Chapter 41 #2
My heart is in a hundred thousand different pieces of fine porcelain. Before he got his hands on it, it was whole. Simple but beautiful, just like the little house I grew up in, the one he tore me from. I never asked for much from him, just that he leave me alone.
That’s all I wanted.
To be left in peace. To not be wanted, to not be desired. To not be taken against my will because of it.
“Leland.” My voice breaks.
He looks but doesn’t respond.
“Why do you want to keep me at all?” I whisper, another tear slipping down my face.
He reaches out and cups my chin. I look up at him, but he’s not seeing me, not the way Jensen does.
It takes everything I have not to shudder as his hand drags down my neck, down over my collarbones to the satin bra cupping my breasts.
His middle finger runs a straight line to the diamond tucked between them.
His lids are lowered, eyes focused on my body wrapped in gold and silk.
“Because I like beautiful things,” he says finally.
All at once, I’m back in the river by the church. I’m desperate, trying to scrub the blood out, trying to wash Leland from my sheets. He did that like it was nothing. I know that to him, it was truly nothing, a shallow river in the light of the rest of his life.
He is a boy reaching for the best toy, holding it up so everyone can see what he owns. He is a consumer, a destructor, hungry for everything and nothing at all.
He took me. He took this city. God knows what he’ll take next.
His ego will burn the world down if nobody stops it.
All these years, I showed him the wounds he put on me. I begged for understanding. I made myself soft and vulnerable, hoping he’d look into my eyes and really see my pain. He never did because he never wanted to understand.
“Leland,” I whisper. “The night you got me pregnant…why didn’t you wear a condom?”
He’s not listening, stroking over my stomach. With slow pressure, he slides his other hand around my body and lays me down against the pillows. The heat of his mouth burns my stomach as he kisses me.
“Leland,” I repeat. “Please tell me.”
“I don’t remember.” He lifts his head. “Why does it matter, Della? You’d have gotten pregnant eventually after we married.”
Crack.
I was wrong that there’s no more heart left in me to break. Right now, he’s grinding the final shards of it to dust with his heel. Biblical anger pours through me, mixing with a deep sadness, deeper than the river I tried to wash him away in.
Maybe he’s lying. Or maybe that’s the God honest truth.
It doesn’t matter. His time is up.
“You will behave tonight,” he says against my bare skin.
The ceiling swims overhead. My only prayer is that the drug works fast, and that I gave him enough to sedate him.
A hot tear etches into my hair. “I understand,” I whisper.
He flips us with effort, like his hands are unsteady. I’m on top of him, straddling his body, and his arousal beneath my bare thigh sends waves of sickness through my stomach. Are his eyes heavy? Or is that just the light?
“Do what you did to him,” he says. “Do it to me, but make it better.”
He slurs, and I swear I can hear it. Slowly, I bend and touch his forehead with my lips, then his cheekbone where Jensen broke the skin. He makes a noise in his chest, and this time, I know for certain he’s fading.
“Fuck,” he says, eyelids flickering.
His body slowly weakens beneath mine, like the energy is being drained from him. The hands on my waist loosen but don’t let go. I straighten and look down at his face.
He's a handsome man, beautiful like one of the marble busts in his library. A real gentleman on the outside. It’s such a pity he’s so ugly inside.
“Della,” he murmurs.
His eyes roll back, and he’s gone but still breathing.
I need to go. It’s time to take Landis and run. But something stops me, keeps me sitting on his inert body.
What Leland did to me meant nothing to him. He said he couldn’t even remember it. In the confusion of being so young, so vulnerable, I still don’t know for certain if he meant to do it, or if Landis was the result of pure negligence. But either way, it doesn’t matter. He still did it.
It still hurt me.
And now, I have to carry my broken, porcelain heart everywhere in my hands.
All the nervousness seeps out. In my mind’s eye is the sight of Jensen beating Leland with a terrifying anger in the pit. My own rage is so calm now. I’m sinking in a river of it. And I understand what he felt in that moment.
Brothers Boyd told Leland to tell the devil who sent him, but no man will send him to hell. That privilege is only for the most broken, for the woman he loved and destroyed with that love.
And yet, I’m still alive.
My broken heart is still beating.
