Page 87 of Demons & Damnation

Tony needed to know the depths of the excruciating agony he’d left her in. He needed to linger in the bottomless abyss of gloom that she’d been left to live in, alone.

But he wasn’t the only guilty party.

Anna-Rose needed to experience all of that too.

Chapter 36

With Tony having the power of speech back, he begged and pleaded for his life. “Kyla,” he said, his eyes full of pleading. “Please. Come on. What’s done is done. It’s in the past. I’m a father now. Don’t scar my children forever.”

Kyla stared at him, poker faced, taking his words in one by one and deciding how to reply. “‘What’s done is done’. Is that really how you think about what you did to me? What you did to our child?”

“I did what was best for everyone involved,” he said, straining against the vines holding his wrists.

“Did you? Who told you that? Because I certainly disagree that you did what was best for me.”

“You were too young to have a child. You needed to live a little first, enjoy life, be without burden.”

Kyla tilted her head back and laughed, a proper deep guttural laugh that shook her stomach and vibrated through her chest. Seconds ticked by as her laugh bounced off the walls of the silent house, the children, Anna-Rose, and Tony all watching her, waiting, wondering what she would do next.

When she finally eased her laughter, she lowered her head and glared at Tony, her eyes sparking with hatred. “Enjoy life? What’s your definition of that Tony? Because being told at the age of eighteen that I can’t have kids, being pushed from psychiatrist to psychologist to therapist because no one could help me, battling with depression, anxiety, trust issues, and trying not to kill myself on a daily basis is not my idea of enjoying life.”

Tony stared back at her, mute, unable to say a word. He knew in that moment how much he’d fucked up. Fucked up royally. After nearly a minute of staring each other out in tense silence, he finally whispered, “I had no idea.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Kyla yelled, throwing her arms up in the air in exasperation. “Because you were too busy running away with and fucking my mum!”

“What’s fucking?” Lina asked.

Kyla turned around, seeing her younger half sibling staring at Anna-Rose, expectantly waiting for an answer. “Please,” Kyla said to her mother. “Indulge her. Tell her what that is.”

Anna-Rose looked up at her daughter, her eyes full of water. “Please, Kyla. They’re innocent in all of this. Don’t force them to face the same horrors you did.”

Kyla raised an eyebrow and considered her mother’s words for a second. More like a split second. “Why not? If it was good enough for me to endure, dear mother, it’s more than good enough for them to also endure. You can’t have favourites now, can you?”

“You heartless cow,” Tony shouted. “You’re a fucking heartless bitch.”

Kyla whirled back around to face her former lover, pure ire flowing through her veins, splashing against her insides with a dire need to be let free. “Quite the opposite, Tony. If I had no heart, I wouldn’t be feeling all of these things inside of me, now would I? I wouldn’t still cry at the sight of pregnant women or lose myself in depression for days at the sight of a baby, would I? That if anything proves that I do have a heart. However, if you wish to see a heartless cow, or a heartless bitch, I can indeed show you that.”

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