Prologue
Killian
Twenty-Nine Years Earlier
“Shhh. Wake up, Killian.” My mother’s hand covered my mouth as she whispered, trying to wake me up in the middle of the night. “Shhh. Come on, honey. You gotta wake up. We have to hurry.”
The fear in her voice finally penetrated the sleep fog I was in. I looked around my room, and it was dark except for the moonlight that came in from the open blinds.
When she realized I was awake, she pulled her hand off my mouth and put a finger to her lips, gesturing that I should remain quiet. I nodded, letting her know I understood what she wanted me to do. Even in the darkness, I could see the bruises on her face and neck from where he’d hit and choked her earlier as I stood by, helpless to stop him.
“We need to be quiet and quick, Killian. Get dressed.” She pushed some clothes into my hands, and I slid as quietly as I could from under the covers so I could do what she said. Even at nine years old, I knew that if he heard us and woke up, he would come after Mom again, and again she would put herself between me and the man hellbent on inflicting as much pain on her as possible.
While I dressed in the jeans and shirt Mom had given me, she grabbed my backpack from the corner of my room and filled it with a few more changes of clothes. “Can I take my game system?” I whispered, holding up the small device from beside the bed. Mom nodded and quickly shoved it in the backpack with my clothes before zipping it up and handing it to me.
Mom got on her knees in front of me. Her eyes were level with mine as she put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me close so I could hear her instructions.
“Okay, Killian. You’re going to hold your shoes instead of wearing them out. I want you to stay right with me, and I’ll tell you when it’s safe to put your shoes on, alright?” I nodded as she pulled me into a quick, hard hug and kissed my hair.
She handed me my backpack, and I slipped it on my shoulders and clutched my shoes to my chest. My blood was pounding so hard and so fast through my veins that I could hear the echoes of my heartbeat in my ears. Mom quietly opened the door. The sound of the hinges opening wouldn’t normally be something you heard or paid attention to, but in the tense moment and the stillness of the night, it sounded like thunder.
We waited another second just inside my doorway before Mom took my hand and pulled me with her into the hall. There was a small nightlight on the stairs that helped us see our way down them without tripping or falling. If making sound wasn’t an issue, we would have been down the stairs and out of the house quickly, but it was an issue and it seemed to take forever to get from my bedroom to the bottom of the steps.
“Wait here,” she stopped and whispered before releasing my hand with a gentle reassuring squeeze once we were right by the front door.
I watched as she made her way into the living room and unscrewed all the lightbulbs. I don’t know why she did that, but she did the same in the dining room and the kitchen too. The last thing she did was place the lightbulbs on the stairs after removing the nightlight from its socket and placing it beside the others. That’s when it made sense of what she had done. If the stairs were dark and he couldn’t see the bulbs, he would step on them, slowing him down if he woke up to find us escaping.She was trying to give us our best chance at escaping him.
“Okay, Killian. Put on your shoes,” she whispered when she joined me by the front entryway. “Once I punch in this alarm code, he may wake up and we need to be ready to run.”
I nodded. My hands shook as I bent down to put on one shoe and then the other. Mom moved to the closet and quietly opened the door, grabbing a bag she’d hidden inside and her shoes. It was then I knew she had been planning this. Mom had our escape mapped out for a while.
Relief and fear warred within me. My father was a pillar in the community and a devil at home. As the high school’s principal, he would talk to an auditorium full of teenagers about bullying and violence and how wrong it was, then come home and hit my mom until she was bruised and bloody. I hated him. At nine years old, I hated the man I called Father. He was a hypocrite and not at all the man he pretended to be in public.
“Are you ready?” she asked me quietly, taking my hand again.
“Yeah, Mom,” I whispered, and cast another look up the darkened stairs. I couldn’t see anything really, just black nothingness, but I heard nothing either, so that gave me hope we would make it out of this prison.
She felt along the wall for the alarm keypad and opened the flap. The number pad lit up, and she pushed in each digit to the code. Zero. Seven. Two. Five. Each number made a loud tone before the system loudly beeped three times and spoke in a female robotic voice. “Alarm Disabled.”
Mom rushed to the door and flipped the locks, pulling the door wide and running outside. She grabbed my hand and together we ran for safety, and until the first shots rang out when we were halfway down the street; I thought we’d make it.
“Mom!” I screamed as she fell to the ground next to me, dropping the bag she was carrying and almost taking me with her. She released my hand.
“Run. Killian,” she gasped, her eyes pleading with me to run. I looked back to see my father storming towards us. Unbridled rage filled every inch of his face. He was in boxers and an undershirt, and his feet were bare and bloody from the lightbulbs, but it didn’t seem to faze him or slow him down. “Killian, hide,” my mom said again, getting my attention from my dad, who was solely focused on her.
I ducked behind the truck that was parked on the street nearby and tried to make myself as small as possible. My hands covered my ears, and I squeezed my eyes shut, but I still heard every word he shouted at her.
“You thought you could get away with this, whore!” Dad screamed at her, uncaring that we were in the middle of the street in our neighborhood. The beast he normally kept so well hidden from everyone was on full display, but there was nobody around to see it at two o’clock in the morning. “There’s only one way you’re leaving me, bitch. In a body bag.”
“Carson. Don’t do this. Please. You don’t want to do this. ”
I peeked out from behind the wheel of the truck at my mom’s voice just in time to see him kick her in the side where blood was already soaking through the shirt she wore. She rolled onto her back and tried to back away from him. She was holding up her blood covered hand, pleading with the monster for her life.
“You’re wrong about that, Cora.” Hatred and disdain dripped from his words. “I have dreamed of this moment for so long—ever since I found out what a whore you really are.”
The crack of the gunshot echoed through the quiet street, followed by an eerie silence. It was several moments before I heard my father’s voice, still laced with rage.
“Your mother was a whore, Killian,” my dad called out without looking for me. “I don’t know whose bastard son you are, but you aren’t mine. If I’ve taught you anything this night, remember that women can’t be trusted to keep their legs closed.”
