The one consolation in her mind when Thad dragged her into the house was that it was his house. He hadn’t taken her somewhere else, somewhere they couldn’t be tracked. He’d brought her home. And someone, somewhere would have this address. Therefore, if she was careful, if she could buy herself some time, stall him somehow, it might give the authorities a chance to get to her before he did anything worse.

 

“Thad, I’m not going to struggle anymore. You’ve brought me home. Now, let’s sit down and talk about this. Let me pour you a drink.”

 

“Seriously? Oh yeah, why don’t I let you give me a massage as well—with a power tool. Hold on a minute while I fetch that kitchen knife so you can give me a straight shave.”

 

Tiana swallowed a queasy lump in her throat. His talk of power tools and kitchen knives wasn’t the kind of distraction she’d had in mind.

 

“So what are we doing here?” she asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t.

 

“We’re here to finish what we started,” he replied.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Tiana went to sit on the sofa, but he yanked her up right away and hustled her over to the stairs. “Thad, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

 

“Get up there!” he snapped.

 

“We settled this last time.”

 

“Fuck we did.”

 

By now her heart was racing so fast, she found it difficult to breathe. Tiana had heard about WAGs suffering from anxiety attacks during their partners’ fights, but she’d never had one. Was this what it felt like—the onset of one? Either that or a goddamn heart attack. He kept shoving her up the steps. The urge to leap over the banister and make a run for it almost got the best of her. However, he was so close behind her, the bastard would never let her get that far.

 

“Come on, Thad. This has to stop. It’s getting serious now. You do know the police will be on their way. You can stop this now and that’ll be the end of it. I promise. We can both move on with our lives and put this behind us.”

 

Either he wasn’t listening or his damaged brain wasn’t capable of seeing sense. At the top of the stairs, he shoved her so hard she careered forward and fell flat on her face. Her chin and knees suffered carpet burns that throbbed like hell. Despite her pleas, Thad roughed her to her feet and frog-marched her into the bedroom. He launched her onto the bed. She immediately spun round, ready to fend him off with kicks. But he calmly locked them in and pulled up the white chair from her dressing table.

 

Now she had an inkling of what he meant by “finish what we started.” The last time they’d shared this room, he’d beaten the truth out of her. Was this his follow-up interrogation?

 

But she didn’t dare speak first. She was too afraid. Tiana had to stick to her game plan at all costs—to draw this out as long as she possibly could and hope that he didn’t hurt her too much before help arrived.

 

Jesus, has it come to this? Thad? My Thad? What did I do wrong?

 

“You fucked him tonight,” he said. “Don’t lie.”

 

“I won’t lie to you, Thad. Never again.”

 

“So you had sex with him?”

 

She nodded sheepishly.

 

“Where? In the shower?”

 

“In the Jac—” She cleared her throat. “In the Jacuzzi. It was a spur of the moment thing.”

 

His eyes were deadly still, his tone so flat it was unnerving. “When did you start seeing him?”

 

Tiana had to think back over a turbulent couple of weeks. She scrambled both for the truth and for an answer that might save her. However, she was too rattled to think that clearly. He was in human lie detector mode, if such a thing was possible. Bullshitting him was the way to go, she knew, but not in her state of mind. The truth was all she could cling to right now.

 

“I went to see him,” she explained, “after you had that fight with him in the street. I needed to know what was going on, why he interfered in the ring that night.”

 

“What would you do something so stupid?”

 

“I-I thought I could clear the air. He didn’t know the stress you were under. I tried to explain what you’d been through.”

 

He stood tall and threw the chair against the wall. “You told that shit to a guy who hates me? That was your first disloyalty.”

 

“I didn’t mean it that way. I-I thought if I could explain why you hadn’t been yourself, he’d ease off a little. And he did. He got it. He’s been through hard times himself; he knows what it’s like to go off the rails a bit.”

 

Thad jabbed a threatening finger at her. “He’s nothing like me. Nothing. He was out to sabotage me, and you helped him do it. You think I don’t know that you two were seeing each other before he stopped my fight with Freitas? It’s so obvious. It all fits.”

 

“What fits? What are you talking about?”

