Page 78 of The Woman I’ve Become

The naked man glances around, then steps back for me to enter. “Put it on the table.”

I glance at the table next to the door, then place the bag there.

“Open it.” He motions with the gun.

I do as he says, and he moves closer to see inside.

In one quick move, I jab him with the stun gun. It’s the most powerful one on the market and still it takes a little dancing out of his reach and a second hit to put him down. Thankfully his weapon clatters to the floor without firing. As soon as he’s on his knees I stab him with the hypodermic needle and press the plunger. The dose of digoxin is lethal. He’ll be dead very quickly.

While the drug does its thing, I decide to give him a taste of the medicine he so often uses on the women he abuses. First I use a bottle of the wine to slam into his head, but that quickly breaks. Not to be thwarted, I drag the broken, jagged edge along his pasty white flesh, drawing blood. I do this over and over during those last desperate and precious minutes.

Then he is nothing more than a large mound of bloody flesh who will never harm anyone ever again.

The keeper before him, last year, received a heart-stopping dose of another drug. I didn’t abuse him other than to remove his male parts. I thought it was fitting. Although that aspect of his death didn’t make the news. Too bad.

Between a slip and fall in the shower and a diving incident in a pool, as well as a choking-on-his-dinner event, I’ve ensured there was no pattern whatsoever.

I look one last time at the Monster, then I go in search of his hidden play area.

As usual, I find it with ease. There aren’t that many options.

“Hello?” I call out as I descend the hidden stairs.

No one answers, so I have a look around. A sound draws me into a room where a cage much like the one I once lived in stands empty. It’s unlocked, the door open. Whoever was in there is hiding.

I consider searching a bit longer since I would love to see her face and for her to know that I am the one who has set her free, but I can’t linger.

“He’s dead. You can go now,” I say to whoever is listening.

Then I go back upstairs and make my way out of another place where an endless stream of nightmares were created. This time I go out the front and leave that door open as well. Across the street I wait in the shadows awhile to see if she will emerge. But she doesn’t.

When the street people start to arrive, I leave. I can’t risk being around when the police are called.

That’s another of my little tricks. I get the word out to those who live on the streets that an open house will be available at a certain time in a certain place. The needy might as well benefit from this devil’s gains.

And now it’s done. The last of the keepers is dead.

I never have to look back . . . except for when she comes for revenge.

And if she’s breathing, she will come.

Now

35

Westport, Connecticut

When she only stares at me, saying nothing, I shrug. “Besides, after I ended your keeper and you didn’t come busting into my home to try and take your life back, I decided maybe you were dead or didn’t want your old life any longer. I know firsthand, the shit we lived through changes a person.”

Maybe giving her a chance at freedom was a mistake. But it was something I had to do. Fair is fair. I have done bad things in my life, but I have never been that kind of bad person. If I had forgotten her and never gone back, I would have been just like her, and I couldn’t do that.

Besides, I knew I had the upper hand. Outside of having her parents exhumed and doing DNA on whatever was left of them after that fiery car crash, she has no way to prove she’s the real Julia. No other known living relatives. No fingerprints on record. No identifying marks. Nothing. I, on the other hand, am known as Julia Anderson Belmont from the attorney overseeing the trust to the husband who fathered my child and everyone in between. Doctors. Clients. Neighbors. Shop owners. Even the Anderson’s household staff accepted me when I showed up again months after the Andersons were buried.

Julia may have hoped to charge in here and take her life back, but she surely recognizes proving her story won’t be easy. Doing so would also force her to admit that she knew I had been taken by her lover Casey Duval and that she told no one. Not to mention certain other things of which I am aware.

A genuine catch-22.

This showdown was always going to happen. The two of us will have to decide how to live with our respective decisions.