Page 23 of Her Submission (Monica & Henry #2)
The Girl Within
Monica kept herself as busy as she could that next week. When she wasn’t traveling around the city for work or to port her daughter somewhere, she was taking care of more serious matters like her mother-in-law. And the IRS.
Both required dealing with people in authority that she would rather not see right now.
Abigail was required to talk to the police and the FBI. Monica had been holding it off for as long as she could for Abigail’s good, but due to her age, the investigators were afraid she would forget the details too quickly. So, one day after school, they headed straight to the FBI field office, where she sat in on her daughter retelling how her grandmother packed her off to France and then Thailand.
“Did she tell you that your parents knew where you were going?”
asked the young female agent talking softly and taking notes.
Abigail nodded, her mother wrapped protectively around her.
“She said that my mom was too busy to go with us, but that we would have a good time.”
They were offered juice and cookies to keep them comfortable, but even Abigail didn’t want it. She didn’t have much appetite at all as Monica took her out for frozen yogurt afterward. She even told Abigail she could get whatever toppings she wanted.
“I used to eat these all the time when I was your age.”
Monica plucked a red and yellow gummy worm out of her daughter’s cup. She knew Abigail wouldn’t be able to finish it, so she was more than happy to help.
“My mom would come home from work with a pack she picked up from the Circle K in our neighborhood. She let me have so much sugar. It stunted my growth.”
Abigail poked her spoon at the strawberry-flavored frozen yogurt covered in Oreo crumbs, gummy worms, and sprinkles.
“Why don’t you talk about my other grandma much?”
Monica knew she had opened herself up to that one.
“When I tell you stories about my mom bringing me home a snack before I had to go to bed…”
Monica said, vaguely reminiscing about her childhood being raised by an emotionally distant mother.
“It’s because I don’t have many. I didn’t see her a lot growing up. The only thing we had in common was that we looked a lot alike.”
Henry had been shocked when he first met Monica’s mother, who had the gall to flirt with him before she left.
Not shocked that she flirted.
Shocked that he almost fell for it because she looked just like me, only with crow’s feet.
Monica’s mother had been at the wedding and visited after Abigail was born, but beyond that, she only saw the family once every other year.
Monica ensured her mother’s retirement but didn’t know what she did with her time.
Or if she even spent the five grand her daughter sent her mother every month on anything practical.
The woman enjoyed tropical vacations and hookups with random men.
At least she can do it in other places and not in the room next to mine. Monica and her therapist had been down this road before.
“Am I the way I am because of my mother? Because I had no father in my life?”
Monica didn’t find out who her bio-dad was until she was in high school, and only because she had been his next of kin when he died.
“I miss Grandma. When can I see her again?”
Monica knew her daughter meant Isabella.
“I don’t know. She’s in big trouble with the law. Last I heard, she was stuck at home in Montana.”
With a big device on her ankle, no less.
“Maybe soon, honey.”
Other families with young children came into the sunshine-filled shop.
They were at a popular location downtown, near the FBI field office, and Monica wasn’t used to staying so long in locations that blasted pop music and had such sticky tables.
She had hoped this would cheer Abigail up. Instead, it led them down this strange path.
“Dad’s really mad at Grandma. So is Aunt Eva. I heard them yelling about it.”
That piqued Monica’s interest.
“Hm? Yelling? About what, exactly?”
Abigail shoved a small bite in her mouth. Monica took another gummy worm.
“Aunt Eva was crying. Dad told her to calm down. He sounded angry.”
“About your grandma?”
Abigail nodded.
“She said that Grandma needed to go to prison before she hurt our family. Dad said it was never going to happen. She got really upset. She said something about something Grandma did when she was my age.”
“Where did you hear this? How?”
“In Dad’s office. I was gonna show him the art I did at school, but they were yelling.”
Monica sighed.
“Your Aunt Eva has a bad relationship with your Grandma. They don’t get along. Your grandma…”
No, she shouldn’t mention this here. Not like this. In this place.
