like you did in the past?”
Kick.
“No, Ben. You’re the only stupid bitch here!” I shout, and I keep kicking until I feel two large arms cradle me back into his chest, the smell of smoke, oil, and fire bringing me back from the edge.
“Hush, little bird. I got you. I got you,” he whispers, my hands cover his, and tears I didn’t know I was shedding a minute ago fall on them both.
“It was him, Gabriel! Not Nico! Not my brother, but him,” I choke. I feel my love stiffen from behind me, and as much as I want to turn around, I know I can’t take my eyes off of Ben. I can never take my eyes off any danger that threatens my family.
Although battered and bleeding, Ben’s eyes still look as maniacal as they did before. He spits blood to the ground, but not enough of it to make me happy.
“Jen, you stupid cunt, you really did it now. You just stabbed and attacked a police officer. I’ll paint you to be so crazy, not only will they take your son away from you, but they’ll lock you up and throw away the key. Your arrest will taste even sweeter than your brother’s did, and framing him for killing you, when I had the pleasure of doing it myself, was one of the best moments of my life.” His sneer is so confident I almost believe he can pull it off, but before I have time to counter, Gabriel is already on him, and lays one hard punch to Ben’s face, knocking him out immediately.
“Fucker talks too much,” Gabriel says, walking back to me, and I jump into his arms, wanting his love and protection all in one go.
“What the fuck happened here?” I hear Cam belt out as he’s running toward us, with Michael at his side.
“Where’s Angel?” I ask, panicked. “I don’t want him to be here when Ben wakes up. We need to get him as far away from him as possible.”
“Aurora has him, back at the clubhouse. She showed up at the diner and said she would babysit for a few hours if we wanted. Thought we might have some alone time, but seems like that plan went to shit,” Cam says.
“Sweetheart, you’re bleeding!” Michael exclaims, taking my face into his hands. I must look awful from Ben’s eager slaps and punches because all three men look possessed.
“Go into the house, love, I’ll take out the trash tonight,” Cam says, and before I know it, I see him pulling two Glocks from underneath his shirt, and pointing them to each of Ben’s temples, who is lying unconscious on the ground.
“Shit,” Michael says, leaving me in Gabriel’s arms as he rushes to Cam’s side and lowers both guns.
“Cam, brother, he’s a cop. We can’t kill a cop,” he tries to argue, although, by Michael’s tone, it doesn’t seem he’s entirely against the idea, either.
“Watch me,” Cam counters.
“We have to think this through first, Cam. Think out every scenario beforehand.”
“I say we make him disappear. Kill the bastard,” Cam says, but Michael shakes his head, and I watch as he tries to play out everything that could go wrong if we act impulsively.
“He wants Angel. He was the one who tried to make me disappear, and I think he’s intent on doing it again, only this time, he wants Angel.”
“Hope is ours. Angel is ours. This life… is ours. No one is taking that away. No one, Michael,” Cam says again, raising the two guns to aim true at the danger lurking on our doorstep.
“We should get rid of him,” Gabriel says behind me, his voice filled with the same anger and hatred I had not two minutes ago.
“Get rid of him? You mean execute him?” Michael deadpans, and I feel Gabriel nodding behind me.
“Think about this, brother. Do you want to taint our woman’s soul with this type of stain?” Michael says, and now I understand why he’s faltering. He’s worried about me. About how I will live with myself if I take a life, even one as deplorable as Ben’s.
“It’s the only way. No matter what we do, Angel is his son. He has rights. The law will be on his side, especially if they lock Hope away like he just threatened before I knocked him out. And even if he doesn’t get his way and Hope is in the clear, can we honestly live a life where Angel might be forced to live under this monster’s roof, however sporadically it may be? What if he hurts him like he did Hope? What if he gets his hands on Angel and runs off? Or… what if he makes Angel disappear just like he tried to do with his mother? I can’t live with that uncertainty. Can you?” Gabriel points out, having made his own assessment of our precarious situation, and I see Michael caving to both Cam’s and his demand.
“Don’t kill him,” I hear myself say.
“Hope…” Cam pleads, his hands already shaking to pull the trigger.
“Just… don’t kill him,” I repeat, holding Gabriel tightly to me and fixing my eyes on the other slices of my soul; their love giving me the courage to say what I need to say, “Bury him.”
Chapter 33
Hope
I sit on a familiar log and look up at the starless sky, admiring the silver moon that is out tonight—my companion, showing me the way to my own salvation. The noises around me don’t alarm me as they might have done that fateful night. Like a phoenix, I have risen from the ashes and left the remains of a tortured soul behind. My wings are so strong they will help my flight through any peril. I lean on this strength and faith to guide my actions now, as I await another ghost to make its appearance.
First, I see his hand reach to the skies, and then his body lifts from the dirt and soil he was buried under. He tries to lift his leg as well, but flinches in pain, his wound reminding him he’s very much alive, and in my mind, very much fucked.
