“Don’t do this, Michael.” Leilah’s plea emerged as a strangled whisper, the begging evident in the emotion behind her words. “There are other ways you can hurt me; you don’t need to use Seline.”
“But maybe I want to,” her former husband declared. He waved the pistol toward Seline’s temple and laughed as she recoiled. “Keep still, baby,” he said, his voice soft and he planted a kiss in the space where she expected a bullet.
“Michael, you’re high,” Leilah pleaded, her sentence building to a wail. “You wouldn’t do this otherwise. You adore Seline.”
“I’m not high,” he replied with annoyance. “I’m desperate, Leilah. You’ve taken away everything I valued and I’ve nowhere left to go. Get inside.” He waved the pistol towards the porch steps and followed the women up, closing the French doors behind him.
“The merger’s done?” Leilah asked, regretting the words as they became airborne. She searched her mind for the date and realised she no longer recorded the days in her brain. Alasdair Grayson would’ve needed only days to fell her arrogant husband and he’d used the time wisely. Meanwhile, the town had sucked her into its timeless vault like a hoof in deep mud. Sucked her in and kept her prisoner. “Sorry,” she said, her answer sounding lame against the taste of terror in her mouth.
“Two things I built,” Michael said, waving the gun. “A world class business and a family. You took them both, Dee Hanover.”
Leilah glanced at Seline. Her daughter’s eyes moved behind fluttering lids as she attempted to keep still. Michael’s arm locked around her neck made her look like a ragdoll carried by a child, a sickening sight for a mother to watch. Bile rose into Leilah’s throat and she swallowed it down, her shocked body maintaining its posture of arms stretched forward towards her stricken child. “I can’t change anything,” she whispered. “I felt trapped and I needed to get out.”
“And I handed you the excuse.” Michael waved the gun again and Leilah fought the urge to duck. “I shafted that stupid bitch and gave you the reason.” He sighed. “It was dumb.” His right thumb clicked the lever down on the safety and there was a clunk as something engaged inside the chamber.
Leilah shook her head as injustice rose in her breast, her eyes fixed on the terrified Seline. “You used drugs and beat me when you were high! You used my daughter as a ransom for the last ten years and you seriously expect me to believe that was the first time you were unfaithful?” Leilah dropped her arms to her sides as her confidence staged a return. “You’re a self-deluded liar, Michael Hanover! The little PA was just the first bit on the side you got attached to, but she wasn’t the first indiscretion. If I really wanted to finish you, I’d have sought a divorce years ago for the violence you subjected me to and made sure you were locked up.”
“Instead you waited and sold your share to the highest bidder!” Michael spat, his cheeks flushing with anger. “Who just happened to be Lara’s ex.”
Leilah shook her head and half turned her body away, her brain working through options and coming up empty. “That was unfortunate and not my doing. Do you really think I’d have enough business acumen to cook up a plot like that?”
Seline’s face grew whiter and whiter and her eyes remained closed. Leilah stared at the man who once provided succour and salvation in her troubled world; a man she declared fealty and kept her promises to until the final indignity. “What do you want from me now, Michael? There’s nothing left. I used my share of the house sale to buy this place and if it’s about the money from the company shares, you can take them. Nothing is worth this.” She raised a finger and pointed at the terrified teenager whose breathing looked constricted, crushed between Michael’s forearm and bicep. “Let her go.”
Michael kissed Seline on the side of her damp forehead and released his arm. She sank to the floor like a boulder and Leilah panicked. She made a dash for her daughter but Michael blocked her with a strong arm. “Leave her. I didn’t come here for the money.”
Leilah swallowed and took a step back, her heart increasing the yammer in her chest. “No,” she whispered and shook her head. “No.”
Michael advanced, placing thumb and finger either side of Leilah’s trachea. He squeezed and she felt her throat gag in complaint. “I need you to make some calls,” he said, his voice calm. “Let’s get them up here and you can tell the truth. His life for hers.” He put the gun to Leilah’s temple and she heard the trigger grate as he moved it with his index finger.
