- Chapter 27
ABBY
“He did what!” Aldo screamed into his phone as I came out of the bathroom. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
I looked over toward Nicole, and the concerned expression on her face told me that she also had no idea what Aldo was talking about. But Nicole had been married long enough to the man that she didn’t bother to ask him at all. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stand not knowing.
“What’s going on? Anything I can help with?” I asked as I tried to make myself useful.
“What is wrong with you? Why do you look disgusting,” Aldo yelled at me.
“Aldo, she was in the bathroom vomiting, give the poor girl a break,” Nicole interjected.
“Take her to her room; I don’t want to see her,” Aldo said with a look of disgust.
I hadn’t quite seen a look like that on Aldo toward me before, and I felt like it had something to do with whatever was going on with his phone call. My stomach churned for real as Nicole walked me to the room they wanted me to stay in. Everything felt like it was falling apart. In the span of only a few hours, I had gone from thinking that life was great, to being scared for my own life.
Sometimes, I had to wonder what was going on in my head and why I made the decisions I did. As I sat on the well-adorned bed and Nicole shut the door to leave me there, I felt real fear for what was going to happen next. Aldo hadn’t actually liked me, it was obvious by how quickly he had turned against me as soon as something went wrong. I shouldn’t have agreed to go out with Aldo in the first place. That very first day when I was with Theo and Aldo had made me the offer of ten thousand dollars. It was that moment that I regretted the most.
Even when I sent the money home to my sisters, I knew that it was money that I shouldn’t have earned the way I did. Sure, I talked myself into it and made myself believe that everything was fine, but deep down I felt like shit taking Aldo’s money. It felt like a snake was circling around me, and I was trying to ignore the fact that he could kill me at any moment. The horrible part of it all was that I knew better. I wasn’t stupid, I had been in New York for years. I knew better than to get involved in the kind of shit that I had gotten myself into. But the money had blinded me.
Even Theo was the kind of guy that I should have avoided when I started seeing him throwing his money around on the trip to Vegas. I knew better than to trust a guy who would spend that kind of money on a woman he hardly knew. But I was starting to have feelings for Theo that I hadn’t had before, and it was too hard for me to just walk away from him.
But as I sat there on the bed, locked in a room at Aldo’s house, I finally realized that money really couldn’t buy you any sort of happiness. Just looking at Aldo and his wife, you could see that it didn’t matter how much money they had, it was never enough, and they weren’t happy. At that moment, I decided I needed to be with my sisters. The years of me hiding from the reality of life had to end. I was a jerk for leaving them and never going back for them. Sending money to them wasn’t at all like being there to support them. They were my sisters and I loved them, and I obviously wasn’t going to make it big in New York; so I needed to go home to them. That was if I could get myself out of the situation I had gotten into.
“I should just fucking kill her!” I heard Aldo scream as he threw something in the living room.
I could hear that Nicole was talking to him softly, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Whatever was going on was pretty huge and it had pissed him off enough that he was talking about killing me. I was scared. More scared than I could ever remember feeling, and I had been in some pretty shady situations over the years. Aldo was the kind of guy who could kill anyone he wanted; I was more sure of that now than I had been when Theo had talked about him. If only I could figure out why he was so damn angry, maybe there would have been a way to calm him down.
But my ways of manipulating people in my favor only worked so well and only worked when I knew what was going on. At that moment, I had no idea what was going on or why Aldo was so damn angry with me.
I looked out the window to see if there was any way to escape the room they had put me in, but we were up in a high-rise and there were no balconies. Even if I could have opened the window, it surely would have been the death of me if I had jumped. No, I decided I was just going to have to wait and hope that Nicole could calm her husband down. Or hope that whatever had pissed him off so much would calm him down.
I tried to listen at the door to hear what was going on, but I couldn’t hear anything. There was no more screaming and no more throwing things around. It was either a good sign or a really bad one, and I decided to sit in the corner and see if I could reach Theo.
When I pulled my phone out, I saw that Theo had tried to call me. It was far too dangerous for me to be on the telephone at all, and I certainly couldn’t call him back. I text him again.