I play with the dagger in my hands, loving how the light from the moon above makes it glow with the same power and rightful vengeance I feel within me. When he finally sees me, I get a warm feeling when I see hatred and fear mixed up, knowing how rattled he is by his new surroundings.
“Where am I, Jen?” he croaks, soil still lodged in his throat, a memory I recall all too well.
“Doesn’t it look familiar, Ben? It should. You dug that grave yourself,” I inform him stoically.
“Not deep enough,” he slurs, but I don’t take the bait; instead I keep an eye on him and the knife in my hands. “I have to hand it to you, Jen. I never thought you had it in you,” he adds, almost as if he’s impressed I would go through with such measures to make him disappear.
“My name is Hope,” I reply.
“No, it’s not, you crazy bitch. It’s Jennifer Russo Zappa,” he continues, dragging the rest of his body out of the manmade grave.
“No,” I state, cool as ice. “That was your wife’s name, the one you buried. The one you left broken, beaten, and bloody, to rot in the middle of nowhere, six feet deep in the ground. Jen is dead, and you killed her,” I recount.
“Apparently I didn’t complete the job; otherwise I’m talking to a ghost. Is that what you are, Hope? A ghost set to ruin everything for me? You were gone. I made sure that no one would find you. I saw you dead, but still, look at you. Not only are you alive, but you’re starting to get on my last nerve. It was so fucking clean, and like a cockroach, you returned.” He spits on the ground the remaining filth from his mouth.
“You sound disappointed,” I taunt.
“Nah, Jen. See the first time I killed you, it was an accident. I thought you
were so used to me knocking you up a bit, that you could take a bit more that night. I liked getting creative with you. My fist, my belt, a bat, a crowbar, and let’s not forget how much fun I had with that shovel in the end, but nothing gave me more joy than when I had you underneath me barely clothed, and I saw the light extinguished from your eyes with my bare hands. Now that feeling, I miss. So maybe you coming back is another chance at getting it right, huh? Since I took so little pleasure out of the first time, maybe this is fate giving me what I was robbed in the first place? Killing you slowly, with my hands wrapped around your scrawny little neck.” His yellow smile beaming sadistically, looking better for the wear as if just the idea gave him a second wind. But I just keep playing with my knife, not giving him the inch he wants from me.
“Where is the big fellow?”
“Gone.”
“And the others?” he continues, his eyes scoping the eerily quiet forest around him.
“Gone, too. Took Angel with them. You’ll never get your hands on my son, Ben. Never,” and it’s the first time I feel a little more edge to my voice. I bite my inner cheek to reprimand myself for showing him any feeling, but it was too obvious for him not to have picked up on it.
“You really have lost your mind if you think for a minute that’s going to happen,” he chides, but his threat doesn’t touch me.
“It will,” I inform him confidently. “Now my men have him safe, away somewhere—far away from you,” I explain, giving him my own seditious grin.
“Jen, you stupid, stupid bitch. Don’t you know by now that you will never win crossing me?” he replies, and I look at the bruised, bleeding, earth-covered man before me and raise an eyebrow, suggesting how wrong he is with his statement.
“I will always come out on top. Just ask your brother,” he mocks, finally pinching a nerve within me.
“I’ll get him out of jail.”
“How? No one knows you’re alive,” he laughs.
“What do you mean?” I question, wondering what this madman still might have up his sleeve.
“Didn’t you find it odd that no one came to see you from Philly to discuss the case? Or to get your statement?” His tone was too laced with venom and triumph not to take notice. I had thought about it a little those first few days when I got back from the hospital, always expecting someone to show up, but then when no one did. I must have forgotten about it, with Angel’s birth and ‘meeting’ Ben that first time, not to mention it being the first month of being a mother, my brain was still catching up to all of it. So I guess I forgot along the way somehow.
“The reason no one showed up was because the minute I got back, I told everyone it wasn’t you. Just some woman with the same name. Tragic, really, how you both looked so similar, but it wasn’t you. So I had it put away. Nice and neat, the way I like it.”
“I can go to Philadelphia myself, then. Or I can go here to the police and make a statement,” I threaten.
“Do it. Then I’ll tell everyone how you lost your mind when I told you I wanted full custody of my son, as you are an unfit mother, for whoring yourself to three bikers you met a few months ago and proceeded to attack me. You even went as far as plunging a knife in me and then had your lover bury me in the woods to die. It won’t be a far cry from the truth, now, will it? It’s all about perception.” I watch his eyes gleam in delight with the story he was able to conjure up at the drop of a dime.
“I’ll paint you as such an unstable woman, there is no court that will keep my boy away from me.”
“No one’s going to believe you,” I tell him, standing up for the first time, so he has to stretch his neck to look up at me.
“Really? Did no one believe me when I told them Nico killed you?”
“But he didn’t,” I fist my hands around the handle of the knife, not wanting to get too close to this menace, but close enough for him to see the dagger in my hands. I want him to paint a nice little picture of all the ways I could cut him and leave him here to rot.
