I remembered everything in a flash, Lia, the knife, sunset! I reached under the pillow, whipped out my chef knife and sat up in bed, ready to do battle. I was up on my feet, swaying, knife held out.

“Where’s Lia?” I croaked.

My throat was so horribly dry, I could barely speak. My head swam and spun from the sudden movement. I almost fell over with vertigo. Enrique jumped up to catch me, his strong arms holding me tight, supporting my weight.

“It’s alright. She’s gone now. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

“She wants to kill us! She’ll come back! We have to stop her!” I croaked, my voice breaking.

“Calm down. Here have a drink.” He handed me a glass of water. He forced me to sit down on the bed. I was still amped, ready to rumble, but too dizzy to stand.

“She’s dead, querida. She left me no choice but to kill her.”

It took a minute for his words to register. Lia dead? Gone?

The realization stung. Surprisingly, I didn’t want her dead. I just didn’t want to live with her hate anymore. But how could she die?

“Really … are you sure? Can she die? Can’t she like … come back?”

“Not when I separated her head from her body. No one survives that.”

“You took her head off?” I shuddered in gross-out surprise.

“Si, querida. The only way to ensure she could never hurt you again. I forced her obedience, but where there’s a will there’s a way. She found ways around my power over her.”

“How … I thought she couldn’t hurt me. How could she attack me?”

“My orders were that she couldn’t harm you. But I allowed her to defend herself. You attacked her. Granted, she was shooting at me, but your attack allowed her to defend herself … very aggressively.”

“She stabbed me … over and over.”

“I know. It’s a miracle you survived, querida. I’m so happy you’re alive and well. I thought you were gone. You looked like death warmed over.”

His words reminded me of everything I went through from Lia’s devious betrayal and Arana’s vicious assaults. If only he’d have taken me with him, none of this would’ve happened. Lia would still be alive. My life would still be perfectly wonderful. He didn’t care enough to take me with him. It was his fault, everything was his fault. Lia would still be alive today. We would still be a happy little family if he hadn’t left us.

I wanted to cry, but my tears of self-pity were all used up. Outrage, fury, abandonment, I could still cry in frustration and rage. “You left me here with that psycho! Did you really think that just because she behaved herself for a few weeks that somehow, magically, she had changed?”

He was taken aback at my reaction. He didn’t seem to know what to say.

“You knew what she was! Your minds were linked! You knew she was insane! She lived with you for twenty years. How could you leave me alone with her?”

“I’m so sorry Hope.” He wouldn’t look me in the eyes. How could I trust a man who couldn’t look me in the eyes?

“That’s all you have to say? She made me whore for her bite. She made me fuck another man for hours just to get one fucking bite! Is that what you expected her to do? How could you not know what she was up to? She had no secrets from you!”

“Apparently she did. I was unaware of all this.”

“That’s only because you didn’t give a shit. You didn’t care enough to call me for more than a few seconds, one time. You didn’t care enough to check on your psycho servant and your bloodslave sex toy! You didn’t care what she did to me!”

“I’m so sorry, querida. I’ve never had to consider how dangerous she could be. She obviously learned to keep secrets from us both. I thought her incapable of blocking you out of her mind. She figured out a way to fool us.”

“She dumped me off with Arana after I threatened to tell you what she’d done to me. She planned to get rid of me all along. You gave her the perfect opportunity.”

“I’ve never had another person living in our home before. I never had to deal with her jealousy. It was always the two of us till you came along.”

“Yeah, you decided I had to stay. When you forced me into staying, Faustino thought I ran out on him. He was so angry, he took it out on Arana. Lia dumped me off with Arana, he wanted me dead. Arana wanted revenge. He never planned to give me back to Faustino.”

“You’re right, Hope. I can’t deny it. It’s my fault. I never considered how vulnerable you could be to Lia’s sick manipulations.”

But he should have known. How could he not know?

“Maybe you wanted her to get rid of me. Take care of the problem? I knew it was all too good to be true, the employment contract, all the promises of long life. You were speaking the truth when you told her how soon I would die!”

“No, querida, she was jealous of my feelings for you. I only said those horrible things so she wouldn’t feel threatened by your presence.”

“Don’t querida me! If you knew she was so damn jealous, then why did you leave me alone with her to be abused and raped and beaten half to death? She only bit me once! One time in four nights!”

