Roman's Redemption: Roman: Book II (Roman's Trilogy) (18 page)

I stalk to where she sits, grab her by the throat and her head is cracking against the stone hearth wall surrounding the fireplace before I can even make sense of my movements. Growling between clenched teeth, “Don’t you ever, ever speak of my wife like that again or so help me God…”

Mace’s signature snicker reverberates through her chest making her sound maniacal.

“What, Romie? So help you, God you’ll what? Kill me? Beat me? Put me back in the hospital? Your inability to own how badly you want to walk on the edge of darkness and taste what naughty tastes like on your wife is something I find utterly astounding, yet sadly pathetic.”

Before I am able to choke the words from her or shake the answers out, her body sags against mine as she conveniently loses consciousness.

I’m laying on my side with my head resting on my hand, my eyes haven’t moved from the spot in our bed my wife has occupied over the last several hours, scanning every curve and line of her face, her profile is illuminated by the moonlight shimmering through our bedroom window. When Heather’s eyelids flutter before opening, my anxiety becomes almost unbearable, but it’s when her dark brown eyes lock with mine and all I see is nothing, that I feel the last few frail shreds of hope break and fall away.

Who is this woman, I wonder. What have I done to her? And will I ever, in this life, get her back?

My voice sounds like a croak, “You fainted, mouse, or rather Mace fainted, are you alright?”

She shakes her head before turning her face away from me as a tear spills from the corner of her eye until it’s hidden in her hairline.

“Mace, she…when she spoke to me before fainting she said something and I’m having trouble piecing together her riddle. She said something about similarities, it was almost as if the people who held you prisoner are familiar to either her, you, or both. Does any of this make sense or ring any bells?”

With her eyes still gazing out of the window she slightly shakes her head and whispers, “No. I don’t know what she’s referring to. That’s all she does, mocks me and speaks in riddles, I began tuning her out years ago, Roman,” a soft sob leaves her words trailing off. After a few minutes she’s calm enough to continue, “She’s agitated, resentful, and jealous of your affections towards me as well as the loving bond I have, I had,” the last two words are sputtered out around another heartbreaking sob, “with Ivy.”

I gather Heather up in my arms and gently rock her back and forth, combing my fingers through her hair, when she winces as my fingertips brush over the swollen bump on her scalp, my muscles tense, “I ahh…Mace said some things about, well she said something and I reacted without thinking. I’ll go grab an icepack.”

“What did she say, Rome?” Her tone is flat and without emotion.

Bracing myself with a hand on each door frame, I hang my head and mutter, “You don’t want to know, mouse, and even if I told you, it wouldn’t help our situation.”

I shove my weight from the doorframe before heading downstairs to the kitchen when I hear Andrew shouting, angrily from somewhere in the house.

No, not just somewhere. His voice is coming from the basement where Heather’s rooms were in the beginning. When she was shackled from the ceiling that first night for all of seven hours.

After quickly making mouse an icepack, I jog up the stairs to check on her and find her still lying in bed with her eyes closed. I slide the icepack in her pillow case and position it so it cradles the back of her head before kissing her temple and leaving.

Descending down the stairs and into the basement, my Ferragamo dress shoes halt, ceasing their echoing through the corridor.

When my right hand grasps the door knob, I am forced to stop myself and count to thirteen…twice.

After taking a deep breath, knowing what I am about to encounter is something I won’t be able to witness, then make it go away, unsee, unhear, or undo.

Andrew’s shouting abruptly stops when I step into the room and he immediately steps back until his back is against the wall.

He looks over at me and shrugs, “Just like Jase said, Rome, not a single word, no matter how much it could possibly help her or Ivy, she still refuses to speak.”

As I round the corner keeping me from Dolores’s sight from where she sits handcuffed and shackled to not only the particle board desk in front of her, but the floor as well, I freeze at the sight of her.

The woman before me is nothing more than a shell of her former self. The state of condition she’s currently in makes the pictures I saw of her this morning pale in comparison. And as much as I hate to admit it, I must say seeing her, the woman who practically raised me, the one clapping as I took my first steps, who taught me how to ride a bike, who spent tireless hours quizzing me and helping me prepare for every spelling bee I ever won, the woman who cried and beamed with pride as I graduated high school, and again when I graduated med school, almost causes me to become undone. At least until Andrew’s voice pulls me from my happy childhood memories of the woman who bandaged and cared for me the day I first saw the girl of my dreams with dark brown eyes and silky blond hair blowing in the summer wind. I stood up against the seven boys to protect her that day, all of who outweighed me by fifty pounds or more and were a good foot taller than me. I watched her face masked in horror get smaller and smaller staring at me through the back window of her dad’s maroon Datsun as they drove away. While I was getting pummeled, lying in the fetal position on the gravel path in the middle of the park, I promised myself one day I would find her again.