“Still, people believe what they want to. I’m a cop. You’re a stupid whore. Not a hard pick,” he sneers, not liking how he is the one who is vulnerable in this unplanned scenario of his. He takes a minute looking at the ground and then lifts his head as if I’m the one on my knees.
“But don’t worry, Jen, it won’t come to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because I don’t have the patience or the time to lose with you anymore.” He laughs out bitterly, but it’s the intense self-assurance in his stare that makes me shiver in the cold night air.
“You once put my whole case in jeopardy with your little stunt of leaving me all those months ago. I have used that to my advantage—now I think I’ll use it again.”
“What are you saying, Ben?” I need him to say it, and he’s been cocky enough all night to give me exactly what I want.
“I’m saying that the first time I killed you, it was quick and impulsive, but still, I made it work. Because of your disappearance, I was able to get Nico and his friends just like I wanted. Sure, I didn’t get the big fish, but I made them bleed just the same. That was all you, Jen.”
I chew my inner cheek, not liking how easily he manipulated my disappearance for his own gain, and incarcerated Nico and the boys for his own crime instead.
“Now I have another opportunity on my hands. I want my kid, and I want those bikers to go down, too. I’m thinking maybe I weave a tale of how they kept you prisoner here. How they brainwashed you to be their plaything. How I didn’t recognize you in the hospital, too grief-stricken, as I was still mourning my beloved wife. And how hard it was to make the connection between my wife and the woman I saw, surrounded by three unknown men. You, on the other hand, remembered me and used the card I gave the nurse out of courtesy, and reached out yourself, telling me you were, in fact, Jen, and had been held against your will all this time. Unfortunately, I got here too late. For the second time, my love died, only this time at the hands of marginal fiends, and this time they had my son in their hands. I can see it now. I’ll probably be given every medal there is for taking down the so-called Archangels Motorcycle Club.”
“You’re insane,” I deadpan.
“Tsk, tsk. Words hurt, Jen. Shame on you. You lacked the courage to finish what you started because if you had it, I’d already be dead. But see, I do not. Ever heard the saying, practice makes perfect? Well, I’m going to practice as much as possible to finally clear all the air from that windpipe of yours, until I’m sure you’re dead as a doornail.” He says it with such conviction that I almost believe him, but my eyes are wide open. His overconfidence at besting me is placed on the idea he can taunt me enough, that I’ll lose my temper and head right to him with my knife in hand. He wants me to lose it like I did back at the house, and if I let him bait me enough, I’m sure I would. But the rock he has in his hand, the same one he thinks he was clever enough to hide from me, would be used repeatedly on my skull in my hasty attack, grabbing my knife in the process if he could.
Unexpectedly, I start to laugh. I lean my head back and let out a howl so loud, any animal within a five-mile radius would hear it echo. I laugh uncontrollably until the ache in my rib, still tender from this afternoon, reminds me to take it down a notch.
“You really have lost your mind, huh? Why the hell are you laughing, bitch?” Ben asks, trying desperately to mask his own insecurities. He’s still aiming to get a rise out of me, and my downfall all in one go.
“Oh, I’m not a bitch, Ben, but karma sure is. Joe, you got all that?” I yell.
“Yeah, Hope, I got it. Heard every word,” Joe says, coming from behind a tree, with two other officers following right behind. My men, who must have been eating away at the seams, also make their appearance, coming up from behind me, and I feel their presence and love warm my back, reminding me that they always had it, should something have gone wrong with my plan.
“What the hell is this?” Ben looks to the side as the six men circle him.
>
“Well, this here, Ben, is your arrest,” Joe explains, as he orders the other two policemen to cuff him and pull him onto his feet. I kind of feel sorry for them, since they will probably have to drag the piece of filth all the way back to their cruiser.
“And this, here Ben, is your video confession, you prick,” Cam informs him, showing the video playing on his phone.
“See, I gather you can spin all the lies you want, Ben, but witnesses and hard proof will win every time. Impressed enough, asshole?” I add, putting my knife back in my ankle boot and broadcasting a smile as wide as the glorious Allegheny National Forest, the place of my rebirth. If he could kill me with a stare alone, I’d be dead a thousand times this night. But I figured he already killed me once, so I wasn’t going to allow him to kill me a second time.
“I have to admit when you called, I wasn’t expecting all of this,” Joe says, running his hand behind his neck. “I mean, I was hoping for a nice family dinner to meet my new little nephew, not a takedown. But I guess this isn’t your typical family. Archangels never are,” he smiles genuinely.
“No, we’re not,” Michael adds proudly.
“Okay, then. You have anything else you like to tell this scum before I take him in, honey?” Joe asks.
“Just one more thing,” I singsong, walking closer to Ben and looking him straight in the eye, fearlessly.
“I want a divorce, asshole!”
Chapter 34
Gabriel
Eight Years Later
“I wish Aurora was here,” Hope says, sitting on my lap, her head on my shoulder, basking in the summer sun. Every once in a while, I hear the same words come out of her mouth. Especially on days like this when she’s happy and at peace, and it feels like the only missing fragment to make her perfect reality is the return of the sister she once had.
