After His Mistress Faked a Baby, I Burned It All Down

Tiffany leveled the dark muzzle at me. A shot cracked out. I threw myself sideways on instinct, and Tiffany burst out laughing, swinging the barrel up at my head like a woman who had lost her mind. I kicked off my heels and scrambled away across the dirt. The bullet tore past, the wind of it grazing my skin, and bored a deep hole into the ground where I'd been. Terror was all over my face. Tiffany's was lit with excitement. She shouted at me, "You won't be this lucky next time!" Beside her, Robert took the girl's hands with doting eyes. "Silly thing. Hold the gun like this if you want to hit her." He closed his hands over Tiffany's and steadied her aim at me. I couldn't afford the bitterness welling up in me. I scrambled to my feet to run, but the tie lashed tight around my legs sent me crashing hard into the mud. A shot rang out. The two of them had fired into my ankle. I clamped my hand over it, the blood running bright red through the gaps in my fingers, more and more of it. The blood at my ankle stung my eyes. I still didn't have proof that Robert had moved his assets. I couldn't die. Something almost like reluctance crossed Robert's face. He came over and looked down at me. "Or just kneel and apologize now. Promise you'll never hurt Tiffany again." Pain and fury hit me at once. My mind had no room to think. The words came straight out. "Kneel to that woman? Never." "These shoes were custom-made cowhide heels Robert had brought back from Italy just for me," Tiffany said. "Now they've got your filthy blood on them." "Lick them clean and I'll think about letting you go." The malice on her face wasn't even dressed up. The next second, I gritted my teeth and worked the tie loose from my legs, and threw my whole body straight into that black muzzle. My blood-soaked hands closed over Tiffany's and forced the trigger down. If I didn't die this time, I would stake this life of mine on dragging Robert and Tiffany to hell. The bullet drove into me in an instant. I went straight over backward, my whole body shaking with the agony of it. Tiffany let go of the gun, panic flashing through her eyes. "It was her, she pulled the trigger herself!" Robert gathered her against him, soothing her. "It's all right. I'm here." He bent down and murmured by my ear, "Sign those shares your father left you over to me yourself—then you can die." The words went into me like a poisoned blade, stabbing again and again at the softest part of me. The next moment he straightened up and kissed her cheek, gentle. "There now. Don't let her spoil your mood." "I'm so scared. My head's spinning." Tiffany's voice trailed off, her eyes closed, and she sagged into Robert's arms. The fury drove his heel down into my wound. "If anything happens to Tiffany, I won't let you live." I couldn't hold back the scream, couldn't stop my body from curling in on itself. He wouldn't give me another look. Robert lifted Tiffany up in his arms and strode toward the sports car. At his signal, a bodyguard threw me into the trunk like a piece of junk. I lay there listening to Robert call that woman's name over and over inside the car, blood and tears running together down my face wherever they pleased. I still remembered that year. He was the heir holding all the capital in Easton, yet he cared about nothing outside his studies, and I was just a girl whose looks drew envy out of nowhere. That day a group of students had cornered me on the rooftop, tormenting me, and he happened to be up there reading. He stepped in for me. That one moment brought Robert into my world, and it showed everyone just how far his power reached. He went straight to the classmate leading the bullying, and in his name as chairman of the school board he called an immediate assembly of every teacher and student, telling the whole world that he was my weapon. As long as the Randall name existed, no one could touch a hair on me. From that day I began to fall for Robert, and he gave me all the gentleness in the world. In our world there was only each other, no one else. When he proposed to me under the blazing northern lights in Iceland, every outlet raced to report on the golden couple we made, calling us a perfect match made by heaven. He gave me the most spectacular wedding in the world. On the day we married, we became the couple everyone on earth envied, the pair blessed by the gods. Almost everyone was moved by this love between two who had grown up together. Just when I thought I would be happy for the rest of my life, a woman named Tiffany shattered the illusion I had of love. I pressed down the thing tearing at me inside, picked up my phone, and found that familiar number. "Brenda. Have you made up your mind?" The voice I hadn't heard in so long came straight to my ear. He'd picked up the instant I called. My lips parted, and heat rushed to my cheeks at once. My brow was knotted tight, my heart pounding like a drum, and in the end I still gathered the courage to speak. "The deputy director post you mentioned before, the one you wanted me for..." My voice cut off. The words circled all the way to my lips and wouldn't come out. "It's been kept open for you the whole time. Come whenever you like." There was a thread of gladness in his voice. I drew a deep breath. "Give me seven days. Once I've handled my own affairs, I'll come and take the post."

