Monster(39)

“Come here,” she ordered, wrapping her boney fingers around his emaciated arm to tug him forward. “I want to show you something.” She forced him to sit and joined him seconds later on the stained threadbare carpet that had seen better days. She was swaying, the hand holding the gun not quite so steady. “Let’s play a game,” she whispered with a small smile that chilled him. “It’s called Russian roulette.”

Dominic was shaking. His heart was hammering so fast he could feel it in his throat. He had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. “Mommy…” He wondered if he could outrun her, his verdant gaze frantically eyeing the little bit of hallway behind her. “I…I don’t want to play, Mommy.”

“Shhh…” she soothed. “We’re both going to die, baby,” she whispered while her dark, dilated eyes held his. “Let’s see who God takes first.” She raised the gun to her temple and unflinchingly squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

The sound of her laughter was off, frightening him like something of nightmares. When she aimed the gun at him, Dominic stared into the perfectly rounded chasm of his death and visibly shuddered. Before she squeezed the trigger, his gaze found hers, and in that eternal moment, he saw…nothing. There was nothing in her dark brown eyes, not even an ounce of warmth a mother should’ve felt for her child.

Dominic, physically too young and yet mentally mature enough to grasp the implication of that moment, closed his eyes to everything: to her, the gun and the burning sensation in his chest that felt like hunger, but hurt so much more. He thought of nothing but the toy truck he’d left on the couch, the one she’d given him, as he heard the click and her laughter soon after.

It had been in that instant, with the click of the empty chamber, that Dominic remembered shutting everything down. He was lost in his memories, lost in his fear, lost in his rage, lost in the hatred that poisoned his heart, that kept him from seeing or feeling or caring for anything else. Her remembered numbness and the sinister chill that had crept in his veins and swept with agonizing slowness through every crevice of his being, blanketing everything in a dead, cold frost, encasing what remained of his heart in ice. It had felt good not to care, not to feel and the fear that had paralyzed him, made him weak and powerless dissipated along with everything else.

Fueled by hatred, by a twisted form of vengeance, Dominic had lived solely for himself, cruelly exploiting and manipulating the people around him to fit to his needs, only to callously discard them when they had stopped being useful to him. And it should’ve been the same with his wife. From the very moment he’d seen this woman, Dominic had set out to have her, and when he finally did get her into his possession, he’d lorded his authority over her with a devilish sadism that would’ve made the Marquis de Sade gleeful. The more she’d resisted, the more aggressive he became, emotionally whipping her with chains that had tethered him. He’d punished her for mistakes she’d never made. Why? Because he’d feared her. She’d posed a danger to his mental stability, to his very foundation… to the little boy he’d hidden beneath the shallow depths of his soul.

“I lived here. But I wasn’t really living so much as surviving. My mother…”he exhaled a sharp breath and drew another back in raggedly; in the excruciating silence of the car it sounded like nails on a chalk board to him. Shoulders raised, brows furrowed and tension ready to go off like a spring trap, he kept his head down unable to look at her, but he saw her hand, delicate, small, and sweetly providing comfort to a man who did not deserve it.

“Tell me, Dominic,” she implored gently only to inaudibly gasp when he unfurled his fist and caught her hand within his own. Interlacing their fingers, he gripped her with bruising strength. Almost instinctively her fingers settled and squeezed back to show that she was there.

“There was nothing good about her, but if she’d wanted, I would’ve stayed, I would’ve loved her enough for the both of us. But she was cruel beyond comprehension. She hated me too much to see or feel anything else. How can you possibly love the product of your rape? That’s why a part of me knew that I deserved what she did. I was a constant reminder of what my father did to her. I can’t remember a day when she wasn’t high. I can’t remember a day she wasn’t screwing some guy to pay for that high. When she was high she liked to play games. Russian roulette: one bullet, a fifty-fifty chance that it had my name on it. I think she liked that game the most. Then there were the burn marks, cigarette burns she’d dig into my flesh until I screamed. I handled the beatings alright. Even the lack of food hadn’t been so bad. But it was the darkness. She had a special room for me, a little crawlspace no bigger than a box. I’d scratch my nails on the door until it they bled, screaming at the top of my lungs for her to let me out.”

