I walk slowly up the stairs to my apartment after lunch. I had hoped that seeing Sara would make me feel more like myself, but it had only partially worked. Just because I knew what was motivating Victoria Russo didn't mean that she wasn't still dangerous.

She was a woman fighting for her lavish lifestyle and I was in the way. I needed to come up with a plan. I needed to call a doctor. I needed to figure out what the hell I was going to do with Norwood in town. I like having my panic button, but that's a band aide. I need a solution.

At least she got me answers, I think as I open my apartment door. I shrug and turn to lock it behind me. There's a sticky note taped to the inside lock with just two words written on it.

Good Girl.

I know that handwriting. The loop on the G is forever burned into my memory from long ago. Panic wells up from the acid pit of my stomach and I bite down a scream.

John Norwood was in my home. My sanctuary. My greatest tormentor was in my most safe place. He was here.

I go to the bedroom and strip the bed, putting the sheets in the washing machine with the hottest water I can set. I don't know what else he's touched in my house, but I have to get anything that might have even the smallest trace of him out of my life. I go to the closet and start ripping everything down and stuffing what I can in the washing machine with the sheets and throwing everything else in the tub to hand wash.

My hands shake as I search for the bleach under the kitchen sink and start scrubbing every non-porous surface I can find. I don't want even his fingerprints in my house.

Terror is making me sweat. All the progress I've made, all the strength I've accumulated the last ten years is gone. He stole it from me like he stole my youth. I can't get away from him, no matter how hard I try. There is no escape from him. He was in my house!

The phone rings. I don't want to answer it, but I know if it is Mr. Norwood he'll be even angrier with me if I don't. I don't dare miss his call for fear of what he'll do to me. Or Dante.

“Hello?” I'm far too proud that my voice doesn't shake.

“Cara,” a familiar female voice greets me. It's not him. It's Dante's mother. I can breathe again.

“Hello, Mrs. Russo.” The fact that I'm relieved to be talking to her is frightening.

“I was hoping you could join me for lunch tomorrow.” The tone of her voice makes it clear this isn't really a request. “I was thinking of bringing Mr. Norwood to join us. I thought he would like a reunion with you.”

Irritation overrides my good sense. I don't have time for her games. Not today. “You do that,” I say, growing defiant. She obviously doesn't know how dangerous he is.

“You think I'm bluffing, Cara?” Anger ripples through the phone. “I want you away from my son. You are meddling in a world you don't understand and the implications of your actions are far over your head. You have no inkling of what a mess you have caused.”

“Mrs, Russo, you are the one who has no idea what's going on.” I'm far more angry than I should be about this, but it's a welcome distraction from terror. “I'll be happy to explain it to you at lunch.”

I slam the phone down on the counter. I'm angry now. Angry and terrified. All I want to do is scream and then hide under a rock and die.

I crumple to the floor, rocking back and forth in tears. How can I expect Dante to protect me from John Norwood? Even though Dante's rich, and his mother is obviously someone to be reckoned with, John Norwood brought his company to its knees in a matter of hours. He could have seriously hurt my baby. I'm angry and frustrated and I don't know what to do.

Tears fall on the floor, but I just scrub them away with bleach. I wish I could bleach everything and just start fresh. But my life is never that easy.

A knock on the door surprises me. The windows are dark and twinkle with the lights of the city. I've been scrubbing for hours and lost time completely.

I stand and go to the door. I can see Dante through the peephole and I instantly am flooded with guilt. I forgot about dinner.

Dante smiles as I open the door, but it quickly fades as he sees the destruction I've wrecked on my apartment. It reeks of bleach and everything is tossed and scattered in my desperate attempt to erase any essence of Mr. Norwood.

“What happened?” Dante asks, looking around the room. I realize I've gone a little insane.

“I saw a rat,” I lie lamely. It's the best excuse I can come up with. I don't want Dante to have one of Norwood's accidents. I couldn't handle it right now. “I hate rats.”

Dante chuckles, apparently finding my neurosis endearing. “Why didn't you just call an exterminator instead of dousing your building in bleach?”

