Leave Me Breathless

‘Depends on you, beloved wife.’ He drags the barrel of the gun up my thigh, pushing back the tail of Ryan’s shirt. My back pushes farther into the seat, my whole body racked by shakes. ‘This shirt doesn’t suit you.’ He pulls the gun away and lifts it to my head, and my shakes intensify as I look out the corner of my eye at the tip of the gun sitting in my hair. ‘And this blond? I hate it.’

‘Then I’ll change it,’ I say, forcing myself into the placating wife I used to naturally be. I’m in self-preservation mode. Buying myself time. ‘For you.’

He pulls the gun away, but I don’t relax. ‘For me? You mean you’re coming back to me?’

‘Yes, I’ll come back to you,’ I whisper, hating the sound of those words.

Jarrad slowly casts his eyes to me. The glint in them is borderline evil. It’s also a sign of his intention. ‘But you’re dead, Katrina,’ he says calmly, before propelling his arm toward me and cracking me across the head with the butt of the gun. I cry out, pain radiating through me as my head starts to spin. ‘You took me for a fucking fool, Katrina!’ he bellows, his temper now unleashed and ready to destroy anything in its path. The monster can’t be contained anymore. This is it. ‘You of all people know I’m no fool.’

My hand clenches the side of my head, the warmth of the blood soaking my palm. Everything is woozy, my head thumping. I can’t think. Can’t see. But I can hear.

‘You left me, you scheming little bitch. Everything I gave you. All the hard work I did to make the perfect life for us. And now I learn that you were feeding Brayfield information? He helped you run away from me?’ He sniffs his disgust. ‘I should have killed him slowly. I fucking loved you!’

Amid my chaos, I manage to believe that, yes, maybe Jarrad did think he loved me in his way – as long as I was the wife he wanted me to be. But when I disappointed him, nothing could contain his rage. Not me begging, not me promising to do better. I took what he dished out, and then I accepted the gift he would buy me to show his remorse. Every beautiful piece of jewellery I owned represented an injury I’d sustained at his hands. I would be holed up for weeks, unable to leave our mansion in case I was seen. Those weeks in solitary became more frequent. Until one day I stepped out to walk my beloved dog. I was careful. I wore huge shades to cover my black eyes. A hat pulled low to cover the graze on my forehead. A scarf pulled high to conceal my fat lip. No one saw me.

Until I got home and found Jarrad had returned from work early. That time, he broke my arm and my nose. My dog defended me. Growled at Jarrad as she stood guard by my broken body on the floor.

So he took her away.

I feel a tear trail down my cheek, mixing with the blood there, and I look at the madman next to me, knowing beyond all doubt that he will kill me. He won’t risk me destroying him. He won’t risk anyone else discovering that I’m still alive. His status and power are too precious to him. Even more precious than I was as his possession. I’m being driven to my death.

I look across to Jarrad, my fear mixing with hatred, and for the first time since he took me, I consider how rumpled he is. His hair isn’t slick and neat, the black waves more haphazard, and his suit has been replaced with a pair of trousers and a bomber jacket. It doesn’t suit him. This truck doesn’t suit him, either. This truck would suit Ryan.

Ryan.

‘I wonder how your boyfriend would feel if I told him you were dead,’ Jarrad says as if hearing my thoughts. He’s composed again. The storm has calmed. But not for long.

He has my attention, and he knows it.

‘Would he feel how I felt?’ Jarrad muses, as if having a discussion with himself, his attention fixed on the dirt road. ‘Does he love you as much as I love you?’ He gasps. It’s over-the-top and intended to be. ‘Does he love you at all?’ He flicks me a sick smirk. ‘I think he does.’ Nodding to himself, he turns the steering wheel. ‘I think when I break the news, I’ll let it sink in for a while before I kill him.’

‘No!’ I blurt, stupidly showing some emotion. I should have kept my mouth shut. I shouldn’t have showed my hand. I see the Realisation in him, and I see the tightening of his jaw quickly after. He stares forward for a few moments. He’s allowing the rage to take hold, and when he turns his eyes my way, I see the psychopath in him. The emotionless beast.