FORGIVE OR FURY CHAPTER 4

The bell above the roof of the doorway sounded loudly as I left the cafe, a shotgun blast of a sound, the shockwave hitting my brain like a blow, though my eyes remained on the floor, my knees drawn up into my chest as my sobs came in like the tide from beyond the line of the horizon, up onto the beach of my chest in gargling gulps of air and water.How was it that three words 'I love you' kept on hurting?After the lies, the slap, the destruction of a car that easily could have killed the child within me, I had to chase after the man that I believed I loved.

But I didn't move. I couldn't. The baby moved beneath my skin, its tiny feet kicking gently. I felt it, and my immobility felt it. I was no longer alone. “It's okay,” I told my baby inside. “We're okay without him. We're just going to be okay.”

Eventually, the tears stopped falling, and my face was just sticky and swollen. I pulled myself up and closed the door, putting up my sign that read "Closed."

The walk back home was a haze of spring air thick with the scent of blooming lilacs and the sounds of people laughing as they walked along the sidewalk: the world spinning on as if my very heart hadn’t just been shattered all over again.

My small apartment looked just as I had left it, even down to the mustiness that seemed prevalent on all surfaces. I threw myself on my bed and looked up at the large holes in the ceiling, they formed a vein system of their own.

I slept fitfully, running in my dreams after the look on Adrian's face: soft, then hard, and then again. It was finally morning, and I felt like I'd been run over by a car. I had a date with work—the bookseller gig, bills to pay and all that. The third time, I was not going to let him screw it up on me.

Little did I know, he was not finished yet.

Adrian Blackwood shut the door of his shiny black sedan. The motor hummed in the underground parking garage of his brand-new condo. It was decorated in stereotypical minimal-chic, lacking any sort of pictures on the walls, or anything to show life with Cecilia. He'd sold the penthouse apartment weeks after she disappeared, couldn't bear the memory of her, or so he had said to himself over and over again.

But the truth? It wasn't guilt that kept him up at night. It was unfinished business.

He poured a scotch and drank it straight up, sitting down in a leather armchair that looked out across the city. The lights danced across the window glass to mock him. Not only had Cecilia's father that bastard Lancaster not ruined a business deal; he had orchestrated a corporate sabotage that had precipitated his own parents' fall from power. His father, crushed by the betrayal, had driven off a cliff in despair. For months, his mother had devoured pills and grief after him. Lancaster had emerged unscathed and wealthy.

It had been marrying Cecilia: infiltrate, seduce, destroy from within. Make her love him, take it away. Reveal the truth, watch her crumble, like his family had. Somewhere down the line, though, things had gotten. complicated. Feelings had crept in, unwanted. That night in the office-when she'd walked in on him and Isabel-it was supposed to be the finale. The slap? A mistake, one born of panic. Her crash, though. that was too much. For even him.

It hadn't been from love that he'd been looking for her, but rather to finish what he'd started. He wanted to make it worse. He wanted to twist the knife. The baby had been a bonus, something new and different, another way to keep her, another way to keep her under his power. "I love you," he told her that day in the café. It was all an act. He hadn't been satisfied. She hadn't been suffering enough. She hadn't been begging on her knees. She hadn't felt the burden of her own father's sins.

His phone buzzed. Isabel.

Where are you? We need to talk.

He ignored it. Isabel had been a tool too—useful for the affair, for the deception. But her lies about the pregnancy had nearly derailed everything. Faking tests? Ultrasound pics from some online hack? She'd confessed weeks after Cecilia vanished, tears streaming, begging forgiveness. "I did it for us, Adrian. I love you."

Love. What a joke. He didn't love anyone. Not anymore.

But Isabel wouldn’t let go. And recently, he’d seen her staring at him, scrutinizing him like she saw through his pretenses.

Again the phone buzzed. I'm coming over. This can't wait.

Fine. Let her come. Maybe she'd prove useful again.

"I wiped the bookstore counter clean, the smell of old books and fresh coffee brewing calming my state of mind somewhat. It was a slow day in the store, a dozen or more regulars flipping through the mystery section, a young boy giggling at the children’s books on display.” "The belly began to protrude, a sympathetic softness under my sweater,” I said to myself as I felt my hand on my belly, talking to my baby in soft sweet nothings.

The chime on the door snapped me back into reality. I looked up again. My heart stopped.

Adrian

Again.

He stands there, dressed in his coat to perfection, rain drops on his black hair, the picture of the man I have fallen in love with. But his eyes, his midnight eyes, have something different today. Something colder.

"Cecilia," he said lowly, his tone necessitating a step forward.

I gripped the counter, knuckles white. "I told you to leave me alone."

"I know.

    But I can't."

    He glanced around to make sure nobody was paying attention.

    "Please. Just five minutes. Outside?"

My boss was in the back, the customers were distracted, and despite every screamin’ instinct in my body to stand my ground, I nodded. “Five minutes. That's it.”

We went through this alleyway behind the store, where the air was damp and cool. Water was mirrored on the parched earth under the grey sky. I folded my arms across my stomach.

"What do you want, Adrian?”

He rubbed a hand through his hair in a clearly tormented pose. Oscar performance. "I just can't stop thinking about you. About us. Our baby. the baby. our baby. I was so wrong, Cece. So wrong. Let me make it right."

I laughed, sharp and bitter. “Make it right? You married me for revenge. You slept with my best friend. You hit me. And now you waltz in here like some hero?”

His face contorted in pain. “I understand what I’ve done. It torments me every day. Yet that’s no excuse for that act of revenge… that was poisoning me inside out! Your father.”

"Don't," I snapped, my eyes welling up with tears. "Don't you dare bring him into this. He was a good man. Whatever happened between him and your family wasn't murder."

Adrian moved closer, and the scent of him was all cedar and spice, tangling around me like a trap. "Maybe not. But it destroyed mine. My dad. he didn't just die, Cece. He killed himself because of that deal. My mom overdosed six months later. I was eighteen, alone, clawing my way up. I blamed your father for all of it."

I gulped hard as those words stung like stones. Yes, I knew I had somehow guessed that my dad had rival businessman. But this? "Even if that's true, what did I do? I loved you."

“And me." He scowled, his eyes locking onto mine. “I started to love you too. That's why it hurt so much. That's why I'm here. Give me a chance to prove it."