“Why aren’t you at our house, fighting those bastards who are trying to take our life away?” He walked toward her.
“Fighting them? The FBI said you were going to prison. The house wasn’t ours; the cars weren’t ours. Nothing was ours. They froze our accounts. I had to go.”
“I paid the rent for the entire year. You did not have to go. You fell for their lies. You didn’t trust me or our life enough to fight for it. I thought you were a strong woman when I married you, but you are nothing but milquetoast. A wilting flower. You don’t deserve the life I’ve given you. You’ve proven that.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” she admitted, his words beating at her soul and reverberating around her mind.
“Because I haven’t been there to tell you how to think. Why can’t you think on your own? Are you really that weak? It’s why you lost our baby. I don’t think you’re strong enough to be a mother. You certainly aren’t strong enough to be my wife.”
If he’d struck her it would have hurt less. Was he right? “I tried…”
“Yes, you always try!”
“Just let me go. Get out. Sign the divorce papers and leave me alone.”
He laughed, towering over her. “Yes, you would like that, wouldn’t you? But what you don’t understand is I own you. You will never get free from me.”
“I won’t go with you,” she stated, her voice hard and cold. She would rather die than live another moment with this man.
The blow came out of nowhere—hard and fast and painful. Tears sprang to her eyes. He hit her again and again. Her head snapped back, and her chair rolled into the wall, where she was trapped, unable to defend herself from his brutal attack.
When he finally stopped, her face was burning, and she couldn’t see. She wiped the tears and blood on the sleeve of her shirt and tried to focus. He stuck his angry face into hers. “Where is my money, you stupid bitch?”
She jerked back, smacking her head against the wall. She couldn’t give it to him. It was her only way out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she cried.
He hit her again, and all she could think about was Nick and his precious little baby that she would never get to hold, rock, or sing to. Nick was right all along; she deserved to be happy. She deserved to be a mom. She deserved a life out of this nightmare.
But it was too late for her now. Her life was over. Paul would kill her before he let her leave.
She should have trusted Nick.
She should have trusted herself.