“I take care of things myself,” I tell him. I wince a little. That's what got me the bruises in the first place. I feel the universe trying to show my a lesson, but I push it away. “Let me go get dressed and we can go. It'll just be a minute.”

I hurry to the bathroom and pull out a freshly washed black dress. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I should put on makeup, but the bruises already ache and I don't want anything near my stitches. I pull my hair up into a tight bun and just put on enough eye makeup to make me look human.

I hear him lean up against the wall outside the bathroom door. “I have good news. The lawsuits are being dropped and the article for the Times isn't going to hit the papers,” he says. There's palpable relief in his voice.

I freeze and my breath catches.

“You okay?” Dante asks, peeking around the door. His blue eyes are full of concern I don't deserve.

“Just caught a bruise,” I lie. I smile, but inside I'm drowning. Mr. Norwood's threats are real. He wasn't bluffing. It wasn't just random chance that those things happened to Dante. Mr. Norwood caused them. I want to run and hide, but instead I just put on my work face and step out of the bathroom. “I'm ready.”

The car ride to the restaurant is quiet. We sit in the backseat of a limo, our knees touching and not much else. I am lost in my own thoughts. I look out the window. The sky is clear with the lights of the buildings like tiny daggers digging into the sky.

Stepping out of the car at the restaurant makes me gasp. The cold burns in my lungs. I hate the cold so much.

The lobby is quiet, filled with warmth and soft tinkling music that is supposed to be soothing. If anything it irritates me further. My fingers tingle from the warmth after just the short walk outside.

A woman gasps. Heads turn and look at me as we walk toward the hotel restaurant. For the first time in years, I'm self-conscious of my appearance. I'm naked in front of their eyes and it terrifies me.

“What's wrong?” Dante asks, nearly running into me as I stop dead in my tracks.

“Everyone's looking at me...” I whisper, glancing around and the judging eyes.

Dante tips my chin up with his hand. “Everyone is always looking at you,” he says. “You're too beautiful not to look at.”

I pull my head from his grasp and shake my head. “They're not looking at me. They're looking at my bruises.” I feel ugly. Broken.

I don't want to be treated like I'm made of glass, but at the moment I feel like I might be. And Dante is looking at me like I have a giant crack running down my center that might make me shatter at any moment.

My shoulders sag. I won't be good company tonight. Not after the past two days.

“I can't do this tonight, Dante,” I say, defeated. “I'm sorry. I'm just going to go home and go to bed.”

“Are you sure?” Dante asks. From across the lobby I see a woman whispering to her friend and looking at me. I can't decide if I want to burst into tears or go beat the shit out of them.

“Yes. You go have a nice dinner with your family,” I whisper, looking at the patterned marble floor. “I just need a good night's sleep.”

“I'll come with you,” he says.

I shake my head. “I just want to sleep. And someone needs to have dinner with them. I know these things are important. Tell them I say hello and make me sound good. I promise I'll be okay.”

Dante frowns, and then he sighs. “Okay.” He kisses the top of my head. It's a tender gesture, but it's not what I need right now. “Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”

I force a smile and touch his cheek. He's shaved and smooth. “I will. Thank you.”

I turn and walk back to the limo. Luckily, it hasn't left yet and I'm able to crawl into the backseat and curl up in a ball. “Take me home, please.”

I stare out the window at the bright lights against the dark sky. Everything hurts. My hands go to my stomach and I cringe at how close it came to hurting this child growing inside of me. I used to be safe here. How could this have happened to me?

I remember how Norwood had treated me special once. He'd given me gifts. He'd taken my mother to expensive restaurants and always went to her concerts. I could see now how meaningless the trinkets of his love had been, and just how many bruises she had covered up for him. She'd tried to spare me the worst of it, but she wasn't hear to protect me anymore. I was so naive, and he had been so cruel.

The baby. I remember the flash of happiness when I found out. I still needed to tell Dante. I had gotten so caught up in cleaning my apartment and hurrying to dinner, that I hadn't had the chance. I closed my eyes and sighed.

