Page 3 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)
“Bullshit.” Priscilla grinds the phone into my throbbing cheek, and this time, I can’t hold back a whimper of pain, curling my fists shut so I don’t lash out at her.
She smirks in my periphery. “You’re working the morning shift, not the dinner,” she says, since she keeps track of my work schedule and anywhere else I may go.
“I switched shifts,” I say when she finally straightens. Resisting the urge to palm my cheek, I curl my stiff hands together on my lap.
“With who?”
I open my mouth to lie again, but nothing comes out.
I should be better at this by now. Telling her I’d switched shifts was the worst lie I could have come up with.
No matter which co-worker I pick, she could easily verify if I’m telling the truth, which would only lead to more questioning and potentially hurting them if Priscilla thought they were covering for me.
She gets in my face, her pupils dilated as large as her irises from more than just the lack of light. She’s been hitting her stash more frequently than I thought since her son passed. “You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?” For once, her increasingly volatile paranoia isn’t misplaced.
“No, I promise,” I say, keeping my voice low, careful not to let my foot bounce on the floor with anxiety and the need to do something . “You saw it. You saw my phone. You know I’m not hiding anything.”
My shoulders curl inward as I try to lean away when she harshly drives her sweaty forehead into mine and screams, “Lying bitch!”
“Mama!” Kendall toddles out of our bedroom, clutching her polar bear, her little chin quivering. She wants to run to me, but she’s always been terrified of her smelly, crazy grandmother, who stands between us, and she waffles about what to do.
Priscilla slaps an easy, clownish smile on her face and moves toward her. “Kendall, baby, come here.”
Kendall screams and tries to dart around her on her little legs, running to me for safety with her mouth open wide with a cry .
I shoot up onto my feet, reaching for my daughter, but Priscilla snatches her up and bands an arm around her back, crushing her to her skinny chest, growing angrier the harder Kendall thrashes against her, twisting and reaching for me, screaming for Mama repeatedly.
Approaching six feet tall to my five-foot-nothing frame, Priscilla towers over me as I approach, holding my unsteady arms up, adrenaline surging through my veins with the need to yank my daughter out of her hold and run for our lives…
But I can’t. Not with my other two children asleep in their bedroom.
And Priscilla knows it, angling her body to further block the hallway.
I swore I would never let anyone hurt my babies. That I would happily continue to take it all to protect them, as I promised each when they were born. I’ve broken my promise when Priscilla gives Kendall a quick swat on her butt, and I sink further into my guilt.
“Please, give her to me. I’ll put her back to bed and then we can talk,” I say, ducking my head slightly in forced submission.
“Yeah, you wish,” Priscilla yells above Kendall’s cries, bouncing her roughly up and down in a poor imitation of a soothing gesture, which only serves to terrify her further.
“Please,” I beg on a whisper, taking another step forward. “She’s scared.”
Priscilla raises her hand, but I automatically back away before she can shove me again, which pleases her, given the smirk that morphs her smile into something more sinister.
“Why would she be scared?” she asks in a mockingly innocent tone.
Her grin drops in an instant when Kendall claws at her cheeks to get away, arching her back to put as much distance between them as she can. “Are you turning her against me? ”
“She’s two, and you’re hurting her! Of course, she’s scared,” I snap instead of keeping control of my emotions and trying to de-escalate the situation.
I whip my head to the side at the mouth of the hallway when my six-year-old son, Dustin, asks, “Mommy?” Standing in his race car pajamas, he shields his five-year-old sister, Sydney, behind him in her pony pajama dress.
No, no, no, no!
Priscilla raises an overly plucked brow at me expectantly. Shoving my fear and rage into a tiny black box in my mind, I lift my voice. “Go back to bed. I’ll tuck you in soon.”
“Here.” Priscilla shoves Kendall into Dustin’s arms, making him and Sydney stumble backward. “Take the fucking brat with you.”
“But, Mom—”
“Now!” Priscilla screams shrilly at Dustin, advancing on him, making him and Sydney cower while Kendall clings to her brother.
And I see it. The glint of her favorite knife kept in the leather sheath buttoned to her belt loop beneath her jacket.
Priscilla whirls on me before I can finish debating whether I should risk everything by reaching for it, and she grabs me by the throat, forcing me to roll up on my tiptoes with her freakish strength. “Tell your bastards to fuck off, or you know what will happen.”
She doesn’t give me a chance before she spins me around and pushes me into the galley kitchen with the kids screaming for me in the background.
I crash into the counter with a cry, twisting my body around in time to avoid hitting my stomach.