But Abigail stared at her, spoon in her mouth, ready for answers.
“Your grandma never really loved your Aunt Eva.”
She probably didn’t love Henry, either, but that was harder to tell.
Abigail dropped her spoon. Neither she nor Monica got up to get another one.
“Why would she not love Aunt Eva? Everyone loves her. I love her.”
Abigail kicked her legs out in front of her, banging a foot beneath the table.
“Don’t you love her?”
It was asked with the frightful conviction of a girl desperate to know that the world functioned the way she had figured out. She’s still figuring it out. Monica still was, too.
“Your grandma likes perfect girls. Perfect women. People who act just like her. Eva has never been that kind of person. Neither am I.”
She smiled.
“That’s why I love your Aunt Eva as much as you do. I don’t like people who pretend to be perfect. There’s no such thing.”
Abigail continued to stare at her mother.
“Everyone in our family as it is loves each other very much. Your daddy loves me and his sister. Your auntie loves your aunt Nadia and me. Your aunt Nadia loves you. We are a house full of love. Partly because none of us had a lot of it growing up.”
Well, except for maybe Nadia, but Monica didn’t know enough about her childhood to know for sure.
“We all love you. We would all do anything to protect you. Remember that, Abby. Even when what we do might not make sense, it’s because we love you and want you to grow up smart and healthy.”
She was quiet for another moment. Then, “Mom?”
“Yes?”
Those blue eyes cast downward.
“You love me, right?”
Her heart was on the verge of breaking in the middle of a frozen yogurt parlor. “Sweetie.”
She kept her cool, despite her desire to cry.
“I would do anything for you. Even die.”
“You’re not gonna, though, right?”
“No. Not for a long time. It’s a figure of speech.”
She finished the dessert on the car ride home. Abigail clung to her while staring out the window, her eyes foggy and her thoughts too distant for her mother to penetrate.
When they arrived back at Warren Manor, Monica was intent on creating a calm atmosphere for the family. They would eat as a small unit in their wing’s more intimate dining room, and Monica would put in a word to the chef on duty that night to whip up Abigail’s favorite cookies if he had time. Maybe Henry will finish work early enough to play a game with us tonight.
She had guided Abigail into their home just in time to hear yelling in Henry’s office.
“What did you expect us to do? For her to do!”
That was Eva’s voice, and it stopped Monica in her tracks as Abigail hid her face in her mother’s side.
“I don’t care what you think, Hen! We got results, didn’t we?”
Monica put a hand on her daughter’s head.
“Wait here. I’ll see what’s happening.”
Abigail sat on the couch in the living room as Monica marched toward her husband’s office on the other side of a long hallway. The thing about Eva… Her voice carried. Far.
“You could have suffered.”
Henry’s voice almost stopped Monica again, but she pushed forward.
“You could have been…”
She stopped in the office doorway. Eva turned around from the window, her nail between her lips as her other arm clutched her torso to protect herself from whatever she shared with her brother. Henry, meanwhile, lowered his arms from where he stood behind his desk.
“What’s going on?”
Monica asked.
“We can hear you all the way out in the living room.”
Although Eva’s face softened, Henry’s remained tense.
“Apparently,”
he began, gaze boring into his wife.
“Eva has been receiving calls from Jackson.”
Monica controlled her reaction, but only because she had seen the man for herself the day before. His contacting Eva was news, yes, but not surprising. Once he dug his fingers into someone, Jackson didn’t let go until he got bored.
“Concerning.”
“Not quite as concerning as what she’s also just told me.”
He knows. Eva probably gabbed half the details because she was overwhelmed by her brother’s idea of interrogation, but it wasn’t his sister that Henry now silently demanded answers from. It was Monica.
So much for doing this on her terms.
“Do me a favor and watch Abigail.”
Monica approached Eva while Henry watched them both.
“She’s in the living room. It’s been a long day – we just got home from the FBI office.”
“I’m so sorry,”
Eva apologized.
“I didn’t mean to… he just got it out of me…”
“Please. Abigail.”
