The Unwanted Wife: Revenge After Divorce

DAMIAN

With a tired grunt, I pushed the laptop away as my phone rang. The call was from Amelia. I frowned. Why was she calling? Wasn’t she in the house? Glancing at the time, I concluded that she had to be indoors as it was very late. Was she calling about the Noah incident again? Maybe she needed me around to talk her out of her mood. Shame that I couldn’t comfort her better.

“Amelia?” I said into the phone.

There was no answer for a moment, and I thought she had accidentally dialed my number. Then, I heard the sound of a car zooming past. A scream followed this in a voice I instantly recognized as Amelia’s. The scream had me sitting ramrod straight.

“Amelia?” I called, clenching the phone tightly, worry and panic trying to swamp me. “Amelia, what is going on?”

And then I heard something that sent a chill up my spine.

A male voice spoke in a low growl, “Stop screaming. You can’t get away. Screaming will only make it tough for you.”

“Please. Please. Let me go. I beg you. You don’t want to do this. If you hurt me, the police will-”

There was a loud smack, a grunt of pain.

“Where are you, Amelia?” I screamed so loudly that my throat hurt.

“Don’t you dare threaten us with the police,” threatened the first voice. “Now, take off your clothes like a good girl.”

“Stay the hell away from me,” Amelia said. She sucked in a breath and began to scream for help over and over again.

There were muttered oaths.

“Shut the bitch up,” barked another voice.

“Shut up, dammit!” said another.

Amelia’s cries were abruptly cut off. There were muffled grunts as she still tried to cry out. I could imagine those scumbags clamping their hands over her mouth-another scuffle, then a cry of pain, not from Amelia.

“Shit! The bitch bit me!” one of the assailants exclaimed.

There were scurrying footsteps, hot in pursuit of Amelia. The footsteps faded away after a second. I sprang to my feet so fast that the chair I was sitting on fell backward with a crash. I stared at the phone, which had gone ominously silent. For a long, terrible moment, I could not move; I could not think. As I moved away from the table, I stubbed my foot against the leg of the fallen chair. The pain helped bring my thoughts into sharp focus.

How could I get Amelia’s location? I had no idea where she was. Then my eyes lighted on my phone, and inspiration struck. I could track her! With slightly unsteady hands, I picked up my phone. It didn’t take me too long to track her location, which was close to a nearby bar, and then I was barreling out of the door, out of the gates, out into the street, running faster than I had ever run in my life, hoping and praying that I was not too late, that Amelia could hold out against those hoodlums until I arrived.

My heart sank when I thought of those precious minutes I had spent listening to those assholes on the phone, time I could have better employed tracking her. If anything happened to her, I didn’t think I could forgive myself.

I put on an extra burst of speed as I got closer. I ran across the road without looking. Behind me, there was a screech of tires, and an angry driver yelled, “Watch where you’re going, you maniac.”

Finally, I got to the bar and looked around. Dread seized me by the throat, overwhelming me, when I found out that there was no one there. Then I heard a faint thud coming on the still night air. The sound came from the back of the closed store. I raced there. Four laughing boys leaned over a struggling figure pinned to the ground. I was sure it was Amelia. One of them, with one hand around what seemed to be her mouth, kept slapping her rhythmically on both cheeks while the other boys tried to take off her clothes. Two of the four, while going about their monstrous task, passed around a bottle in a brown plastic bag, which had to be booze.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

I registered all this in just a second. I sprang at them with a yell of rage. Their faces registered surprise as three of them spotted me and to their feet.

“What the hell-” the one closest to me exclaimed just before I punched him in the nose.

He screamed as blood spurted from it. I lashed out with my fist, keeping my rear clear so they could not surround me. I lunged suddenly and kicked the legs out from under another boy. He went down with a grunt of pain, and I heard a crack as something broke. I wished it was his head.

Something hit me in the back of my head and sent me staggering forward. I turned in time to prevent one of them from hitting me with a piece of paling. I wrenched it from his grasp and clubbed him on the head with it. It broke into pieces. I sprang at the boy who still knelt by Amelia, looking on with his mouth agape. Before I could get to him, he took to his heels. The others followed suit, running and stumbling away with bruised bodies and hopefully broken bones. I was so mad that I started to give chase. Then Amelia groaned. I stopped in my tracks and hurried over to her, knelt beside her.

“Are you okay?” I murmured.

It was a stupid question, as she was obviously not. Her blouse lay in tatters. Her cheeks were bruised from the slaps. She had a cut lip, and her eyes were puffy. I gently raised her to a sitting position.

Then I asked the question I had dreaded, even though I saw her jeans were still intact. Only the belt had been unbuckled. “Did they… Were they able to…”

I trailed off and swallowed, unable to complete the sentence. Amelia moaned and shook her head slowly, painfully.

“No,” she croaked. “They didn’t. You arrived just in time.”

Her lower lip trembled. The dam she had been keeping on her emotions broke, and then she began to sob uncontrollably.

“It’s okay,” I soothed. “It’s okay. You’re fine now. We’re going home.”

I set her on her feet. Her knees buckled, and she would have fallen without the arm I had securely wrapped around her waist. She obviously couldn’t walk home, so I swung her into my arms. Still weeping, she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my chest. I stiffened immediately. I felt out of sorts at having Amelia this physically close to me. Feeling her warm weight in my arms, smelling her perfume and the shampoo in her hair, which the smell of floor dirt couldn’t hide… it did things to me.

“Fuck me,” I muttered, acknowledging it was the worst time to have such thoughts in my head. She was hurt, and deep down, I knew it was my fault. If only I could spend more time with her. If only I could be a few inches away from her without feeling like I was losing control of myself and my actions, she wouldn’t be in so much pain.

I lengthened my strides, eager to get her home and put some much-needed distance between us. With a sigh of relief, I finally kicked the door of her room open and laid her on the bed. As I stepped back, my phone buzzed. Amelia whimpered, and her arms automatically went around my neck again. I kept very still. She looked around the room in fear, then registered my discomfort. She withdrew her hands and scooted over on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sniffling, wiping her eyes, and twisting her fingers in her lap. “I- I know you don’t like me touching you.”

I gave a long, drawn-out sigh as I wrestled with myself. Her cheeks had turned pink, and she was no doubt remembering how I couldn’t even bear to touch her to comfort her earlier today. She looked so miserable that I had to tell her why.

“It’s not you. It’s me,” I blurted out.

She looked up sharply and blinked like I had said some abominable words. “What?”

“What I meant to say is… it’s not just you who I don’t allow to touch me. I- Something happened to me that- that made me like this.” Why the hell was I telling her this?

“What happened?” she breathed, her own pain forgotten as she stared at me.

“When I was a child, I was left alone at home with a nanny by busy parents who were so caught up in their lives that they didn’t give two shits about their son.” I glanced at Amelia apologetically. “Excuse my language.” I waited a beat, then went on. “It turned out that the nanny my parents left me with was a pedophile.”

“Oh, Damian,” Amelia gasped.

“She used my body as hers, against my will. I grew up… scarred, avoiding any form of physical contact because it always reminded me of her.”

Amelia’s eyes shimmered with fresh tears. “I understand now. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Damian.” Her big, bright eyes were glimmering with tears as she stared up at me with adoration and pity. “That’s so much pain for one person to bear.”

She knelt, shifted close, and hugged me tightly. This time, I let her.