Dangerous Beauty: Part Four: Beautifully Broken (35 page)

“They didn’t feed you?” Kyle asked, shocked by what he was hearing.

“No.” She shook her head. “I think it was their way of punishing us for what our parents had done. But we still made due.”

“Why didn’t you tell, Reanna?” It was still unbelievable, even to him, that this could have happened to children.

“I told you, Kyle, we didn’t want to be in a home like the first one again. We were afraid. We didn’t know where they’d send us.” She sighed. “After a little while I noticed Tamara losing weight, and getting sick a lot. I was, too, but I was more concerned about her health than my own.”

“You weren’t getting enough food, warmth.”

She nodded. “The food we took from school wasn’t enough, so …” She frowned a little as if she didn’t want to say it. “I stopped going to school,” she whispered, then immediately lifted her hand and began fanning her eyes. “Gosh,” she said in a shaky laugh, “I don’t know why I always get emotional when I remember this part of my life.”

Kyle held her closer as the tears filled her eyes.

“I guess I just remember how broken up I was when I quit. Because I …” the tears spilled over and fell down her cheeks, “I loved school. I was a straight A student, but I never got to go back. I mean, I got my high school equivalency in the future, but,” she shook her head, “it had been my dream to graduate with honors, get scholarships, go to a fancy college. And I was headed toward that, but Tamara … she needed me to be more
then
, not in the future.” She placed her hand to her heart. “And she was my responsibility. I wasn’t ready for it, by any means, but still did what I had to.”

“What did you do?” Kyle asked, even as his heart broke for the girl she once was.

She held up two fingers. “Two jobs during the week, and one on the weekends. One job would have sufficed at the time, but I was thinking long term. With each passing year I was getting closer to eighteen. I knew that if I didn’t have a steady job, and enough money for a decent place to live, Tamara and I would have been separated for three years.” Reanna shook her head. “That wasn’t an option for me, so I worked,” she swallowed, “nonstop. The only time I got off was to walk Tamara to and from school. And I was making good money … I opened a savings account, got us some nice air beds, warm blankets, some little,” she made animated motions with her hands and chuckled softly, “space heaters for the basement.” She smiled. “I was doing good for us. Tamara wasn’t sick anymore, she was doing good in school, we ate well, sometimes we even got to eat out at the restaurants I worked at. On the weekends I worked at a daycare, and Tamara used to come play with the kids. Life was good.” She frowned. “Well, not good, but better than it had been. But then I turned eighteen.”

Sighing, her eyes just seemed to … drop, the moment the last five words left her lips.

“No …” she said, her voice breathless. “No, no, no, no, no.”

Kyle frowned, immediately becoming concerned. “Reanna—”

“No, shh,” she silenced him. “I can do it.”

Kyle shook his head, staring down at her now shaking hands, then back up at her. Don’t get him wrong, he wanted to know what was going on, but not if it meant Reanna having a fucking nervous breakdown. Maybe they needed to take a break.

“Reanna—”

“No don’t, Kyle,” she said through her clenched teeth, her eyes still lowered, and tears still falling rapidly from her eyes.

Kyle fucking hated it, seeing her cry.

“Baby …”

“Stop,” she stated sharply, giving a firm shake of her head.

But Kyle couldn’t understand what she was doing, or why she was trying to push herself. “Baby, we can—”

“They wouldn’t let me have her …”

The words just shot out of her mouth, catching him by surprise and rendering him silent. She didn’t look up at him, but she did finally start talking again.

“They said I was too young. That they didn’t like releasing minors to their eighteen-year-old siblings.”

“So you had to leave without her?”

Her eyes closed tightly as she nodded her head. “Yes,” she cried, her voice cracking. “They made me go. They kicked me out of the house the day I turned eighteen.” She swallowed, visibly trying to pull herself together. “I … freaked out. I didn’t know what to do, how to get her. I tried to fight. I called the social workers over and over, trying to get help, but nobody …” she shook her head. “Nobody would help me. I did everything they told me to, I had jobs, I had an apartment. It was only one bedroom, but it was plenty for the two of us. I could take care of her, but they wouldn’t let me …” She wiped her eyes, reopening them, but still never looking up at him. “I only got to see her when I went to her school. She’d always cry. Say she hated it there, that they treated her horribly with me gone. They took all of her stuff, all of the things I bought her, the food, blankets … So she told our social worker.” She sobbed softly. “She thought I’d be mad at her because she’d gotten scared, but I told her no.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t mad. But they were going to transfer her to another foster home … one far from where I was.”