Dominic did not allow himself a moment to think; the words came and he permitted them, purging himself of secrets and memories he’d kept for far too long. He told her of waking up in his own filth, surrounded by the stench, while the darkness consumed him, toying with his young mind, driving him further into madness. He shed his pretense, his arrogance, his very pride and laid it out at her feet and dragged a knife from Adam’s apple to navel to reveal the ugliness that dwelled at his core. Dominic bared it all.

“Two million dollars and I was no longer her problem. She didn’t look back, we didn’t exchange words, and the last thing I remember of her is her tattered sweater that smelled of cigarettes and hate. A hate that I have inherited and nourished with rage. It grows in me, Eden. Here,” he touched the middle left side of his chest, “there is nothing here but ugliness.” Voice raw, he released her hand and gripped the steering wheel once again. “I just…I wanted you to know. I wanted you to see.”

For a very long moment afterwards, nothing was said, until she settled her hand on his arm, and Dominic recoiled slightly. When he finally braved a glance at her, anguish twisted his insides. He’d expected revulsion, scorn, or even worse, apathy from her, but what he saw instead was compassion coating her fine-bone features. There had been nothing but softness and understanding in her beautiful amber eyes and Dominic had never felt so underserving, so unworthy of her.

“Thank you for telling me,” she uttered in the silence, her voice soft and gentle. “I can only imagine how difficult it was for you to tell me, so thank you.”

It seemed as though she would say more; she opened her mouth a few times but words failed her. Dominic could not blame her, the fact that she had listened was more than he could’ve asked for. With an imperceptible tilt of his head in acknowledgment, he swallowed around the lump lodged in his throat and started the engine. When her hand slipped away, he fought against the urge to draw it back. But Dominic kept a hand on the steering wheel and another on the gear shift, determined to see them out of this neighborhood unscathed. With just a glance outside, he noted the group of men seated on the playground, their gazes had not left the car since Dominic had pulled into the parking lot. He figured the only reason they had yet to approach was because of the heavily tinted windows that provided them a trace of anonymity. But they would remain idle for long and Dominic wanted to get them out of town before anything happened. With everything else he’d done to her, endangering her life would not be one of them.





Chapter Eighteen


Eden tossed and turned, punched her pillow a few dozen times to get rid of the lumpiness, hoping to find a comfortable position to sleep, but her attempts proved futile. No matter how hard she tried, sleep wouldn’t come. But then it really wasn’t from a lumpy pillow or how she couldn’t stay cool despite the centralized air conditioning. The culprit of her sleep deprivation was the chaotic state of her mind, and it was wreaking havoc on the rest of her body. Her mind replayed Dominic’s confession on an endless loop. She’d had her suspicions about his childhood, especially after the little bit Lucas had revealed, but Eden could not have imagined the extent of the abuse he’d suffered. Even now, she shuddered, horrified by the tale he’d recounted in that bleak, detached voice that had seemed too far away for her to reach him. Sitting up, she drew her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. How could a mother treat her own child in such a way? In her turbulent state, Eden tried to imagine the horror he went through, the crippling fear, and the unmitigated cruelty he’d endured, and it made her heart burn. She hurt for him. She hurt for the abused little boy and for the man who carried his scars, scars that were so deeply entrenched they were now permanently rooted in his core.

Eden had a slight understanding of the man now; she understood the reason for the enmity that he’d harbored for so long, not necessarily towards her, but she’d been the most convenient target. By no means did she condone his actions, but understanding led to clarity, and with that lucidity, she was able to feel compassion for him regardless of the part of her that wished to remain angry. How could he trust when his beliefs were rooted in violence, fear, and hate? How could he show affection and love, when he had been so cruelly deprived of it? He’d been a child, simply a child, blameless, innocent, and eternally hopeful when he’d undergone those unimaginable atrocities. If his mother had been capable of betraying him this badly, then what was to be said for the rest of the world?