Once he agreed, I let out a breath, finally let the phone slip from my hand, and passed out. When I woke again, every inch of me hurt. "Quit faking. Get up." Robert nudged me with his foot, disgust in the motion. A cough tore out of me before I could stop it, and I spat a mouthful of blood. I wiped it away and stared him down. "Don't push your luck." He turned, grabbed a sheet of paper, and shoved it into my hand. "Sign this. The share transfer. You sign it." I laughed, a bleak little sound, and let the paper drift to the floor. "I'd rather die." For a second Robert froze. He looked at me, bloodied head to foot, and something in his eyes turned unfamiliar. The old me had leaned on him every day, bent to him in everything. He crouched and reached out to wipe the blood from my forehead. I turned my face away. "Don't put your filthy hands on me," I said, weak as it came out. He paused, then stood and looked down at me. "Stop making this hard on yourself. Sign, and I'll still let you be Mrs. Randall, fair and proper." Under that imperious stare, I tore the transfer into pieces. He swept Tiffany against him and slammed out. "Sit here and think about it. Until you're ready to sign." "Let's see how long that backbone of yours holds." His voice went calm, then turned tender. "Tiffany's the easy one. She understands me." After they left, I gritted my teeth and dragged myself to the study computer, hunting for the records of how he'd transferred the company's assets. Robert's machine was spotless. But I found the second hidden system underneath it anyway. I tried his birthday, our wedding anniversary. Nothing. In the end I typed in Tiffany's birthday, and the hidden system opened. I clicked fast and found it all without trouble — every filthy thing he'd done out in the open. I saved every transfer record, every stolen core secret from my father's company, onto a hard drive. The whole study was dead silent, nothing but my own breathing. And every breath came laced with pain. When the screen showed the save was complete, I sagged against the back of the chair. Then footsteps came pounding down the hall. Robert kicked the door open, eyes fixed on me like a snake's. "What did you do on my computer?" I slipped the drive into my clothes and said the first thing that came. "Typing up a new copy of the share transfer." He bought it. His eyes eased, and he hauled me up out of the chair. "Good that you've come around. Come with me. We're going to your father's grave." I couldn't work out what he wanted at the grave. By the time I'd stopped wondering, we were already there. Tiffany stood off to one side, pointing and directing a crew of construction workers. An excavator shoved my father's headstone over, hard. She lit up the second she saw me. "I'm starting my own business. This plot is already in my name. I had a master look at it specially. He says the feng shui here is the best, so I'm putting up a fifty-thousand-square-foot mall. Your dad can keep blessing my venture, watch it flourish." She leaned close to my ear. "On the surface it's a mall. Underneath, it's a red-light district." Rage burned through me. I threw myself in front of the excavator, waving my arms. "Stop digging!" Tiffany stepped up and said it softly. "You should go die. Just like your father." I backhanded her across the face. She clutched her cheek, weeping prettily, and at the same time pressed her body against mine, raising her voice. "Hit me all you want, as long as you spare the baby in my belly." Then she forced a dagger into my hand, gripped my wrist, and drove it toward her own stomach, murmuring in a voice only the two of us could hear. "Finally, a use for the blood pack I prepped." Tiffany clutched her bleeding stomach and wept over my shoulder at the people behind me. "I only begged her to spare my baby..." Robert's face went black. "I came here meaning to be kind, to tell you your dad's grave was being redone. A dog never quits eating its own filth, does it." I couldn't be bothered to explain. "This is my father's grave. What gives you the right to hand it to some woman you've known three years?" He looked me dead in the eyes. "Tiffany isn't just 'some woman' you can wave off." "Three years ago, someone drugged me at a bar. If it weren't for her, I'd be dead." Three years ago, a rival had planted a bomb in the bar Robert frequented and slipped sleeping pills into the drink he loved. When I found out, I went into the fire to save him, risking my life. He came to his senses fast enough. I came out with the skin of my lower back ruined, a full month of grafts in the burn unit. When I was discharged and went to find him, I walked in on him and Tiffany in our wedding bed, doing what they were doing. So why was Robert now saying it was Tiffany who saved him? He waved a hand. "Level the rest of it." I ignored the roar of the excavator and threw my arms around my father's headstone, holding on. Robert kicked me clear and took a hammer to the stone I had carved with my own hands. I clawed my way back toward the grave. Only my father's ashes were left now. I dug into the earth that was his, hands already torn open, fingers running with blood within moments. I didn't care. I only wanted to keep one last piece of him. Robert hauled over a bucket of sulfuric acid. I wrapped my arms tight around the urn, the way my father had held me when I was small. He ordered the bodyguards to drag me up. The urn fell from my arms and broke apart, my father's ashes scattering like shattered snow. I reached for them, and the bodyguards held me fast, gripping me so I couldn't move. In that instant my eyes burned wide enough to split, and one thought was all that was left: I would make every one of them pay. With all that hatred filling me, the dark closed in.

