Page 17 of Ghost's Revenge
Derek points to the knife without moving from his position between me and David. "Haven't touched it since it hit the ground."
The officers exchange glances, and I see something pass between them and Derek. Some kind of understanding or communication I'm not part of. Like they've done this dance before.
"Ma'am," the male officer addresses me. "Are you Debbie Wilson?"
"Yes. I mean, I was. I'm filing for divorce."
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Derek... Ghost... he stopped David before..." I trail off, not sure how to explain what almost happened.
"Before he could hurt anyone," Derek finishes for me.
The female officer is already photographing the knife and the scene, while her partner starts reading David his rights. David tries to protest through his swollen mouth, tries to claim he was just here to see his son, that Derek attacked him for no reason.
Nobody believes him.
"We'll need statements from both of you," the officer tells Derek and me. "But first, let's get Mr. Wilson some medical attention and into custody."
As they load David into the ambulance that arrives shortly after, he looks at me through the back window. Even with his face destroyed and his hands cuffed, there's still hate in his eyes. Still that sense of ownership that made him think he could just show up and drag me back to the life I escaped.
But there's fear there too. Fear of Derek, yes, but also fear of what this means for his ability to control me.
"He'll try again," I say quietly, watching the ambulance pull away. "When he gets out, he'll—"
"No," Derek says with absolute certainty. "He won't."
"You can't know that."
Derek turns to look at me, and in his dark eyes I see something that should probably scare me but somehow doesn't.
"Men like your ex-husband are bullies. They pick on people who can't fight back, who won't fight back. But they're cowards at heart." He pauses. "He just learned that hurting you means going through me. And after what happened here, he knows exactly what that looks like."
The police finish taking our statements an hour later. Derek's account is precise, factual, delivered in the tone of someone who's given similar statements before. Mine is more emotional, full of the history Derek doesn't know. The escalation, the fear, the final straw when David raised his hand to Tyler.
When it's over, when the last police car pulls away and Sarah ushers the other women back inside, Derek and I are left alone on the porch. The sun is fully up now, turning the morning intosomething that looks almost normal despite everything that's happened.
"Thank you," I say, the words feeling inadequate for what he's done.
"You don't need to thank me."
"Yes, I do. If you hadn't been here..."
"But I was here. That's what matters."
I look at him standing there in his leather jacket, not a mark on him despite having just beaten a man unconscious. He looks exactly the same as he did yesterday when he was teaching Tyler to play baseball, but now I know what he's capable of when someone threatens the people he protects.
I should be scared. I should be running in the other direction from a man who can switch from gentle to violent and back again without breaking a sweat.
Instead, I feel safer than I have in years.
Chapter 7 - Ghost
I can't believe I let her see that.
The violence, the way I lost myself in those thirty seconds when David came at me with the knife… That's not who I wanted to be around her. That's not who I am when Tyler asks me to play baseball or when Debbie says my real name like it means something good.
But the moment I saw that blade flash in the morning light, the moment I heard the threat in David's voice when he said he'd make me regret wanting her, something primitive took over. Years of military training, years of MC enforcing, a lifetime of watching men hurt women because they thought they could.
