Note to readers: The following chapter contains violent scenes which may be disturbing and triggering to survivors of abuse. PLEASE proceed with caution. Thank you.
Chapter Eleven
Lionel
Over these past couple of weeks that Mia's been home from the hospital, she's been so anxious to just pick back up with her life where she left off before her second heart attack. While she's certainly spent plenty of time with Claire and Rosie and me, she's also spent a lot of time pushing herself too hard when it came to her work, just as always. Although Clarisse and Joe and I have tried to get her to take it easy, she's still remained determined to do as much work as possible.
Mia and Uncle Seb and Lord Devereaux recently sat down together and discussed it, and they all decided that the best course of action would be for Lord Devereaux to take over the majority of Mia's work for her from now on as both head of government and head of state, and for Mia to simply do whatever work she felt up to doing. She could still do the same work with Uncle Seb that she did before, working on bills with him to propose to Parliament, and it would still be her decision as to whether or not to give royal assent to a bill or to veto it, but in times where she wasn't well enough to do those things, Lord Devereaux would step in and take over for her, and in fact, it was no secret to any of us that he would be stepping in a lot more often now.
And Mia actually felt that since Lord Devereaux would be doing most of the work of ruling these days, she should abdicate and let him ascend the throne in her place, but he adamantly refused. He told her that in the heart of every Genovian, she would always be their Queen, and he also told her that if he became Genovia's ruler in her place, the whole country would have a riot. And although I've never been the biggest fan of Nicholas Devereaux, I couldn't have agreed with him more. Even though Mia couldn't do as much work as she used to, she's always been Genovia's version of Princess Diana, and just as Camilla Parker Bowles didn't dare assume the title of "Princess" in England when she married Prince Charles, Nicholas Devereaux knew better than to assume the title of "King" in Genovia.
And there were some very good reasons why Genovia has been so fiercely loyal to its Queen all these years. Just as Princess Diana was known as "The People's Princess" in England, in Genovia, Mia has been known as "The People's Queen" for quite a long time, and it's a title she's more than earned. No Genovian ruler before her has put as much time, effort, and energy into really getting out there and getting to know the Genovian people and listen to their needs, wants, and concerns as Mia has, not even Clarisse. And no Genovian ruler before her has sacrificed as much for the Genovian people as Mia has either. And I will never forget the sacrifice Mia made on November 29, 2007.
It all actually began the night before, which was Wednesday, November 28, 2007. After about a week of my relentless attempts at persuasion, I eventually wore Mia down and convinced her to start letting me accompany her to the Pyrus Women's Shelter every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night when she snuck out of the palace. I never convinced her to let me carry my pistol with me, but it still made me feel a lot better knowing that she wasn't going to be out all by herself in the middle of the night. And even though I hated to do it, I also disobeyed Mia's orders and had a long talk with Shades about what she'd been doing, because I really wanted someone else in Royal Security to know what was going on in case something went wrong while we were away from the palace. I got him to swear himself to secrecy, thank goodness, but if something did happen to us while we were gone, I knew at least somebody there could start trying to track us down and send in reinforcements.
But while I still had my worries about the security side of things, I had to admit that as a Christian and as a man, I learned a lot in those weeks that I worked with Mia at the Pyrus Women's Shelter. It's never come as any surprise to me that the rest of the world hates Christians with a vengeance because as Christ, Himself explained in the Bible, the world hated Him first. But it didn't take me very much time of working there at all to also learn the tragic fact that much of the time, many professing Christians give the rest of the world very good reasons to hate us.
There were so many battered and abused women and children there whose churches and fellow "Christians" had only enabled their abusers, causing the abuse to continue going on for years, sometimes decades. It seems that there were tons of professing Christians in Genovia who, when confronted with abuse, resorted to blaming victims for causing the abuse and telling them that Bible verses instructing wives to submit to their husbands and children to honor their parents meant that no matter what an abusive husband and father did, they had to stay and take it and suffer. They loved to twist the verses about loving one's enemies and forgiving seventy times seven to enable abusers to keep abusing their families without ever having to face any consequences for it, and instead of confronting abusers and holding them accountable for their actions, they just preached at the wives and children to submit to and honor their abusers and keep forgiving them, even if they never showed any repentance for their evil actions. In those weeks I worked with Mia at the Pyrus Women's Shelter, what I saw there had nothing to do with what was true Christianity, but was instead a sickening and appalling perversion of it in which evil was honored, submitted to, and allowed to flourish while innocent victims suffered with absolutely no relief from "Christians" whatsoever.