But my momentum is too great, and I can’t find my balance in time, falling on the trash can, knocking it over.
When the lid skitters across the peel-and-stick vinyl floor, but none of the “trash” spills out, Priscilla cocks her head to the side with feverish glee, and I know it’s all over.
Priscilla moves faster than I can react, ripping the garbage bag open and throwing everything I’d packed so carefully across the room. “I knew it! You were trying to take my granddaughter away from me, you fat cunt!”
“No! I swear!” I lie, even as I’m getting my feet under me, ready to spring up and grab my kids.
Priscilla shoves me onto my back but fists my hoodie with both hands to lift my upper half off the floor, her dusty, high-heeled, gaudy cowgirl boots planted on either side of my hips. “Bullshit!”
“They’re old clothes I was throwing out, I promise!”
Priscilla’s laughter is unhinged, and she shakes me, knocking my head back and forth on my neck while I claw at her hands uselessly with my chewed fingernails, unable to reach her knife in my dizzy state.
No matter how much noise we make, Priscilla won’t stop unless she wants to.
We both know none of my neighbors will miraculously come to my rescue or, at the very least, call the cops.
Everyone here has something to hide, with lives as miserable as mine, and no one will risk the police coming down on them.
It’s when she drops to her knees, crushing my upper thighs beneath her frame, and flattens me on the floor with her hands around my throat that I let go of any hope that I can lie my way out of this mess.
For the first time in my life, I truly fight with all of my strength, knowing that if I don’t, this will be the end.
Our third chance at life is riding on this one moment in time.
My kids’ futures. Mine. Mine and Quincy’s unborn baby that I made sure Quincy never knew about.
The one Priscilla still doesn’t know about.
“I told you!” she screams several times while tightening her grip, my blood rushing in my head that swims with the lack of oxygen.
“I told you what would happen to Dustin and Sydney if you ever tried to leave!” She rears back and tries to slap me across my face, giving me the chance to draw in a life-saving breath.
And there’s Sydney, ripping at Priscilla’s hair before Priscilla can bring her hand down.
Sydney screams at Priscilla to get off of me while Kendall clings to Dustin, but Priscilla easily throws my daughter back, only for Sydney to come at her again.
My beautiful baby girl’s face is mottled with rage no five-year-old should ever have to feel, battling her fear as she fights for me.
It’s a position I never should have put her in, but did so anyway, simply by chance, when I met Quincy three years ago and fell for his knight in shining armor mask, rescuing a nineteen-year-old single mother of two a year after I made it to Las Vegas with only the clothes on my back.
A mask that started to dissolve the minute I got pregnant with Kendall.
He was the pot of water that slowly began to boil, and I was the desperate, naive frog who didn’t notice until it was too late.
Sydney strikes Priscilla across the head with the chopping board left on the counter, though Priscilla took all my steak knives and any other sharp objects long ago.
When Priscilla twists around, screaming obscenities, shifting the full weight of her unrelenting, maniacal cruelty from me to my daughter, I take the one and only opportunity I have while she’s distracted to sit up, reach under Priscilla’s jacket, and grab the hilt of her knife .
Elliott
Teagan’s apartment complex looks like it ought to be condemned.
Of the six two-story buildings, three have roofs missing close to half their shingles, their gutters sagging or having come loose completely from one side or the other.
Maybe at one time, this place was nice, the decorative swirl designs in the metal fence perhaps bright and shiny, but now it’s rusted straight through, gouged by wind, dust, and neglect.
Each step up to Teagan’s unit on the second floor groans, the bolts used to anchor the stairs to the side of the building threatening to come loose beneath my bulk, irritatingly leaving me unable to move silently like I usually would be able to do.
I don’t have to check the apartment number to know I have the right one when children’s wails reach my ears above the sounds of a vicious fight, and I quicken my steps.
I pause briefly to press my ear against the door with chipped off-white paint, doing my best to discern if the kids are standing in front of the door or not.
Praying that I’m not wrong in my conclusion, I pull the sawed-off shotgun I’m legally not allowed to own or travel with—but never go anywhere without—from inside my jacket.
I back up a pace, then slam my steel-toe boot against the door.
It gives way as easily as if I’d kicked an empty tin can down the road.
Swollen red eyes swing toward me from where a boy and a tiny girl are huddled together. A woman’s scream and another woman’s howl from the other side of the wall opposite have the little hairs on the nape of my neck standing on end.
The boy’s face crumples beneath his short black hair. “My mommy needs help.”