She was wiping the tears from her face when Rhys asked, “How? How’d they die, Amy?”
“A fire.” She sniffled. “It destroyed their entire house. They died. I was told it was probably smoke inhalation—I hope to God that’s true. Their burned bodies were found in their bed.”
I realized my hands were balled into fists. I got up, pushing the chair back as I did. I couldn’t sit still.
“They said it was an accident,” Amy continued.
I spun to face her. “And you believe that?”
If it was an accident, why were they in bed? Surely they hadn’t slept through it. What about smoke detectors? Or even the smell of smoke? Or the heat? Something should’ve woken them up.
“No. I don’t believe it.” Her eyes locked with mine. “Not anymore, anyway. Eventually, he told me that no one would stand in the way of us being together. I…” She sobbed again. “I don’t know how he did it, but he killed them. I know he did. He never openly admitted it, but it was the little things he said.”
Rhys held Amy’s hand until she got control of herself again. I could tell she wanted to get this over with. Probably the only reason she pulled herself together.
“Son of a bitch.” Rhys stood, pacing the floor. “Keep goin’, Amy. We need to know the whole story.”
I agreed, although I didn’t want to hear any more. I wanted to go back to not knowing the hell that Amy had lived because it was eviscerating me. And I knew it’d been hell even without hearing the rest.
Amy
I felt as though I had a four-hundred-pound weight sitting on my chest. That was how it felt every time I thought about my aunt and uncle and the horrific way they’d died.
“The worst part about it,” I said, breathing deeply, “is I didn’t go home for two days after the fight with my uncle. I didn’t even know. He finally took me home and it was then I found everything gone. The house, everything in it, but most importantly, the only family I had.” I sniffed, refusing to break down again. I had to get through this. “Those few days were a blur. He consoled me, told me everything would be all right, held me while I cried. I remember the police station, someone telling me how they died, that they’d ruled it an accident. According to the fire inspector, there had been a leaky gas line.”
“Convenient,” Lynx muttered, his voice hard as steel.
“I lost my parents at sixteen, and three years later, I was burying my aunt and uncle. I had nothing. Nowhere to go, no one to turn to. I was all alone.” I looked at Wolfe. “Except for him. He was there. Always there. He made me feel safe, told me he would take care of me, that I had nothing to worry about. And from that point on, I lived with him.” I cleared my throat. “I lived with him for the next four years, seven months, and twenty-two days.”
Yes, I had counted every painful day that I had suffered with him.
I straightened my back, feeling the need to show them I wasn’t as weak as they probably believed I was. Not that it wasn’t true, but I didn’t want them to know.
“During all that time, I suffered ten concussions, a broken ankle, elbow, three fingers, my right arm, left wrist. My nose was broken twice.” As I said the words, I realized how bad it looked that I had stuck around, continued to endure. I knew for a fact that Reagan never would’ve put up with a man hurting her like that.
“There were no questions from the hospital?” Rhys asked.
“A couple of nurses seemed concerned, but he was never less than two feet away from me. I couldn’t tell them anything. Then, he stopped taking me to the hospital. A couple of times, he took me to an emergency clinic. When he broke my fingers, he splinted them himself, said I’d be fine.”
I glanced down at my fingers, wiggled them as the memory took hold.
“It’s your own goddamn fault, Amy. If you’d just listen, I wouldn’t have to hurt you.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
“You should be. Next time you won’t fight back.”
That was always his excuse. If I didn’t fight back, he wouldn’t have to hurt me. It was a lie because the couple of times I hadn’t fought back, he’d still beaten me.
God, I fucking hated him.
Shaking it off, I sighed and sat up straight. “At first, he was nice afterward. He would hit me, then apologize profusely. A few times he even cried. I would forgive him, even though I knew I shouldn’t. As time went on, I wanted to leave, but I had nowhere to go. I had no one else. I would work myself into a panic, worried that no one would ever love me, that I would always be alone. So I stayed. I endured.”
I didn’t bother to tell them about how he’d raped me damn near every day. After the first time I tried to resist his sexual advances, he demanded sex from me. Although I didn’t fight him off, I didn’t consent, either. That was rape; even I knew that. It got to the point I simply lay there while he did what he needed to do. In the beginning, he had tried to whisper romantic words, but I had closed my eyes and willed him to finish so he would leave me alone. Then, he stopped trying to make it good for me at all. He simply took what he wanted, whenever he wanted it.
He was the only man I'd ever been with and sex had never been a pleasant thing. Still, I had never been disillusioned. I knew it could be good. With the right man.
The only positive in all of it was that he’d insisted I be on birth control because he didn’t want children.
