I take the keys and run to his place across the hall. I thought I’d have to find the right key and can’t stop shaking long enough to do anything. That’s when the door opens. Maggie peers out from between the jamb. Her green eyes are glistening, like she’s been crying.

I rip the door open and a nail tears off. “Maggie!” I lunge for her, but she holds up her hands, preventing me from hugging her.

“Leave, Hallie. Get the fuck out of here before he comes back.” Maggie’s eye is puffy with a circle darkening around it. One of her wrists is rubbed raw and the other one is bleeding. She’s wearing a tattered piece of lingerie that’s damp. Her legs have black and blue bruises all over. The bruises are arranged in small clusters of four, like hands gripping too hard made them.

“Maggie.” I want to cry. He beat the shit out of her.

“Hallie, go, before he comes back.”

I tug on her arm and she stumbles toward the door. “He’s not coming back for a little while. Come on. We’re gone. Never come back here. Ever.”

Maggie digs in her heels. “I can’t leave. I’m dead if I leave.”

I look her over once. “You’re dead if you stay. What the hell happened?”

“I didn’t bring him a girl.”

“So he used you?” She nods. My lips part as a breath slips out. “Oh, Maggie.” Rage is building inside of me. If I had a gun, I’d go back and shoot his nuts off. I don’t know exactly what she’s doing or what Victor did to her, but I know he beat her and probably raped her. The black and blue marks go all the way up her thighs. Her hair is a mess and her once perfect makeup is smeared across her face like she’s been drowning in tears.

Her voice is stern and cold. “It was my choice.” Maggie’s face glistens with tears and snot. She meets my gaze almost defiantly. “This is my life, not yours.”

I stop in my tracks and quit pulling on her. Turning back, I blurt out, “You’ve done this before?”

“Only when I had to. Hallie, this isn’t your problem.” Maggie’s jaw locks and her once vibrant eyes dart away.

I’m mortified and can’t conceal it. I stand there and feel every ounce of grief, regret, and rage ripping from my body. It changes me and I can’t stop it. Maggie is the only family I have left. I don’t care about Neil, maybe I never did, but people can’t live alone. Being alone is a step away from being dead—it’s a pace from ending up in a place like this with my face covered in bruises and tears.

There are times in life that creep up slowly, like shadows extending across the earth as the sun sinks below the horizon. Other times it’s quick like a breaking twig. My life changes in that moment and I feel it. The walls go up, higher and higher, until there’s no one above them, not even God. I’m alone in my misery, and there is no way I’m letting Maggie go. I’ll do what I have to do and the consequences are of little importance.

I snatch her wrist and tug her after me, explaining, “Victor’s knocked out in your apartment. We’re leaving and never coming back. You’re not allowed to leave and you work for me now. This shit is over. It’s over, Maggie, and we’re never coming back.”

Maggie is gasping for air and nearly falls to the floor. “I can’t!” She bellows. “Don’t make me! Hallie, he’ll kill me.”

I release her and feel the twisted smirk inch across my lips. I’m not myself, because I’m offering something that I’d never suggest. “Then I’ll take care of it. Go to the car.”

“Hallie!” Maggie lunges for me, trying to grab my arm.

I round on her. “Go!” Her green eyes meet mine and she knows. She sees the pain has fractured me in two. I’m no longer the same and we both know it. “You’ll never see him again.” It’s a promise.

Maggie nods as she stands there, shivering. She wraps her arms around her middle and looks up at me like we’re children again. We stood in this spot before, but last time we didn’t fight back. “It’ll be all right. It will be.” She utters the words more to herself than me. I smile, and holy fuck it practically breaks my face to do it, but I manage. Before she walks down the hall with her clothes in her arms, I touch her shoulder lightly. Maggie nods once at me, then pads down the stairwell and disappears from sight.

My mind is etched with darkness. It’s like I’ve fallen into a pit and can’t find my way out. Victor is there, smothering me and if I don’t release him, if I don’t cast him out, he’ll always be there, waiting. Three slow, silent steps back to Maggie’s apartment and I see the man still lying on the floor. He’s rousing, moaning curses and touching the bloody spot on his temple. Will anyone mourn him? Will someone buy him a tombstone and a cemetery plot? I couldn’t afford those things. I couldn’t give them to the best man in the world, so why should Victor Campone have them? He’s death incarnate.

Before I know what’s happened I’m gripping a dull kitchen knife in my fist, slowly approaching him from behind. Victor sits up and nearly falls to the side. “That fucking bitch.” He grips his skull like it’s pounding.

This isn’t real, is it? My life has come full circle. I’m back at the mercies of the heartless and I refuse to let them rule. I’d rather die, so here I stand. My hand doesn’t shake, and the girl I had been vanishes. She’s dissolving like an image left in the sun, fading forever until there’s no trace remaining.

Victor senses me standing behind him and turns to look over his shoulder. That’s when I act. The surprise on his face, the flash of the silver blade on the knife, and the river of blood that runs down his throat like a red river all flash as if they were happening somewhere else. Victor’s eyes widen with shock as his hand lifts to his neck and comes away covered in scarlet.

Those eyes, I’ll remember the way they looked at me with admiration and anger until I die. His lips part to speak, but I don’t care. I drop the knife. It clatters to the floor as I turn on my heel and walk away, leaving Victor dying on the floor.