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“Dani! Darling! Wait, please wait!” Tony said. “Just hear me out.”
And then she saw Alex was with him.
“I don’t know what game you two are playing coming here like this, but I don’t appreciate it,” Dani said.
Alex put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and moved into view.
“Don’t be like this, Dani. Tony’s just a passionate man. He overdoes it sometimes, but he’s harmless, believe me,” he said and flashed a big smile.
“He’s not harmless, and neither are you,” Dani snapped. “If either of you had a sense of decency, you’d know how to take no for an answer.” Then she shut the door in their faces and turned all the locks.
Almost immediately, two hard thuds sounded against her door, like they’d both kicked it. Then she heard one of them say, “You’re a bitch, and you’re going to be sorry.”
“I’m already sorry,” Dani shouted. “Leave me alone or I’m calling the police.”
She heard muffled cursing, and then the sound of their footsteps as they walked away, and thought that was the end of it. But she was wrong. It was just the last time Tony spoke of reconciliation. His cajoling had moved to anger, and the stalking began.
The first were obscene phone calls in the middle of the night, promising all kinds of torturous things that were going to happen to her. Threatening notes left on the windshield of her car. And even though she lived on the second floor in her apartment building, more than once she’d awakened to a shadowy figure standing out on the balcony beyond her bedroom, trying to peer through the shades she’d drawn.
That’s when she contacted a lawyer and filed a protection order against Tony Bing. To her dismay, it only upped his game. Dani made so many frantic phone calls to the police about what continued to happen, that the police began to think she was making it up. He was never there when they arrived, and the shadowy figure caught on security cameras was too indefinite to make an ID.
She was twenty-nine years old and had never felt so helpless, or so alone.
It was late and Dani was tired. She’d run her fingers through her short dark curls so many times this evening that they were standing on end. But there was one more load of laundry in the dryer, and one last set of math papers to grade before she could go to bed. Tomorrow was Friday. The last day of school in Monroe before spring break, and it couldn’t come any too soon.
She heard the buzzer go off on the dryer and laid her papers aside to get out the load. Most of it was clothesshe wore to work, and leaving them in the dryer wasn’t an option. She carried them to the bed and began folding up T-shirts and putting the rest on hangers and hanging the garments in the closet.
She’d just put up the last stack of clean T-shirts into her dresser when the doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock and frowned. It was after 9:00 p.m. Whoever it was could just go away.
But they kept ringing and ringing, and then the banging and shouting began, and she recognized Tony’s voice.
“Oh my God,” Dani muttered, and made a run for the door. “What’s wrong with you? No means no! Go away! Leave me alone! I’m going to call the police.”
“Nothing is wrong with me! What’s wrong with you?” he shouted. “Why wouldn’t you answer the door? You’ve got another man in there, don’t you? You’ve been cheating on me, you bitch!”
And before she could answer, he kicked the door in, breaking the chain and sending her flying against the wall in the foyer. Before she could get up, Tony grabbed her by the hair and began dragging her through the apartment.
“Where is he? I’ll kill him; I’ll kill both of you!” Tony shouted.
Dani was screaming. “There’s no one here but me! You’re hurting me! Let me go!”
He let go of her hair and yanked her to her feet, his hands digging into the flesh of her shoulders. She wasstaring into the face of a man she didn’t recognize. His eyes were wild, his pupils dilated, and his words were no longer making sense, and in that moment, she knew she was going to die.
He drew back his fist, hitting her square on the jaw. She heard it pop, and then she was on the floor and he was on top of her, pounding her with his fists until everything went black.
She woke up in an ambulance, so wracked with pain she thought the siren was her still screaming. With both eyes swollen shut and the scream engulfing her, the EMTs hands upon her body became Tony Bing, still beating her. And then she heard a voice.
“Dani, you’re in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. The police caught your attacker. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
The relief was overwhelming, but it didn’t last.
She went home from the hospital three days later with broken ribs, a broken jaw, massive contusions and abrasions, and barely able to see.
Tony Bing bonded out of jail before she got out of the hospital. She knew he was still out there, somewhere. He and Alex.
Her heart sank.
There was no justice in this world.