And while I'd always loved my Uncle Seb and my Aunt Sheila, it wasn't until I started working at that shelter that I began to appreciate just how blessed by God I'd really been. When Seb had seen that my father had no intention of giving up alcohol and that I was being neglected as a small child, he'd had the guts to step in and do something about it before any significant psychological damage was done to me. He got me out of that environment when I was very, very young, and thanks to Uncle Seb and Aunt Sheila, I enjoyed a very stable, happy, healthy family life, and I'd been shown what real Christianity actually looked like, rather than the sickening imitation that allowed and enabled abuse.
And although Uncle Seb and Aunt Sheila and I had been going to a small Methodist church my whole life, after seeing what I saw at that shelter, I well understood the controversial decision Mia made about a year into her reign to stop attending any church at all and to simply attend a small Bible study session her Uncle Pierre held when he wasn't away on missionary trips. I had absolutely no doubts whatsoever that when it came to being a Christian, Mia was the real deal, and I think it was actually because of her true faith in Christ that she could no longer be a part of the institution of church that was so consistently heartless to abuse victims. And as a born-again Christian myself, I personally applauded her decision. She naturally caught plenty of heat for it in the press and was frequently accused of turning her back on her faith in Jesus by many professing "Christians," but despite what people said, she stuck to her guns and stood by her decision and I admired that. It was never Christ she was turning her back on, but rather, a "church" where Catholics let their priests get away with sexually abusing children in their congregations and Protestant evangelicals told abused wives and children to go back home and submit to their abusive husbands and honor their abusive parents. In both systems, evil was enabled and honored and victims were crushed. Mia helped me remember that the true Christian Church was about the people, not the institution or the church building.
Shortly after Mia and I arrived at the shelter that night, we soon got a good, hard look at the latest crushed victims of the monstrosity that passed as "church" in Genovia and the rest of the world. Penny Hastings was a tall, slim lady with blonde hair and blue eyes, with two lovely daughters, Erica and Ashley, who were ages twelve and ten and were both the image of their mother. When they came into the shelter with Sarah that night, who had picked them up and driven them there, Penny had bruises all over, but even though the girls' wounds were invisible, we would soon learn that it was Erica and Ashley who had been hurt the worst.
"Jennifer, you need to get these girls into one of the exam rooms," Sarah instructed Dr. Jennifer Wilson, a lovely, average-sized black lady. "Now. They've just been raped."
The rest of us didn't say anything, but we all felt like we'd been kicked in the gut.
"Who did it? Their father?" asked Terri Chen, a small-sized twenty-year-old girl of Asian descent.
"Who else?!" Sarah replied in disgust. "Danielle, as you can see, Penny has multiple bruises and cuts," she said to Danielle Finch, a short, heavyset lady with dark hair who volunteered there as a registered nurse. "She needs to be taken to an exam room and cared for as well."
"Of course. Right this way, Penny," she said as she led her back to the clinic area of the shelter.
"I'm going to go back and be with the girls while Jennifer examines them," Mia announced, and then she left.
"And I'll stay with Penny," Sarah said as she left as well, leaving me behind with Terri Chen and the only other male volunteer there, a black, muscular twenty-year-old young man named Ben James.
"And that is why you could never pay me to set foot inside another church, even though I am a Christian," Ben said. His mother had actually been murdered by his abusive father when he was little, and thanks to Genovia's invisible network of abusers, he'd gotten off scot-free. He'd been living on his own since he was sixteen, and Sarah had really taken him under her wing through the years.
"And that is why I'm a proud atheist," Terri announced, which really made my heart ache. She had a similar story to Ben, and had managed to leave home and live on her own ever since she was seventeen. "What is it with you Christians being stuck back in the 1800s?! Men having all the power, women and children being subhuman objects? Men getting all these automatic privileges in marriages and families to make all the decisions and abuse the people they claim to love, and getting away with it because some book written thousands of years ago by a bunch of sexists tells wives to submit to their husbands and children to honor their parents? It's insane!"
"The problem is not with the Bible itself," I attempted to explain. "The problem is how abusers with a selfish agenda and their enablers twist Scripture to suit their own desires. If you pull a Bible verse out of context, you can make Scripture say anything you want it to say. Abusive husbands and fathers who are professing Christians, not real Christians in my book, love to harp on the Bible verses you were just talking about, but what they don't talk about are the verses telling husbands to put their wives before themselves even to the point of sacrificing their lives for their benefit if necessary; or the verses where parents are told not to provoke their children to wrath and not to embitter their children; or the verses where Jesus says it would be better for a person to die rather than do anything to harm a child."
