Three Times a Lady

Chapter 33

Thirty-six hours later, Nicholas finally had his long-awaited showdown with his mother back home in Chicago.

This was it. The day for which he’d been waiting all these years had finally arrived. The day for which he’d been waiting ever since watching his little brother brutally murdered in cold blood right in front of his shocked and disbelieving eyes. The day for which he’d been waiting ever since the sadistic bitch had forced him to breathe in his own waste and to taste his own sin. A day Nicholas had dreamed about.

A day he’d never truly thought would ever arrive.

Annabeth Preston sat at the kitchen table in their shared home on 969 Turning Oaks Drive, idly flipping through the glossy pages of a gossip magazine. She didn’t even bother glancing up to acknowledge her son’s presence when Nicholas entered the room behind her. ‘How’d it go out in Arkansas?’ she asked, wetting a manicured fingertip with her small pink tongue and flipping another page.

Nicholas’s heart pounded in his chest. His hands trembled. His armpits flooded with sweat. His temples throbbed. His pulse raced.

Annabeth Preston finally turned around when he didn’t immediately answer her. Her emerald eyes locked onto his, freezing him in her paralysing cobra stare. ‘I asked you a question, son. I said, how’d it go out in Arkansas?’

Nicholas tried to speak but no words would come out. His tongue felt too swollen; his vocal cords too tight, the crashing in his brain too loud.

Annabeth Preston studied the sheen of fear in his eyes and rose to her feet. The belt on her white satin robe fell open at the waist to reveal her beautiful body. A silver Tiffany heart necklace was cushioned between her ample breasts. A lacy black bra supported perfect white globes. A small brown mole winked out at Nicholas from the left side of her chest. She took a languid step in his direction.

‘You want this, son?’ she cooed, pursing her painted lips and running her fingers through her ink-black hair, letting the strands cascade over her shoulders in a glorious display of seduction. ‘You want to take your mother to bed and show her what a big, strong man you are?’

Annabeth Preston slid a finger teasingly along the elastic waistband of her white satin panties. ‘Are you ready for me, Nicholas? Finally ready to do something with that bulge I see in your pants all the time? Do you like what you see, boy?’

When Nicholas again failed to answer her, Annabeth Preston laughed. ‘I know that you and your little brother like me,’ she said, taking another step forward. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t. I see the way you two boys have been looking at me lately. Disgusting, foul little perverts. Don’t you know that little boys aren’t supposed to look at their mothers that way? It’s unholy.’

Nicholas took a step back and held up his hands in a futile effort to keep her away. He should have known better than to come here tonight. There was no escaping his mother. Never had been. Never would be. She owned him.

Nicholas’s worked the muscles around his mouth. When his voice finally emerged from his badly constricted throat, it shook uncontrollably, reduced to sounding the same way it had when he’d been a confused, pre-pubescent boy who didn’t understand the feelings he felt. ‘No,’ he said, taking another step backward and feeling the wall next to the refrigerator press into the small of his back. ‘This isn’t right. You shouldn’t be doing this to me. You shouldn’t have done a lot of things you did to me.’

Annabeth Preston cocked her head to one side and took another step forward. ‘Like what, son? Tell me exactly what you’re talking about here.’

Nicholas’s eyes filled with tears, blurring his vision. ‘You shouldn’t have…’

Annabeth Preston took another step forward and cupped a hand to her right ear. She was no more than three feet away from him now. ‘Yes, son? Go on. I shouldn’t have done what?’

Nicholas felt his heart break into a million tiny pieces inside his chest. ‘You shouldn’t have… molested me,’ he breathed, his voice shattering in his throat. ‘I was just a little boy. You were supposed to protect me.’

Annabeth Preston threw back her head and barked out a short, ugly laugh. Her eyes flashed like heated emeralds. ‘Molest you?’ she asked incredulously. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Are you f*cking kidding me? I never laid a finger on you a day in my life, boy. You were a freak, but I still took care of you. I fed you. I bathed you.’

Annabeth Preston shook her head again and exhaled a disgusted breath through her mouth, producing a hard pfft sound with her beautiful lips. ‘Molested you. Give me a f*cking break. You can just go to hell, for all I care, you ungrateful little sissy.’

The pure venom coating Annabeth Preston’s voice finally caused the sturdy wall inside of Nicholas to break. Taking one quick step forward, he punched his mother square in the mouth with all his might, releasing all the pent-up ferocity he’d kept stored behind that wall ever since he’d been eight years old. She crashed down hard to floor in front of him. ‘I am going to hell, Mother,’ Nicholas snarled. He leaned down and wrapped a thick handful of his mother’s silken black hair in his right fist before yanking her up hard to her feet. ‘And I’m taking you with me.’

Dragging his mother by her hair down the long hallway, he mocked the way she’d always spoken to him. ‘You do know what this means, don’t you?’ he mimicked, kicking open the front door to the house and pulling her down the sidewalk. Opening up the back door to the massive Buick LeSabre sedan, he tossed her inside. ‘It means a trip to the butcher’s shop, you sadistic bitch. And if you think what I did to those other women was bad, believe me, Mommie Dearest, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’

Nicholas leaned his body into the car and held his mother’s disbelieving stare. For the first time in his life, the fear and uncertainty and confusion that had always ruled his movements had disappeared. In its place, a confidence like none he’d ever known flowed through his veins, giving him the strength that he knew he’d need for what would come next.

Annabeth Preston trembled in the backseat of the car. A sickening rush of blood gushed from her broken nose, streaming down her gorgeous face and staining her satin night robe a beautiful crimson.

‘I’m gonna hurt you, Annabeth,’ Nicholas said, wanting her to understand exactly how serious he was about this. ‘Enough’s enough already. Time to pay the piper, cunt. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna hurt you real bad.’

Slamming shut the back door, Nicholas went around to the driver’s side and slid behind the steering wheel before cranking the ancient engine to life with a quick twist of his right wrist. Then he turned in his seat and spat directly into his mother’s ugly face, which for some reason or another didn’t look quite so flawless as it usually did at the moment.

‘I’m gonna hurt you real bad, bitch,’ Nicholas repeated. ‘That much I promise you.

‘Just like you hurt me and Timmy.’