“Aldo says he’s going to kill me. Please, if there is anything you can do. Help me,” I sent to him.
Instantly, I could see that he had read the message and was responding. I waited in anticipation for his message to appear in return. I didn’t know Theo much better than I knew Aldo, but there was one thing I knew for sure; Theo wouldn’t hurt me. He cared about me, and I knew it in my soul. Whatever else happened before or after that moment, I knew that Theo would try and help me.
“Coming there now, hide if you can,” Theo responded. “Can’t text anymore. Do whatever you have to. I’m coming for you.”
I felt relieved when I read his message, although logically, I knew I was still in a lot of danger. It wouldn’t take Aldo very long to kill me if that was really what he wanted to do. Certainly, one bullet to my brain would only take a few seconds once he got into the room I was in. I decided I had to start putting all the furniture in front of the door. Anything necessary so I could slow down the process.
As soon as I had pushed the nightstand in front of the door, I heard the jiggling of the handle. The fear inside of me was so much that I felt like my whole body go cold and was unable to move as I stared at the door handle and waited for my killer to force himself into my room.
“It’s me,” I heard Nicole say.
Although Nicole had been the one who held the gun up to my head in the restaurant, I didn’t feel like she actually wanted to hurt me. The move had seemed more like something she was doing to impress her husband and to scare Theo. She was the only person I could hope to help me, so I pushed the nightstand out of the way and let her in.
“Why does he want to kill me?” I asked as Nicole came into the room and closed the door.
“It’s Theo, he went to the police and tried to turn Aldo in. The police wouldn’t deal with him, so hopefully, everything is fine. But Aldo doesn’t want to deal with you anymore. I’ve convinced him to give you to Briggs. I know it’s not ideal. I’m sorry.”
“What? Briggs? Oh, my God,” I said as tears started down my face.
There weren’t many times in my life where I had actually felt hopeless. Usually, I felt like if I worked hard enough, I could figure a solution out. But at that moment, I felt everything being pulled from me and didn’t have the ability to think clearly. I wasn’t in charge any longer, and that was a place I wasn’t used to being in.
Being in charge was how I made myself feel better. I could make a man love me, and I could drop him just as quickly when I didn’t need anything from him any longer. Of course, I hated that I hurt people, but I was much better at hurting others than I was at letting myself get hurt.
“Listen to me, Abigail. Briggs is just like any other man. You hear me? I know you can deal with him.”
The way Nicole looked at me made me see her in a whole different light than I had seen here before. It was like she knew I had been manipulating men all along, even her husband. She had a look of knowing in her eyes as she held onto my arms and shook me back to reality.
Women and I didn’t get along much. Isabella had been my only true female friend since I had arrived in New York. But Nicole was like me; I saw it in her eyes and felt it in her hands as they held onto my arms. She wanted to help me, and I needed to listen to her.
It is weird, how in moments of sheer panic, you can hone in your own body’s ability to function. Suddenly, I felt in control and more able to handle the situation. Knowing that there was at least one other human being that was with me and on my side made everything seem much less hopeless.
“What should I do?” I asked urgently.
“Your sick thing is good. Use that again, but can you make yourself actually vomit?” she asked.
There was no time for games; I couldn’t pretend not to understand what she was talking about. Surely, she already knew that I had pretended to be ill so I wouldn’t have to sleep with her or with Aldo. At that moment, I felt an alliance with her that was so unusual, yet so pure.
Whatever Nicole had been through with Aldo had put her in a position where she wanted to help me. Sure, it was probably purely because she felt they might be arrested, and she wanted it to look good that she had made some sort of effort. Or maybe she really did have a sister alliance with me and wanted to help me, but it didn’t really matter to me at that moment. She was all I had.
“Yes, I can.”
“Then do that. I’m going to have to be on Aldo’s side. But if something happens, and there are police, please get me out,” she said with a longing in her eyes. “I was like you once. I thought I could handle this life. But if I can get out, make it happen for me.”
“I will do anything I can,” I said, and I meant it.
Nicole didn’t have to come into that room and warn me about what was going on. She didn’t have to give me that small moment of hope. So if it came to something down the road where I could offer her help, I would do my best to make sure I helped.
