Page 40 of Splintered Security
“Will you send me the pic from Friday morning?”
Silently, he grabs his phone, taps a few icons, and my phone is dinging with the photo I requested and more.
It hasn’t even been seventy-two hours. I stare at the image. The man there is such a far cry from the man-boy he was when he graduated high school. He’s just as handsome, actually he’s more so. But his posture, his demeanor, all of it screams of discipline, duty, and determination.
And the way he’s looking at me in this picture, he’s… mine.
That settles in my bones in an odd way. Like I could eat waffles every Sunday, count on foot rubs, and somehow, we’dmanage.
Lulled into that false sense of security, my old phone catches me off guard with the awful siren sound notifying me that Heath hasn’t forgotten me. I know he hasn’t. He never will. My little bubble of life with foot massages and waffles pops, and it all comes crashing down.
“I wouldn’t ask and I don’t want you to, but I need the intel. Do you mind? I know it’s going to suck, but I’ll be right here with you the whole time.” He extends the phone. “Put it on speaker.”
I do as he asks and brace for the cruelty that is to come.
… But I don’t brace enough.
Ren
“Hello?” Annika’s voice is tentative.
“You answered. Didn’t think you’d have the guts.”
“I’m here.” She visibly hunches in on herself. Her shoulders roll in, and she tucks her chin.
“Where’s here, you little cunt?”
Anni’s eyes go wide as she looks to me.
“What do you want, Heath?”
“I want to know where you are. I want you here. I want you to do your fucking job and pay your fucking debts.” His voice is a shout, until lethal calm enters it. “I want to punish you for disobeying me, and not in the way that you’ll get off on it.”
Her eyes slam shut as I clench my jaw to the point of pain.
“Did you hear me, bitch?” he seethes.
“Last time wasn’t enough? Or the time before that? I thought the bruises would teach you a lesson. If not that, the blood surely would’ve. Dumb bitch.”
Anni says nothing. There’s nothing she can say when he’s screaming in a tirade like this.
“Maybe I should let Conyers have at you for real. He’s itching to use that knife on you again. Maybe this time I’ll let him slice your cunt with?—”
I know better. I fucking know better, but it doesn’t matter. I swipe the phone from her hand and hurl it. It lands somewhere in the kitchen, and from the sound of it, at least some piece of it is broken.
She’s cowering in fear.
I’m shaking with rage.
I can’t calm myself enough to help her, and she shouldn’t get near me either.
After several moments, and against both of our instincts, I scoop up her tightly balled-up body, offering no words of comfort. I have no right.Idid that to her. I asked her to allow herself to be spoken to that way, put in that position, to be made to feel low, to revisit torture. I did that.
“I’ll never forgive myself.” The words come out on a whisper. If I attempt anything more, I’ll scream until I’m hoarse.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is.” I give her a squeeze that tells her not to argue with me. My control is frayed and the small string I’m holding onto is unravelling.
