“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“I remember.”
The cutlery Anderson was using clanked against his plate, and within seconds I found him on his knees in front of me. His hands touched my shoulders and his fingers bit into my flesh painfully. His eyes looked wild as his gaze drilled into mine.
“What d’you remember?”
My eyes burned with tears.
“I was leaving you . . . that night . . . I was leaving you.”
My husband blinked, sat back on his heels and sighed, long and deep.
“You weren’t leaving me,” he said, his dark eyes still boring into me. “You were just confused; you’d never leave me.”
I was about to disagree with him, but fear made me hold my tongue. I couldn’t remember everything about my life with this man, I could just remember the night he ruined mine and I knew it was enough for me to watch what I said to him. Anderson . . . he was abusive towards me. He’d beaten me, controlled me . . . and tried to kill me.
“Things are still hazy,” I lied, swallowing. “What happened if I wasn’t leaving you?”
He watched me with such intensity that it scared the shit out of me. I quickly realised that I couldn’t let him know that I remembered that he was a woman-beating, abusive piece of shit, because I didn’t think I would get out of the flat alive if he knew.
“Can you untie me?” I asked when he didn’t answer. “I can’t go anywhere with my leg, so can you just untie me, please? I can’t feel my hands.”
Anderson stared at me for a long moment.
“Please?” I pressed. “I’ll sit right here; I just want to be free. I promise.”
He got up, grabbed his steak knife and then walked back towards me. I held my breath as I eyed the knife, and when he put a hand on my shoulder so I could lean forward, my heart thudded in my chest. I released a breath of relief when I heard the knife cut through fabric. The tight binding on my wrists and feet suddenly fell away, so I pulled my hands around my body and rubbed my aching, raw flesh.
“Remember your promise.”
“I will,” I replied, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m staying right here.”
“I know you are,” he said. “You aren’t leaving me. We’ve spent years together, just the two of us. We’re in love.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In love? He couldn’t really believe that. He’d abused me until I was so filled with terror that he could control everything I said and did. I wanted to scream at him, to attack him, to inflict some sort of pain on him for everything he had put me through, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do a single fucking thing.
“So, what now?”
“Now” – he stood back up – “I finish my lunch.”
I watched him as he returned to the table, sat down and resumed eating his food like he hadn’t just knocked me unconscious and tied my wrists together to keep me from leaving him. After a few minutes of silence, I pushed myself to my feet and then sat on the sofa and groaned as my body melted into the cushions. I felt Anderson’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look at him. I was trying to think of what to do. My mind instantly went to Elliot. He was downstairs in the car park. Anderson had said I was only out cold for a few minutes. I was thinking of how I could get Elliot to come to the flat . . . but I was worried if I did that then Anderson might harm him.
I knew he was capable of it.
The back of my head ached and my wrists were sore, but nothing to the extent of what I should have been feeling. This was only a taste of the pain that Anderson could cause me, though he didn’t appear to be angry and that was how I knew that I was safe for the time being. My gut told me to keep him calm, but I also needed him to talk so I could find a way to get proof of what he had done to cause the crash that Bailey died in, and what he had done to me all the years I was with him. I shifted and felt something dig into the side of my right thigh. I tensed when I realised what it was.
My phone.
“Oh my God.”
My phone was in my fucking dress pocket. The loose material of the fabric made it hard to notice the pocket, Anderson obviously didn’t know this, or he would have taken it away from me. I looked around and couldn’t see my bag anywhere, so I knew he had searched it and taken it out of my sight.
“What?” Anderson said, his gaze on me. “What is it?”
I glanced at him. “My wrists are sore.”
“They’ll be fine,” he grunted. “The skin isn’t even chafed.”
I looked down at my red wrists and realised that he was right.
“They’re still sore.”
He didn’t reply, he just finished off his food and his wine. Then he proceeded to wash and dry his dishes like it was a regular day, and not like he was keeping me hostage in his home. It hit me then that Anderson was really deranged. Not just sick, but twisted and clearly evil. He had to have some sort of mental disorder to think what he was doing was okay. It was fucking crazy. He was crazy.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” he told me with a pointed glare. “I’m leaving the door open, so if you move, I’ll know, and I will not be happy.”
In other words, he’d beat the shit out of me if my arse left the sofa.
“My