“You’re upset right now, understandably so. Let’s not argue. Come, let me take care of you.”

“Do you know what Arana did to me? He beat me for hours. I was tied down to the bed as he beat and raped me for two whole days! He tried to kill me several times – choked me off. I could be pregnant, he didn’t wear a condom! I wish he’d have killed me! I wish I was dead!”

He tried to hug me, I pushed him away. I still had the knife in my hand. I pointed the blade at him as I shook and cried.

“You don’t love me! You’ve never loved me! I was your little sex toy. You and Lia played with me, almost killed me twice. And when it was no longer convenient to keep me around, after I’d picked everyone’s brains to find out who was loyal to you, you decided to let Lia take out the trash. You let Lia get rid of your little problem!”

“It’s not true, querida. I made a mistake. I thought she had accepted your place here. I didn’t realize what she planned.”

“I told you she wanted me dead. I begged you to protect me from her. I gave you everything, every part of my heart and soul and body, and you left me here with her. I told you something bad would happen. I begged you to take me with you! But you listened to her! Did you honestly think her feelings towards me would change in the weeks she spent in Spain?”

“Yes I did. That was my mistake, trusting her. She said she could see the benefits of having you around for business. She said she was okay with the arrangement.”

“The arrangement, hunh? The arrangement where you watched her damn near suck me dry, fucking me till I could hardly walk? That happened while you were here. What did you think she would do the moment you were gone? And did you tell her about how you supposedly care for me?”

“We didn’t really talk about it. I admitted I liked having you around, I enjoyed your company, our lovemaking.”

“You mean sex? It’s not lovemaking when you don’t love someone. She believed I was just your sex toy. You let her believe that. So that’s how she treated me after you were gone. Her own personal sex toy to fuck and abuse at her whim.”

“I should’ve told her the truth. That’s another mistake I made.”

“You told her the truth. And she did exactly what she thought was right in her twisted mind. I just don’t understand how you couldn’t see any of this coming.”

I was irate, swinging the knife back and forth. I was ready to kill, to strike out in vengeance for what had been done to me. He stole my thunder and wrath when he grabbed me and bit down on my neck. Pain, fury, hate, all gone in a flash. I was a slave to the venom, betrayed by my biology.

“I loved you and you left me to die alone in pain.” I cried, wanting to hurt him, wanting him to make love to me. Not sex, love. It was all wrong. I was stuck with this creature who callously, mercilessly, used my biology to manipulate me. I hated him.

He was the first man I’d ever loved, the fairytale dream. But it was all a façade, an invention of my own mind. He never loved me.

He released his bite. The magic drained away, all that remained was my shattered illusions. “I hate you.”

* * * *

Chapter 23

My nights flew past without incident. I did my job precisely as contracted. I attended all required meetings, wrote lengthy, detailed reports of everyone’s mundane thoughts and consulted with Enrique on certain key points in our after-the-meeting meeting. It all became routine. No big surprises. The property maintenance guy wanted a raise, an export company hoped for a better shipping rate. The real estate agent was horny for Enrique, and willing to violate her code of ethics by sleeping with him if it might finagle a better commission on a piece of commercial property he was bidding on. He respectfully declined her offer, and did not give her a higher commission. In fact, he considered firing her. Each night was more or less the same as the one before. Attorneys are still the laziest bastards on the planet, and yet somehow manage to catch the highest hourly rate for the least amount of work.

I did what was required of me and nothing more. Sex is not in my employment contract. I am not anyone’s whore or sex toy. I’m not a piece of meat to beat on, chew on, or stick your dick in. No one touches me. No one. I am an island. Enrique’s not permitted to touch me beyond the cordial embrace necessary to facilitate his nightly bites. That’s the way I want it, and that’s the way it stays!

“I don’t need him, don’t love him, and don’t desire his touch.” That’s my mantra. I repeat it to myself nightly in front of the mirror.

“I love myself. My body is sacred and magnificent.”

I have tight biceps, a six pack of ab muscles, and my gluts and quads are rock hard – toned. I attend real kick-boxing classes – not that cardio wanna-be shit. I also have a private Krav-maga Israeli commando self-defense class every week. My kicks and punches break through bricks and cinder blocks. If anyone is stupid enough to pull a knife or gun on me ever again I’ll take it and shove it so far up their ass it’ll have to be surgically removed.