When I woke again, the back of my hand throbbed in slow pulses. The monitor beeped on, steady, and as I pushed myself upright I saw Robert. He watched me, perfectly calm. "You just had to sign, didn't you?" He paused. "You never listen." I thought of how he had destroyed my father's ashes for that woman, and a mouthful of blood rose into my throat. Robert caught my shoulder, alarmed. "Lie back down." I looked at him, and the hate sat plain on my face. "Don't put those filthy hands on me. They've touched other women. You're not worth it." His expression froze, then turned ugly. "You will never learn to admit you're wrong. Let's see how long you can keep this up." "From now on, stop hurting Tiffany. She saved my life, and she's carrying my child. Is it so unreasonable that I treat her well?" Impatience crept into his eyes. Every word was a shard of glass driven into my heart. I held back the tears in my eyes and forced out a smile. "All right." His gaze went cold to the bone, and he opened his mouth to say more, but a cry came from Tiffany's room next door. In an instant his eyes softened, and his voice rushed out. "Baby, I'm here." On his way out he knocked the hand still taking the transfusion, and the needle tore through my skin. I clenched my teeth against the pain. He didn't even notice. "One more thing. In two days I'm announcing to everyone that I'm going to be a father. You are not allowed at the banquet. I won't have you scheming up some way to hurt her again." Robert dropped the words at the door and was gone. Fine. In two days the evidence of his crimes would surface. And in two days, I would be gone. I picked up my phone and scrolled to Tiffany's latest post. In the video Robert was kissing her belly, his face full of happiness, while her fingers stroked through his hair. I set the phone down. Laughter and bright voices drifted through the wall, and my mind floated somewhere far off. On our wedding night he had told me, solemn and earnest, that for my sake he would stay childless without a second thought, that he would even go to the hospital and get a vasectomy. He had pulled me into his arms, kissing me again and again, telling me he couldn't bear to watch a pregnancy ruin my body. The happiness ended there. Without warning he changed, became cruel, became selfish. The next day I pulled out every tube and went to settle my discharge. The nurse told me the payment had failed. Wrong password. I tried five times, and five times it came back wrong. They started looking at me the way you look at a deadbeat trying to walk out without paying. The password was our wedding anniversary. There was no way I had it wrong. But reality landed the blow clean and clear. I still remembered the day we married, going to the bank together to open a joint account. He had held my hand as we set our wedding date as the password. "I want you to remember our wedding day forever, to love me every year the way you do today." At the VIP counter he had pinched the tip of my nose, all indulgence. "Every time we feel happy, we put money in. This is our happiness fund." But now the system flagged me as a thief. I patted myself down. There wasn't a single thing of value left on me. I was fumbling for some way to explain it all when Tiffany came strolling out of the elevator. She raised a hand in greeting and, as if by accident, let her collar fall open. Around her neck was the purple-diamond crystal necklace Robert had once had made exclusively for me, and below it, kiss marks scattered thick across her skin. "Brenda, Robert changed the password last night. He probably hasn't had a chance to tell you." She smiled, pleased with herself. "He was a little rough with me last night. To make it up to me... you don't mind, do you?"

