Chapter 42
VIOLET
Icount the turns.
First, there’s a left turn. Then straight for a long time.
I can tell we’re on the highway by the fact that we’re going fast and staying in one lane.
Then we slow, and there’s a series of small turns, followed by the sound of gravel under the wheels and the bounce of the car over uneven ground.
I’m in the back seat with my hands zip-tied and a canvas bag over my head that blots out every bit of light other than a little band at my neck.
I want to scream. The only thing that keeps me from doing it is the knowledge that screaming is exactly what Lance wants.
He's in the passenger seat. I can hear his breathing, calm and measured. Another man is driving, and neither of them have spoken a word. It’s easy to picture the pleased smirk on Lance’s face. So far, everything is going according to plan for him.
The car stops and a door opens. Hands grab my arms roughly and pull me out. The air is cool and gravel crunches underneath my shoes. The air is different out here. It’s cleaner and colder and the usual scent of exhaust that lingers in the city is gone, replaced by the smell of damp earth.
I’m walked across the gravel, up three wooden steps and through a door. Inside, the air changes once more. Now it’s stale and enclosed, with that particular mustiness of a building that hasn’t had proper ventilation in a long time.
The hood comes off. I blink hard against the light coming from a single bare bulb hanging from a beam. It takes a second to adjust and realize where I am—the main room of a cabin with log walls, a low ceiling, and sparse furniture covered in dust sheets.
There’s a stone fireplace that likely hasn’t been lit in years, and the windows are boarded from the outside. In the center of the room is a wooden, straight-backed chair. The big man pushes me into it and I sit. My hands are still zip-tied. My bag is gone, my phone with it.
Nobody knows where I am.
The big man steps back and positions himself by the door. Lance is standing near the fireplace, his back to me, examining the mantel like a buyer appraising a property. He's removed his jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves to his forearms. He’s casual and relaxed in a way that makes me sick.
"Do you know what I missed most about you, Jessica?"
I don't answer. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my wrists, in my temples, in the zip ties cutting into my skin.
He turns and flashes me that smile, the one I used to think was charming, back when I was twenty and stupid and desperate enough to believe that a man who paid that much attention to me must be in love.
I know what that smile means now; it means he’s in his element and the performance has begun.
"The quiet," he says. "You always went quiet when you were scared, like a rabbit. Like if you're quiet enough, the thing hunting you might lose interest."
He walks toward me, pulls a chair from the wall, and sets it down facing mine. He’s close, knee to knee, the posture of a man conducting an interview.
“It amused me,” he says. “Seeing a woman as outspoken as you turn quiet. You’d get so small, so silent, your eyes big and wide.”
"What do you want, Lance?"
"What do I want." He repeats it slowly, tasting each word. "I want what I've always wanted. I want my wife back. I want my son back. I want the life you stole from me when you ran."
"I didn't steal anything. I did what I had to do to survive, to keep my son safe.”
"You abandoned me." The smile vanishes. Just for a second, a flash of the thing underneath, the raw, scalded ego of a narcissist shows through.
Then the smile back, smooth and controlled.
"You took my son. You filed false charges.
You had some hacker erase my wife from existence and build a fake person in her place.
And then you walked into the arms of a mob boss and played house while I spent a year trying to find you. "
"Those charges weren't false."
"Those charges were dismissed."
"Because your friends buried them."
"You know what Patrick said to me at the bakery?" he says. "When I picked up his little piece of cake? Do you remember?”
My stomach drops.
"Nothing. He said nothing. My own son looked at me like I was a stranger, like I was something to be afraid of." He uncrosses his legs and leans forward. "That's your doing, Jessica. You took a boy away from his father and taught him to be afraid. You poisoned him against me."
"He was afraid of you before I left. He was afraid of you because he heard what you did to me."
"What I did to you." He laughs, short, sharp, performative.
"What I did was try to build a family with a woman who was never grateful for anything I gave her.
I gave you a home. I gave you stability.
I gave you my name and you threw it away and made up a new one because you couldn't handle a marriage that required you to be something more than a scared little girl from a broken home. "
He knows exactly how to hurt me, mentioning the broken home, the mother on drugs, the father who disappeared. The parts of myself I've spent a lifetime trying to outgrow, and Lance catalogued them all, not because he cared, but because he wanted to one day use them as weapons.
"You were always going to fail, Jessica," he says softly, almost tenderly. It’s his worst voice.
The voice he used right before the worst nights—gentle, reasonable, the tone he used to explain why I deserved what he was about to do to me.
"You were always going to end up right back here.
Alone. Scared. Dependent on someone else to save you.
First it was me. Then it was Russo. But nobody saves you, do they?
Because the common denominator in every disaster in your life is you. "
"Let me go, Lance."
"No."
"Please." I hate the word. I hate the way it sounds coming out of my mouth—small, begging, the exact frequency he's been trying to tune me to since the day we met. "Please let me go. I'm—"
“I know you’re pregnant,” he growls. He stands, the chair scraping, and then he starts pacing.
"You left me. You took my son. You disappeared.
And then you—what? You spread your legs for a criminal and got yourself knocked up?
While my custody case is pending? While my son is sleeping under the same roof as a man who's under federal investigation? "
He crouches in front of me, close, only inches away from me. I can smell his cologne, that horrible, sharp, too-clean scent.
"Do you know what a family court judge is going to say when I tell them my ex-wife is pregnant by a Camorra boss?" he whispers. "Do you know what that does to your custody position? You just handed me Patrick on a silver platter."
"You don't want Patrick. You never wanted Patrick."
"I want to win." His eyes are flat. Empty. The mask is gone, fully gone, and what's underneath isn't anger or jealousy or wounded pride. It's nothing. A void where a human being should be.
"I will destroy you, Jessica," he says. "Your career. Your identity. Your relationship. And then, when there's nothing left I'll make sure you remember that it was me. That every single thing you ever tried to build, I took apart. Because you left. Because you thought you could leave me."
He stands, straightens his shirt, and the mask slides back on—smooth, professional, composed. "But not today," he says. "Today, I need you to sit here and think about everything I just said. I have a few things to get in order. Calls to make. People to see." He buttons his cuffs. "I'll be back."
He walks to the door, then turns. "Comfortable?"
I don't answer. I'm the rabbit again—silent and still and hoping the thing hunting me will lose interest.
He smiles and closes the door, a lock clicking from the outside. I hear his footsteps on the wooden porch, the gravel, the car door. The engine starts and he drives away.