Women needed to stick together, at least, the ones who understood my way of thinking and looking at the world. I was willing to bet that Nicole hadn’t gotten to the place she was in life without living a little outside of the norm. I was willing to bet that she was much more like me than many of the women in the world. Aldo probably had sucked her into his life, just like he had sucked me in. She put on a strong persona and pretended to be in control as a way of protecting herself. I knew what that was like very much.
“Thanks,” she said as she hugged me and then left the room.
I stood there in total awe as I tried to soak in what had just happened and what was about to happen. I could only hope that whoever Theo was coming with was indeed the police and they were going to be there before Briggs came for me. The horror stories that Briggs himself had told of what he liked to do to women was enough to make my blood go cold. I really didn’t know if I could fend off a man like that.
Quickly I looked around the room for anything that I could use as a weapon and hide in my bag. The room was pretty much emptied out with only the basic furnishing still around, but I remembered watching a crime drama where the woman had stolen a spring from under a bed and killed her captor with it. Certainly, I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill anyone, but I laid down and looked under the bed frame to see if there were springs there that I could use.
Sure enough, there were long nine-inch springs under the bed. I had to pull with all my strength to get one of them free, and as I did, it collapsed on my finger and sliced it opened. The cut was big and the blood started dripping all over, so I held the finger against my chest in an effort to get the bleeding to stop.
There was a knock at the front door, and I instantly felt like I was going to pass out. It was either Theo with whoever he was coming to the house with or it was Briggs, coming to get me. I slid down into the corner of the bedroom and waited to see who it was.
The talking in the living room made me instantly think that it was Briggs and not whoever Theo had planned to come to the apartment with. Certainly, Aldo wasn’t going to talk with Theo when he arrived.
As the footsteps toward my room got louder, I felt myself getting dizzier and dizzier. I could hardly breathe from anticipation and fear as the doorknob to my room opened, and I saw Briggs standing there.
“She’s all yours,” I heard Aldo’s voice say from behind him.
Briggs shut the door and locked it behind him. He had a disgusting look on his face and a smile that spanned across his crooked teeth. I wanted to scream but was afraid to. I wanted to run but knew there was no way out of that room. I was stuck, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“Now this is going to be fun,” Briggs said as he yanked me up from the ground and threw me onto the bed.
“Please, I’m sick. Please, let’s go back to your place. I promise to do whatever you want,” I pleaded with him.
“You seem to forget my dear. I don’t like to make my women happy. I like to make them scream,” he said as his fist hauled off and hit me across the jaw.
For a moment, I thought I was going to be alright, but then I felt the room go dark. The pain hurt in a throbbing and pounding sort of way as I opened my eyes and tried to get my bearings to what was going on. I expected that Briggs would have been on top of me or assaulting me in some way, but instead, he was just sitting in a chair watching me.
The blood from my finger had covered the sheets, and my lip was dripping blood as well. But I didn’t scream. I knew better than to give him that satisfaction. If there was anything I could do to prevent it, I wasn’t going to scream for that bastard. I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure.
There was a loud bang that sounded like it was coming from the front door, and Briggs jumped up to go see what was going on. He opened the door and then quickly shut it again and locked it. I had also jumped up by this point and moved back to the corner of the room where I slid down to the ground and watched as Briggs started piling things up in front of the door. Whoever had come through that front door had scared Briggs enough that he no longer cared about assaulting me, and instead, was hiding in the room with me.
“What’s going on?” I asked as we heard Aldo screaming.
“I’m going to kill you bitch. You aren’t going to testify against me,” Aldo screamed at Nicole.
Briggs ran into the bathroom and shut the door, leaving me alone in the bedroom as the gunshots continued. I stayed low on the ground in the corner and just hoped that none of them would fly through a wall and hit me.
I heard Nicole screaming for help, and I don’t know what came over me but I jumped up and opened the door. There I was face to face with Aldo. He had Nicole in front of him and was holding her hair in a fist with a gun in his other hand as he looked toward the front door. Something came over me at that moment, and I looked at Nicole and knew what I had to do.