“I want to cut the bullshit, Jagg. I want to know what you know about my attack, exactly what you know about Kenzo and why you’ve taken it upon yourself to be my bodyguard.”
“I will once you tell me about what happened in Dallas. It’s time to talk, Sunny. Tell me about Kenzo Rees.”
A minute ticked by before, finally, she began.
“We started dating in high school. Kenzo was popular, the definition of a jock. Football, basketball, baseball, he did it all. A popular guy. A bit of a bad boy. We went through the trials and tribulations of any young relationship, on and off, on and off. … Looking back, he showed signs of aggression back then.”
“Like what?”
“He started getting in regular fistfights, things like that. Started falling behind in school and sports. I remember he was really possessive of me. Abnormally so. I also remember he was really hard on his family dog… it’s silly that I remember that, but I do. He was mean to the poor thing. It was like he was showing his dominance to something that couldn’t fight back. I broke up with him over it once. Should’ve never gone back.” She looked down.
“Don’t dwell on that. That kind of thinking is unproductive.”
“I know. You’re right.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, after graduation, we went to the same college and that’s when things started to really change.”
“What changed?”
“Kenzo.”
“How?”
“Drugs. He started hanging out with the wrong crowd, so to speak. I tried to pull him away from them which just made him cling tighter it seemed. I did everything I could, but he just got… darker and darker. It happened so slowly that I kept thinking it was just a phase. It wasn’t. We started drifting. I almost broke up with him two days before it happened.” Her hand trembled as she took a shallow sip of beer. I didn’t ask any questions. Just listened.
“It was my twenty-first birthday. We were at a party at one of my friend’s houses. His ‘new’ friends showed up and it started to get wild. He left the party for a bit. I know now that it was to get high.”
The kid had taken enough coke to kill a horse, but she didn’t need to know that I knew that from reading the report.
“When he came back, he accused someone of flirting with me. He pushed the guy around but was eventually pulled off of him. I remember the feeling I got then, the churning in my stomach. Looking back, it was almost as if my body was telling me to run. I told him I wanted to go home. We caught a ride to my townhouse, where the argument got worse.” She looked down and began picking at a thread on her shorts. “I’ll never forget the moment he hit me. Theshockof it. I was stunned. It was funny, I didn’t feel the pain or blood running down my chin. I was just so shocked. I didn’t fight back.” She looked at me, self-disgust evident on her face. “Can you believe that?”
“I can. Most women who experience their first physical abuse don’t fight back, for the very reason you just said. The shock of it.”
“I remember the look in his eyes after he hit me. It waslike they flared, bulged out of his head. Like he liked it. Like a switch was flipped… and thatlookmade me more scared than the fact that he’d hit me.”
Blood lust. My grip around my beer tightened as my pulse skyrocketed. I squeezed my other hand into a fist and curled my toes in an effort to dispel the rage bubbling up. This wasn’t about me, or the fact that I wanted nothing more than to sprint to my car, find the bastard and slam his head into the fender until the thing cracked open.
This was about her.
I needed to be there forher.
“After that, everything became a blur. He punched me, over and over. I remember hearing the pop as my nose broke. I tried to run then, and that’s when he pushed me into the bathroom and bounced my head off the mirror, and then…”
She went silent, still, every muscle in her body tense.
I didn’t know what to do or what to say to make it better.I unfisted my hand and placed it over hers. Although she was doing exactly what I’d asked of her, I wanted her to stop. I didn’t want to be the cause of any more of her pain.
“Sunny. It’s okay. You don’t have to?—”
She pulled her hand away and sniffed. “No. I want to get this done. And then I don’t ever want to talk about it again.”
“Sunny—”
“And then he ripped out my fucking hair, Jagg. Chunk after chunk, he pinned my head against the sink and started ripping it out screaming racist bullshit and telling me he always hated my kinky hair. I remember that pain more than anything else. Thefirewhen the strands ripped from my head. The throbbing pain after. It felt like someone had poured acid on my scalp and lit a match. That’s when I started crying. He hadn’t only beaten me but was defilingme as well. Ripping out my dignity. Then, he threw me down the stairs like I was worth nothing more than a rag doll. Ihate him,Jagg. I fucking hate him.” She turned to me, eyes wild, her jaw twitching with rage. “Do you know where he is?”
“I’m working on it.” My voice was also trembling now. “I’mworking on it, Sunny.”
I knew that look. I’d seen it many times in my career. The need for justice and revenge, the beginning of a vigilante mission that, more often than not, landed the person in the morgue.
That would not be Sunny.