Tears welling in my eyes, I lift my head. Hanging on the wall is Leland’s most prized heirloom, the dagger with the Caudill family crest, handed down from son to son.
Slowly, I reach out, gripping the headboard I’ve gripped many times before, and pull it from the sheath.
The hilt is so cold. A sob works its way up my throat.
Maybe anger, maybe sadness. I shake as I draw the knife to the side, but the hand that grips his dark hair and pulls his head back to expose his throat is steady.
Brothers tried to outwit him.
Jensen beat him.
But I will kill him.
I might be a woman who came from nothing, but I know every empire ends.
It’s time for his to fall.
Crimson spreads across the white sheets, spilling over the pillows, a bright red flower that keeps blossoming. Burning tears pour down my face, but I don’t stop until Leland Caudill is in two pieces.
In the distance, I hear a gunshot. At first, I think it’s nothing, a firework maybe.
Then, it comes again, loud and clear this time.
Someone’s shooting in the back field. It snaps me out of my trance, sending me running to the bathroom to wash the blood from my hands.
It ripples down the drain, pink, sticky.
Stumbling into the bedroom, I snatch one of my dressing gowns out of the closet and pull it on.
I don’t look at the body on the bed. There’s no desire in me to ever look back again. Stepping into the hall, I pull the door shut, but not before locking it. Another shot rings out. Someone is yelling, rattling the fence.
I run down the hall and push open the nursery. Landis is upright in bed, eyes enormous.
“Mommy, what’s happening,” he croaks.
I’m at his bedside, gathering him in my arms. He’s big for his age, heavy, but right now, he feels like he weighs nothing. Clasping him to my chest, I wrap a throw blanket around his head.
“Keep your eyes down,” I order. “Just look at Mommy. Don’t look anywhere else.”
“Mommy,” he cries out, arms wrapping around my neck. “I’m scared.”
“You’re safe,” I breathe. “Just hold me.”
I don’t have courage, not really. I’ve let myself be pushed around.
I’ve been a doormat for people all my life.
But when it comes to my son, I am the bravest woman who ever lived.
I fled to Montana for him. I faced my worst fear and cut its head off for him.
There’s no world in which I don’t get my son out alive.
Holding him tight, I run as fast as I can down the stairs.
God help anyone who gets in my way.
We make it to the front door before Georgie tears down the hall. I whirl to call out to her, and in that second, the glass breaks behind me. She screams, hands clawed and covering her mouth. Frantically, I spin from left to right, desperate for a way out.
If I can get through the kitchen, I can run out the back door.
Surging, I flee down the hall.
Glass splinters again, sounding like something exploded on the porch.
The hinges of the front doors blow open.
I don’t know why, but I stop and look back.
My heart stops. He’s coming, riding up the drive on horseback.
The front gates are burning. A whistle goes off in the distance.
He’s just a shadow, AK on his back, but I know it’s him.
I’d know him anywhere.
Godspeed skids to a halt at the end of the walkway. He swings down, and he’s running up the steps, taking them two at a time.
“Jensen,” I breathe.
No sound comes out. This is a nightmare, one where my voice doesn’t work. The yard is ablaze, Caudill soldiers are shooting in the Magnolia grove. My son is sobbing in my arms, and my feet won’t move.
The firelight flares, catching the side of the house.
It bathes Jensen in a red glow as he bursts through the shattered doorway. I see his face like it’s burned into my eyelids—lowered brow, mouth a grim line.
“Jensen,” I scream, louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life.
Our eyes lock through the chaos. He breaks into a run, getting to me in seconds. Overhead, the chandelier sways. Without hesitating, he takes Landis in his arms and grabs my hand.
Right away, Landis stops crying. His tiny arms wrap around Jensen’s neck, holding tight like he knows him. My stomach jerks, warmth trickling through the searing fear.
“Kayleigh is upstairs,” I pant. “She’s in the guestroom.”
Another figure skids to a halt on horseback and comes barreling up the stairs. Brothers Boyd, bathed in sweat, eyes wide, blown out.
“Brothers,” Jensen roars. “She’s upstairs.”
The words haven’t left his lips before Brothers is running, tripping up the stairs, ripping his AK from his shoulder as he goes.
