20
Violet
She has finally left the room.
My head swims from the last three hours of her screaming in my face, slapping me, and making sure I know that she is in charge. The woman is crazy, but I’m pregnant and exhausted and it is starting to show. My limbs burn, my body aches with every breath, and my wrists are bound so tightly by coarse rope that the fibres have cut into raw flesh. I shift uncomfortably and gingerly flex my fingers, searching for slack. There is none. If I don’t free myself, I’m as good as dead.
The single, sputtering bulb overhead casts shadows across the floor. I crane my neck, eyes scanning every inch of the battered walls and the heavy metal desk in the corner. I get up off the cold concrete, legs numb and wobbly, and shuffle toward the old desk, praying I can find something useful inside. I know where we are; it didn’t take me long to figure it out. We are at Travis’s storage facility. Down here, though, nobody uses it anymore.
But Janice isn’t smart enough to have cleared everything out.
She didn’t have time.
She just wanted to get me here so she could carry out whatever plan is in her head.
Clenching my teeth, I have to use my feet to shove the drawers open, losing balance multiple times. Eventually, I get them open. The first one is full of paper and mess, nothing useful. The second, though, is a little more interesting. Inside lie pens, paperclips—and at the very back, a metal letter openerwith a slender, bird-beak point. I kick the drawer until it falls out onto the ground, and then I shuffle myself down and pick it up with my toes.
How the hell am I going to use this to get these ropes off?
My wrists are behind my back—no chance of getting them forward—but maybe I can wedge the letter opener in the desk and use it to break the ropes. It takes me a minute, but eventually I manage to shove it down a broken piece of metal, enough that it is tight. Then, I turn around and try to line my wrists up against the blade.
The first try makes me hiss out loud; the point jabs into my flesh, gouging a furrow along my wrist, warm blood worming its way between my fingers. I close my eyes and breathe, count to five, picture Travis’s face, and try again. I drag it in short, brutal jerks. The rope tightens, resists, frays, catches, and before long the fibres are wet and slippery with blood. My heart punches at my ribs. Every few seconds, I freeze and listen, terrified Janice will come back. But she is busy, dragging out whatever endgame she’s planned for me.
It feels like an eternity, but eventually the rope gives with a faint pop. I exhale in pure relief as my arms come back where they are meant to be. I don’t pay too much attention to my blood-soaked hands. Instead, I get the letter opener out of the wedge and shove it in my pants. I crawl to the corner and sit back down.
Now, all I can do is wait.
Janice is back within an hour. She sweeps in, ankle boots echoing, knife already in her hand. She drags one finger along the blade, gaze distracted. Her nose is pinched, lips twisting as she walks across the cracked concrete and stands over me. I stare up at her, hands behind my back, not wanting to tip her off that I am free.
“Was it always this bad,” I ask, casually, “or did you just wake up one morning and decide to go full reality show psycho?”
She gasps, and something in her face clarifies, like a mask snapping into place. “Shut up. You ruined everything the day you showed up. If you’d just left Travis alone, he’d be happy by now. I’d be happy—” Her voice breaks and she jabs the knife forward, an awkward, unpractised motion that betrays her bravado. “You’re the reason my life is broken. You and your perfect, helpless act—”
I keep my face blank. “Did you even have a boyfriend who was abusing you, or did you do that just to get him where you wanted him?”
“No one ever beat me,” she says, and then she laughs. “But it worked. All it took was a bruise and a story. Travis came running. He always comes running. He cares about me. It was all the proof I needed. He was willing to do whatever it took...”
“He likes saving broken animals, what can I say,” I taunt.
She lunges.
I move first.
I shove up with my legs and drive my shoulder into her stomach. She goes down, but not before the knife rakes across my forearm, cutting through the skin in a hot sting. I use the momentum to roll us. My blood soaks into her shirt. The letter opener is like dead weight in my hand, but I don’t hesitate; I aim for her stomach and drive it in, hard. She shrieks, kicks, tries to bite. We roll, and she claws at my face, but I have the opener wedged between us, my arm pinning her arm, her own knife clattering away in the scramble.
Her blood and my blood mix on the cold floor. I want her to stop screaming, but she makes this thin, desperate sound, animal and pathetic. Still, she is strong and unwilling to give up. She keeps fighting, clawing at me, kicking her legs, waving her fists. “You can’t have him,” she gasps. “You don’t deserve to—”
I punch her in the mouth. Hard. The shock of it stuns us both. “I’m not going to let you take what’s mine, you psycho.”
She tries to knee me, but I’m faster now. I shove my hand into her hair, twist her head back, and then slam her into the concrete. Before she can get up, the door swings open. Travis is there, wild-eyed, Chief standing behind him with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. They see the blood, the wreck of us on the floor.
Janice is rolling on the ground, groaning and clutching her stomach.
I have managed to get her to stay down.
“Violet? Jesus, Violet!”
Travis is beside me in a second, his hands everywhere. Chief already has his phone out. He’s calling the police, his voice clipped. I watch as Janice tries to move, but I know she is struggling. She still has enough venom to fix a glare on me, one last time.
