Surrender: Keeping Her in the Dark Vol. 4 (15 page)

He lunged at me with force and we struggled again.

“I’m gonna fuck the shit out of you, you fucking bitch! Then I’m going to kill you,” he panted. “Because if I can’t have you, Norah, I won’t let anyone have you!” He slammed my head against the desk and everything went black for about five seconds. I screamed but I knew no one who could hear me would come to my rescue and anyone who would rescue me couldn’t hear me.

This wasn’t going to end well. But it had to end. He had managed to get his pants open and was holding me by my throat with one hand. I felt around the desk to find something I could use to help me. And then my hand came across the letter opener.

Liam

I opened the door and walked inside. The house was quiet. No one was in the kitchen. No one was in the library. I didn’t see any lights on upstairs either.

“Norah!” I called out as I placed my bags at the bottom of the stairs. I heard footsteps and saw Kelly at the top of the stairs.

“Liam!” she shouted and ran down the stairs. She stopped at the last one. “You’re back!” she looked like she wanted to hug me but restrained herself. We didn’t know each other very well after all.

“Where’s my wife?” I asked. I was so tired. I wanted to take a long shower with Norah and go to bed so I could hold her all night long.

“Well…there was a little development while you were gone,” I didn’t like the sound of her voice or the look on her face.

I paced the floor listening to the craziest thing I had ever heard of in my life. I ran my hands over my hair.

“Where does she come up with shit like this? Does she want me to go bald before I turn fucking 31 years old?” I screamed. “Does she have any clue about what I have been through these last weeks? Now I come home to a fucking empty house and to a wife who has begun dating my biggest enemy!”

“Well in her defense, she kinda did know what you were going through and didn’t want you to have to deal with more now. She thought she was helping,” she scrunched up her face because she knew I wouldn’t be happy about that statement.

“In her defense? No. No. No. She gets no defense.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Where is my wife right now, may I ask? Is it prom night?” I tried to be funny.

After Kelly filled me in on my wife’s stupid plan to free Holly and get revenge on Nick without me just so I wouldn’t have to, I called John.

“Mr. Hastings,” he sounded shocked. I filled him in on what I knew about my wife’s plan for world domination and he told me where she was and what she was up to.

“So this was supposed to come to a head 10 minutes ago?” I kept pacing.

“Ok, something’s wrong. I don’t know what, but I don’t want to wait either. Her time is up.”

I arrived at Nick’s home with 2 buses full of police officers. They surrounded his house. Agent Shaw and I met John in the driveway and he filled us both in on her plan again.

“Stay here,” Shaw said to us both. He stepped forward said a few words to another man and then they used a large log like thing to bust open the door. Ten men went inside and I kept hearing, ‘Clear, Clear, Clear.’

I couldn’t wait. I ran to the door and I heard her screaming. I followed her voice and entered what looked like a study or office.

There she was, laying on a desk, Nick on top of her, limp, and there was blood everywhere. She was screaming and I saw her hands up in the air shaking.

I walked closer as a man pulled Nick off of her and helped her up. Our eyes locked. She was shaking, her dress was ripped, her hair was knotted up, and she had blood all over her body. I pulled her to me and held her. She kept shaking.

“She needs to be checked out by the doctor,” a man behind me said to us.

“It isn’t mine,” she whispered. I pulled myself away from her for a moment and looked her over.

“Norah, you could be hurt, let’s have you checked out,” I pulled her to me again and started to move. She buried her face in my chest and wouldn’t move. Her body was shaking uncontrollably.

I could hear a camera clicking behind me and men talking all around us. A man handed me a blanket and I wrapped it around her little body.

“Come on little one, we need to see how bad you are hurt,” I tried to move her again.

“It isn’t my blood.” She cleared her throat and looked up at me. “It’s his. It’s all his. The blood isn’t mine.”

We both looked down at Nick laying on the floor with a letter opener stuck in his neck. I swallowed hard and pressed her against my chest.

“Oh Norah. I wish you hadn’t done this,” I whispered to her hair.

“I did it so you wouldn’t have to,” she leaned back and looked me in the eye. I tucked some hair behind her ear and tried to figure out what it was I saw in her eyes.