The driver stops at my building and I run up the stairs. I'm going to make a cup of tea since I can't have wine and cuddle into bed and try to forget everything. Tomorrow I can come up with a plan. Tomorrow I won't feel so fragile and weak.

I open the front door, step inside, and nearly have a heart attack. Mr. Norwood is standing in my living room admiring my piano. One of Mr. Norwood's thugs closes the door behind me and blocks my escape.

“You're back early. Mr. Russo just not have the stamina for you?” Mr. Norwood turns with a wicked smile cracking his face.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. I wish I had some bravery left in me, but seeing him here makes me feel two feet tall and weak as a kitten. I reach for my panic button only to find I don't have it. I must have left it in the limo.

“Coming to see you, of course.” He motions with his hand around the apartment. “I admired your apartment earlier, but I must say that the smell of bleach is not a welcoming scent.”

My heart is pounding like a scared rabbit facing a wolf. “What do you want?”

Mr. Norwood crosses the room in two easy steps, taking my chin in his hand and forcing me to look up at him. “I can still see the defiance in your eyes. You think you are going to come up with a way to beat me. A way for your beloved Dante Russo to save you. You need to be taught otherwise.”

He flings me away and I tumble to the floor. “I wouldn't...” I whisper, but I know as well as he does it's a lie. I'll never stop fighting.

“You are mine, little Cara. There is no escape from me.”

He turns his back to me. There's a sledge hammer leaning up against the piano that I hadn't noticed before. He picks it up. Immediately, I know what he's going to do.

“No.” I say, in denial of what I already know is going to happen. “No, no, no, No, No, NO,” I scream, trying to get to my feet. His thug grabs my arm and keeps me in place. I might have been able to wrench free, but I couldn't take my eyes away from the scene in front of me. Panic, rage, fear, and horror splinter through my core all at once as Norwood brings the hammer down on the shiny black surface of my beloved piano.

I beg and scream as he keeps swinging that horrible hammer at my piano. The keys clang and the strings make horrible death cries with every violent strike.

The piano is my connection with my mother. It's how I bridge the gap to heaven and feel her with me. With every smash of his hammer, my connection is broken yet again. Twice now he has killed my mother.

The bodyguard releases me and I crumple to the floor. There's no sense in trying to stop him now, the piano is ruined beyond repair. Mr. Norwood drops the hammer into the rubble of my dreams and wipes the sweat from his brow with one of my drapes.

“Now be a good girl, or I'll have to come back.” He pats me on the head like a dog.

I don't know how to be the good girl he wants, just that he wants me to try and fail. I know he's just going to keep punishing me, never stopping and never telling me what to do to make it stop. It's part of the pleasure for him. He can always change the rules to make me disobedient, no matter how hard I try to behave. He did it to my mother.

Mr. Norwood looks around, pleased with his work before walking out the front door and leaving me alone with my ruin. I hear his footsteps on the stairs as he leaves me. He knows there's nothing I can do against him. I won't call the police. I won't call Dante. I have no recourse to his destruction.

At least he didn't hit me this time. My baby is safe.

I pick up a white piano key, holding the marred beauty in my hand. Something inside of me breaks. Something that has never broken before, not even when my mother died. The darkest emotions I've ever felt have never even come close to what I feel at this moment.

Anger bubbles through me. He threatened my child. In threatening me, he threatened my baby. I will not tolerate this. I will not let him do this to me.

It is war now, and I am a mother bear on the attack. I now understand my mother's fury.

I stand up and look around with a detached sense of calm. I am in the eye of the hurricane of my anger.

The piano is destroyed. There is no way it can ever be rebuilt.

Luckily, he didn't destroy the small bookshelf with all my sheet music and Nan's bible. It still stands next to the shattered remnants of my piano like nothing ever happened.

A piece of the piano collapses, making a terrible snapping sound. I watch in slow motion as a piece of it slides directly into the bookshelf. Nan's bible wobbles and then falls to the floor.

“You need to punish me more?” I ask into the universe. “That wasn't enough for you?”

The universe doesn't respond.