I shake my head. “I just want to sleep. And someone needs to have dinner with them. I know these things are important. Tell them I say hello and make me sound good. I promise I'll be okay.”
Dante frowns, and then he sighs. “Okay.” He kisses the top of my head. It's a tender gesture, but it's not what I need right now. “Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”
I force a smile and touch his cheek. He's shaved and smooth. “I will. Thank you.”
I turn and walk back to the limo. Luckily, it hasn't left yet and I'm able to crawl into the backseat and curl up in a ball. “Take me home, please.”
I stare out the window at the bright lights against the dark sky. Everything hurts. My hands go to my stomach and I cringe at how close it came to hurting this child growing inside of me. I used to be safe here. How could this have happened to me?
I remember how Norwood had treated me special once. He'd given me gifts. He'd taken my mother to expensive restaurants and always went to her concerts. I could see now how meaningless the trinkets of his love had been, and just how many bruises she had covered up for him. She'd tried to spare me the worst of it, but she wasn't hear to protect me anymore. I was so naive, and he had been so cruel.
The baby. I remember the flash of happiness when I found out. I still needed to tell Dante. I had gotten so caught up in cleaning my apartment and hurrying to dinner, that I hadn't had the chance. I closed my eyes and sighed.
The driver stops at my building and I run up the stairs. I'm going to make a cup of tea since I can't have wine and cuddle into bed and try to forget everything. Tomorrow I can come up with a plan. Tomorrow I won't feel so fragile and weak.
I open the front door, step inside, and nearly have a heart attack. Mr. Norwood is standing in my living room admiring my piano. One of Mr. Norwood's thugs closes the door behind me and blocks my escape.
“You're back early. Mr. Russo just not have the stamina for you?” Mr. Norwood turns with a wicked smile cracking his face.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I wish I had some bravery left in me, but seeing him here makes me feel two feet tall and weak as a kitten. I reach for my panic button only to find I don't have it. I must have left it in the limo.
“Coming to see you, of course.” He motions with his hand around the apartment. “I admired your apartment earlier, but I must say that the smell of bleach is not a welcoming scent.”
My heart is pounding like a scared rabbit facing a wolf. “What do you want?”
Mr. Norwood crosses the room in two easy steps, taking my chin in his hand and forcing me to look up at him. “I can still see the defiance in your eyes. You think you are going to come up with a way to beat me. A way for your beloved Dante Russo to save you. You need to be taught otherwise.”
He flings me away and I tumble to the floor. “I wouldn't...” I whisper, but I know as well as he does it's a lie. I'll never stop fighting.
“You are mine, little Cara. There is no escape from me.”
He turns his back to me. There's a sledge hammer leaning up against the piano that I hadn't noticed before. He picks it up. Immediately, I know what he's going to do.
“No.” I say, in denial of what I already know is going to happen. “No, no, no,
No, No, NO,” I scream, trying to get to my feet. His thug grabs my arm and keeps me in place. I might have been able to wrench free, but I couldn't take my eyes away from the scene in front of me. Panic, rage, fear, and horror splinter through my core all at once as Norwood brings the hammer down on the shiny black surface of my beloved piano.
I beg and scream as he keeps swinging that horrible hammer at my piano. The keys clang and the strings make horrible death cries with every violent strike.
The piano is my connection with my mother. It's how I bridge the gap to heaven and feel her with me. With every smash of his hammer, my connection is broken yet again. Twice now he has killed my mother.
The bodyguard releases me and I crumple to the floor. There's no sense in trying to stop him now, the piano is ruined beyond repair. Mr. Norwood drops the hammer into the rubble of my dreams and wipes the sweat from his brow with one of my drapes.
“Now be a good girl, or I'll have to come back.” He pats me on the head like a dog.
I don't know how to be the good girl he wants, just that he wants me to try and fail. I know he's just going to keep punishing me, never stopping and never telling me what to do to make it stop. It's part of the pleasure for him. He can always change the rules to make me disobedient, no matter how hard I try to behave. He did it to my mother.
Mr. Norwood looks around, pleased with his work before walking out the front door and leaving me alone with my ruin. I hear his footsteps on the stairs as he leaves me. He knows there's nothing I can do against him. I won't call the police. I won't call Dante. I have no recourse to his destruction.
At least he didn't hit me this time. My baby is safe.
I pick up a white piano key, holding the marred beauty in my hand. Something inside of me breaks. Something that has never broken before, not even when my mother died. The darkest emotions I've ever felt have never even come close to what I feel at this moment.
Anger bubbles through me. He threatened my child. In threatening me, he threatened my baby. I will not tolerate this. I will not let him do this to me.
It is war now, and I am a mother bear on the attack. I now understand my mother's fury.
I stand up and look around with a detached sense of calm. I am in the eye of the hurricane of my anger.