Page 47 of Brutal Husband

I gasp and try to push myself up, but Nero puts his knee in the middle of my back and shoves me down again.

“Don’t struggle. You’ll only make this worse for yourself.”

There’s a burn in the back of my neck, and I scream in fury and pain. I can’t move even one inch with his heavy body pinning mine to the bed.

“There,cara mia,” he says in a velvety voice, pulling the needle out and lifting his weight off me. “Such a good girl for me.”

I push myself up to sitting with trembling arms and feel the back of my neck. “What did you do to me? Did you drug me?”

Nero goes into the master bathroom to dispose of the hypodermic, and comes back to me. “I injected a tracker so I’ll know where you are every hour of the day and night. Nothing you do is going to be a secret from me from now on. Oh, and watch what you say on the phone because I’ll know that as well. Every call. Every text. Every browser search. Every website you visit.”

I shake my head in disbelief. This isn’t happening. This is a nightmare.

“Don’t shake your head at me, wife. I wouldn’t have had to do this if you didn’t go to see that divorce lawyer. If you run from me, if that tracker goes offline, I’ll kill everyone in your family. Your mom. Your sisters. Your uncles. If you dare tell anyone that your dear, darling husband isn’t so darling as he used to be, they will be the ones to suffer. If you see that divorce lawyer again, they’ll be the ones who pay.”

There’s a cruel sneer on his handsome face.

“Why are you doing this?” I sob, wiping the tears from my face, but they just keep falling. I know how much he loves seeing me cry. My vulnerability is oxygen to him. “You’re the one who walked out on me. You’re the one who needs a tracker, except I don’t care where you go or who you talk to.”

His expression is gloating. This man has me exactly where he wants me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Instead of answering, he heads for the door.

“What is it you want?” I call after him, and when he doesn’t reply, I scream, “Just tell me what you want.”

Nero stops in the doorway and stares straight ahead, his hands curled into fists and every muscle of his broad back taut with fury. He turns around slowly, his gaze narrowed with hatred. “Proof. That’s all I want, Rieta.”

“Proof ofwhat? I don’t know anything. I haven’t done anything.”

Nero doesn’t hear me, or he just doesn’t believe me. “And once I have it?” He draws his thumbnail across his throat, his eyes burning with malice. “You’re dead,cara mia.”

There arebruises all over my arms. Up the backs of my legs. I look like a banana that’s been shaken around at the bottom of a schoolbag for a week. The marks are everywhere but my face. Nero’s too clever to leave his violence where someone might see it.

I’m too ashamed for Mrs. White, our cleaner, to see what a mess Nero has made of our bedroom, so I clean up all the wood splinters and call a builder to replace the broken doors.

I want to go next door and see Annie, but I’m worried that if she asks me how I am, I’ll burst into tears and confess everything, putting her and her family in danger of my husband’s retaliation.

I’m afraid to leave the house, but Mia is worried about me, and she insists on coming over for movie night. As we sit together on the sofa watching a comedy, I tug the sleeves of mysweater down over my wrists to hide the bruises and smile at my sister, but the smile feels brittle on my face.

At one point, Mia pauses the movie and turns to me. “Is everything all right? You don’t seem like yourself. Is it Nero?”

I knew Nero was trouble from the second I met him, but I married him anyway. I was attracted to his unpredictability, his jealousy, his cruel mouth. I should have known better, and now it’s too late.

“Everything’s fine,” I say with what I hope is my most convincing smile. “I just feel a little under the weather. But I’m glad you’re here.”

It’s only half a lie. I’ve been feeling sick to my stomach ever since Nero forced a tracker into the back of my neck. My husband’s not at home right now, but I have no doubt he’s listening to every word I say somehow. Mia and her family won’t be safe if I confide anything about my nightmare of a marriage to her.

After Mia leaves, I flick aimlessly through the channels, paying little attention to what I’m watching. I end up on a true crime documentary, a story about a woman married to a man who told her he was in finance but who turned out to be an FBI agent with a whole other family. He would disappear for weeks at a time, telling her that he was on work trips, but he was with his other wife and his children. A real wife and children, not the make-believe family he’d created with her while he was undercover.

I grimace and change the channel. I’m sick of thinking about missing husbands, and I go into the kitchen and get a glass of water.

Something Nero said a few weeks ago seems strange to me.

Why did I leave you?

I don’t understand why Nero asked me that question, and he didn’t ask it in a tone of command, sarcasm, or anger. It soundedgenuine. Something happened the night he disappeared, but I can’t remember what it was. Could it be that he doesn’t remember either?

But I’m the one who was drunk and hit in the head.

I stare out the kitchen window, gazing at the far end of the garden where the grass doesn’t grow properly, and the ground is shaded by a leafy tree. I must stare at that place for an hour as I travel down the corridors of my mind, trying to remember anything I can about the night Nero disappeared, but I run into nothing but dead ends.

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