REprisal - Kathy Coopmans Page 0,57

I could go on; nothing made sense to me anymore. A… a life without you in it seemed senseless. I tried to kill myself afterwards. I wasn’t going to live without you.”

I thank God again that she didn’t succeed. The notion of her trying to kill herself sends my mind into a tailspin of worry. She was just a few weeks pregnant with Journey at that point. The thought of losing them both scares the shit out of me now that I have her back and Journey is here.

I tell Clove the whole story, taking my time and leaving out not one detail about that horrible night and the months that followed; my broken bones, my surgeries. Even the excruciating pain of heartbreak and how my life spiraled downward into a deep, dark depression; the anger, sadness, and more when I learned the truth about my brother and father and what they had done.

“Those first few nights away from you, I fought with everything I had in me to get back to you. That first night I was so damn out of it. Trent beat the living shit out of me.”

I can’t look at her. I know her so well. One look and I will fall apart.

“My hands and feet were tied to a chair and both he and my father kept screaming at me about twenty million dollars. Fuck, you know I had no idea that money even existed.”

“Stop,” she pleads, sitting up with tears welling in her eyes. “Please stop. I can’t listen to anymore, not now. Not yet. I don’t know if I ever want to hear the things they did to you.”

Clove’s weeping turns into full-fledged body wracking sobs. In no time, I gather her into my arms. Her body shakes; she clutches onto my shirt and doesn’t let me go, even when I try to ease her back down onto the bed.

“No! Don’t let me go! Don’t ever let me go. Please,” she begs, clawing at my shirt.

“God, baby, I will never let you go. I never will,” I vow.

Some people may call crying a healing process, a way that we can let out all of our frustrations, anger and sadness. I hold my wife, clinging to her just as hard as she is clinging to me, and crying for the exact same reasons that she does. So help me God, as long as I live, I swear that those two motherfucking animals who did this to me and my family are somehow, some way, going to pay. There will be a reprisal like no one has ever seen before.

Chapter Eighteen

Turner

Watching the two most important people in my life sleeping so peacefully is an indescribable feeling. An overwhelming urge to protect them both from the malicious, despicable people of the world surges straight to my gut.

My arm is securely around Clove and Journey is sleeping on my chest. This is my family. I’m complete and happy. I have my wife back and a daughter I didn’t even know I had until a few days ago.

The rage inside of me for the horrendous things they have endured over the past year overpowers this happiness, though, and that pisses me the fuck off. Not being able to tell Clove I know everything that they did to her thanks to Zack killed me tonight, especially sitting there listening to her tell me how she tried to take her life after she thought I was dead.

If I truly was a killer, and had those same fucked up genes coursing through me that my father and brother, they would both be dead by now. I wish I’d had the guts to be able to do it, to stand in front of them and tell them exactly how I felt, mocking and torturing them until they had me begging to kill them, to place my hands roughly around their throats and suck the life out of them slowly. But I’m not like them. My family means more to me than that, and that is where the difference between us lies.

Shifting my head carefully, my vision blurred from lack of sleep, I gaze upon my child’s sleeping form on my chest. Her mouth hangs open slightly, lost in her own little world; no cares, no worries, and sheltered securely right where she was meant to be.

My body demands sleep, but every time I close my eyes, all I can see is the two of them locked up in a goddamn room with