It was Eva’s out as much as it was Monica’s chance to be alone with Henry. And Eva took this chance since she was red in the face with embarrassment and likely to make matters worse if she didn’t extract herself from the situation immediately.
“I’ll go get Abby,”
Eva said while swallowing some air.
“Good luck.”
Monica waited for the sound of the door shutting. She didn’t have much time to collect her thoughts before Henry demanded an explanation.
“How much did she tell you?”
Henry suddenly looked ten years older than he was. When the gray hair comes in, that’s it for us. Monica barely knew how to face a future where her daughter was grown and independent. Yet here was her husband, showing his emotional vitality to her.
“You went there,”
he said, evenly.
“To his house.”
Monica said the first thing to come to mind.
“My old home. I lived there for ten years.”
“A happy homecoming, for sure.”
What a strange way to think of it now. Although it would never be home again, there was a time when Jackson’s mansion in the woods was as comfortable to Monica as Warren Manor in the city was now.
“Did she tell you that we went to him because he is personal friends with Jean-Pierre Beaumont?”
“When were you going to tell me that you went to his house!”
Monica was nearly bowled over by Henry’s tone. He’s never yelled at me like this before… Rarely did Henry raise his voice at all. For him to reveal this side of himself…
He must have been scared. Terrified.
Henry leaned his hands against his desk.
“The thought of you there with him…”
“Eva went with me.”
“I know! How do you think I found out!”
“How did you find out? Something about him calling Eva? Harassing her?”
“Does that sound like something he would do?”
Monica swallowed.
“Unfortunately. Especially after…”
She stopped.
“What? Especially after what?”
So, Eva hadn’t told him everything. This was Monica’s chance to spare her sister-in-law some humility and redirect Henry’s attention. Lie to him. Lie by omission. Protect whatever they all still had between them after the kind of family-splitting incident befell them.
But lying to Henry would only lead to more misery. At some point, more of the truth would come out. If Monica were to spare herself in the future, she had to come clean now. Henry might be angry, but he would understand. It was for their daughter.
Right?
She recounted the night Henry flew off to France and both she and Eva realized that the answer lay with Jackson Lyle, the last person either of them wanted to see. They went alone, so none of the staff were complicit to their knowledge. Monica met Paisley, Jackson’s latest primary pet. He made calls on their behalf. But if they wanted the information…
Maybe Monica should have left it at that. Their great mistake was looking Jackson in the eye and reminding him that the Warrens existed after all this time.
Yet she saw that look on Henry’s face. He might know what happened, but his sister…
No. Monica would leave that part out. For Eva’s sake, and Henry’s sanity.
“I offered myself to him,”
Monica said as Henry rounded the desk, his nostrils flared and his entire demeanor accusing the universe of acting against them.
“It was the last chip I had to barter with, and he knew it. The only reason it didn’t happen is because Paisley interfered. She wanted me gone, so she gave me the information she overheard during Jackson’s phone call to Jean-Pierre.”
When Henry was still silent, Monica continued.
“I remember what it was like to be in her position. I took the opportunity and left with Eva immediately. All I thought about after that was getting to Thailand.”
Henry’s hand lifted before dropping again. Every shaking, tentative movement he exhibited was accompanied by a fire blazing behind his icy-blue eyes. Abigail’s eyes. From now on, Monica would always associate with the other when she looked into those eyes. Henry. Abigail. Me. Her lip trembled as much as his did.
“Did he…”
Henry choked back his words as a finger entered Monica’s periphery, attempting to wag a point home to her but only weakly curling again.
“Did he touch you?”
Monica had to parse a thousand inflections in his voice at once. The fear. The disgust. The shock. But also the sadness. Henry must have blamed himself as much as Monica for this situation. He hadn’t been there. He had gone on a wild goose chase. Not that Monica would have let him know about it if she thought that was the only way she could get to her daughter in time.
At least she didn’t have to lie, though.
“No. It never got that far.”
“But it could have!”