“No,” she gushed, her blue eyes wide in her pale face. “You promised.”
Michael sneered. “I promised a lot of things, babe, but being married to you killed my ability to keep a single one of them. I started off loving you, Leilah, I really did. But year after year of watching you pine for him and knowing no matter what I did, I couldn’t match up. That’s what killed our marriage, Leilah. All I did was start the funeral.”
Leilah shook her head. “I loved you, Michael. You helped me when nobody else could and the rest of it’s all in your mind. I gave you everything I had and you threw it back in my face.” Leilah’s voice caught as he squeezed harder. “You don’t know what real love is.”
He hit her with the side of the pistol and white spots flared behind her vision. “Make the call,” he hissed. Still Leilah shook her head.
“No. Just kill me and get it over with.” Maternalism flared within her. “Kill me and let Seline go. She’s done nothing wrong.” Twenty wasted years of trusting the wrong man. Hector’s letter clanged in her brain. She should have trusted her father all along. Leilah squeezed her eyes shut and wondered how to get to the gun in the safe. It seemed an impossible task, probably because it was.
“Call. Him.”
“No.” Denial made Leilah feel strong. Nobody else should die for her error of judgement. “No way.”
Michael turned towards Seline’s slumped body and he put the gun nozzle back on Leilah’s temple. The cold metal circle pressed into the delicate skin until it made contact with the hardness of her skull. “You do it,” he snapped at her. “You make the call.”
“To who?” Seline’s sentence tailed off into a wail and Leilah shook her head.
“Nobody honey. Just get up and walk away. Don’t look back. Go!”
“And I’ll pull the trigger and come after you,” Michael said, his voice cold. “There’s no blood between us, kid, or did you never work that one out?”
“What?” Seline’s wide blue eyes fixed their liquid gaze on Leilah and her mother drove down the spectre of guilt.
“Go, Seline,” Leilah pleaded. “He’ll kill me anyway so get out. Now!”
Her child faltered, damaging knowledge filtering through her brain ahead of the threat. “Dad’s not my dad?” Her voice wobbled and she looked from one to the other. “Mum?”
Leilah swallowed and closed her eyes. When they snapped open she made her decision and tried to communicate it telepathically. She pushed Michael with a gargantuan shove and screamed to her daughter, “Run!” She heard the gun discharge but realised too late Michael’s inexperience with firearms was worse than a sniper’s bad day.
The noise shook her eardrums to the point of rupture, leaving the blast reverberating through her skull for seconds afterwards. Michael swore and stepped back from the damage, but not far enough. Leilah lifted her arm to slap him again, finding hope in the deep recesses of her genetic Dereham optimism. She could do this. Seline would escape even if she couldn’t.
Her right arm failed to respond to her brain’s frantic signals and Leilah looked down, her eyes widening at the black line of spotted, singed fabric from elbow to shoulder. Her eyes tracked up, following the trail to its conclusion at the spreading circle of blood originating from the soft flesh between her collar bone and shoulder. The spots of black fabric spattered her expensive shirt in a generous arc and Leilah registered the prickling sensation reaching up her throat and onto her cheek. She watched the blood leak and pool, soaking a blue and red chequered square until it was crimson with no blue visible.
Seline’s high-pitched screams and Michael’s swearing brought her back to the scene in Hector’s lounge, but Leilah floated there with detached interest. The throb in her shoulder rose from nowhere, a bone wearying ache which deflated her chest and made the burns pale into insignificance on her pain scale. With the pressure gone from her larynx she gasped humidity soaked air and felt it catch in her chest. Shock locked the release valve in her lungs and she sucked in air on a one-way track, her body forgetting to let any go. Down seemed to be the most logical direction to head and Leilah stepped back until able to slide along the wall behind her, landing in a backward sitting position which hurt more than standing.
“Mum! I’m sorry, Mum!” Fear helped Seline make the distance from her slumped position to Leilah’s side, her pupils huge in her aqua irises. She speed crawled and hurled herself to a kneeling position, Michael and his lethal weapon forgotten.
