“No, that’s fine. Tell him I’ll speak to him later or tomorrow. Thanks, Danielle.”
“No problem, Damita.”
After hanging up the phone, Damita did what she was afraid to do. She went into the bathroom and took a look in the mirror. Her face was swollen and bloody and her right eye was partially closed.
She found her phone charger and plugged it in. She was happy to see Neal hadn’t sabotaged her phone. She would need it when she left. She was also happy to see that he was gone. He was such an anal-retentive sociopath, after everything he had done to her the night before, he probably still went to work. He couldn’t stand for things to not follow his stringent schedule. She didn’t want to waste any time getting out of the apartment, in case he returned home early, so she decided she would call her mother with her cell phone, once she was out the door.
Damita’s home phone rang as she turned on the television to check the weather. When she picked up the phone, all she could hear was a woman sobbing. The first person she thought of was her mother.
Her face was etched in a frown. “Mom, is that you? What is it? What’s happened? You have to calm down! I can’t understand you!”
“Damita, it’s me, Carmella. Turn on the news.”
“I already have it on. What’s wrong, Carmella? What’s happening?”
“Just watch. He’s dead, Damita. Brandon is dead.”
“He can’t be. You’re wrong. I just saw Brandon. We went running together yesterday. I ran into him in Central Park and we ran together.”
“That’s where it happened; in Central Park, yesterday. You might have been the last person to see him alive.”
“What happened?”
“Do you have the news on?”
“I do, but I haven’t seen anything about Brandon. How did he die?”
“He was murdered. Someone stabbed him in the back while he was in the park. They were able to get him to the hospital, but he had a punctured lung. He died a few hours later.”
Finally, Damita saw the mention of Brandon’s murder: Man stabbed to death while jogging in Central Park. So far, The NYPD has no suspects.
As much as she didn’t want to admit it to herself, Damita knew who had killed Brandon. She didn’t want to believe Neal could be capable of something so sinister. It was easy for a lot of men to beat a woman. It took a special kind of insanity to go around slaughtering random people.
“Damita, are you still there?”
She was so shaken by the news, Damita couldn’t hear a word Carmella was saying and hung up on her while she was still talking.
She slumped to the floor and cried. It was because of her that Brandon was dead. She was sure her ribs were broken and maybe one of her fingers. She wasn’t Neal’s wife. She was his prisoner and his punching bag. It was no different than if she had been abducted by some nut job in an unmarked van. Now all that was left was to escape.
Just as Damita expected he would do, Neal came home from work early. She was sitting in the living room, waiting for him.
She looked at him angrily. “What did you do?”
Damita beat at his chest and cried. She wasn’t afraid. She hated him and she couldn’t keep herself from reacting to what she knew he had done.
“You killed him! You killed Brandon!”
He looked at her unabashedly. “And if I did?”
“I’ll go to the police.”
“No, you won’t.”
“What makes you so sure? You haven’t left me many choices. Either I stay and die, or I leave and, according to you, I still die, along with my family and friends. So, the only choice, as I see it, is to go to the police.”
“Damita, you do that and I can’t be responsible for what might happen. Your mother isn’t getting any younger and too much stress might be enough to cause her heart to give out or even worse.”
“The police will protect me and my mother.”
“Let me ask you something, Damita.”
“What?”
“Have you ever seen my client list?”
“What?”
“You heard exactly what I said. Have you ever seen my client list?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with this. That client list has saved my ass more times than I can begin to count. It’s what killed the investigation into my first wife’s death and that list and the people on it will continue to serve me well. Admit it, Damita, this is what you wanted. You don’t think I heard your conversations with your girlfriends and your mother time and time again. You wanted a strong man. That’s exactly what you got.”
“You’re not strong. You’re weak. Any man that would do what you’ve done to me is weak. Did it make you feel like a big strong man when you raped me or when you broke my ribs?”