He yelled right in her face, knocking Monica back two steps. You know what it’s like to be yelled at. Her mother had been a pro before she even knew a man named Jackson Lyle. And Jackson? He yelled at her more and more toward the end of their relationship. The only reason Monica faltered at all in her husband’s office was because Henry had never done it before.
Again, the fear. Again, the disgust. The images in his head must have been unbearable because the fire raging behind his eyes managed to melt all the ice.
“Yes,”
Monica softly said.
“It could have.”
Henry grabbed her wrist, but whatever he had planned in that spur-of-the-moment passion immediately fizzled out as he backed away to his desk. Monica rubbed her wrist and fought back the tears she had been afraid of crying all this time.
“What a deranged thing to do,”
he barked, back still facing her.
“You could have been hurt. He could have been lying, and you could have hurt yourself for nothing!”
Sweat beaded on Monica’s forehead. She held back the first thing she wanted to say.
“You’re damn right, and I’d do it again!”
That would get her nowhere. Especially with a man who knew her entire history. Her entire history – from her father leaving her, to her mother being emotionally absent, to meeting a man who promised to make all her dreams come true.
Jackson.
“I was willing to do anything,”
she calmly said.
“Anything to get to Abigail before she felt even a hint of heartache because she realized she was never coming home on her terms.”
Henry rounded on her, nothing but fire and brimstone as flames colored his cheeks and smoke blew from his nostrils.
“Are you insane?”
His voice echoed in his office. It must have echoed in the hallway, the living room as well. Thank God Monica had the foresight to ask Eva to take Abigail out of here.
“What if you ended up dead, Monica?”
That was it. It was like he didn’t even understand.
“Then I would have died, but Eva would have known where to go!”
A deafening silence followed her outburst. Henry was now more shocked than angry as if her powerful words had knocked some sense back into him. Yet he still looked at his wife over his shoulder, bemused, off-kilter…
Even Monica didn’t know she still had that in her. If Henry had brought the knife to their fight, she had brought the gun.
And it wouldn’t have been the first time, would it?
“I would have done anything.”
Each syllable fell with spit from her teeth.
Every vein in her body, each neuron firing from her brain was activated, daring Henry to stay in her way when it came to protecting their daughter.
See how quickly you would be nothing to me, Henry.
The enraged woman simmering inside Monica’s petite body those past few months now came bursting through her skin, asserting her authority and proving to the room, these god damned Warrens that they should never, ever underestimate her.
If you ever hurt our daughter, you would be dead to me.
Like a switch flipped. Like a toss of a dime. Like using the last of her broken heart to feel for her daughter, the only person on Earth who had earned her unconditional love just for existing.
“Anything,”
she reiterated with the embers of Henry’s flames fueling her blaze.
“I would have put myself through anything if it meant saving our daughter. I didn’t think twice! If that man wanted to use my body to get back at me, at you, I didn’t give a flying fuck because that witch had stolen my daughter and there was nothing, nothing that I would not endure to find her and bring her home! And I would have one hundred percent thrown your sister into the fire, too! But don’t worry Henry, we were both on the same page of doing whatever that demon said if it meant getting Abigail back!”
“You–”
“Don’t you ever dare underestimate me.”
Monica wagged her finger right beneath her husband’s nose, daring him to defy her anger.
“Just because I’m your sophisticated submissive, doesn’t mean I’m not willing to blow this whole place up and kill us all in it if it was the only way to ensure Abby lives another day. When that little girl was born…”
She reclaimed her finger, shaking it toward the floor as she spat in her husband’s direction.
“She recalibrated my entire world. Nothing matters more to me than her. Not you, not me… why the fuck do I care about who touches me and to what end if my daughter needs me!”
As Monica held back what she really felt, her husband was stoic, taking in everything she said and the way her body shook as her small body attempted to contain all of the raw emotion bursting forth from its corporeal form.
“I care about you,”
Henry said.
“Don’t underestimate what I would do for her, either.”