“She’s down the hall,” she said in a small voice. She pulled away from me and wrapped her arms around herself. “The keys on the floor in the glass and Holly is in a room down the hall,” she nodded in that direction.

“We found her,” Shaw said over my shoulder.

“She’s fine. She was worried about you actually. She said she could hear you screaming. Now I apologize but we need you two to move so we can take more pictures of the crime scene,” he put his hand on my back and ushered us out of the room.

Chapter Eleven

Liam

It had been two days since I had returned from Paris. Norah had been through three long interviews and had finally been cleared. No charges were pressed. It was self-defense.

We had taken a long bath the first night and I washed her hair and body. She hadn’t said a word and I hadn’t either. I wasn’t ready to tell her what I had been through and I really wasn’t ready to hear her explanation.

The second night we laid in bed facing each other. I had spent most of the day on the phone or computer trying to figure out the state of my affairs at work. Norah had spent most of the day walking around the back yard and in and out of her old room.

“Do you want to talk about it?” her voice was quiet and she hadn’t raised her eyes to look at me.

“Do I want to talk about what?” I asked.

“Where you were? What you were doing?” she said.

I didn’t want to but the silence was killing me. I retold the story of my adventures as briefly as I could. She cried when I told her about Nasun’s death. I reached out to touch her face.

“There was nothing I could do,” I wiped her tears away. “I wanted to stop it. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. But if I protested I would have been killed too, Norah.” She looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

“I’m more upset about you being in danger. If they killed him they could have killed you too, Liam.”

“I know. So I stayed quiet and they slit his throat right in front of me.” She rolled into my arms and we fell asleep.

The third day we went to Marcy’s house and saw the baby. Norah sat at the window holding the baby looking outside.

She was quiet. She said very few words. Her hands shook and she kept staring off into the distance.

When we laid in bed together she held on to me like she never wanted to let me go. I didn’t mind at all. I wanted her close.

We had both been through a lot and I was ready for things to just be normal again. I wanted to hear the craziness of Will and Jane. I wanted Norah to complain about not being able to find Anne Boleyn look alikes for some crazy Tudor party she was planning.

I wanted Marcus to hit on me or make an inappropriate comment about my penis. I wanted our old lives back and wondered how long it would take to get there.

I wanted her to talk to me and I wanted to talk to her. But I was so angry. I had a hard time looking at her. She had taken a huge chance with Nick, and honestly I didn’t know how far it had gone between them.

I wanted to hear her explanation but I was afraid I couldn’t take it right now. I was so happy to be home, so relieved she was ok, but infuriated that she had taken this on herself.

“So if you’re going to yell at me, Liam, I wish you would just do it.” I shook my head at the window. My back was to her but by the sound of her voice she was standing at the door. I was in her old bedroom. The one I kept her locked in for months. The room still reminded me of her. It reminded me of a time when I had control of the things in our lives. Now all of that had slipped away.

“Go ahead, let me have it. I deserve it,” she said. I turned to look at her. She was so beautiful, even without makeup and her hair pulled up in a messy bun. She tried to look like a bum in her baggy sweat pants and t-shirt, but she still looked radiant to me. Her face glowed without makeup. Makeup only enhanced my wife’s beauty. It was so hard to be mad at her after all I had been through. But I was mad.

“Yes, you do deserve it. You deserve a lot more than I am willing to give right now,” I turned back to the window and crossed my arms against my chest. I heard her walking toward me.

“Liam,” her hand touched my back.

“Don’t,” I flinched and shook her hand off of me. “I can’t, Norah. I’m so,” I looked back at her and saw tears in her eyes.

“What were you thinking? What in the hell were you thinking?” my voice was still in a whisper. “Do you have any idea of what could have happened to you?” she started to say something but I wouldn’t let her. I turned my body toward her and grabbed her shoulders.

“I could have lost you. He could have raped you, Norah. He could have raped you and beaten you way worse than he did. You know what kind of man he can be. Why in the world would you take a chance like that?” my voice didn’t reflect my anger but I knew my eyes did. I could always get Norah with the way I could look at her.

