Page 18 of If You Fight

Chapter Six

Serena

As much as I hated to leave Ryder’s, I had to if I wanted to still keep us a secret. So after kissing him one last time and promising him this wouldn’t be our life forever, I crept back to my apartment with the plan to be in bed when Oliver finally got home.

My blood ran cold when I turned the corner to head into my apartment and saw him leaning against his blue BMW, his arms folded and a triumphant smile on his horrible face.

I’d been caught.

“Out late, Serena? Coming from Daddy’s office? Oh, but that can’t be since I checked and he’s nowhere to be found tonight. The guards at the gate told me he left an hour ago. So where were you?”

My mind raced as I worked feverishly to construct a lie he couldn’t see through. “I went out for a walk in the garden and then went to the main house for a bite to eat since my father had told me the cook had made lamb special for him today.”

Oliver’s gaze traveled down my body and stopped at my bare feet. Grimacing at my lack of shoes, he said in a low voice, “I’d think your feet would be wet if you went out for a walk in the garden at this time of night, but they look bone dry. Want to try again?”

I began to walk past him to get into the house, but he grabbed my arm around my bicep and squeezed it tightly, bringing tears to my eyes. Leaning in close to me, he whispered, “I can smell him on you. Back to fucking him already?”

“Let go of me!” I cried as I attempted to pull away from his hold, only to have him tighten his grip on my arm until my skin burned. “You’re hurting me, Oliver. Let go!”

“I knew that kid wasn’t mine. That’s why I had no problem getting rid of it. And the first chance I get, I’ll get rid of the guy who’s been fucking my wife too.”

The mere thought of Oliver, with his scrawny body and small hands, going up against Ryder made me laugh in my husband’s face. “Just try to get rid of him. He’ll kill you where you stand. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, dearest husband, so let go of me and accept that I’ve got you just where I want you after what you did.”

Fear filled his beady little eyes, and he pushed me away as hard as he could. Stumbling across the concrete driveway, I steadied myself and shot him a look before heading into the house. He could think whatever he wanted. If he thought Ryder was going to disappear that easy, he had no idea who he was.

That meant he didn’t know who I’d been with.

Thankful for at least that, I undressed and climbed into bed, hoping to avoid Oliver for the rest of the night, like usual. In the state he was in, I didn’t want to risk another fight with him. I may not live through a second one.

I closed my eyes and thought about that life I’d promised Ryder we’d someday have. I’d thought about it so many times I could picture it down to the last detail. We’d live in a cozy house with a yard for a dog and our kids and a white picket fence in the front. During the day, I’d take care of the babies while he worked somewhere doing an honorable job that didn’t involve fighting or hurting people. Then at night, we’d sit on the back porch and he’d hold me in his arms as we looked up at the stars, counting our blessings as we thanked God for helping us escape this place.

It was what I thought of every night before I fell asleep, and sometimes I dreamed about that little house with the green grass and could almost smell the flowers I’d plant every spring down the front walkway. Yellow daisies or some other happy looking flower that told anyone who saw them that our house was full of love and joy.

We could be happy. I believed that, even though I struggled to remember more than a few days of my entire life I could truly say were happy. A few of them involved my mother, and then for a long time, all I had were days filled with questions why she’d left and lies my father told me to keep me in line.

The rest of my happy days were because of Ryder. That first night he invited me into his room. The times we spent talking as we lay on his bed, as close as we were now but still innocent. The night I went to his room with the candy I’d spent all afternoon making just for him and the sensuous feeling of his lips on mine for the first time.

Every moment I got to be near him when I came home from the hospital after my suicide attempt. For the first time in my life, I’d had something that felt normal. I knew no one else would ever think of what he and I were then as normal, but when we sat down to eat breakfast and walked around the grounds each afternoon, each of us cared that the other person was right there.

My mind always travelled to that night when the world thought my husband and I would be happily celebrating our marriage, and instead Oliver left me alone and I turned to the only person I knew would understand.

The only person I wanted to spend that night with.

Had our child been conceived then as we made love, finding one another’s body and soul after I’d been given away to another man?

I choked back tears as I thought about the child we’d never have. Had it been a girl I could have dressed in pink and tied ribbons in her hair? Or had it been a boy who would have taken after his father and grown up to be strong and protective of the woman he loved?

We’d never know. Oliver had made sure of that.

And now I planned to make sure he’d pay for what he did. I just had to stay strong, no matter how hard that seemed.

I heard him walk into the bedroom and instantly my body tensed like it did every night when he came home. Sleeping next to the man who’d tried to kill me, the man who’d taken my child from me, sickened and terrified me.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and said in a low voice, “I don’t know what you think you’re going to do to me, Serena, but it won’t work. If your father believed it was me, he would have killed me by now, just like he killed my brother.”

I knew who had killed Jacob. My father may have ordered his death, but he hadn’t gotten his hands dirty. The man Oliver thought to go up against had been the one to do it.

And if my father ever decided my husband was to die, the same man would kill him. And I wouldn’t shed a tear.

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