Chapter 24

She huddled on the couch, sobbing, hugging her crying baby to her chest. Her eye was black and swollen nearly shut, and a trickle of blood ran down her chin from a split lip.

"Shut that brat up, slut. I don't intend to listen to another man's bastard scream in my own house." The man stood by the fireplace, a glass of bourbon in one hand and the bottle it came from in the other. He was a good-looking man in his early thirties, with dark brown hair and eyes that were almost gold. He was tall and strongly built, with thick, heavy muscles and huge hands. His handsome face was twisted in a dark scowl.

"I didn't cheat on you, Ryan! Celeste is your daughter!"

"Bitch!" He strode angrily over to the couch. "Lying little slut. I was offshore in February."

"She was just early--"

His hand cracked across her face. "Liar. She doesn't look early to me."

The baby screamed and he snatched it from her arms. "I told you to shut that brat up. Since you won't, I will."

"Ryan, please! What are you doing?!"

Crossing the room, he wrenched open the grate on the fireplace.

"NO!" She threw herself across the room, trying to tug the crying baby away from him. "Ryan! Oh god, stop!"

He easily held the baby away from her with one hand while he stirred the flames higher. "Bitch. Whore. You'll burn in hell and your little bastard with you. He tossed the poker down and started to unwrap the baby, shoving his wife roughly to the ground.

She sobbed in terror, and her desperate hands found the poker, still hot from the fire. As Ryan grinned down at her and prepared to toss the infant in the roaring flames, she swung the hot iron bar with all her strength, striking him across the face. The smell of sizzling flesh filled the air and he screamed, dropping the child.

The woman caught her as she fell and scrambled madly away, lurching to her feet and running for the door. She almost made it.

With a bellow of pure rage he caught her, wrapping his fist in her long braid and yanking her backward.

She curled around her baby as she fell, trying to keep her from her insane husband's reach, but her strength was no match for his, and he unwrapped her as easily as he'd peel a banana and tore the child from her grip.

The poker had slashed deep into his flesh, the skin of his right cheek seared and split, his right eye just a blackened, bloody, oozing mass. She stared at him in horror, knowing that no sane man would be smiling in the grip of such pain.

Tenderly, he caressed her cheek. "Emma darling. Fire would have been fast, but now she'll suffer. And so will you, while you listen to her cries grow weaker and weaker. You'll both pay for this. "

He drug her up the stairs to their bedroom. Opening the closet, he laid the child on the floor and grabbed a handful of belts from the shelf. Closing the door on the screaming infant, he tossed the hysterical woman on the bed and proceeded to tie her tightly to the bedposts.

He tortured her for three days, using knives and fire and his body to torment her as the baby's cries grew more desperate, more terrified, and then faint and weak, and finally stopped completely late in the second day.

Finally, he lay a gentle kiss upon her burned and bleeding lips. "It's been fun, sweetheart, but I have to go to work now. Goodbye." He plunged a knife into her stomach, twisting the blade viciously, and left it. Then he got up and showered ... He took clothes from the closet, ignoring the tiny corpse, and dressed. He smiled into his wife's tormented, still aware eyes one last time.

"You can stay in bed, love. The baby's sleeping." Then he left, never to return.

Mark woke in a cold sweat, every detail of the dream burned into his mind. Retching, he scrambled desperately out of bed, vomiting on the floor as he ran for the bathroom and fell to his knees in front of the toilet. He was sick for a long time, retching and heaving long after his stomach was empty, leaving him with aching muscles and a throbbing headache by the time he was finally able to stand up and splash cold water on his face. He managed to clean up the mess before stumbling back to the bed where he lay, wide awake and terrified to go back to sleep.

It was his tight, shivering grip around her waist that finally woke her. She blinked sleepily as she turned in his arms to look up at him. "Mark? What's wrong, love?"

He shuddered. "I dreamed about them," he said hoarsely.

"Them?"

"Emma ... and the baby ... and Ryan," he choked out, trying not to be sick again.