I whirl, heart in my throat. Georgie is gone—I hope to God she gets away safe, but I can’t think about that now.
We need to get out of here before the fighting gets to the house.
“Back door?” Jensen pants. “Where is it?”
“Both to the left and right. The right exit leads to the kitchen and back door.”
“And the left?”
“The dining room and back hallway.”
He does a quick circle, pale eyes roaming the room. “No side exits?”
“There’s one from the basement,” I say. “Left hallway, turn at the end.”
He goes ahead, pulling me by the hand. We enter the dining room with the table where I used to sit with Leland while he had meetings. The porcelain set of dishes used to belong to his mother, untouched in their cabinet. A little part of me hopes they burn tonight.
Jensen ushers us down the hallway to the window looking out over the back lawn. My mouth drops, my steps falter. Across the lawn, the fence is burning in tall streaks of orange. Gunshots pop back and forth like fireworks.
This was my life for four years. I thought it would be my life forever, but tonight, I’m watching it go up in flames, burning my past to ashes.
There’s no time to understand what I’m feeling.
Jensen has my arm, and he’s guiding me to the door at the far end to the basement.
Landis is quiet for the first time since I pulled him from bed.
Maybe he thinks Jensen is his father, but I doubt it.
I think it’s the strength of his presence. It calmed me the moment he appeared.
“This door,” I gasp, pulling it open.
He pushes me through first and shuts it after us.
For a second, we’re in the dark. Then, the automatic lights flicker on, revealing the enormous cellar that houses all the food, wine, and bourbon for the estate.
We make it to the bottom of the stairs before he adjusts Landis to sit in the crook of his arm and ushers us beneath the steps.
“You okay, baby?” His eyes glint, inches from mine.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Mommy,” Landis says, staring up at Jensen. He’s just realizing he doesn’t know him.
I touch his face. “This is Mommy’s friend. He’s going to keep us safe, okay?”
He stares at Jensen, hard. Jensen’s looking right back at him, but I can’t tell what he’s feeling at all. His eyes are wide, lips parted. He could be astonished or devastated. It’s impossible to know with him.
“Jensen,” I whisper.
He swings his eyes to mine. “Where’s Leland?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t get the words out for a second. All I can do is shake my head.
“Talk to me, baby.” His whisper is low and urgent.
“He’s dead,” I mouth. “Upstairs.”
His brows rise. “You kill him?”
I can’t speak. I don’t want to say the words in front of Landis. Someday, I might tell my son what I did to gain our freedom. Or I might let him live in blissful ignorance. I don’t know yet.
“Take Landis,” he says hoarsely. “I need to find a way out of here.”
“What about Kayleigh and Brothers?”
He eases Landis back into my arms and ducks out. “Brothers knows what he’s doing. Stay put, baby.”
The way he calls me baby is so soft this time. Heart in my throat, I watch him move among the shelves. There’s a flicker of orange as he opens the door to scan the yard. Then, he’s back, holding out his hand.
“We have a window of time right now,” he says. “Give Landis to me.”
I slide from beneath the stairs and put my son in his arms. This time, Landis grips his shirt, holding on.
Jensen takes my hand for the second time tonight and pulls us through the back door into the side yard.
It’s empty, sheltered by the porch. The hydrangea bushes wall off the back area where the commotion still rages.
“Where are we going?” I whisper.
He shifts Landis to his left side and pulls his AK out of the way, reaching to the small of his back to remove his pistol. It glints in the firelight, and Landis makes a muffled sound, like it frightens him. Jensen turns to him, pulling the pistol down and out of sight.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, voice dropping. “I got you, kid.”
Landis opens his eyes. “What’s your name?” he whispers.
“Jensen,” he says, voice cracking.
Landis sniffs. “My name is Landis. It’s nice to meet you,” he whispers, his words rehearsed the way I taught him. “I’m four years old.”
“That’s good. That’s the best age,” Jensen says, eyes glittering.
The fighting fades into nothingness, and I’m back in my bed in Harlan, my daddy sitting on the edge of the mattress. He’s using that voice he’d use to calm me down after a bad dream, and it sounds so damn much like the one Jensen is using right now.
Footsteps hammer, snapping me out of it.
“We need to go,” Jensen says. “Stay close, baby.”