“Did she ever go?” Kyle asked.

But in his heart he already knew the answer to that. No. And the reasoning was probably something she was ashamed of, which would explain her reluctance to meet his eyes.

But Kyle wasn’t having it.

If he had to force her to look at him, then so be it. He wouldn’t have her casting her eyes down to him as if she had anything to be ashamed of with him. He’d never judge her, nor make her feel wrong for anything she’d done in the past.

“Look at me, Reanna,” he commanded as gently as he could.

When she didn’t immediately do as he’d asked, he tilted her chin with his forefinger.

“
Colomba
,” he urged her again. “Look into my eyes when we speak, baby. Let me see you …”

His words seemed to give her the courage she needed, because her eyes lifted—slowly, but they did meet his—and the utter despair he saw in them nearly shattered his heart.

Bringing his hand up, he cupped her face. “Colomba …”

He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to continue, that she didn’t have to put herself through anymore heart ache, but he knew he couldn’t. Past the despair in her eyes, he saw her determination. Her determination to push through whatever was holding her back so that she could tell him her story. So that she could finally give him all of her, and that, he would not stop.

So he asked her again. “Did Tamara have to leave you, Reanna?”

This time, keeping her eyes locked to his, Reanna shook her head. “No,” she whispered, “she didn’t.”

Kyle nodded. “How?” he asked, preparing himself for whatever she said in response.

“Bryon …”

She said the name as if it explained it all, but it meant nothing to Kyle. It was just a name, but judging by Reanna’s shaky reaction to the sound of the name, Kyle could tell that name packed a lot of power to her.

“Who is he?” he asked.

More tears fell from her eyes. “My ex,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper.

Kyle nodded again. “Did he hurt you?” he asked, trying his best to keep his features relaxed when he did.

The task became harder and harder with each passing second. There was so much pain in her eyes, so much fear, Kyle could feel his anger rising just at the thought of some fucking bastard putting his hands on her.

“Yes.”

Her features tightened when she said the word, as did Kyle’s. But he still fought to keep his voice steady when he said his next words …

“Tell me …”

She tried to look down again, but one light tap on her chin, and her eyes came back to his. He felt her fingertip on that same scar again once she began to speak.

“He was a frequent customer at the little restaurant I worked at, and every time he came in, he requested me … I never minded. I knew he had a little crush, but he was nice, and he never left me less than twenty dollars as a tip, so I figured I’d hit the jackpot. I was making money, and all I had to do was entertain his flirting. It was no big deal to me.” She inhaled a shaky breath. “But one night, when I was working the night shift, he had come in, been my last customer. It was the night when I had found out that Tamara was leaving, so I was,” she shook her head, “a mess.” She nodded. “Of course, Bryon noticed, and asked me what was wrong … I didn’t think anything of it when I told him. I just figured why not, he couldn’t do anything to help me.”

She gave him a look that clearly said ‘guess what …’

“He could help you,” Kyle stated.

Reanna nodded her head. “He was an attorney. One with a lot of connections, a lot of money, and best of all he was thirty-six years old.”

“And he offered to help you, an eighteen-year-old kid, for what?” Kyle asked, instinctively knowing that there was indeed a price.

Hesitating to answer, Reanna’s brows furrowed into a frown as a sob fell from her lips. “He offered me everything I could ever want, but none of it mattered to me. I just wanted Tamara, and he said he could make that happen.”

“And did he?”

She nodded. “Yes …”

“And what did you have to give him in return, Reanna,” he asked again, realizing she’d dodged the question.

Sniffling, she wiped the tears from her eyes. “Me.” And this time Kyle didn’t respond, he just allowed her to continue. “I had to marry him … be his wife, take care of him …”

Kyle’s jaw tightened.

