Chapter 11
I was a scholarship girl with a d
angerous mouth and sharper hips. He was that kind of rich where even his socks looked expensive. We sat beside each other in economics. He never smiled. He didn’t even look my way for the first two weeks. Until I wore that black dress with the slit up my thigh and asked the professor a question in front of the whole class.
After that, he never stopped looking.
We fell fast. Ugly fast. The kind of love where you scream more than you kiss. I’d scratch him during sex, and he’d call me his sin. But I wanted more. Not just from him. From life. I wanted to be on billboards. In magazines. I wanted lights and cameras and people screaming my name.
Torren didn’t like that.
“You’re not going to whore yourself out in that industry,” he told me one night after I showed him my first portfolio.
I told him to go to hell and packed my bags the next morning.
I left the country before he could stop me.
I thought I was done with cold men. I thought I found gold when I met Jaxon.
He was loud. Wild. Promised me the world with that crooked smile. Said his family owned networks, had their fingers in movies, modeling agencies, fashion empires. Told me I’d be a star in a year. I was young. I was hungry. I said yes when he proposed after two months.
Biggest mistake of my life.
Jaxon didn’t own a single thing.
Not even the apartment we lived in. Not even his broken–down car.
He was broke. And worse, lazy. He drank before noon and lied with every breath. At first, he was just careless. Then he got cruel.
The first time he slapped me, I was five months pregnant. Said I was “flirting with the neighbor” because I waved at him while carrying groceries.
After that, it never stopped.
I wore sunglasses to hide the bruises. Told people I had a migraine. Wore turtlenecks in the summer.
He started locking me inside the apartment like a prisoner. No phone. No bank cards. Nothing.
Once, I told him I was going to the store. I came back ten minutes late. He smashed a vase over my shoulder and yelled that my child probably wasn’t even his.
And when I was eight months pregnant?
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He kicked me.
Dinner was late by five minutes. He came in drunk, took one look at the cold food, and
roared like an animal.
“You’ll give birth to trash just like you,” he said, right before his foot slammed into my stomach.
I remember lying on the floor, whispering to my baby not to die.
I thought it was over.
But I survived.
And now?
I’m back where I belong. Right next to the man I never should’ve left in the first place.
Torren Massaro.
Rich. Brutal. Mine.
And this time, I’m not going anywhere.
Then another flashback hit me–sharp as cold wind and twice as bitter. I remembered the night I ran.
Jude was only a few weeks old. His body so small, he fit into my coat like a secret. It was raining hard that night. Not the romantic kind. The mean kind. Dirty rain that soaked through your shoes and made the world smell like rust and regret.
Jaxon had passed out drunk, beer still dripping from the bottle he dropped. I didn’t pack much. Just diapers, formula, and one photo of me holding Jude in the hospital.
We slipped out barefoot.
No plan. No money. Not even a jacket for myself.
I remember hiding in the corner of a train station, wrapping Jude in the last clean scarf I had. I told him stories while he cried, stories about queens and castles and soft beds. Meanwhile, my hands were bleeding from holding onto rusty rails.
We moved a lot. Shelters. Abandoned apartments. One time we slept inside a photo booth.
I worked every job I could find… waitressing in sleazy diners, scrubbing toilets in motels, even sold an old gold necklace I stole from Jaxon’s deadbeat aunt.
All for Jude.
My baby had to eat.
But more than that, he had to learn.
So I taught him. Early.
“Baby,” I’d whisper, tucking him in with secondhand blankets, “if we want to survive, we play the game. You hear me?”
He’d nod, tiny lips pressed tight, soaking in every word.
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“People love sweet. People obey beautiful. And people never question a smile. Learn to use it.”
Jude learned quick. He could melt hearts with one pout. By age four, he could cry on command. By age six, he understood secrets were currency. He knew when to listen, when to hug, and when to stay silent. My boy? He was no boy. He was becoming exactly what I needed.
I didn’t raise a child.
I crafted a weapon.
**
Back in the present, I reached over and brushed Jude’s hair away from his forehead. His breath was soft. His lashes curled like angel wings. People looked at him and saw innocence.
I looked at him and saw destiny.
“I gave birth to a weapon,” I thought, smiling to myself. “And now he’ll bring me the crown.”
I sat up slowly, careful not to wake him, and opened the drawer of my bedside table. Inside was a tiny velvet box. I popped it open, pulled out an old fake engagement ring. I used to wear it when I was still pretending to be loved. Wore it so people wouldn’t ask questions. Wore it so I could dream.
I held it up, turning it in the light.
“Soon, this will be real,” I whispered. “Massaro real.”
I turned to the photo frame beside my bed. It was one of those hospital photos the nurse printed for us. Jude and I, all smiles. But I had strategically placed it in front of another picture. One that had Therese in it. Her face was barely visible now, cut off at the edge.
Just the way I wanted.
I laughed to myself.
Therese never stood a chance. Poor thing thought love was enough. She thought honesty mattered. She fought with tears and devotion.
Me?
I fight with survival. I fight with teeth. I fight with fire and silence and blood.
Final line left my lips like a promise:
“Therese fought with her heart. I fight with blood.”
Sun, Aug
