Page 155 of Phobia

“Can you stand?” I asked hurriedly, ignoring the curses Judah kept spewing at me.

“Y-yeah,” Lazarus stammered, looking at me as if he had never seen me before. “Danika—”

“Not now,” I cut him off as I bent down, putting his arm around my shoulders. “We need to get out of here.”

The fire started spreading all over the room, coming closer and closer to where Judah lay. He was trying to get away from it. His sins would finally stop here. His madness wouldn’t be able to stop me from leaving ever again.

Lazarus grunted as I lifted him, and as he leaned on me, I took one last look at Judah, at the hatred shining in his eyes, and started hauling us both toward the exit, smiling, because I knew. This town would forever remember my name.

Chapter 15

Seven Years Later

I hated this day.

Maybe hate was too weak of a word to explain the feelings coiling inside my gut, but it was as close as I could get to explain the turmoil happening in my core. A cold war brewed in my heart over the past couple of months, trying to come to terms with what we needed to do.

That fire seven years ago might have erased any trace of Lazarus Morass and his family, but it created issues we couldn’t foresee in the middle of all that craziness and trying to get away from Winworth. The biggest issue of all—Judah Blackwood survived.

I had no idea why or how, but he was still a living, breathing reminder that neither Lazarus nor I would ever be free as long as he lived. So here we were, hiding in this little cottage close to Emercroft Lake, piecing together our lives, while at the same time pretending we were two different people and barely ever going into town.

We weren’t worried about people recognizing us—not anymore—but Judah was relentless, turning over every little stone, going through every little town in order to find us. The fire was supposed to free us, but instead it caged us in this endless game of cat and mouse. Being a fugitive wasn’t something I ever envisioned being.

It was all fun and games those first couple of years, but everything changed when I saw those two lines on the pregnancy test, feeling both elated and terrified at the same time. There was no worse feeling than knowing you would never be able to provide your own child with everything he or she needed because the world was a terrible place that had no problem destroying you, even when you tried to do the right thing.

And people like Judah Blackwood and his family controlled the narrative. They controlled the masses, appearing as this picture-perfect family to the outside world. I wanted to laugh when I saw his wedding to his own sister, standing proudly in front of that minister, in the middle of that church, as if he wasn’t the very Satan the church always warned people about.

So we watched from afar, planning and gathering information until the time was right to strike, but we had to stop. I had to stop the moment our son announced himself to us. I didn’t care about many people, but looking at him now, lying on his back with his little arms in the air, trying to catch something only he could see, I knew I would do everything possible to give him a life better than I ever had.

The chubby cheeks and those smiling eyes were the reason why we were here. They were the only reason why we decided to abandon our previous place of hiding in Prague and to come back to this side of the world, this close to Winworth. We both knew there was too much at stake. We were only a couple of hours away from the predator we wanted to take down, but we had to do this.

For Casimir.

For his future.

There were not many things I regretted in my life, but I knew I would forever regret not being able to keep him. Not being able to watch him grow old. I wouldn’t be able to hug him tightly on his first day of school. I wouldn’t be able to tell him how much I loved him, how proud I was. I wouldn’t be able to do any of those things as long as Judah Blackwood lived.

A wayward tear rolled down my cheek, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t cry anymore. Casimir didn’t deserve to know what sadness meant—not yet. He deserved to know only love and happiness, and if Lazarus and I weren't the people who could give him that, then there was one person who could.

“Dani.” Lazarus’s voice broke my resolve to stop crying, and as if the dam broke, they started rolling down and down and down until my chest squeezed painfully while my finger traced invisible shapes on Casimir’s tiny stomach. “God, you’re killing me, baby.” His voice turned gruff and before I could hide the emotions fighting to break free, he was next to me, kneeling next to the bed, his own eyes filled with so much sorrow, so much pain.

I sometimes forgot that I wasn’t the only one who was losing a son today—he was too. But we were so consumed by our sorrows, our own pains, that we forgot to talk to each other these last couple of days. If I’d learned one thing over the last couple of years, it was that holding too much inside tended to destroy you at one point or another.

Lazarus leaned over our son, pressing his lips to his chubby cheek, closing his eyes as if trying to hide the pain living inside him.

“Laz,” I murmured, pressing my hand to his cheek. “It’s okay to be sad.” My voice broke as another sob rocked through my body. “It’s okay to miss him even though he’s still here.” Lazarus shuddered, his pain becoming a living, breathing thing. Before long, he climbed onto the bed on the other side of Casimir, looking down at him with love so strong that this tiny organ in the center of my chest squeezed even harder, telling me I chose well.

I chose better than well, and if I had to, I would go through ten more fires if it meant being with him in the end.

“He looks so happy,” Lazarus choked out, pulling out another avalanche of tears from my body. “I don’t know if I can do this, Danika,” he mumbled, looking up at me. “I don’t know how to say goodbye.”

I understood that. If there was one thing I understood it was this sorrow that fell over us from the day that Casimir turned five months. It was the wake-up call both of us needed.

We’d lived for too long cocooned in this little world of ours, thinking that nothing and nobody would be able to find us.

Until they did.

Until they almost killed us both along with Cas.