“… and in return he’d get my sister out of the system. Give us a nice home, money, and he’d put Tamara in a better school. A private school. She was nearly sixteen at the time, so of course, I took his offer.” She swallowed again. “A few weeks later, Tamara and I were moving into his penthouse in Jersey, and a week after that, he and I got married at the court house. Tamara was upset, I could tell, but I kept telling her that it was the only way… And it was, at the time.” She looked back into his eyes. “There was no other way. I had tried everything … Bryon was our only chance, and it had worked. All of it. It had given me exactly what I wanted. A home for us to live in together, a school that Tamara
loved
…” She smiled slightly. “She excelled, made friends, joined clubs; she had everything I wanted her to have.”

“And what about you?” Kyle asked. “What did you have?”

She blinked, staring in to his eyes with a blank expression, even as the tears continued to fall down her face. “Everything that I went through as Bryon’s wife, I would go through again if it meant that my life would end up the way it has, Kyle.

“I regret it, my decision, but I wouldn’t change it. I’d rather live with regret, with the pain, because I love the way my life has turned out.” Her chest rose with a deep breath. “Bryon hit me, often. For …” she shook her head, “everything. If I went out without his permission, if dinner wasn’t completely finished when he came home; if other men looked at me, if I talked back to him, or resisted doing something he told me to, he would beat me … sometimes until he knocked me out. If I passed out he’d just leave me on the floor of our bedroom, if I didn’t, he’d drag me to our bed and rape me. He got off on it.” She paused for a moment, her eyes moving away from his as she stared off into space. “He loved hurting me, I could see it in his eyes. He loved hearing me beg him to stop, tell him it was too much, that he was going to kill me. He loved choking me, watching the blood pour out of my mouth, while he jammed himself inside of me.” She looked back into his eyes. “And I let him do it … I kept him happy, I hid what he was doing to me from the world, from my sister. I hid the bruises, made excuses for the ones I couldn’t hide. I made sure she never saw him do it. I’d always run to our bedroom where I knew she wouldn’t be able to hear us …

“So many times I wanted to leave. I wanted to run away. One day I even packed our bags, waited for Tamara to get home from school so that I could tell her, and we’d be gone by the time he got home from work, but then she’d come home, happy, going on and on about how she’d made the honor roll, joined this club and that club, and of course, I knew that if I had just … told her what Bryon was doing to me, she would have gladly left with me, and switched schools, but …” She paused again, her breath catching, before a sob escaped her lips. “I couldn’t do that to her.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t take away her happiness. So I stuck it out. I took the hits, I endured the rape, being his slave … I told myself that it was fine. As long as Tamara was safe, it was fine; as long as she didn’t see what was going on, it was fine. But …” Shaking her head again, she averted her gaze. “But then it just … wasn’t fine.”

“What did he do?”

“He looked at Tamara,” she whispered, her bloodshot eyes full of despair.

Kyle frowned, confused. “He looked …”

She nodded. “Yes,” she cried. “The same way he looked at me when I had been a waitress. I saw him just … staring at her, like she was his for the taking, anytime he wanted her …” A deep-rooted anger filled her eyes. “He looked at her, he lusted for my little sister, and I caught him. He knew I caught him, too, because he looked at me, then he smiled.” She nodded. “That’s when I knew …”

“Knew what, Reanna?”

“That he wanted my sister, too, Kyle,” she cried, her voice slightly raising. She brought her hand up and sunk her fingers into her hair. “And in my mind I saw it. I saw him doing to her what he was doing to me. I saw him beating her, making her live just to please him, raping her, abusing her emotionally, and I saw her quitting high school, doing drugs to numb the pain. All of these things that hadn’t even happened!” She shook her head. “I saw them in my head and I …” She let her hands fall to her side. “I’d had enough.
Enough of him
.” Wiping the tears from her face, she straightened in his lap. “I thought of what I wanted to do before I did it. Gave myself time to talk myself out of it,” she shook her head, “but I couldn’t. I wanted to do it.” Her eyes watered as a laugh devoid of humor fell from her lips. “And I’ve never admitted it before now, but I did.” She nodded. “I wanted him dead. For everything that he did to me. For everything that stupid look
suggested
he wanted to do to my sister. I wanted to make him pay, and didn’t want to be his fucking
wife any more. This was the
only
way.”