Henry’s hand lifted before dropping again. Every shaking, tentative movement he exhibited was accompanied by a fire blazing behind his icy-blue eyes.Abigail’s eyes.From now on, Monica would always associate with the other when she looked into those eyes.Henry. Abigail. Me.Her lip trembled as much as his did.
“Did he…” Henry choked back his words as a finger entered Monica’s periphery, attempting to wag a point home to her but only weakly curling again. “Did he touch you?”
Monica had to parse a thousand inflections in his voice at once. The fear. The disgust. The shock.But also the sadness.Henry must have blamed himself as much as Monica for this situation. He hadn’t been there. He had gone on a wild goose chase. Not that Monica would have let him know about it if she thought that was the only way she could get to her daughter in time.
At least she didn’t have to lie, though.
“No. It never got that far.”
“But it could have!”
He yelled right in her face, knocking Monica back two steps.You know what it’s like to be yelled at.Her mother had been a pro before she even knew a man named Jackson Lyle. And Jackson? He yelled at her more and more toward the end of their relationship. The only reason Monica faltered at all in her husband’s office was because Henry had never done it before.
Again, the fear. Again, the disgust. The images in his head must have been unbearable because the fire raging behind his eyes managed to melt all the ice.
“Yes,” Monica softly said. “It could have.”
Henry grabbed her wrist, but whatever he had planned in that spur-of-the-moment passion immediately fizzled out as he backed away to his desk. Monica rubbed her wrist and fought back the tears she had been afraid of crying all this time.
“What a deranged thing to do,” he barked, back still facing her. “You could have been hurt. He could have been lying, and you could have hurt yourself fornothing!”
Sweat beaded on Monica’s forehead. She held back the first thing she wanted to say.“You’re damn right, and I’d do it again!”That would get her nowhere. Especially with a man whoknew her entire history. Herentirehistory – from her father leaving her, to her mother being emotionally absent, to meeting a man who promised to make all her dreams come true.
Jackson.
“I was willing to do anything,” she calmly said. “Anythingto get to Abigail before she felt even a hint of heartache because she realized she was never coming home on her terms.”
Henry rounded on her, nothing but fire and brimstone as flames colored his cheeks and smoke blew from his nostrils.
“Are you insane?” His voice echoed in his office. It must have echoed in the hallway, the living room as well. Thank God Monica had the foresight to ask Eva to take Abigail out of here. “What if you ended updead,Monica?”
That was it. It was like he didn’t even understand.
“Then I would have died, but Eva would have known where to go!”
A deafening silence followed her outburst. Henry was now more shocked than angry as if her powerful words had knocked some sense back into him. Yet he still looked at his wife over his shoulder, bemused, off-kilter…
Even Monica didn’t know she still had that in her. If Henry had brought the knife to their fight, she had brought the gun.
And it wouldn’t have been the first time, would it?
“I would have doneanything.”
Each syllable fell with spit from her teeth. Every vein in her body, each neuron firing from her brain was activated, daring Henry to stay in her way when it came to protecting their daughter.See how quickly you would be nothing to me, Henry.The enraged woman simmering inside Monica’s petite body those past few months now came bursting through her skin, asserting her authority and proving to the room, these god damnedWarrensthat they should never,everunderestimate her.If you ever hurt our daughter, you would be dead to me.Like a switch flipped. Like a toss of a dime. Like using the last of her broken heart tofeelfor her daughter, the only person on Earth who had earned her unconditional love just for existing.
“Anything,” she reiterated with the embers of Henry’s flames fueling her blaze. “I would have put myself throughanythingif it meant saving our daughter. I didn’t think twice! If that man wanted to use my body to get back at me,at you,I didn’t give a flying fuck because that witch had stolen my daughter and there was nothing,nothingthat I would not endure to find her and bring her home! And I would have one hundred percent thrown your sister into the fire, too! But don’t worry Henry, we were both on the same page of doing whatever that demon said if it meant getting Abigail back!”
“You–”
“Don’t you ever dare underestimate me.” Monica wagged her finger right beneath her husband’s nose, daring him to defy her anger. “Just because I’m your sophisticated submissive, doesn’t mean I’m not willing to blow this whole place up and kill us all in it if it was the only way to ensure Abby lives another day. When that little girl was born…” She reclaimed her finger, shaking it toward the floor as she spat in her husband’s direction. “She recalibrated my entireworld.Nothing matters more to me than her. Not you, not me… why the fuck do I care about who touches me and to what end if my daughter needs me!”
As Monica held back what shereallyfelt, her husband was stoic, taking in everything she said and the way her body shook as her small body attempted to contain all of the raw emotion bursting forth from its corporeal form.
“I care about you,” Henry said. “Don’t underestimate what I would do for her, either.”
Monica’s lower lip trembled as she pressed her hands against her cheeks and attempted to still their vibrating.Thisis happening. We’re having this terrible confrontation.About what she had done. What she would do again if she could.
“She was gone…” Monica averted her gaze to the carpet, where she saw her closed-toed heels and Henry’s leather loafers. The beige carpet was only inches away from the blue and green Persian throw rug beneath his desk. Always immaculately cleaned, because he often had guests in here, and besides the bathroom, this was the place the maids prioritized every day. How many times had Monica seen these carpets? His shoes? Henry was a creature of habit and knew what he liked. This carpet had been here since before her. The shoes themselves changed, but they were always the same color and brand. If they changed soon, it was because something happened. Something that completely upended his reality. “She was gone, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
