Chapter 6
You should’ve never left your home that night…
There’s his voice again in my head as I try to fall asleep on this bed but it feels all wrong.
Granted, I thought he would throw me in a dungeon or some sort of cell built just for me when he dragged me into this room but outside of that earlier exchange, Alaric hasn’t said a single word to me.
There was food delivered to me but I couldn’t eat. I don’t know if there’s something in it or if he wants me to die slowly.
I should be hurt by what Alaric said to me but I can’t be. I deserve this and if I just do whatever he says, eventually, I hope he forgives me and lets me go live out my life or like he said, just die here. But I’d rather die early than stay as a constant reminder of losing his family.
“How does he do it? How can he stand to look at me?”
I whisper into the dark room.
Trying again to shut my eyes, I hear a sound then open my eyes quickly.
The nightmares have started up again. I felt safer in jail because I knew Edwin wouldn’t show up, he wouldn’t step foot near authority but now, it was different.
I was out in the open. I was exposed and my face was plastered all over the tabloids and all media outlets because of Alaric Crowne.
A man whose family was much more powerful and more influential than mine.
The Harts are up there too but isolating myself from them, disappointing them and then, at last, shaming them in all that I’ve done.
They’ll never speak to me again, my parents that is…
as for my siblings, I know how they’re being watched like hawks, I don’t know if they even want anything to do with me now either.
I have no way out. If Edwin finds me again this time, I know that he’s going to kill me.
I won’t be able to get out of his grasp.
“Because it reminds me that I can hate someone really well.”
Alaric answers and my eyes search for him in the dark as my heart beats rapidly in my chest.
When my eyes land on his, I blink back so many thoughts I had of how to escape this place. It was one prison to another. He sat there like a god of death waiting for me at the bridge to cross over to hell. There was no heaven for me.
“You’re going to kill me.” I state.
It’s not even a question at all. I just know that’s what’s going to happen.
Alaric stands in his expensive robe, shirt and pajama pants.
I hear as his bare feet pad a path toward me but I can’t do much else besides lay back down on the floor and stare at the ceiling.
If this is how it ends then let it end. I want to be gone from this world already. It’s been too cruel to me.
The world has rejected me in more ways than one. I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun and was glad to have it embrace me or hit my face giving me its warmth.
“You think I’m going to kill you and let you enjoy hell without me, Juliana?” Alaric asks, taunting me to say something back, to fight back but I fight that. That was my old nature and it was beaten out of me. This is the new me. “When I ask you something, you answer me.”
“No, sir,” I answer, defeated, as if I was a soldier and my superior was asking me something.
“You better eat every single meal I have them bring in here. You will not starve and die to get away from my punishment. You and I are sealed. We’re binded and we’re not ourselves anymore.
We’ve disintegrated and morphed into one being.
I am me and you,” he says with a wicked smirk on his face.
“You have lost all sense of self. You are my shadow; you take the steps I take and you breathe when I do. Am I understood?”
It takes me a moment. One hesitative moment and Alaric reaches out toward me which makes me react.
“I’m sorry! I won’t do it again!” I cry out as I lift my hands to protect myself from the brutal slap that’s coming but… it never does.
“What are you doing?” Alaric asks me but I turn into the fetal position.
“Please, don’t hit me. I promise.” My mind isn’t exactly transported to Edwin but my body can’t forget.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in a place where I can’t control the narrative, I can’t run away because I don’t know where everything is and where would I go without any money left?
“Why would I hit you? Physical pain isn’t my thing and it never will be. I told you, we’re going to morph into one being. Why would I hit myself?” Alaric speaking those words again doesn’t put me at ease instead it further drives me into my shell.
“Get up.”
His words will never be suggested to me and that is my new reality. After taking a few breaths, I finally turn and don’t look at him but the ceiling. Anywhere but him.
Alaric doesn’t do anything but wait as I slowly sit up then stand up. Without touching him, I venture over to the bed and I slip in under the covers.
Instead of him leaving, Alaric moves back to where he was hidden in the shadows as he sits down.
“You’re not leaving?” I ask.
“You won’t sleep on the floor as long as I’m in here. You think I don’t know you, Juliana but I know you better than you’ll ever know yourself.”
His words make me shudder and I shut my eyes. I don’t sleep nor do I even feel like I’ll fall asleep soon as long as Alaric is watching me.
“Tomorrow,” he begins when I finally get so lost in my thoughts I didn’t realize I almost fell asleep which shocks me back to being awake. “My son, Ricky, you will be meeting him. He came back tonight from his grandparents, you will be good to him and raise him right.”
“Your son?” He has a son? I haven’t heard of Alaric having any kids from the media or have I been so busy running away from the reality of all that I don’t remember.
“My son. You may have birthed him but he’s my son.”
His words stun me into silence. What does he mean by this?
“I don’t understand.”
I’m not stupid, I’m just… I don’t understand.
“The only good thing that came from you, Juli, is my son so you will raise him but you will not tell him you are his mother, am I understood?”
Before I could think, I shot up the bed and got out of the sheets making my way to Alaric.
“Please, please tell me you don’t have my son. How could you have him if it was a closed adoption?”
“Closed for you. He’s my son. You couldn’t even name him, don’t give me that right now.” He shoos me away but the pain reverberates through me.
“But he’s my son. I wanted him to have a good life! To be with people who loved him!” I yell out because I’m angry.
Alaric places one leg over the other as he watches me in my emotions as they switch just as quickly because I drop to my knees in front of him, begging.
“Please, please let him go to a family that will love him. He is innocent in all this. He doesn’t deserve this. please.” Tears fall down my face, in distress and a wave of sadness comes over me, an emotion much deeper. Something that’s stirring from the pit in my stomach.
Alaric’s face morphs into that angry one he had when he first watched me in the courtroom as he moves the leg back to the ground. He scoots closer to me, placing his arms near his knees.
“What makes you think I don’t love my son?
” He asks, pointing at his chest. “I don’t care who he came from.
He is a good kid and I’ll never give him up.
He has a family. Me. I’m his family and his father.
I’ve been there since the beginning when he cried all night for a mother who never cared to name him or breastfeed him so he could remember her smell.
His first walks, his little I love yous, his smiles and all his birthdays, I’ve been there!
” He takes a deep breath, looking away then back at me.
“Don’t tell me anything when it comes to my son.
I said to raise him not tell me what’s best for him. Only I know.”
Before I could get another word in, Alaric stands and walks out of the room, slamming the door. I hear as the lock turns, he’s locked me in here.
My heart sinks to my feet as I think about my son.
I had to give him up so he could have something more than this.
So that he didn’t need to know the tragedy that brought him into this world.
How could I tell him who his father was and how it all happened?
Hell, Edwin didn’t even know I was pregnant and I made sure to never say a word.
I can’t believe my son is here and he’s being raised by someone who loathes me but how can he claim to love my son, a product of me yet he hates the source?
I sink to the floor, holding on to my chest, the closest to my heart I’ll ever be as I sob because I would’ve never given him up but I had to.
I remember his little cry into the world and how much I wanted to take him in my arms but if I did, I wouldn’t have let him go.
Turning my head away from the nurse holding him was the only way I could hold on to that.
I had to let him be able to grow up without Edwin in his life.
Without the taint that came with his mother.
I didn’t even want people knowing he was a Hart.
He deserved more so I kept him nameless.
I didn’t even have a name in place for him.
I couldn’t be attached to him. No matter how much he was always going to be a part of me.
I had to let him go so that he could live but… he’s here with Alaric, is that really living? Is he free?