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• Prologue •
The silence. It wasn’t comforting. It didn’t bring me peace. When it came, I knew it was the calm before the storm. My entire body was drawn up tight, preparing for the next moment. The one when the rage would explode from him and I would be the recipient. But it hadn’t always been that way. If it had, I’d not be here today. The six-carat diamond ring that weighed down my left hand would never have been placed there.
How easy it had been for him to charm a girl like me. Looking back, I knew I’d been an easy mark. Not hard to impress, desperate for affection, to belong, to be wanted.
Now, as I stood in the three-million-dollar home in Buckhead, Georgia, all I wanted was to be alone. A small house in the country with no one. Perhaps a dog as my companion. He’d be golden and big. We would sit on the worn, faded sofa and watch television at night together. He would sleep at the foot of my bed. There would be no moments of fear. My constant state of anxiety would no longer control my every move. I wouldn’t have to please anyone. Except my dog. I’d call him Bear. Because he would be as fluffy as one.
“Where the fuck is my striped Brunello Cucinelli blazer!” Hill shouted from the staircase.
I tensed. I’d known from the look in his eyes this morning when I served him breakfast that this was coming. The unsettled, agitated glower had been simmering in his gaze. I’d made his favorite breakfast, asked about his day, done my best to pretend that I cared what he had to say. It was a chore that I’d perfected. Pretending this was perfect. Trying my best to give him his idea of how it should look, how I should be, what he wanted the world to believe we were.
“Hanging to the left of your shoes, two blazers over on the top row,” I replied, knowing exactly where I had put it once I picked it up from the cleaners yesterday.
He had an important meeting today with a company who wanted to buy one of the buildings from a company he represented.
His heavy footsteps as he stomped down the stairs sent a shudder through me. I fought the instinct to run. Scanning the living room, I tried to decide the best place to be when he approached. Somewhere that there were no sharp edges I could fall on, free of any objects that could be used to cause more damage than just his fists. As I hurried over to the far corner, my mind raced with things I could say to defuse him. I knew his blazer was there. He’d probably found it before asking me. He had been looking for an excuse. Any reason to hurt me.
The moment he entered the room—his blond hair styled perfectly; his lean, toned body dressed in the white linen pants I had also picked up from the cleaners yesterday and a light-blue shirt that was perfectly pressed—he swung his gaze to me. The rage boiling in those eyes I had once trusted knotted up my stomach. This was a very bad day. It was rare there was ever a good day anymore, but the bad days had different levels of extremity.
“Would you like me to go see where your blazer is? I must have put it in the wrong spot.” I hadn’t, but taking the blame sometimes saved me. I had learned the ways to please him. The more I did that, the less I paid for whatever it was he was convinced I had done.
His clean-shaven face was tan, and his teeth, which he had professionally whitened, were clenched as he stalked toward me. “Did I not tell you that today was important? You live here like a fucking lazy mooch who has ONE job, Carmella. Yet you are too ignorant to even do that right!” he roared before his hand cracked against the side of my face. “There are wealthy women from powerful families who would kill to be my wife. Women worthy to carry my name! Yet I chose you. A nobody from the swamps of Louisiana. You should be grateful that I gave you this life. FUCKING GRATEFUL!” He grabbed my arm and threw me onto the floor.
I said nothing. I knew if I did when he was like this, it only made it worse. Even begging for forgiveness seemed to make the monster inside him expand.
“I let your face and body seduce me, and I pay for it every goddamn day of my life!” He sneered the hateful words, then kicked me hard, taking my breath away.
The sharp pain that shot through me made it impossible to move. If I tried to even shift, the searing in my side would cause me to cry out, and he’d do it again.
“GET UP! GO GET MY FUCKING BLAZER!” he bellowed.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and forced myself to do as I had been told. The agony caused a cold sweat to break out all over my body. I found a focal point and breathed out and in through my nose. Keeping my eyes locked on the door that led to the back patio, where I would escape if I could. Imagining I was running for the door to freedom. That I would never see this house again. My secluded cabin in the woods with Bear the dog was there, waiting for me.
“If you would just try, Carmella—do something worth the life you’ve been gifted—then I wouldn’t be so angry. You bring this on yourself. You know that, yet you do it anyway.” He was talking softer now. Explaining himself. It was part of the routine.
I nodded. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”
He sighed heavily, as if he was weary from trying to teach me.
“Go upstairs and get my blazer, then just get out of my sight. I don’t want to look at you wincing and being dramatic,” he ordered me.
I did the best I could to stand up without crying out. I didn’t make eye contact with him, keeping my head down as I hurried to the staircase. I wanted to get away from him as much as he wanted to not see me. I’d get his blazer, then go back upstairs and hide until he left. I would be kept here all day to clean, make sure everything he’d touched upstairs was back in its place, prepare the evening meal, and hope he came home too late to eat it.
If I had known then that it would be the last time I had to live in fear of Churchill Millroe, the pain would have been easier to bear.
• one •
“Monsters could come in pretty packages. I knew that only too well.”
Rumor
I should have called the police. That would have been the sane thing to do. I glanced back at Hill’s Mercedes I’d parked at a busy service station I stopped at before I ran out of gas in Florida. I scanned the area, looking for a sign to clue me in as to where I was exactly. The abandoned Mercedes wouldn’t be noticed right away. This place was crawling with people. It was why I had chosen this as my stop. I had to calm down and think.
Where did I go from here, and how? I couldn’t use anything that required my identification or credit cards.
There was a little less than a thousand dollars in cash stuck in my purse. I’d taken it from Hill’s closet. It was where I had gone to hide shortly after I heard the door on our veranda crash open. I heard Hill’s panicked voice and men demanding their money, saying something about him stealing from them or selling something that wasn’t his to sell. I stood there, listening long enough to know Hill was in danger. The way he begged for them to let him fix it. The tremor in his voice. Part of me enjoyed hearing him terrified. He deserved that. To know how it felt. The other part knew I was in danger and had to hide before the intruders found me.
I barely got myself tucked away when the sound of the gun went off, and then I sat quietly, barely breathing while huddled in the storage cubby inside his walk-in closet. Footsteps got closer, and muffled voices I couldn’t hear well through the walls came, then went. I stayed there for over an hour. When the silence continued, I made a plan. I would leave. This was my chance to escape. I never thought I would get this kind of opportunity to flee Hill. He’d made sure I had no money of my own or a vehicle. My phone had a tracker on it so he could see where I was at all times. So many nights, I had lain awake, believing that my freedom would come with my death. The day that he hit me too hard or not stopped choking me in time.