Monica’s lower lip trembled as she pressed her hands against her cheeks and attempted to still their vibrating. This is happening. We’re having this terrible confrontation. About what she had done. What she would do again if she could.
“She was gone…”
Monica averted her gaze to the carpet, where she saw her closed-toed heels and Henry’s leather loafers. The beige carpet was only inches away from the blue and green Persian throw rug beneath his desk. Always immaculately cleaned, because he often had guests in here, and besides the bathroom, this was the place the maids prioritized every day. How many times had Monica seen these carpets? His shoes? Henry was a creature of habit and knew what he liked. This carpet had been here since before her. The shoes themselves changed, but they were always the same color and brand. If they changed soon, it was because something happened. Something that completely upended his reality.
“She was gone, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
The first few tears broke again, but Monica sniffed them up, determined to be rational. If that was even possible.
“I didn’t want to do anything, Henry. I wanted to keep that man away from me for the rest of my life. Let alone away from the rest of the people in this family that I now call my own.”
She finally had the strength to look up again and meet Henry’s cooling eyes.
“It wasn’t about want. It was need and desperation. I could never explain to you what was going through my mind. I don’t ask you to understand it. I just need you to know that it was done entirely to save Abigail. I would… I would die without her.”
Henry lowered his arms again, sighing.
“If something happened to you, I would find a way to move on. If for no one else’s sake but Abigail’s. But if something happened to her? If she was gone forever? I would fade away into a quick nothingness no one had ever seen before. I did it to save my life as much as I did hers.”
She took his hand. It was as warm as hers. Sweaty, too.
“He didn’t touch me. He didn’t touch your sister.”
“Why do you have to put that thought in my head?”
“Because you deserve to be reassured after all that’s happened. Don’t you? Don’t you need reassurance that everything’s going to be all right, too? It’s not a peace that only I get to harbor, Henry.”
Although his hand slowly pulled out of hers, it was only so he could slump against his desk. His head was now closer to his wife’s, and she saw more clearly that Henry was as worn down by recent events as she was.
“If anything happened to our daughter…”
He swallowed, shaking his head.
“Anything that God couldn’t make right… I don’t know what I would do. Waste away, too. You’re my other half, Monica, but Abby’s my light. She’s what keeps my head on straight.”
“I feel the same way.”
“If I could save her before it was too late… if the universe asked the unthinkable…”
Monica came closer. She still shook in delicate rage, but it wasn’t at her husband. It was the people of the world who thought they could do what they wanted to others. That money and power gave them the authority to use, abuse, and cast away those who were lesser. Monica had known many. Not only in her bed but in her precious one life that had also created the child she would spend the rest of her existence trying to protect from the worst of the worst.
But that would never be enough.
“One day,”
Henry said.
“we won’t be able to rush after her and put our bodies on the line, will we?”
“No. All we can do is prepare her to do it herself.”
Henry buried his face in his hands while Monica stood next to him, offering a humble comfort without touching him. Let him do it. He had been demanding and brought this terrible emotion out of her. He could initiate the healing.
“When I think what that family wanted to do with her…”
Henry accidentally smacked his face when he curled his hands into fists and slammed them in his half-hearted lap.
“Treat her like an object. A seven-year-old broodmare. Because you know they would have filled her head with all sorts of nonsense to make her think that was her purpose in life.”
“They were certainly going to groom her for it, Henry.”
She meant that in every definition of the word. Pretty dresses to go with her heart full of self-hate. That had happened to someone else in this family, but in the end, she always had the chance to make her own life. Isabella wouldn’t let that happen twice.
“Your mother facilitated it.”
His next sigh was louder and heavier.
“The worst she ever did to me was set me up with women who weren’t right for me and say terrible things about you. I knew one day she would set her eyes on Abigail. I just didn’t know it would be like this.”
“I prepared for it since the moment Abigail was born. The moment she stepped out of line, talked back to your mother, or showed a sign of a personality that didn’t fit her master plan, that would have been it. I’ve been dreading the day I have to explain to Abby why Grandma doesn’t seem to love her anymore.”
