AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Aggravated stalking of Mrs. Calla Fiore," one of them said as they neared the door.
"Wait!" I called. "He's a friend. He isn't stalking me." They glanced at one another and then continued on their way.
"You'll have to come down to the station and explain then, ma'am," he said.
"Call Ryker now!" Dante announced as he disappeared, and I glanced around nervously. If I wanted to run, I had my moment finally. My decision made, I spun, pulling out my cell phone as I made for the back room and dialed Ryker.
"The police just arrested Dante," I gasped as soon as he answered. "Should I take the car and go to the station?" It might cost me my job at the studio to leave unannounced, but I knew every second I spent unprotected was another second where I'd worry about my safety.
"No," Ryker grunted on the other end of the line. "Fuck! Do not leave the studio, Calla. I'll be there as soon as I can. I'm sending Bryan and Dario to you. They're closer and they'll get there first. You just sit tight, you got me?"
"I got you," I murmured as I hung up, staring at where the back door creaked open and contemplating calling him back immediately. When Jason stepped inside, I heaved out a breath of relief. "Was this you?" I asked, watching as he went to the door that led to the main part of the studio and tugged it closed.
"We don't have time." He said as he set two folders on the table where Dante usually sat, flipping one open. I gasped, turning my eyes away from the photos that stared up at me. I'd thought myself horrified when I found the pictures Ryker had taken of me while I slept, but nothing compared to the photos of mutilated bodies.
Nausea crept up my throat as Jason grabbed my face and forced my attention back to the photos. “What is wrong with you?” I asked Jason. Someone had carved into the face of the woman in the top left, the gashes continuing down her neck to where her throat was slit. The man next to her was beaten and bruised beyond belief, his face unrecognizable thanks to the swelling and his eyes missing from their sockets.
"This is who your husband is. This is what he does to people who cross the Bellandis." The photo in the bottom was of a little boy Axel's age, hand print shaped bruises curled around his throat. I touched my own, remembering the way Ryker had held me pinned to the wall as nausea filled me.
"You're wrong," I said, steeling my spine as I objected. "Ryker wouldn't. He's not capable of that." Even as I said the words, there was that lingering part of me that wondered. I knew he was a killer, but there was a woman.
A child.
What if I shared a bed with a man who murdered children?
Still, I closed the folder and sucked back a deep breath. The man I knew, the one who held me while I cried and laughed with my children, wasn't capable of such atrocities. "I want you to leave."
Jason sighed, closing his eyes for a moment, before he stepped forward and flipped open the top of the second folder. I didn't glance down at it, instead holding his eyes as mine flooded with tears. “Why are you doing this to me?” I repeated.
"I didn't want to show you these, but they're his family, Calla." Curiosity got the better of me, the family he never spoke of too enticing to resist. With a gulp, I glanced down at the photos in the second folder. These hadn't been laid out like a collage. They were just loose. The sight of the dismembered man on top was the first I saw, and I turned my face away. "This was his father." Jason reached down and snatched them up, shoving it into my face so I had no choice but to look as my body trembled with sobs. He tossed the photo to the table, showing me the second one where a woman had been strangled in the same way as the boy from the first set of pictures. "His mother," he growled as he tossed that one down. "And his older brother." I winced, the line drawn from ear to ear across the throat of a man younger than me too much to bear.
"Stop," I begged, turning away from the photos.
"You can't even look at them! Your husband killed them and you can't even look at them. They were a respectable family. His father was a senator in Maryland. He crept into their house one night and strangled his mother while she slept. She woke up before she died. She would have had to. And then once his father and brother discovered him in the house, he used the other son to control his father. He dismembered his father in front of his brother, and then Gerardo Fiore slit his own brother's throat." I froze, relief striking like a match inside me.
"My husband's name is Ryker," I told him, certain that there'd been a mixup.
Jason scoffed, shaking his head as if I were absurd. "You don't even know his real name?" he asked, and I sagged beneath the weight of that confession. "They call him Ryker because he belongs in the Rikers Island psych ward, Calla."
A buzzing rang in my ears, and that was the only defense I had for what I fixated on. "That's spelled with an I." Even to me, it seemed like such a trivial thing to fixate on.
I didn’t even know his name.
"Who the fuck cares? You think those assholes are smart enough to know the difference? He slaughtered his entire family. One wife is already dead. How long until he gets rid of you?" I stared at him, I knew I did. But I didn't really see him. There was nothing but my stunned disbelief and a black fog that crept in at the edges of my vision.
I didn't know my husband at all.
"We have to get you out of here," he said, gathering up the photos and wrapping an arm around my shoulders. His dress shirt felt so warm against my chilled skin, too hot and intruding. I wanted to shrug it off, but I couldn't seem to find the will to move. "Come on, sweetheart." His voice softened as he seemed to realize that he'd broken something inside me. Something I didn’t think would ever be whole again. "We have to get the kids."
"He'll never let us go," I whispered as he guided me to the back door. My legs moved as he made them, stumbling over themselves. "I can't go. It won't end well for me."
"It won't end well for you if you stay," he whispered. "Think of the kids. What do you think happens to them when Ryker gets sick of you?"
"He won't," I argued as his hand closed on the doorknob. "Ryker loves me and the kids. He won't get sick of me."
"You don't think his first wife thought the same thing?"
I didn't have to answer, because Ness flung open the door to the back room, eyeing Jason leading me to the back door. "Your new security is here. What do you want me to do?" she asked, and I knew from the judgment in her eyes she'd already decided regarding Ryker's guilt. I didn't know how she knew that my husband was a Bellandi criminal, but it explained her being so quick to offer me help.
