Chapter 10
Flashback (Elle age 19)
She was walking back to her loft when the hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up on their ends. Elle felt in her gut that she wasn't alone on that dark street, but she kept on walking. A few more feet and I'll be behind locked doors, she coached herself. Ten more steps and I'll be at the front door, she chanted. Nine, eight, seven…six more steps and she would have been safe. Six more steps and she could smell the whiskey on his breath. Five more steps and Elle had been shoved into her front door, the cold metal knob punching through her abdomen. She lost count. She lost her nerve for a split second. That's all she allowed. Fear was her friend.
"Don't scream. Do not say a single thing, sweetness. Just do as I say and we'll have all night to scream." The shadow whispered into her ear. She could have sworn she heard a sinister laugh as he pushed her up the stairs to her living room.
For the first time in her life, she was afraid. It was the fear that drove her to do what she did next. She followed his every direction while she was blindly walking the room, remembering each step they took. He never turned on the lights, but Elle knew her loft like the back of her hand. Eight steps from the front door to the couch. He threw her onto it like a rag doll.
"Sit there and don't make a move, bitch. I have to take care of something first." He said and he walked the sixteen steps to her tiny bathroom.
Good, she thought to herself, let him think I am weak. To her right, she knew she had an end table, and on it was her way out. She heard him in the bathroom and the moans she heard gave her the time she needed to pick up the letter opener and hide it underneath her shirt. She could have run for the door; he would have never heard her. The bastard was enjoying himself in there. Why didn't she run?
I may be many things, she said to herself, but a runner I'm not. She had to take control and no man was going to take advantage of her. Boy did he pick the wrong girl, she laughed to herself. Her schoolyard scrapples and that encounter with her step-dad would prove it. Not good enough to make it, she laughed. I made it through his beatings, she thought with acid burning her throat.
She heard the toilet flush and the door open. She began to count his steps. She figured he was approximately 6' compared to her 5'8" stature. Her target was his throat. She counted his sluggish steps, seven more and he would be on her right hand side. She carefully enveloped the metal blade in her right palm.
Six more steps. Elle's heart began to race.
Five more steps. She thrived on adrenaline.
Four…her breathing became steady.
Three…her lips formed into a tightly drawn sneer.
Two…she could smell him; the liquor and his sweaty stench made her stomach lurch.
One…Elle closed her eyes for a split second, that's all she allowed for the fear to sink in, and then she sprung like a panther.
He never saw her coming. The quick slice of the blade to his jugular was all it took to catch him off guard. His blood, thick and warm, dripped onto her hand. She could smell his life draining from him as his liquored drenched breath escaped shallowly.
One…
Two…