“Fuck! I hate it!”
Henry was on his feet again, pacing to the couch as he tossed a hand into the air.
“My parents got this whole family into such a disaster that I had to bring us out of! It took years! I was doing the high-society equivalent of selling my fucking plasma just to get us by another month! We came this close, Monica.”
He squeezed his fingers together in front of her face on his next pass toward the desk.
“This close to losing this home that’s been in my family longer than my parents ever acknowledge outside of getting their asses kissed. And did they ever say, ‘Good job, Henry?’ Of course they didn’t. Certainly not my mother, who was congratulating herself for raising me ‘right.’”
Henry was on the verge of ripping his hair out.
“It’s maddening!”
Monica nodded along. She knew much of this already. Henry had dripped some of his revulsion toward his parents over the years, but to finally hear him yell it out was cathartic for them both.
“I often have the same thought. About Jackson.”
“God, that’s right. This started with that bastard.”
Monica showed herself to the couch and finally sat down.
“Since we’re coming clean about things, there’s something else I need to tell you. About Jackson.”
Henry stared at her.
“Now what?”
He didn’t join her on the couch. Monica had to unravel her recent meeting with Jackson alone, including his involvement in her business and his offer to buy the Chateau from her.
“It’s my fault,”
she whispered, Henry an ever-lingering presence.
“I shouldn’t have reminded him of my existence. Now he’s harassing Eva. He’s a monster. Always has been.”
“I wish you had told me.”
Monica squeezed her eyes shut.
“I didn’t want to worry you. Besides, I wasn’t even sure what to make of what was happening. I just… I want this… for him… to go away.”
Something bubbled up her throat. At first, she thought it was her ongoing anger getting the best of her, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was Jackson getting to her?
He cornered me. He tried to touch me. He could have…
That bastard. That scoundrel. That piece of shit.
Monica flung her face into the nearest couch pillow and screamed. All of the fear and rage ripped through her like a windstorm decimating the meager wood frame holding her body together. Nobody ever gave her the chance to be built with brick or concrete. She was natural but fragile. Beautiful, but temporal. Henry had tried to help her build something strong, but her foundation had always been weak.
Her throat gave out. So did her body. When Monica’s voice petered off, she remained glued to the pillow, squeezing the cotton cover as her foot kicked against the carpet.
Henry knelt beside her, hand on her shoulder.
“I’m always amazed,”
he said when she finally relented to her sapped strength.
“at how powerful the women in this family are. You, my sister, her wife… if our daughter comes out half as unbeatable, then I don’t have to worry about her growing up. You can get through anything.”
Monica pulled her face up, wiping her damp hair away from her eyes.
“What does that make you?”
she croaked.
“One lucky bastard.”
Monica allowed herself to hunch forward, her useless hands picking at each other as they fell into her lap.
“I keep thinking that I’m not strong enough. That Abigail will be ashamed of who I am one day. And what if I get us all in trouble because of my business? I can’t be doing it forever. I need to put her first.”
“There’s no reason for you to not have your business and be a mother. You’ve already pulled back so much from work.”
“Which is exactly how Jackson managed to sneak in…”
“Stop. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re exactly the mother our daughter needs.”
“Submissive to a fault, am I?”
Henry shook his head.
“There isn’t an inch of you that isn’t radiating with power. You’re just quiet about it. You’re observant, and all the more dangerous for it.”
“I just don’t know what to do. Jackson, he…”
Henry held her face between his hands.
“You’re going to stop thinking about him right now.”
His thumb rubbed her cheekbone, and she was compelled to hold his hand as she attempted to imagine such a feat.
“For the rest of the day. No more Jackson. No more my mother. We’re going to let these feelings make their point, and then focus on our family. We can strategize tomorrow when we’ve rested.”
“Yes.”
Monica leaned into his palm.
“Strategize. You know I love a good strategy.”
Finally, after all of those harsh words and intense emotions, he lightly kissed her, pushing their foreheads together.
All they had both needed was to feel whole with the other.