Page 9 of Sinful Palace

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she replied, waving a hand. “Forget I said it. I’m sure you don’t want to listen to my sob story.”

“No, it’s fine. I could really use a distraction right now, sob story or not.”

“All right.” She quickly ate a mouthful of food, and then she put her fork down and leaned back. “Would you believe me if I told you I used to be a psychotherapist in New York?”

My eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yup. Had a brownstone in Brooklyn and everything.”

“Oh. Why did you make such a drastic change?”

She looked down at her plate, drawing her brows into a frown. “Are you sure you want to hear this? I don’t want to wreck your appetite.”

“You won’t.” Not after what I’ve already seen tonight, I silently added, guilt stabbing at my guts as I pictured the hole in Teddy’s forehead.

“Okay. Well, like I said, things used to be a lot different for me. I had a good education and a great job, a ton of friends, and an awesome boyfriend. But then it turned out the boyfriend wasn’t so awesome after all.”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded for her to go on.

“He was normal for the first year or so. Sweetest guy I’d ever met. Then we moved in together and he started acting totally different.”

“How so?”

She looked away. “He was controlling and manipulative. He made me cut off my friends and family, but he did it in a way where he slowly convinced me it was actually my decision. Like it was for the best.” She paused to let out a heavy sigh. “You’d think a therapist would know better, right?” she went on, shaking her head. “If one of my patients ever told me her boyfriend was acting like that, I would’ve told her to run for the hills. Red flags everywhere.”

“I guess you were too close to the situation to realize what was happening,” I said gently.

She nodded. “That’s exactly it. Anyway, things got worse. He started hitting me. He also threatened to kill my family if I ever tried to tell anyone what he was doing.”

My stomach flipped. This story was hitting way too close to home. “That’s awful,” I murmured.

“Yeah. I finally realized how bad things had gotten, and I decided to leave him. Unfortunately, abusersreally don’t like it when you try to leave them.”

“That’s true.”

“I thought I was being smart about it. I didn’t tell him I was going, and I didn’t give him any way to find my new address. I just packed my stuff and left one day while he was at work. But then I realized I forgot a few important things, and I had to go back.”

“Oh.”

“I’d reconnected with a couple of my friends by then, and I took one of them with me for protection. He was a big, beefy guy, so I thought I’d be safe, as long as we went while my ex was at work.” She looked down and sighed again.

“That’s when it happened?”

She nodded slowly. “Yup. My ex wasn’t at work. I don’t know how he guessed we were coming, but he was waiting for us. He hid somewhere upstairs so we didn’t even know he was there. I went and grabbed some of the things I needed from my old bedroom, and my friend loaded it into a box and took it out to the car while I grabbed some stuff from another room. He said he’d only be gone for a minute.”

“I’m guessing that’s all the time your ex needed.”

“Uh-huh. He grabbed me from behind, put something around my neck, and started strangling me. It was like a garotte. Cut me right open.”

“Oh my god.” I shook my head and stared at her, eyes wide. “That’s horrible.”

“Yeah. It was. I couldn’t scream. All I could do was try to kick back at him and claw at his hands. Somehow I managed to free myself. Then I tried to run, and he grabbed me again and attacked me with a knife. He stabbed me twelve times.”

“Holy shit.”

“My friend came back and managed to stop him, and now the fucker is in prison,” Myla said. “But the damage was already done by then, obviously.”

My chest tightened. “I can’t even imagine going through that.”

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