“Dolores, I’m only going to ask you one more time. If you refuse to comply, you are the one making the choice to do this the hard way,” Andrew’s head jerks, nodding in my direction, “When I leave, you’ll be in the hands of the father whose daughter YOU lost, and YOU refuse to help find. The choice is up to you, do you feel safe putting your life in the hands of not only a sadist, but also a known serial killer?” He pauses pacing back and forth. When he makes his way back in front of her, he leans over and growls, “I’m going to ask you two questions, after allowing you to replay my words in your mind, I expect an answer from you. Are those instructions explained clearly enough for your simple mind?”

After a few moments of silence he begins, “THE! FUCK! Were you doing in Flagstaff?! That’s a long goddamn way from where the fuck you were supposed to be, don’t you think?!”

It’s not only the smirk on her mouth, but the look of knowing defiance that seals my childhood nanny’s fate. I’m across the desk with Dolores’s throat in my grasp when her head, and only her head connects with the basement wall, her extremities stretched awkwardly still shackled to the floor and now broken desk. Spittle flies from my lips as I demand, “You fucking know! Say it!
SAY IT
! You fucking know, don’t you?!”

Though her lips are turning blue and her voice sounds like it’s raking through gravel before being spoken, her eyes never lose their defiance and her calm demeanor never falters, “Now, now, child, I taught you better than this. Or did I?” She gasps in another breath, “Sometimes I worry the sweet boy I loved and raised isn’t in there any more, what scares me most is knowing he’s been gone since long before even he can remember.”

My hand tightens as the thoughts of her betrayal batter through my mind. Every good memory I possessed of her and my childhood is sliced in two with a scythe forged in lies and deceit. As my hands feel the bones of her esophagus grate beneath my fingertips I ram her head over and over into the wall behind her, screaming, “Fucking say it! Say you know where my little girl is, or so help me God! Say it, D! Say it!”

Once Andrew pulls me back, her body’s weight slams into the floor and her blank eyes spark with fire before rolling back into her head, but not before her hoarse voice cracks around the words, “The child is where she belongs, with her uncle, your brother. The chere bebe is finally where she belongs, sweet boy.”

Chapter 25

The sound of Roman’s voice echoing through the corridors pulls me from my happy dreams of playing in the back gardens and hiding behind the wisteria canopy’s, counting to twenty while Ivy and her cousins run and hide. I try to remain in either my daydreams, or better yet, my lucid sleeping dreams at night. It helps me keep the pain away. So when I’m ripped, or jerked from the only place I know I can find my precious little girl, I get pissed. Anger doesn’t even come close to defining what I feel.

Yet, before I allow my body to do what my mind is screaming for me to, defeat blankets the turmoil with a sigh and I roll over, pulling the pillows over my head to block out not only my pain and anger, but the sound of my husbands as well.

“Sleeping beauty with her head stuck up her ass, from what I can gather from your Neanderthal husband’s tone and words, I’m pretty fucking sure now’s a good time to begin participating in the real world instead of up here on my turf. You are the daftest woman I’ve ever met. Yes, I said daft, it’s a fantastic word and I will have it back in regular rotation, mark my words.”

Roman’s voice splits through the house again, “Fucking say it! Say you know where my little girl is, or so help me God! Say it, D! Say it!”

In my minds’ eye I see Mace throwing her hands up as if she’s asking. “Hello? What are you doing?”

Then she says it, “
Umm…hello? What the fuck are you doing? Are you playing deaf, or just intentionally choosing to be a pathetic excuse as a mother? Get your lazy, pitiful, selfish ass up and see what’s going on!”

Bitch. I huff climbing from the bed, slip on a robe, and head in the direction I heard Rome’s voice, all the while glaring at the cocky tattooed bitch grinning in the shadowy corners of my mind.

I’m near the end of the hallway and as I walk by Roman’s office the screen of what I’d always believed to be a television is on. As I register the figures, room, and scene, I feel myself beginning to hyperventilate and it takes me a few seconds before I can look back at the TV.

He’s going to kill her. Roman slams Dolores’s head against the wall again and again. Even as Andrew pulls him away, he’s like a beast, not once does his assault slow down. When I see Dolores’s lifeless body fall to the floor my hand snatches up the phone and dials Roman’s father, Richard, and for the life of me I’ll never understand the reason why.

What’s playing out on the stage of my life doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s like watching a movie, but the sound drags slower than the actors lips move and the scene playing is a raging volcano, erupting and destroying everything in its path, yet what I hear is church bells, the sound of a baby cooing, a child giggling, and lover’s murmuring sweet nothings to each other.

Richard’s voice pulls me back to the present, “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Heather.-“ I feel somewhat in control, maybe a little freaked, scared, and confused as hell, but even as all these emotions stormed through me, not once do I feel like I can’t handle the circumstances.

Not until Dolores’s words ricochet, sending me spiraling and Mace’s shit kicking boots barreling their way into the forefront and in control.

“The child’s where she belongs, with her uncle, your brother, the chere bebe is finally where she’s always belonged, sweet boy.”