Bill roars as he tosses me off his back and whirls on me, and if he was mad before, he looks like a demon now. Blood drips from the fingernail marks I've left across his face, and I find myself scrunching into a ball as he quickly storms across the room towards me.
My scream cuts off as his hand clasps around my neck, and I'm choking and gasping for air as he squeezes tightly.
“Whoever yer daddy was never taught you proper manners, but I swear to fucking God I'm gonna put some respect into you if I gotta burn it into yer skin!”
The scream comes ragged from my throat as I feel the scorching sting of the lit end of Bill's cigarette bite into the skin of my arm. I'm squirming and jerking and rasping out screams as he laughs and burns me again and again. Tears flow down my cheeks as I look wildly at my mother.
She's watching TV.
Her only child is being tortured in front of her face and she's not just doing nothing, she's actively ignoring it. And as in-character as that is for her, it almost hurts worse than the burns and the choking hand around my neck.
Almost.
Bill is screaming at me, his face purple with rage and his hand growing tighter and tighter around my neck. Spots dance across my eyes, my vision bending a little in the corners as the air begins to leave my brain. I'm reeling, reaching my hand out and clawing towards my mother; clawing for anything.
Like the kitchen knife lying on the counter above my head.
“Oh, what,” Bill sneers at me, his eyes crazy and his whiskey breath hot on my face; “You gonna stab me, you little slu-”
The only thing I can remember after that is my mother screaming “how could you” over and over again. I'm still choking later, still lying on the floor with my arm on fire, my breath still ragged, and Bill's blood pooling around me, when Sheriff Evans comes in and swears softly before pulling me up and leading me out of the trailer.
I have no idea what happens when you stab someone, but I know it's usually not good. And I know I should be scared, but in that moment, when they push my head down and guide me into the back of the police car with the neighbors watching and my mother screaming obscenities at me…
I’m really just numb. Because anything is better than that.
Out of the frying pan, and into the fire, as they say.
P R E S E N T
The main offices of Archer Holdings in midtown are quiet this hour of the night. Roger, the head of security just gives me a cursory smile and nod as I swipe in with my key-pass.
I really hope he doesn't get in trouble for this. I mean, it's not like he knows what I'm doing, but still.
Logan's office is locked of course, but I could remember the key combo in a coma for the time I've spent here working late or just helping him out.
I know the rest of them all understand, but they don't; not really. They've all lost, I wouldn't ever say anything against that, but the Archer family has each other. They're still a family.
Me? I've just got Logan. Of course that doesn't mean they all don't want him back; I get it. But I have to do this. Bryce can do his thing, but I'm not stalling and I'm not fucking around back here worrying myself to death and wondering what I could have done.
Because there's no “could have” here; there's only “do.”
The wall-safe in Logan's office sits behind a large framed picture of one of his hospitals in Guatemala; all smiling kids faces with my brother and Quinn grinning arm-in-arm behind them all. I feel the anger rise in me again, thinking of them putting the bag over his head and dragging him away from me. No one deserves something like that, but least of all a man like Logan who just gives so much to the world.
They're going to pay.
I know they all see me as Logan's kid sister. They see me as the financial analyst, the office worker, the pencil-pusher, and the book-nerd. They don't see the other side of me; the dark side. Which is good, because I've gone to huge lengths to keep that side and that past hidden from everyone.
Well, everyone except Bryce. Him, I showed it all to.
My brother is predictable, and even if I've never had to go into this safe without him here, I already know the password is his birthday before it even ends up working.
C'mon, bro.
The spare corporate credit card will come in handy, but the hundred-thousand in cash will work pretty well too. It's not- well, ok, it is theft, but I hope it's one they'll forgive me for.
I'm dialing the company's transportation department from his private line and scheduling the flight before I can stop and let my brain catch up with the wild plan I've already decided I'm going to go through with. I've got ten minutes before the car picks me up downstairs, and I run into my own office and grab some spare clothes I keep there.
Three years later and I'm still keeping spare clothes and packed bags ready to go all over the damn place. I briefly wonder if the small bag I kept at Bryce's place is still there or if he's ditched it by now.