Leilah’s eyes pleaded with her daughter to leave but Seline ignored the unspoken entreaty. “She can’t breathe!” The teenager dragged at the front of Leilah’s shirt, exposing a pink lace bra and a messy hole under her collar bone. Sooty powder covered fabric and skin, melding with the seeping blood to create a dirty paste. “Dad! Help me!”
Leilah’s brave daughter switched into capable woman, treating her mother as though she were a damaged equine in her care, assessing and appraising, weighing up her options and making split decisions. She cupped her hands either side of Leilah’s nose and mouth, leaning across Leilah and pressing. “Breathe into my hands, Mum. Forget everything else. You’re hyperventilating so slow it down and concentrate. Breathe through your nose only.”
I’m not dying. The release of the lock in her chest brought the realisation and relief shuddered through Leilah’s body. She put her energy into breathing through her nose, focussing on the lock in her chest wall. Each breath inhaled as a grunt and exhaled as a whine and embarrassment made its mark on Leilah’s skin as she attributed the awful noise to herself.
Seline removed her hands and Leilah noticed the tremor in them as she sucked in a calmer breath. “Sorry,” she gasped, seeing a tear bud beneath her daughter’s left eye and plunge down her pale cheek. “I’ll be ok.” Her ears still rung with the aftershock from the blast and she noticed Michael chewing at a hang nail on his thumb, his eyes darting left and right. She nudged her daughter as Seline wadded up her cardigan and pressed it against Leilah’s shoulder. “Go,” she breathed.
To her misery, Seline shook her head and raised her chin in defiance. “No.”
Michael’s lips parted as he turned at the sound and he hefted the gun back into his hand so his index finger covered the trigger. His thumb clicked the rear cylinder latch again and his body stiffened as he watched Seline’s futile ministrations. “Leave her,” he ordered and waved the pistol.
Seline shook her head, the set of her jaw making Leilah’s heart ache as she recognised the traits of someone she once loved more than life itself.
“Don’t take it out on her,” Leilah said, hearing the slur in her speech.
“Get your phone out.” Michael pointed the gun at Leilah and she heard Seline’s squeal of dismay next to her.
Leilah moved her left arm across her body, unable to reach her phone in the right-hand pocket of her jeans. She stretched and it wrought a groan from her stomach which tailed off into a sigh.
“You do it.” Michael switched his aim to somewhere between Seline’s chin and her waist. His hand trembled and his eyes looked starry and wild.
“Not high, Michael?” Leilah asked with a gasp, the disappointment evident in the curl of her lips. “Like hell you’re not.”
“Get the phone out and shut her up!” Michael punctuated the words with an alarming jab of the pistol.
Seline grappled in Leilah’s jeans, sobbing apology as the movement rocked her mother’s shoulder. Leilah shook her head in dismissal and once the phone was in Seline’s shaking fingers, used the grip of her boots on the floorboards to shove her bottom back against the wall. The boots caught her eye, a scuff across the toe of the left one. A dead woman’s boots. A dead woman wearing a dead woman’s boots. Maybe the boots were unlucky. The thought took her mind away from the pain but the subsequent smirk enraged her crazy ex. “Find it funny, do you?” he said, kicking out at her foot. The jolt to her shoulder replaced the smirk with a grimace.
“You’re such an asshole,” Leilah gasped. “You always were. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to see it.”
“Never good enough,” he spat, as though coaching her words and Leilah played along.
“No, Michael. You stopped being good enough the minute you started striving for it. Then you just became a wannabe.” She grunted at the end of the sentence, seeing another line of blood add itself to the chequered square and spill over into the next one. Leilah concentrated on slowing her heart rate by creating different images in her head; happier times snatched from an unhappy life. She closed her eyes and her body obliged, her aorta reducing the endless pounding of blood through the hole in her shoulder.
His beautiful face drifted into view, shadowed by the sunlight behind him as he held out a slender bony hand towards her. ‘Down here,’ he whispered, excitement and hope in his voice. ‘I’ve found somewhere for us to go. You’ll love it.’
