Page 32 of It Will Always Be You
Accident.
“Where?” I manage to grit out and, after getting a location, I give in to the urge to hurl my phone across the room. When that doesn’t even so much as take the edge off my roaring emotions, I whirl around, planting my fist through the wall beside the lift. I smash the down button several times before it finally opens. Jabbing the button for the carpark repeatedly and ignoring the throbbing in my knuckles, I barely even notice the bloody trail I’m leaving behind me as I make my way to my car. I’m on autopilot, making my way to the scene of the crime.
The crime scene where my heart and soul lays.
As I get closer to the motorway, the roaring sounds of sirens great me, telling me all I need to know and everything I never wanted to hear. This isn’t a bad dream or a hallucination. I’m not about to wake up with Helen in my arms.
The car I’m looking at looks like a squished can—Helen’s car. I’d know that number plate anywhere. I’m still on autopilotas I stumble out of my car and head for Jake. Clocking me, he meets me halfway with a grim look on his face.
“Boss. It was a freak accident. We called the ambulance immediately, but...” He trails off just as the ambulance gurney rushes past us. The sheet is completely pulled up, telling us without words that the worst has happened.
Denial. Rage. Helplessness. Devastation. The weight of a hundred different emotions hits me, all of them washing over me at the same time, threatening to send me to my knees. I can’t fucking breathe. Can’t move. Can’t think. The only thing I can do is stare at the wreckage in front of me. It was all for nothing. Years of denying us happiness and a family, and for what?
The love of my life, the woman I’ve never gotten over and never will, is gone.
And in that moment, on the side of the motorway, the last shreds of my tattered soul die too.
Chapter 29
365 days in captivity
Awareness trickles in like slow waves lapping at the shores of my reluctant conscious. The phantom feeling of holding my baby girl in my arms is ripped from me as my hazy eyes focus on the grimy ceiling of my cell. Time has lost all meaning in this hell hole, but every morning begins the same way: with dreams of Cora and Jonathan haunting me, teasing reminders of everything I’ve lost. Screwing my eyes closed until the point of dizziness does nothing to alleviate my reality.
Plans of picking Cora up, and spending the summer making memories to carry us through yet another period of separation while she continued to chase her dreams at university, came to a crashing halt in a flurry of screeching tires and blinding lights.
My life flashed before my eyes in a blink: the fleeting moments with Jonathan I would sell my soul to have had more of, the heartbreak that nearly crushed me until Cora came screaming into the world. Becoming a mother may have scared the absolute shit out of me, and doing it alone was certainly not how I everenvisioned embarking on that chapter of life, but in an instant, she became my whole world.
And in an instant, I was torn away from her and thrust into the depths of depravity.
I’ve spent seventeen years protecting Cora with every fibre of my being, both from my past and her dad’s present. I’ve shouldered my heartache like a badge of honour, because it meant she was safe. And if enduring this pain and torture somehow protects her from it? I’ll take it all with gritted teeth and pray she never knows about the true underbelly of the crime world she was born into or the crown of thorns that awaits her.
Blinking back the wetness in my eyes, I inhale through my nose as I envision a steel wall slamming down between thoughts of Cora and Jonathan and my reality. I tuck them safely behind that wall, where they can’t be tarnished.
I refuse to let these vultures pick apart the only good things I’ve ever had.
Over my dead body.
Trailing my gaze from the ceiling to the door, I brace myself for what the day holds. If the creaking floorboards overhead are anything to go by, I won’t have to wait long. Keeping my eyes trained on the door, I work to retreat somewhere far from here, where what’s coming can’t touch me, can’t penetrate me. By the time the door crashes open, I’m so far removed from my body, I don’t even flinch.
“Rise and shine, 103.” Long gone are the days of hearing my name. Now, I’m just a number, and that’s if I’m lucky. Being addressed as 103 beats being called bitch or slut or whatever oh so creative name he can come up with. I wonder if he’s aware of the small mercy calling me 103 truly is. I don’t dare allude to it, in fear he’ll start using my name. Not having to hear my name cross his lips as he rolls over every boundary I ever had makes separating myself from the here and now easier. Being a number makes it easier to say these things are happening to 103, not me.
103 was the one paraded naked in front of a roomful of vile,hungry men. They were the one sold to the highest bidder. It was 103, not Helen, who was medicated and moved to this basement of horrors. 103 is the one being dragged from her metal cot by her hair and thrown into a porcelain tub that’s seen better days.
Helen is blissfully unaware, locked away in concessions far away from this, away from the grimy hands that touch her body like it’s theirs and the hot breath beating down her neck as evil eyes devour her whole.
“Today is a big day, 103. We’re having a very important visitor, so I need you on your best behaviour. You’ll be a good pet for me, won’t you?” At first, remarks like this would draw a response from me, but I soon learnt that’s what he wants.
He wants me to flinch, to cry, to scream and fight back. Because then, that means his actions are just. As if anything I could ever do would justify what’s been done to me since I was sold like a piece of meat to this sick fucker.
I’ll be damned if I give him that get out of jail free card.
Now, I just stare at a spot on the wall in the distance and imagine I’m somewhere else, maybe on a sunny beach sipping a cocktail. Sometimes, I’m back in Jonathan’s arms, but usually, I’m braiding Cora’s hair as she tells me all about her day. Those moments are what gets me through each day in this hell hole while I keep my eyes and ears peeled for a way out, for a weakness I can exploit. If my captor thinks he’s managed to break me…well, he’s got another thing coming. I have far too much to fight for, to hold on to. Giving up isn’t an option.
With a hard yank on the chain attached to the collar around my throat, I’m dragged out of my hazy dreams and back to the here and now. With my morning ‘bath’ done, I’m left feeling grimier than when we started, as I’m dragged back over to my cot, where my wrists and ankles are shackled once more. I guess that’s what I get for trying to claw his eyes out one too many times.
As he paws at my naked body, his excitement evident, I focus on the blood-spattered ceiling above.
As his hands trail lower, I let my mind flutter away.