 

“You and Easterling.” By now he was stalking around the room, his mouth open wide as he processed the crazy epiphanies. “Shit. All that time! You were planning it all that time. To humiliate me. You’d told him everything—the steroids, my treatment. First you drove me away to Adi with all your bitching and whining, you made me feel like I was the one cheating, when all the time you and Easterling…” He’d have torn his hair out if he’d had any. Instead, he raked the bristly dome with his fingernails, drawing blood.

 

“Thad, it’s not true. I swear the first time Dax and I ever spoke was when I went to see him at his gym.”

 

“That’s another lie. You spoke to him at Home for Heroes last year. I remember it.” He paused to weigh her up. “Why would you try to cover that up unless you were seeing him back then as well? All that time you were fucking him behind my back. And you had the balls to give me grief about Adi. That was your second disloyalty, sweetheart.” And that was the blackest use of that pet name she’d ever heard.

 

“Thad, you’ve got no evidence of any of this.”

 

Not that he needed any. He was so paranoid by now that he could just pluck things from midair and, in his mind, make them facts. There was no reasoning with him. Absolutely none. This couldn’t go on much longer. Every word out of her mouth, whether true or not, incriminated her, inched her that much closer to whatever punishment he had in mind.

 

For Christ’s sakes, Dax. Where are you? Did anyone even call the police?

 

“I get that you think I’ve betrayed you,” she said. Hell, at this point it was worth trying any unorthodox tack. “But if you’ll just give me a chance to tell my side of the story, maybe you’ll see that it isn’t so black and white. You know I’ve loved you since high school.”

 

“No, you played me,” he replied. “To get what you wanted.”

 

“Um, you made the first move. You asked me out.”

 

“Then you saw your chance and you played me with that coy little secret-slut routine. I heard about those guys at the burger bar where you worked…that threesome. Did they both nail you at the same time, or did they take turns?”

 

She shook her head, fighting back the tears. “Where’s all this coming from?”

 

“The patterns were there all along. I just never saw them before…not until you slipped up the other week. You stayed out all night when you were usually back before bedtime. Then you tried to lie about where you’d been and whom you’d been with. That fucking proves your guilt. It proves you were covering up for what you’d been up to all along, behind my back. And even now, when the cat’s totally out of the bag, you’re still trying to play innocent. You make me sick. You make me fucking sick!”

 

Before she could offer her defense, he flew at her. Tiana tried to kick him off. She caught him in the balls, which halted him for a moment, then just made him madder. He bared his teeth. The veins in his neck and forearms bulged. His face contorted with murderous rage.

 

“Don’t. Please, Thad, don’t—”

 

His hands were around her throat before she could finish. He squeezed so hard it punched the breath up out of her windpipe, mid-swallow. She tried to cough up the saliva that had gone down the wrong hole, but even her cough couldn’t get through. He choked and he choked. Her head felt like it swelled three sizes. It was ready to explode. A heavy iron weight in her lungs backed up to her heart. Now she went lightheaded, as though her brain had been filled with hot air and cast adrift from the rest of her body.

 

She knew she was dying.

 

Her last impulse was to play him, just as he’d accused her of doing. It made little sense and yet it was the only thing that made any sense. To outsmart a crazy person…

 

She stopped struggling and fell limp. Closed her eyes.

 

Somewhere through her fog of consciousness he released his hold and set her head down. Not violently but gently, peacefully. He’d done what his insanity had made him do and now he would just have to deal with it…with what he’d done.

 

Everything she had left told her to gasp for dear life, but Tiana didn’t dare move a muscle. She was inside a black, muscular hole that was swallowing her deeper and deeper. But the distant voice above said, Not yet. If you move now, you’ll never move again. It kinda sound like Dax Easterling’s voice, and she trusted it. It was desperate, that voice. It relaxed her limbs and clenched her core so that she could play dead long enough to cheat death. To cheat him. The man she’d loved for what seemed like a lifetime. Her murderer.

 

She held on for as long as she could. Not moving. Not fighting back but fighting onward, reaching for survival. All she could hope to do now was outlast him. To cling to the future.

 

Tiana thought she heard a car backfiring. It was close. It was worlds away.

 

Then she slipped into the darkness.