What do I do now? I thought. Call the police? Bitterness filled me at the thought.
Someone was pounding on the front door. I went from numb to trembling again.
But then I heard a frantic Dante calling, "Scarlett! Are you in there? Scarlett!"
I broke. Into a million pieces. In relief. In renewed horror.
I started sobbing and made my unsteady way to the door, fumbling with the lock in my rush to let him in.
Some part of me had shut off, slipped inward, gone dead, perhaps, for the duration of the nightmare.
It took seeing Dante's face to bring me back, to realize, and start to deal with the horror of what had happened to me.
A dozen expressions flitted across his face as he took me in. First shock, then horror, then anguish as he started to connect the dots.
I looked down at myself. I was naked, which I'd as good as forgotten, but that wasn't the worst of it.
Bruises were already mottling my torso, my wrists and ankles raw, open wounds from struggling against the ropes.
And there was blood, a lot of it, all over my thighs.
I crumpled with a sob.
With a low sob of his own, he caught me.
He didn't ask me anything at first, just held me, stroked me, carried me inside, sat down on the couch and tried, around his own helpless sobs, to calm me down.
And when I'd quieted, and was just lying against him, hoping that I never had to leave his arms ever again for my whole miserable life, he asked me only one thing.
"Where is he?" His quiet voice bled like murder into the air.
Of course he'd connected the dots as soon as he'd seen the state I was in. Harris's car was right outside.
I started trembling anew. I shut my eyes and leaned heavily into him. I couldn't bring myself to answer him, and after a time he tried to stand, but I clung to him and cried.
It had sunk in. What had happened to me.
But more than that. What I'd done.
Who I was and what I'd done.
Eventually he had to pick me up and take me with him. I didn't make it easy for him to search my grandma's house, but at least there wasn't much to search.
It took him extra time to get my door open while still holding me clutched to his chest, but he managed.
I didn't look, but his reaction was far calmer than I'd expected.
His breathing barely changed as he took in the cop I'd killed.
"I'm going to jail," I said wretchedly.
"Shh, angel, shh," he said into my temple. "It was self-defense."
I shook my head. "He was sleeping when I shot him. He'd already finished with me. I wasn't thinking. I shot him in the back. Don't you see what's going to happen? With all the trouble I've been in? All the fights? All the reports from times when I've lost my temper? The cops hated me when I was a victim. What do you think they're going to do now that I've killed one of them?"
"He was a rapist," Dante said dully, but I could tell that what I was saying was starting to sink in. "He deserved it."
"They won't think so. What do you think they're going to do to me now when I've killed one of them, and then I accuse him of being a rapist?"
"He was a rapist," Dante repeated, an absolute concentrate of hatred in the words. "I'm so sorry, angel." He was crying now. "So sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know this was happening. I had no idea. I've been looking for you for hours, but I was looking in the wrong place." He was breaking down now, sobbing, screaming, "I'd have killed him myself, I swear it."
It was funny how I only realized later that he never asked me if I was okay, and how that had comforted me. Because he knew me too well to ask such a stupid question.
Of course I wasn't okay. Of course I wasn't fine.
I'd been defiled, degraded, debased beyond all repair. I was covered in that monster's filth. Sticky with it.
I was wretched. Unhinged. Suicidal.
"I don't know what to do," I sobbed. "I don't want to go to jail."
"They can't put you in jail for this," he argued, but he sounded less and less convinced.
"I wasn't thinking right, Dante. My mind was just . . . gone. I shot him in the back. Emptied a full clip into him. Do you really think this is going to go my way?"
He was silent as his mind worked, and eventually I could see he came to the same conclusion as I had, but his next words floored me. "I'll say I did it. I'll say I caught him raping you and shot him in the back."
I started to struggle in his hold.
"No, no, no," I spat. "You think I'd let you go to jail for me? After you already killed someone for me, you think I'd do that? And with your record, do you think it could end any other way?"
"Don't be like that. I can take this hit. Gram will get me the best lawyer out there. It'll be fine."
I kept shaking my head. "No. Never. I'll confess myself before this ever goes on you. I fucking swear it. I won't let you take this on yourself."
He took a few deep breaths. He was thinking, I could tell, his mind racing, trying to figure out what to do.
"Does anyone know he brought you here?" he asked finally.