And for the first time, although he already knows it from the file, I give him my name.
“Elizabeth Rose Archer.”
“ELIZABETH ROSE ARCHER,” she tells me on soft words after a long span of silence.
How could Satan own such a beautiful name?
I keep my hands fisted tightly so she can’t see them shaking, but the roiling fury that runs thick through my blood has me on the verge of detonation. It’s all I can do to hold myself together right now. This woman, the one I loved not so long ago, is like gasoline dripping on my burning heart.
Her name was already known to me. I read it in the file I found on her husband’s desk after I shot and killed him. Seeing her pictures covered in a spray of his blood destroyed all my trust in the world. It was only a couple hours later after getting home and digging into that file when I soon realized I’d been scammed. Scammed by the only person who had ever been able to seep into my heart so entirely. I’ve never loved the way I loved her. And to know it was all a lie, the deceit of being played, was more than I could take.
I know I murdered an innocent man, and now, hearing her crazy explanation has my mind so fucked up. How could I have been in love with someone as psychotic as her?
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Declan, please. Say something. Anything,” her tiny voice requests.
My body is a mass of tense muscles I refuse to relax for fear of what I’ll do. So I keep myself locked and stern when I speak. “So he never hurt you?”
“No.”
“Never mean to you?”
“No. Bennett loved me. He didn’t know who I was.”
“How’d you get the bruises then?” I ask, remembering how God-awful she would look, covered in horrifically grotesque bruises. Sometimes her skin would split from the swelling and bleed. The battered blood that pooled beneath her skin’s surface always stained her body. It fucked me up. Rage and fury for a man I believed was inflicting the abuse, lamenting heartache for the woman I loved, and guilt from not being able to protect her. The emasculating position she put me in, knowing damn well she had me fooled. And now I sit here feeling like a * that got manipulated by nothing more than a runaway street kid.
“My brother.”
“Brother?”
“He was in on it too. I would go to him to get the bruises.”
“It was your brother who beat the shit out of you? On purpose to fool me?”
She nods her head shamefully in response.
“Jesus Christ, you’re sick.”
I watch while tears drip from her chin and wish they were the acid she filled my heart with so connivingly.
“I know. But—”
“Just stop,” I bark. I can’t take any more of this shit, but she doesn’t stop.
Her words come out in a rush of panic, “When I told you I loved you, when I gave you those words, I meant them. I didn’t want to use you, not at that point. I wanted out and to keep you from doing what I initially wanted you to do.”
“But you didn’t, did you?!”
“Everything spun out of control so fast.”
“Were you happy? When you found out Bennett was dead, were you happy?”
“It destroyed me to know I pushed you so far,” she counters.
“Answer my fucking question!” I belt out, standing up and searing my eyes into hers as I look down on her. “Did it make you happy?”
Her body trembles when she closes her eyes and admits, “Yes.”
“So you got what you wanted?”
“No.”
“No?”
She tilts her head back to look up at me, and my bones beg to impale her, to beat the living shit out of her, a punishment she’ll never forget. One that would mutilate her for life.
“No. It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t worth sacrificing you because saving you was all I wanted to do at that point.”
I sneer at her ludicrous words. “You wanted to save me so much that you left me in a pool of blood to die?”
Her eyes radiate horror.
“That’s right, darling. I was conscious. I felt you, your touch, your kiss. But all it took was for that guy who shot me to say Go for you to leave me to die. Was that your idea of saving me?”
“No, Declan,” she says through her tears that never stop. “I was scared. It all happened so fast. I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought you were dead!”
Her words spit venom, and I can’t look at her face any more without hammering my fist into it.
“You fucking left me there to die, you bitch!” I roar, grabbing her arms with force and yanking her up, shaking her as I fume, “Your words are lies. Nothing you say makes any goddamn sense.”
Rage takes over and I lose it, slinging her body around and throwing her to the floor. She crumples, falling hard to the ground. I step over, grab the bitch by the sweater and yank her back off the ground as I hunch in her face. She doesn’t protest my afflictions; she takes them willingly, the same way she has the past few times I’ve been rough with her, and I take advantage of her submission.
Her hands clamp around my wrists as I rip her off the floor and shove her away from me.
“Get the fuck out!”