She did love it. She loved it so much they went back over and over again. It wasn’t the place but him and everything about him. Leilah felt a terrible click in her soul at the realisation she’d never get to reassure him. He was her first, her only and he didn’t know.
“Mum?” Seline’s panic disturbed Leilah’s concentration and she opened her eyes and turned. Her daughter’s face looked ashen as though some unseen hand had pulled the plug on her healthy complexion. “Mum?” she repeated, a wobble in her voice. She held the phone to face Leilah and asked her a question her mother spent almost twenty years avoiding. “Which is it?”
“No.” Leilah shook her head and rested her crown against the wall behind. The ponytail had slipped forward, the end of her brown hair dipped in the blood like a tawny brush. “No,” she repeated, her head lolling as she squeezed her eyes to retain the ready tears.
“Give it here!” Michael snatched the phone from Seline’s hand and peered at the screen. He scrolled one handed, keeping the gun trained on Leilah. The reward showed in the upturn of his lips. “Silly girl, Dee,” he crooned. “You changed your sim card but forgot to carry your contacts over. Seeing as you’re in this awful town where it happened, I’m picking that one of these is him.”
Leilah’s heart sank as she struggled to keep her face neutral. Michael celebrated with a bone chilling laugh. “Who shall I call, Leilah? Which one will come running?” He scrolled through the names, disregarding the women and focussing only on the males. “Is it dear old Derek?” he said, his voice like nails on a blackboard. “Unlikely but you’re such a whore; who knows.” He flicked through more numbers. “Claus, Tai? No. They don’t sound familiar. But these do.” His eyes flashed like dark orbs in his face. “Dante? Or Tane? Which one, Leilah?” His eyes grew hard. “Which one?”
Leilah’s eyes remained impassive as anger burned hot within. Michael studied her and then jumped to his own well-informed conclusions. “Dante’s been hanging around us for the last twenty years, so you can call him. And Tane, let’s get him a ringside seat too. I’ve heard his name before.”
Leilah inhaled, her breath a whine on the way out and she shook her head and turned away. Seline’s voice sounded urgent in her ear. “What does he mean, Mum? Why is he doing this?”
Leilah attempted a shrug which ignited the pain in her shoulder and she shied away with a groan. Michael thrust the phone back into Seline’s hand and jerked the gun towards her. “Ring Dante,” he ordered. “Make your mum tell him she needs him.”
With fingers which behaved like soft spaghetti, Seline pressed the call button above Tane’s name and watched the green icon send out its pulsing signal across the screen. “It’s not working,” she sobbed. “Nothing’s happening.”
Michael seized it in hard fingers and stared at the screen in disgust. He reached into his back pocket and palmed the expensive phone which formed the IT hub of his business. He dialled Tane’s number into it and handed it back to Seline with a warning. “Get him up here,” he said. He dipped his body, so the pistol rested against Leilah’s forehead. “Give him reason to suspect and one second later, your precious mother will be dead.” Nothing in his eyes suggested he was bluffing and Seline activated the call.
Dante answered, greeting Seline with enthusiasm as she identified herself behind the unrecognised number. He grew silent as she made her plea. “Mum needs you.” Her voice wobbled. “Can you come to Grandpa Hector’s old house?” When he agreed, she hung up and handed the phone back to Michael. He redialled, checked the number against Leilah’s useless handset and handed his back.
“Now that one,” he said.
Seline made three more calls. She left a voice message for Claus and Tai but spoke to Tane, who sounded suspicious. “I’m at work,” he said, his voice echoing through the speaker. “I’ll come later though.”
“She said now,” Seline blurted, her voice sounding distressed even to the stranger. Leilah watched from the side as her daughter formed her soul mate’s full lips into a frightened pout and pleaded with the cop. “It’s urgent. This is her daughter, Seline.”
Michael kept the pistol trained on Leilah’s forehead but used his other hand to run a shaking finger across his throat. Seline ended the call without saying goodbye.