He is in my messages. My heart starts to beat so hard it's practically jumping out of my chest. I take quick shallow breaths to try to calm down but it's all to no avail.
“You're seeing him again,” he says quietly.
“We're friends,” I whisper. “I thought you wanted us to be friends.”
“No,” he says sternly. “You're not friends. You're lying.”
I let out a slight sigh of relief, realizing that I was lucky enough not to discuss anything too personal over text. All that Franklin suspects is that I am cheating on him. That's not great but it could be a lot worse.
“Are you seeing him?” he asks.
I shake my head no.
“I don't believe you,” he says.
“Why do you care anyway? I've caught you sleeping around with… how many women is it?”
“That doesn't matter. I'm a man.”
“Exactly, you're just like me.”
“No, I'm not,” he says, shaking his finger in my face. “I can do whatever the fuck I want and you can’t."
I don't know how to make it stop or how to make him go away. I don't want to make it worse but I have to stand up for myself.
“Henry is just a friend. Like I said before,” I say it as calmly as possible.
“You don't text like this to a friend.” He shows me the screen.
I stare at the words "I love you" and pray for them to give me strength.
“That was just him texting me when he wanted us to get back together. He's going through a lot with his mother and he is my ex. As you know, the breakup has been hard and—"
“You're a fucking bitch!” He punches me.
It comes out of nowhere. I’ve never been hit before and the pain catches me by surprise.
The hurt is localized to my eye but it quickly spreads in waves. I can't see anything as my vision goes dark.
Another blow sends me to the floor and something that tastes like iron gushes into my mouth. I grab onto my nose trying to contain the blood and the pain gets worse.
Tears stream down my face but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. My cries are lost somewhere in the back of my throat.
The third jab hits me right in the stomach. I topple over in half and stay there, covering my head with my hands.
“Don't you ever sneak around behind my back again,” Franklin hisses into my ear.
Out of the corner of my eye and through the tears and the pain, I see him lift up his fist again. I close my eyes and brace myself for impact but nothing comes. Instead, Franklin just tosses my phone on the bed next to me.
“You don't get to do whatever the fuck you want,” he says. “You're my wife and I own you.”
13
Aurora
Alone in the room, writhing around, I let out a sigh of relief. The throbbing doesn’t stop, but it’s not just the physical pain that hurts me.
I knew that Franklin Parks was capable of a lot of things but I had no idea that he was capable of this. I never thought he would raise his hand to me. Not like this.
That was naïve. When he slapped me across the face in anger, perhaps then I should have run away but I didn't. I stayed put but things only got worse.
I should have known the person that he was the minute that he laid his finger on me. In another world, I would have never said yes to this wedding and this marriage.
It’s almost as if everything that I have known has gone out of the window. I'm lost and with every passing moment, I go deeper and deeper into the abyss.
My nose is throbbing and when I touch it, I recoil from the pain. Still, I can't help but bring my fingers close to it again and try to feel for something. I force myself off the bed and drag myself to the bathroom.
The reflection in the mirror makes me sick to my stomach. My eyes are swollen shut and my face is covered in blood. My nose is still bleeding and the skin around it is puffy and turning blue.
I have never seen anything like this before, except in a movie. My father is capable of a lot of things but he had never laid his hands on my mother, me, or anyone else that I know of. I try to figure out what to do.
Do I put ice on this?
Do I wash off my face first?
Should I go to the hospital?
I take a washcloth and put it under the stream of hot water. I dab it lightly and press it to my face. Even the slightest pressure is hard to bear.
My thoughts return to Henry. If Franklin's capable of doing something like this to me, what is he capable of doing to him?
And then something else occurs to me.
Did he actually think that I was having an affair or is this just a ploy to get me to confess to what is really going on?
These questions along with about a hundred others speed through my mind but I can't come up with any answers. The person that I thought Franklin was had somehow disappeared. I didn't know much about him but I was certain that the things that I knew were right. Then suddenly, I discovered things that made him someone else.
I would have been a lot more careful with my phone calls and texts if I had any idea that it actually bothered him. He had been so nonchalant about his own affairs that I thought that he existed on a whole other plane of existence.
He wanted to marry me even though he knew that I didn't love him. He wanted me as a trophy and we both knew that. He invited Henry over for dinner and acted like we could all be friends but not once did I ever suspect him having even a tinge of jealousy. Then this happened.
“What the hell?” I ask myself out loud, staring into my eyes in the mirror. “What the hell just happened?”
Despite how I look now, there are some things that I should be grateful for. Luckily, he did not discover the cameras. He doesn't know that I had planted them but I have not had a chance to see if all of the connections are right.
I return to my phone and tap over to the secret folder in the back. The app looks just like a regular news app on the outside. That’s on purpose.
I click on it and hold my breath. I had set everything up just as Jackie had showed me but I was supposed to make sure to double check that it broadcasts to my phone before I left. Franklin had come in before I could do that.
I tap my fingers on the counter before forcing my eyes onto the screen.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, just under my breath. “There it is. The image of the master bedroom along with his office are crystal clear.”
I click on the back of the file, the previous recording, and watch him punch me over and over again.
It's an out of body experience. This just happened to me and here I am watching it as if it is happening to someone else. I want to pull away but I can't.
The door swings open and I close the app with one quick motion and click on Facebook.
“How are you feeling?” Franklin asks.
“Okay, I guess,” I say, turning toward him.
I brace myself for impact but by the way that he is standing in the doorway, I can tell that he's here for something else.
“I just wanted to…check up on you,” he says quietly. “I didn't want you to be hurt.”
I want to say, Well, then you shouldn’t have attacked me, but I bite my tongue.
“Maybe I should go to the hospital,” I say.