"He's right," Ben agreed. "The problem is not true Christianity, but sloppy Christianity; the kind of 'Christianity' that says abuse victims have to be reconciled with their abusers as long as they say they're sorry and shed a few tears and never show one ounce of true repentance. Repentance is not crying a bunch of crocodile tears. Abusers are experts at that. True repentance for an abuser means not only confessing that what they did was wrong, but respecting their victims enough to respect their boundaries. If their victims feel too hurt and frightened by them to stay in contact with them, true repentance means respecting those wishes and backing off, permanently if necessary. It means doing everything humanly possible to help them in any way, such as helping the wife get a new job and a new place to live, as well as giving up all rights to custody of the kids they abused. And these days, sadly, there's a whole lot of Christians out there, or rather, professing Christians, who are just plain stupid when it comes to abuse and true repentance, and many of them choose to be stupid about it because stupidity is more comfortable. They just want the nice little happy ending, all is forgiven, everybody's back together again, all wrapped up in a pretty little package with a cute little red bow, even if the abuser never had any intention of repenting and just wanted his wife and kids back because he wanted his power back."
"I'm sorry, but I'll never be able to forgive all the 'Christians' who kept putting these insane ideas in Penny's head that her husband's abuse was her fault because she wasn't being submissive enough. I'll always hate them for telling her that talking about the abuse would be disrespecting her husband, and for telling her poor kids that reporting the abuse would be breaking the Fifth Commandment and dishonoring their father. The whole thing is sick!"
"I couldn't agree with you more, Terri," I told her.
"Me neither," Ben agreed.
"And now look where their Christianity has gotten them: beaten and raped. How many times did Penny go to all her other 'Christian' friends for help?! How many times did she go to her church, to her pastor?! And what did they tell her again and again and again every time her husband turned on the crocodile tears?!"
"Go home, submit to the snake, and forgive him. I know," Ben said sadly.
"And when Penny stayed here, no matter how hard I or you guys or Sarah or Angie or any of the rest of us tried to undo all that religious brainwashing and tell her God wasn't going to send her to hell for protecting herself and her kids, we couldn't! We tried so hard to undo all the crap they did to her mind with all this submission garbage, but the garbage stuck and who has to pay the ultimate price? Her kids! For every so-called 'Christian' that fed her all that crap that she had to stay with a man who abused her kids, what has happened tonight is their fault!"
"You're right, Terri," I said. "It is their fault for enabling abusers by preaching her and her girls the false messages that men are above women and that parents have more value in God's eyes than children do and that marriages and parent/child relationships are supposed to be some kind of constant one-way street in favor of abusers. You are absolutely right. And Ben and I and every real Christian is just as angry about this kind of atrocity as you are."
"Then why don't more of you do something about it?!"
"Because there's probably a lot more professing Christians in this world, fake and phony hypocrites who like to go on about what 'Christians' they are when they're really not, than there are real Christians like Lionel and me and Sarah and Angie, and a lot of other workers here," Ben said.
"But at least we're here," I told Terri. "And maybe this time, we can finally help Penny and Erica and Ashley to stay free from this monster for good."
"She's tried before, but her husband's buddies in the good ole invisible network have always managed to track them down in the past, and he's always been able to manipulate her into going back to him," said Terri.
"You know, before I started working here a few weeks ago, sadly, I was pretty guilty of looking down on abused women for not leaving, especially if they had kids," I admitted. "I never took it into consideration the emotional impact of hearing someone telling you constantly for years or even decades how worthless and ugly and stupid you are and how you'll never stand a chance out in the world by yourself. And I certainly never stopped to think about all the women out there who had tried to escape from their abusers in the past but didn't succeed, whose abusers went on to beat not just them but their kids as punishment."
"Or all the women whose families actually side with their abusers over them and refuse to do anything to help them when they try to get out," Ben added.
"Before I started volunteering here, I couldn't imagine that happening," I said. "But after seeing what's been happening with Penny's sexist family, I know better. We're in the twenty-first century, yet we still have so many people who really do believe that marriage turns a woman into an object for a man to selfishly use all the time. Nobody who claims to be a Christian will ever say anything like that, of course, but their actions and the way they treat abused women like Penny is proof that in their hearts, that's what they truly believe. And as a Christian, I am so ashamed of all the people out there who call themselves Christians and live with this kind of mindset. Penny's own 'Christian' parents have seen the bruises on their daughter with their own eyes, and know they have two granddaughters in danger, yet they do nothing because they honestly believe her husband has the right to treat his family like this. In so many Christian circles, it's like it's 5000 B.C. when women were chattel."
