Chapter 26 #3
She had managed to contain her anger since leaving her apartment.
Channeling that anger through Angel meant she could act how she pleased without the unfortunate repercussions.
Now, though? She couldn’t take it anymore.
Here she stood, facing the man who had effectively ruined her life and taken away the one thing she hadn’t even known she wanted until it was too late.
I didn’t have the chance to let it sink in that I was having a baby.
I didn’t have the chance to pick out a name.
Baby Boy Clayborn would forever be remembered as such.
Sometimes, Sarah thought about picking a name all this time later, but what was the point?
It wouldn’t bring him back. It wouldn’t send her back in time, when she could go into hiding and hope Russell never came looking for her as long as she left him alone.
Giving a name to him wouldn’t do anything other than rip open the wounds again.But they were opening right now!
“You monster.” Sarah turned away, hives rippling across her skin. Anger manifested until she could barely function. Trembling, incredible anger that this was her life, these were the choices she had made, and now?
What the fuck was there to do about them?
She ruined lives, like Russell Moreau ruined lives.
Sarah couldn’t ride any high horses when she had sex tapes out there of her unknowingly breaking apart well-to-do families.
Her mother was ashamed of her. Elizabeth would never say it out loud, but Sarah could tell from the way her mother regarded her with tense looks and careful words.
The Moreaus thought she was a degenerate. One they couldn’t fire because they had already shown her so much pity for what this shitstain of a patriarch had done to her.
Luca…
God, Luca would suffer the most. Sarah’s carelessness meant her beloved Luca, the woman she couldn’t even bring herself to say she loved, would lose custody of her son forever.
Sarah would take the brunt of the blame.
She had, after all, created Angel. She had made decisions she would never be able to revoke.
She had doomed her physical and mental health to an endless cycle of self-flagellation because blaming herself was easier than facing this broken man and realizing that they both were as powerless now.
How was anything but death justice?
You killed my son. You should die, too. Sarah wasn’t even thinking of his ex-wife, the woman who took his beatings until she gave birth to a son doomed to such a short life that his birth certificate was barely dry before they had to create a death certificate to follow.
She didn’t think of that same woman desperately trying to yank her other child away from a terrible father who might turn her into a spitting image of hate and prejudices – only to suffer a horrible punishment that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Sarah was only thinking of herself.
“If I could,” she spat in his face, “I would choke you right here, right now. I would put a bullet between your eyes. I would beat the fucking shit out of you so you can feel the misery I still feel to this day. I’d light you on fire, so you know the same horrors your first wife did.”
His pupils grew in size. Beyond that, however, there was no way to gauge his reactions.
“You should feel it, you fucking bastard.” Sarah pulled out her pocketknife. With one boot on his armrest, she unfolded her knife and held the blade to Russell Moreau’s pale cheek. “You should feel that same terror and pain we all felt.”
The horror I felt!
Nobody would be able to save her from it.
Nigel couldn’t make back-alley deals to protect his sister.
Elizabeth couldn’t pull her connections and scrounge together money from her well-off family and pay someone to leave her alone, or make problems go away.
The Moreaus couldn’t show enough pity to change her life.
Luca? She couldn’t ruin her life for her, a woman she met at a sex club when she was on a self-destructive kick.
Empowered… I thought it would make me empowered if the choices were in my hands.
She only had herself to rely on. Only Sarah could take the power back.
Only. Her.
The knife trembled in her hand. The edge of the blade pricked a bit of skin. No blood, but it made Sarah pull her arm back and kick away from the wheelchair.
“What are you doing?”
Natsuko stood in the doorway, the bodyguard right behind her. Sarah didn’t bother to hide the pocketknife in her hand. Russell’s eyes lingered on his fiancée, a woman he had no love for, but would be his only savior now.
“I think it’s time for you to leave.”
Natsuko put up a good front. She wasn’t like Jill, who squawked and flapped her arms to make herself look bigger.
So even though her face paled in fright over what Sarah might suddenly do, she wouldn’t let it leak into her voice.
She would sound like the commanding lady of the house who was in control of every little thing happening beneath her nose.
Sarah shoved her knife back into her pocket. She spared Russell one last scathing look before walking away with her head held high. She’d keep it that way, too, until she made it to the front hall and realized that her cab was gone.
Instead, Luca stood in the driveway.
Sarah stopped at the top of the steps. “Lu… what are you doing here?”
Luca came to a halt at the bottom of the same steps. “Sarah! What the hell is going on? I got a call from both Danica and Jill that you’re going around town saying…” She saw the knife poking out of her pocket. “The fuck are you up to, Angel?”
Angel…
Sarah made it to the bottom of the stairs before falling to her knees in the dusty driveway. Luca rushed to her side.
“Please…” The tears of anger she held back for so long finally came again. “Please, help me. I don’t know what to do! I… I almost…”
“What?” Luca shook her shoulders, knocking her wig off-center from the force of fear.
“I almost killed him.”
Sarah clasped her hand over her mouth when she admitted that. I was going to do it. I was going to make him bleed like he made me bleed. Blood for blood. It’s what God wanted, right? It’s what an angel would do, right?
“For fuck’s sake, Sarah!”
“Please!” She buried herself in Luca’s hold, stuffing her face into that warm, soft chest and squeezing her eyes so tightly that she could no longer cry. “Please, help me! I can’t live like this anymore!”
Luca pushed her until Sarah’s tear-stained face looked her in the eyes again. “What do you want, Sarah? What do you want?”
Always that question. She kept asking her that because Sarah never told her the truth.
Clarity struck her. Above her head, the blue sky shone so brightly that not even the few clouds around could mar the translucent sheen of a beautiful day.
What would it be like to fly away? To spread her broken wings and leave all of this behind?
To embrace a new life, being whoever she wanted to be?
A healthier version of herself? Not this Angel bullshit anymore.
She wanted the wings of an angel, but she was tired of falling from grace.
Every time she fell, she took another woman down with her.
She didn’t want to do that to Luca. She wanted her to be happy and to have everything she wanted, even if that meant giving Sarah up.
“I want to fly away,” she said. “I want to forget all of this has ever happened. I want to put it behind me.”
Luca kissed her forehead, her hands so firm against Sarah’s cheeks that she felt every ounce of her strength fueling this hold on her. If there was anyone in the world who could help her, surely, it was Luca. No, no, she needs to stay away from me. If I ask her for help like this, I’ll destroy her!
“What do you really want, my angel?”
Sarah’s eyes glazed over as she stared into the bright expanse of the big blue sky above them. When she spoke, her voice dissipated on the crisp air like smoke.
“Freedom.”