The line goes dead.
I take the phone from her hand and toss it across the room. "Good girl. Now we wait."
Twenty minutes feels like an eternity.
I keep Susie in the living room, seated on the couch.
My knife is within reach but not at her throat anymore.
No point in terrorizing her more than necessary.
She's not the one I want. "What did he do?" she asks eventually.
Her voice is steadier now.
The initial shock wearing off.
"You don't want to know."
"He's my husband. I think I deserve?—"
"Your husband broke into my fiancée's workplace three days ago." The words come out cold. Flat. "He beat her. Broke her ribs. Smashed her face so badly she doesn't recognize herselfin the mirror. Cut her arm from elbow to wrist. Took her engagement ring off her finger while she lay bleeding on the floor."
Susie's face goes white. "No. That's not—Ted wouldn't?—"
"He did. I have it on camera. Facial recognition confirmed it was him."
"But he—he's a businessman. He travels for work. He?—"
"He hurts people for money. And now he's going to pay for it."
She shakes her head.
Denial.
Disbelief.
The foundations of her life crumbling beneath her.
"I didn't know," she whispers. "I swear I didn't know."
"I believe you."
And I do.
Women like her—they don't see what they don't want to see.
They ignore the late nights, the unexplained cash, the dead look in their husband's eyes.
They build a life on lies and call it love.
"What are you going to do to him?" she asks.
"Whatever I have to."
The sound of a car in the driveway.
An engine cutting off.
