No more. I can’t bear to hear what I know he’s going to say. We were safe. He was going to jail. He attacked Mum and me. There were witnesses—reliable upstanding witnesses. He set me up to be raped and planned to do the same to Mum…How much more did they need to keep him away from us?
Please, no more.
With my eyes so wide I feel the dry air in the room sting them all over, and tears welling in the corners, I turn back to Aiden and try to tell him. I try to make someone see that it is all too much. I knew it. I knew he’d get away with it. I knew he’d not be punished for what he did to us, but I still can’t hear it confirmed.
No. No more. I’m not ready.
“Jules? Breathe,” Aiden instructs, but I can still hear Mum speaking behind me. Her desperation to know the truth forces herto get it all out in the open regardless of whether I’m ready to hear it or not.
“In and out, kid. Just breathe!”
“Jules?” Dax whispers. His eyes widen, hearing both Aiden and my mother talking over one another, and he knows something is really wrong. I spare him a glance, tearing my eyes away from Aiden who seems the only one able to help. The horror and pity in Dax’s face nearly brings me to my knees. How bad must I look to him with my hair unkempt and part-missing, the soft shadow of bruises around my throat and the torn clothing from this morning’s fiasco with the biker-kidnappers? It hasn’t bothered me all day, I was too happy watching the kids, but I guess I look as horrendous as I feel.
“He’s not going to prison, is he? He’s getting out,” Mum demands to know. Her words stumble from her mouth unsteadily but hang in the air.
Aiden tries to cover my ears. Cocooning my face between his hands. He holds me firmly so that I can only see his face, but I still hear Dax’s reply regardless.
“I’m sorry. Our lawyers are fighting to keep him as far away from you all as possible, but it looks like Franz is calling on his connections. Eric’s going to walk away from this. He’ll likely be back home by the end of the day.”
“And hunting us,” Mum adds.
Silence swallows me. I close my eyes, open my fists, and let my screams fall silently to the floor. Four stickers. Four lots of grief and pain that never needed to exist. Four parts of my life that were born out of lies and bad judgments and desperation. I keep the final sticker in my pocket where it belongs. The dying scream in my heart is stronger now and weaker too all at the same time. It screeches out in silence and clutches my chest tight.
I need to move. I need out of here. I give Dax one last look, and, accepting his infinitesimal nod as acceptance.
I run.
I run, alone, out into the Vale, determined not to stop until my body or my mind breaks.
Idon’t pay attention to my feet or where they carry me. My only concern is escaping the bar. Air burns my lungs. My chest feels swollen, it stings and it no amount of air I suck in is enough. It’s the opposite of suffocating, but the pain is all the same; hollow, sharp, and scorching.
It isn’t dark out, but it will be soon, and I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide or rest. The thought hadn’t occurred to me until I looked up to find myself in the one place I never expected to end up.
The Tower looms above me. Back-lit by the sun, its vast shadow dominates this section of the Vale skyline. It’s home but isn’t at the same time. I know we lived with my grandmother when I was small, out in the ‘burbs where trees lined every street, and every house came with a garage and a front and back lawn. Mum and Eric started out there, with his mother supporting them before he moved us out to live in the Vale. He was the youngest Vice President of Feelan Shipping and Hauling; a good job, and great prospects within the family firm. He promised to raise the funds tobuy a place out by his mother, only he squandered it all on gambling and liquor. Then, when the family company lost a few of its larger clients, they sold up leaving Dad…Eric…with nothing. He took a pittance job, rented the flat in Olive Tower, and let Mum take a couple of jobs to pay for the three of us.
This was my life. The Tower was my home. It had been for the whole of my living memory. Eric was my father. Maria Feelan was my grandmother and Mara, my mother, had loved my dad to such an extent that she had stood by him through thick and thin. Those were the lies I believed—that they let me believe—until today.
The part that breaks my heart the most, the part that really undoes me, is knowing everything we went through over the years, everything we accepted as our lot, was bullshit. None of it mattered. None of it was real. It was all for nothing. All that pain for no reason at all.
Why?
Why had she let that happen? Why not leave him sooner? Why allow him to go so far?
The days she used to spend in bed recovering from one of his tempers, the days where she didn’t have time to recover and went to work nursing bruises and breaks. The times he humiliated her in public, ruined every friendship she tried to hone, forced her to beg, borrow and even steal from his pocket for the spare pennies to buy groceries. She learned to recognise when he would be too drunk to remember how much he’d come home with, and only ever squirrelled away a tiny amount so he wouldn’t become suspicious.
All of these things, all of these memories, swim in my mind. They are knife slices to my soul. She suffered for nothing. We struggled for no reason. She wasted her life and forfeited mine because she’d married Eric instead of trying to go it alone.
And Carlo was just as much to blame.
Who leaves a pregnant woman he professes to love? What kind of man runs from his responsibilities? Even if he didn’t want me, he could have helped set her up. He could have supported herfinancially a little at least. That way, it would have just been me and her. No one to tell us what to do. No one to make us work to pay their bills. I could have had a proper education, been like all the other girls my age.
“Fuck! Fuck them!” I scream aloud, surprised to hear my voice tinny and flat in the confines of the elevator. I don’t even remember stepping inside the building. The light for twelve glows. I’m going home but why? Why would I want to be anywhere nearhis home?
The doors shudder open, and I step out. It’s quiet on our floor. I hear the televisions from the nearby apartments and even what sounds like the couple three doors down shouting at each other over the right way to cook chicken. It would make me laugh if they didn’t sound like they were pulling their kitchen apart in the process.
This Tower invites misery. It channels the negative energies of the Vale and releases all the vitriol in waves upon the inhabitants. But it isn’t all the Tower’s fault. The people drawn to the Vale have problems; financial, emotional, marital — all kinds of issues. It’s all just fuel for the fire.
I stride for our door and palm the keys buried in my pocket. I don’t want to go inside and yet I’ve got nowhere else to go. And if Dad has lawyers getting him out, I’ll need to grab our things before he gets back. This is my only chance.
