Page 75 of My Dark Horse Prince

Fury and rage bubble up inside of me. “You’re a sick human being,” I say. “You should be in jail.” My hands shake. My blood boils. For one split second, I wonder what would happen if I hit him, for a change. Could he take a hit, or can he just inflict pain?

“Get out of here,” he says. “I’ll tell Danils what a pile of filth you are. Forget about that second chance with him.” He shakes his head and curses me under his breath.

I’m stupidly desperate to do something.

With every single fiber of my being, I want to hurt this man who has done nothing but damage my poor, widowed mother, but right alongside my rage is a very real, very old fear.

But something new occurs to me.

I have no idea what would happen if I struck him in the face, but even if I can’t beat him, even if he handles pain just fine, maybe seeing him hit me would galvanize my mother. She might leave him, finally.

But it’s a lot of maybes.

And I already know what happens if I drive away. I’ll be safe. It’s also what my mother would want. So even though it pains me, I step back and pull my keys out of my pocket. I’m less than one step away from my car when I hear it.

My mom’s whimper.

He didn’t close the door all the way, so this time, I can hear everything. His cursing. His demeaning verbal attacks. His accusations that she wanted me to come over here and intervene for her. “You called the cops,” he says.

“You can check my phone,” she says. “I didn’t.”

“Then you sent your daughter a message somehow,” he says. “You made her call them.”

I’m a little embarrassed that we never thought of that. We should have had some kind of message, something we could say in front of him that meant something else.

But the sound of his fist against something soft, the splatter-thunk sound of my already purple and horribly damaged mother being beaten again by her husband, it takes the almost equally balanced rage and terror inside me and it tips the scales just enough.

Before I have time to even think about what I’m doing, I push through the almost-closed front door, and I grab the busted lamp off the ground. I don’t stop moving. While Martinš is staring at me slack-jawed, while my mother watches in abject horror, I stride toward him, lift my arm, and slam it downward, aiming for his ugly face.

But I don’t succeed.

The lamp’s a wooden block with a shattered glass bulb on top, and it would really hurt if it smashed into his jaw. His hand, however, seems to have almost no trouble stopping me.

And then he laughs.

I’ll never forget that sound.

Laughter should be bright, and happy, and infectious.

This was infectious alright, but in the same way that tuberculosis or the bubonic plague are. It’s certain death to all joy. He drops my mom’s hair, which he had been holding her up by, and stands. “Look at this. Your little girl finally came to play.” Faster than I thought possible, he yanks the lamp from my hand and slaps it against his free hand. “And you even brought me a toy.”

I think if I hadn’t grabbed the lamp, things might have ended differently. I might not have been beaten as badly. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.

As much rage as I held inside, as much pent-up fury and repressed hatred as I had, Martinš apparently had even more, and he’d had years and years of practice converting that rage into meaningful action.

It’s the lamp, in the end, that he uses to shatter my femur. By then, that horrible pain’s just more noise. I don’t know who calls one-one-nine to report the emergency. I don’t know what the paramedics who come to get me look like. I do hear my mother telling them that I got in a fight with her after she broke my lamp.

It’s so ludicrous that I start to laugh, but even that slight effort on my part causes my split lip to bleed profusely, flooding my mouth with an iron taste and choking me. I spit it on the disgusting rug I’m lying on, and I stare right at Martinš. “He hit me,” I manage to say. “With that lamp. My mom did nothing.”

After that, I pass out.

When I wake up, I’m in a hospital bed, all alone. I call out, but no one comes. It’s just me and a beeping machine. I don’t even realize that my leg doesn’t work. I just look around, call out another time or two and go back to sleep.

Almost ten days later, when I’m finally discharged, my leg in a cast after a sequence of three surgeries, my sister Adriana’s the one picking me up. “The police still haven’t come by,” I say.

“And they won’t,” she says. “Mom has given several statements that you two had a fight and that she hurt you. Martinš gave one that backs up her story. Your only option will be to press charges against her, but she says you started it. Since you’re the aggressor, they’re not inclined to do much to her.”

I can’t speak at first, as her words sink in.

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