“He was disgusting,” said Jay, “and so are you.”
“You married the fruit of his loins, honey,” he said, with a hoarse smoker’s laugh. “So how disgusting could he really be? I’ve seen the pictures. God, I thought your mom was a fox, but you do shit she wouldn’t do for free. What’s that old saying—lady in the streets, whore in the sheets? Maybe in ten years, you’ll thank my nephew for photographing your wedding n—motherfucker.”
A meaty thud pierced through his scream.
Nicholas pushed down harder on the handle, driving the sharp point of the letter opener into the web of flesh between the man’s thumb and forefinger, pining his hand to the desk.
Blood began leaking out, soaking into some of the nearby papers.
“If you go to the police,” Nicholas said casually, “I’ll find you and do the same thing to your dick. Even if they do put me away, I’ll get out and then I’ll come after you again. And then I’ll be angrier. You will suffer worse than you have ever suffered in your life. Do you understand?”
Moaning, Frank managed to bob his head.
“You don’t fuck with her.”
“Sorry,” he croaked.
“Not to me. To my wife.”
Swallowing back a whimper, Frank lolled his head towards Jay. “Sorry.”
“Oh my god, Nicholas,” Jay said. “Stop it. We need to go.Now.”
Nicholas slapped Frank in the face with the envelope. “Make sure you pass my message along to your nephew. Just in case he thinks he got off easily.”
Jay was stumbling, and the warm tones of her skin had taken on a slight grayish cast. As the doors swung back behind them, she looked around the half-full parking lot and said, in a low, terrified voice, “Nicholas, what the fuck? I mean, seriously, what thefuck?”
“You expected me to stand there and let him talk to you like that?”
“You stabbed him in thehand. After threatening his nephew. My god, Nicholas, he could go to the police. They could both go to the police. Don’t you understand?” Her voice became higher, desperate. “They could arrest you and lock you away.”
“Jay.” He felt an unfamiliar heat in his face and throat.
“I don’t want to be alone. I can’t go back to—I can’t go back to before.” She reached for the doorhandle blindly and he caught her by the wrist, holding it against his chest. “Nick, I can’t—”
“Nothing is going to happen to me.” He folded his hands over hers. “But we’re not getting into this car until you promise me that I won’t wake up to an empty house.”
“No,” said Jay. “I wouldn’t leave. But we have to go—”
“You did leave me. Twice.”
“I know. Iknow.But I wouldn’t do it again.”
“Why did you leave that night? Why not the first one or the next? Why did you leave on the night I bared my fucking soul to you and chose you over my father?”
“Because what I saw in your eyesscaredme. It wasn’t love—it was obsession. I saw a man who would burn down his entire world to make a place for me in its ashes, who didn’t care how many pieces he broke me into as long as he owned them all.”
“And now?” he asked, his voice hollow.
She plucked her hand from his face and held it in her own.
“And now I’d rather watch the world burn with you just as I am. Soplease, let’s go. Now.”
???????
Jay woke up to the smell of smoke.
She shot out of bed, panicked to find herself alone, the sheets next to her cold. But then she went to the window and looked through the glass, her breath fogging the clear surface.