“Yes,” her voice was shaky. “I knew exactly what kind of man I was dealing with. But I guess I misjudged his feelings for me,” she shrugged.

“His feelings for you? You were hoping that if he loved you at all he wouldn’t hurt you? He would just let you walk all over him, release the girl, and that would be it. The end?” she didn’t say anything.

“Did you go there with the intention of killing him?” with those words she looked up at me.

“The police already asked me that,” she said.

“Yes, and I heard your answer to them. And now I need you to answer me. Did you go there with the intention of killing him?” I asked again. She stepped away from me and walked toward the bed.

“Answer me, Norah,” I demanded. I had gained my voice back and my anger was coming a little easier now.

“You come up with this crazy plan that isn’t even a plan and freely admit you had no idea what you were doing! You wanted to free this girl and then what? Huh?” I yelled. “All I can think about is that this is what you had in mind from the beginning. There was no other way out for you! I know you had to kill him and believe me I am glad the bastard is dead. But I need to know if you went there with the intention of killing him?”

“How can you even ask me that?” she whispered. “I won’t let Rosa kill the chickens in the coupe for our dinner. You actually think I could premeditate murder?” she still wasn’t looking at me but now she was playing with the crocheted blanket on the bed.

“Honestly…yes.” She turned to face me and I stepped closer to her. “I told you I would handle Nick when I got back from the auction. I told you I would handle it. I told you I would gladly go to jail for the pleasure of killing him myself. You knew I wanted him to pay for his sins against me but more importantly for what he did to you.” I knelt in front of her and made her look at me.

“So yes, little one, I think you could come up with a plan to get inside his world, find out where he was keeping the girl and then kill him.”

“Well I didn’t.” Her eyes were filled with tears again. She moved around the bed and stood on the other side keeping the bed between us. I stood back up.

“Why in the world would I need to get the key to the cage if I planned on killing him? If I wanted him dead I could have killed him before that night. I didn’t want to kill him,” her voice broke at the end. She covered her face with her hands so I went to her and took her in my arms.

“Norah, please,” I kissed her forehead. “I just had to be sure. I know you would do anything to protect me.”

She took a deep breath and then let it out. She grabbed my shirt and held me.

“I didn’t want to kill him.” She shook her head. “I wanted to get the key, but things got out of hand,” her voice was breaking. She was repeating the same story she had given the police.

“I wanted to save Holly,” I wiped her tears from her face. “I thought I could help, but,” she was stuttering, “bbbut things got out of hand,” she repeated, “his hands were holding me down, he ri-ri-ripped my dress, and then he started h-h-hiting me,” I shook my head because I didn’t want her to go on.

“I couldn’t stop him,” she cried. “I couldn’t stop him,” she cried again. I pressed her head against my chest.

“Norah,” I didn’t want to ask her but I had to. I had seen the bruises on her arms, the scratches on her chest, the marks on her neck, her busted lip and cut above her eye. But the worst was the bruises between her legs on her thighs.

“Did he rape you?” I closed my eyes preparing for her answer. I chanted in my head that it didn’t matter. She was alive and safe and that was all that mattered to me. She was my wife and she belonged to me. If he had raped her I would have to live with it, because helping her deal with it would be more important.

She looked up at me and I touched the sides of her face.

“No,” she whispered. “It was very close and his hands were everywhere,” she started crying again, so I covered her mouth.

“Norah, you don’t have to tell me. If you want to tell me I will listen, but you don’t have to say it if you don’t want to.” I really didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t like hearing about that sleaze ball touching my wife. It was one of reasons I insisted on a bath the first night. I had to wash him off of her.

She put her head back on my chest and we just held each other.

“Please forgive me,” she said.

“Oh, sweetheart,” I swayed back and forth. “We are together. That’s what is important.” I pulled her face away from my chest.

“It’s over.” I kissed her nose. “I’ve been cleared. We don’t have to hide anymore. I mean,” I kinda smiled. “I wouldn’t shout it from the roof tops, but we don’t have to worry about me getting in trouble for buying you anymore. The auctions are over. That life and all the reminders are gone.”