I looked at Tiffany without a flicker of feeling. She wore the smug little face of someone who'd finally won, her eyes glittering with the pleasure of mocking me. I turned to the nurse. "This young lady stole my bank card. She'll be settling my bill." Tiffany's mouth pulled down at once, all wounded innocence. "Sis, when did I ever steal your card? If it's really yours, why don't you know the PIN?" "I think you've had your eye on my money. You're nothing but a stray with nowhere to go. I'll have you sent to prison, and let the criminals in there teach you a lesson for me." She made a show of pulling out her phone to call the police. I could see she hadn't even unlocked the screen. She just stood there in front of me, playing out a phone call with police who weren't on the line. "Oh, and if you kneel down for me right now, I'll hang up this second." She watched me the way you'd watch a show, waiting for me to drop to my knees and burst into tears. Every old wound, every humiliation flared hot in my chest all at once. I reached out and snatched the purple-crystal necklace straight off her throat. "This necklace belongs to me. Since I don't want it anymore, we'll let it cover the debt." "You vile woman! Look, my neck's all red!" Tiffany clutched her reddened throat and bent over, the picture of someone in agony. Robert came rushing over, suit jacket thrown carelessly over his shoulders. "Tiffany, what happened?" Before he reached us, she raked her own hand across her neck. In an instant, five raw welts of blood opened on that pale skin. I didn't get a word out before she threw herself against Robert's chest, sobbing. "Sis said the necklace was hers and ripped it right off me, then ordered me to kneel down and apologize to her." Robert looked at the blood seeping along Tiffany's throat, and his breathing turned heavy. He didn't even ask what had actually happened. "You used to be so gentle. What's gotten into you, hounding Tiffany like this again and again?" I said nothing. I just looked at him, calm. I knew exactly what I was to him now. A clown whose only job was to keep the woman he loved happy. Red threaded through his eyes in a heartbeat, and he looked at me like a beast about to swallow me whole. "You like kneeling so much? Now it's your turn. Kneel for Tiffany." He waved a hand. The bodyguards took it as permission, and the stun batons came down on me like rain. I covered my head with both hands and let them beat me. The pain climbed higher and higher. I pressed my lips together and bit down on the tip of my tongue, refusing to let out even one moan. Robert was fully past the edge now. He drove his knee straight into the backs of my legs. I had no defense for it and dropped, kneeling on the floor. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, his eyes full of violence. "Still acting tough? Let's see exactly how long you can keep it up." With that, he ordered the bodyguards to lock me away in an abandoned factory. He watched, cold and detached, as they shoved me roughly into the car. "I'm taking Tiffany to the banquet shortly. Once I've announced the good news about my child, I'll come and bring you back myself." The softest place in me was pierced all over again. For his happiness, I'd become the stone in his path to kick aside. "You're going to sit there and think hard about what you've done. I don't want to see that stubborn face of yours anymore." I chose to ignore him. I simply pulled the car window up, leaving only Robert's voice behind, flat and stripped of feeling. It wasn't long before the bodyguards delivered me to the abandoned factory. As they left, they released a dozen-odd venomous snakes inside. The air reeked of mold. The snakes flicked their tongues and slithered toward me. I could hear, clear as anything, the dry scrape of scales against the floor. I couldn't let these snakes bite me. I tried to open the factory door, but it wouldn't budge no matter what I did. I pounded on it, hoping the bodyguards hadn't gone far, hoping someone would let me out. But no matter how hard I beat on the door or how loudly I called for help, no one came. All I could do was struggle up onto a high platform inside the factory. I watched the snakes twist their bodies and lift their sinister heads, scales catching the thin light in eerie glints. It wasn't until nightfall that the factory door suddenly opened, and Robert walked in, his face dark. "This time I invited famous names from every circle to celebrate my baby with me." He looked at me, his face like ice. "So you dumped me in this rundown factory out in the suburbs? And to keep me from running, you tossed in all these snakes to bite me?" I looked at him, hollowed out with disappointment. That soft place inside me gave way and crumbled. Robert lowered his eyes. "I'll grant you one request." When I stayed silent, he turned to leave. Then I called out his name. "Robert. That island you promised me. Does that offer still stand?" He thought for a few seconds, then turned back around. "It stands. Didn't you say you didn't want it before?" I shook my head. "I've thought it through. I want it. And the contract's already drawn up. It's right there in that Maserati you're driving, tucked under the leather seat on the passenger side." "Just sign, and I promise I'll never bother you and Tiffany again." Robert nodded and headed out to the sports car. Three minutes later he came back with the stack of contracts. "Signed. Remember, don't go back on your word." He dropped the line and left at once. I picked up the contracts and read them through, slowly. Every one carried his careless signature. He hadn't even noticed that tucked inside the island deed was a divorce agreement. Half an hour after the sports car roared off, I picked up a long wooden stick, flicked the snakes aside one by one, and walked out of that place for good. The dark covered my escape. I flagged down a cab in a rush and made it to the airport, booking the earliest flight to Westport. There, I couriered every piece of evidence of Robert's crimes, along with the divorce agreement, to my lawyer. Before the plane took off, I dropped my SIM card straight into the trash. I'd never need that number again. Years ago, Robert and I had walked hand in hand into the carrier store to set up a couple's plan. He'd said it was the only way every other man would know I was taken, that he wanted to announce to the whole world that I was his woman. Robert. I hope we never see each other again.