Page 11 of Save Us
“Because you don’t just leave Mayfield,” I reply bitterly, “they choose how you go, and if they let you. Besides, they’d go after Riley, my parents, Xander…” I swallow back the hard lump in my throat over just the mention of his name. I haven’t said it in such a long time, and it physically hurts. I miss him more than the air when Oliver strangles me. “And my little girl. I gave everything up to save them, Kai, to keep them safe and to let them live freely.”
The room falls silent, with everyone realizing there is nothing that can be done to get me out of this. My future is cast in stone. Unless Oliver suddenly decides he no longer wants me, I am at his mercy for the foreseeable.
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath, finally breaking the heavy atmosphere swirling all around us. “What do I do, Beth? Tell me how to fix this.”
His eyes look desperate, wildly searching for answers which aren’t there to be found. All I can think to give him is a shake of my head before I lower my eyes back to the floor, blocking out the hope he still holds in his kind features. Suddenly, I feel so exhausted from it all, I could quite easily curl up beneath his giant desk and pass out. A few moments later, an arm falls gently across my shoulders, but I don’t look up straight away. The floor keeps me hypnotized in a cacophony of thoughts, all sad and lost.
When I do finally force my head up, it’s a little surprising to find Serena’s slim arm wrapped around my shoulders, while her head rests against mine with silent empathy.
“You need a mom right now,” she suggests with a soft smile. “Come and borrow ours for a few hours.”
“Really?” I sniff but find myself returning the smile; the first genuine one I’ve given in such a long time. “But I can’t, I need to get back, you’re all in danger-”
Serena places her finger to my lips to prevent my panicked ramblings from running away with me.
“You stay at ours tonight. Then, after a home-cooked meal and a safe, Lawrence-free sleep, Kai can help you get to somewhere so you can make your way back to…Oliver,” she says, grimacing with a tick in her jaw when she says his name. “You can tell him you managed to get away, that they passed out on drugs or whatever. We can think of something between us.”
“Ok,” I reply without even thinking about it, “but I need someone to rough me up a bit.”
“Say what now?” Kai looks at me, wide-eyed and shocked. “Beth, there ain’t no way any of my guys are going to hit a woman, and there’s even less chance of me letting them.”
“If you let me go back without a mark on me, he’ll suspect I tried to run, and then he’ll hurt me even more,” I tell him with my panic beginning to return. “Or he’ll try and get to my daughter, just to spite me. Please, you have to!”
“I can’t!” The poor guy looks like I’ve just asked him to run over a litter of kittens.
“You have to! Please, Kai!” But he still looks like he’d rather dive headfirst into a tank full of piranhas than attempt to do what I’m asking of him. “Do you not think I’ve already been subjected to pain already? Do you not think, after all these years, he hasn’t hurt me?” Kai shakes his head and breaks eye contact with me, not willing to listen to reason. “Do you not remember the marks I came into school with?”
Still looking at Kai with eyes that beg him to reconsider, Serena suddenly makes a move toward the door. She calls out a name I haven’t heard before, only to re-enter with the same guy who had held a gun to my temple. The poor hulk of a man still looks deeply confused by all of this but does as he’s told without question. He stands at the ready, waiting for further instructions from his boss. My once upon a time happy-go-lucky best friend from school, now gang leader.
Watching the interactions between Kai and one of his minions, how they eye one another, how this large man is obviously in servitude to him, a barrage of questions enters my head. The urge to let them all spill out at once becomes overwhelming. How the hell did Kai become the head of some gang in the middle of a bad area of New York?
“Boss?” the man asks, snapping me out of my thoughts to focus on the matter at hand.
“Will, Beth needs you to smack her a few times, places that will be obvious for her husband to see when she returns home tomorrow.” Serena orders for her brother, sounding both calm and collected over declaring such a thing. Kai can’t bring himself to do it; we all know that.
“Dafuq?” Will looks at her like she’s just instructed him to cut off his own dick with a pair of rusty scissors. “I don’t hit girls,” he says as he looks back at me in complete horror. “Besides, she’d probably break in half if I so much as sneezed in her direction!”
“Serena, will you unzip my dress, please?”
Without question, Serena begins moving over to stand behind me when both men throw out their hands and simultaneously call out, “Woah!”
Of course, Kai’s confident little sister ignores them and does exactly as I’ve just asked her to, pulling down the zip and revealing my naked back for all to see. Her subsequent intake of breath tells me she’s taken it all in, so I finally turn to show the men before me how a few slaps around the face aren’t going to break me.
“Ho-lee shit!” Will gasps in a long, drawn-out way.
“Oh my God, Beth,” Kai whimpers with a sob in his voice. When I turn back to them, his hands are placed firmly on the sides of his head, and a few tears are running softly down his beautiful face. “What has he done to you?”
“Belts, chains, boots. You name it, he’s used it on me. Not to mention he gets whatever he wants from me, whenever he wants,” I tell him, leaving little to the imagination as to how warped my husband is, especially when it comes to me.
“Motherfucker!” he growls and begins punching the metal storage cabinet that is standing up tall beside him. “I’m going to fucking kill him, Beth! You mark my words; I’m going to slaughter him with a huge smile on my face!”
I let Kai have his meltdown because my back isn’t pretty, and neither is my life. However, I still manage to walk confidently up to Will and give him pleading, but certain eyes.
“Nothing you can do to me will break me; I broke years ago. It won’t even hurt anymore,” I reassure him as I swallow back a hard lump in my throat, the same one that’s been there since I mentioned Xander’s name. “But if he threatens my daughter, I will die. Please…hit me!”
Xander
Lying alone tonight feels a little strange given that it’s for the first time in a few weeks. Usually, I purposely find a warm body to share my bed with, purely because it means I will get to see happy Beth, playful Beth, the girl I used to know before she was taken from me. When I am alone, I see broken Beth, alone and crying, lost to somewhere I can’t get to. She always looks the same; her head is down, trying to keep her body small so he won’t find her, won’t come for her, but he always does.