"Women were never chattel, Lionel," Terri corrected me. "Women were always human beings and so were children, regardless of whether or not a bunch of pathetic sexists ever recognized it."
"You are absolutely right, Terri. I'm so sorry I worded it like that. What I meant to say was that things even in a lot of first-world countries like Genovia are today like they were thousands of years ago when women and children were considered to be chattel, not that they ever were chattel."
"Thank you."
"Of course, and thank you for correcting me. I shouldn't have worded it that way."
"You bet."
In that next moment, all hell started breaking loose. Five tall, muscular men with guns threw bricks through the glass doors of the shelter and broke inside. Four of them were white and one was black, and they'd all shaved their heads bald and were obviously bodybuilders. Even to a bodyguard like me, they looked intimidating.
"Where's Gracie Knight?!" the tallest guy demanded to know, and Terri, Ben, and I were too stunned to really say anything. Then he held his gun up in the air and fired it and yelled, "Where is she?!"
"What is going on in here?!" Sarah asked after she ran back into the room with Mia, Jennifer, and Danielle. They'd instructed Penny, Erica, and Ashley to stay behind in one of the exam rooms.
"Dear Lord!" Danielle gasped.
"I'm Dennis Knight, and I've come here for my wife, and for my kids. And if you don't bring them out here to me now, I'm going to start shooting people."
"Gracie and the kids aren't here anymore," Mia told him, and then Knight started angrily stomping his way towards her, and I walked over to where Mia was standing and got in front of her.
"Just what do you think you're doing?!" Knight snapped.
"I'm not going to let you hurt Angela," I answered.
He laughed out loud then and said, "You're not going to let me hurt Angela?! Who's got the gun, and four of the strongest men in Genovia backing him up?"
Of course I was very afraid in that instant, not so much for my life as I was for Mia's, but I knew I couldn't show it, so I just gave him my best cold, hard stare and told him, "Listen, if you want to do anything to her, you and your buddies and your guns are going to have to go through me first."
"Alright then; I will!" he yelled, and before I had a chance to react, he gave me a hard punch and knocked me out cold.
When I came to about half an hour later, I found that I was tied up in a chair in the big office in the back where we ran the hotline from, along with Mia, Sarah, Ben, Terri, Jennifer, and Danielle. It was the largest of the offices on the first floor, and it had several tables, chairs, and many telephones, only now all the chairs had been rearranged in a circle and we were all facing each other. I immediately noticed that Mia's face had several bruises, which infuriated me, although I don't know who I was angrier at: the piece of garbage that would dare to strike my Queen, or myself for failing to protect her. I also noticed the bruises on several of the women, including Sarah and Terri, as well as the fact that Ben was bruised worst of all and seemed to be barely conscious.
"What happened?" I asked them.
"The second after Knight knocked you unconscious, Ben rushed over and started hitting him, and then Knight and his gang started beating him, and we started fighting too to try to protect Ben," Mia explained.
"While Angie and the others were in the fight, trying to help Ben out, I tried to call for help on my cell phone," said Sarah. "But one of them saw me and grabbed it out of my hand, and then after they beat Ben to the point where he couldn't fight anymore, Knight fired another shot into the air and said that if we didn't stop trying to fight them, they would start killing people, so the fighting stopped."
"Then Knight told his thugs to take our cell phones and our purses and wallets and all our cash, and they did," Terri said. "And after that, Knight sent his thugs upstairs to look for his wife and kids. When they couldn't find them, Knight had them bring everybody downstairs at gunpoint. All the women and children staying here are being held in the living area at gunpoint. While Knight's thugs were rounding everybody up, Knight made us come in here and move the chairs around, and he tied all of us up."
"Gracie Knight and her kids left the shelter weeks ago," I said. "They're long gone."
"Yes, but we have remained in contact with her," Mia pointed out to me in a whisper. "Some of us know her new phone number and address."
"And according to Knight, if we don't give out that information, and soon, he's going to start killing people, starting with the children," Sarah said, and then tears started coming to her eyes. "I think deep down in my gut, I always knew this day would come, when that wretched network of monsters would finally find its way here."
As I looked into Mia's eyes in that moment, sitting across from her in the circle, I could see her fighting off tears and I knew she was blaming herself for this inside. Ever since she started working at the shelter and first learned the truth about Genovia's dirty little secret, she'd started extensive background checks of cops, doctors, lawyers, and pretty much anybody in Genovia with a powerful position in an attempt to weed the abusers out of the system as much as possible. As Queen of Genovia, Mia had actively promoted volunteerism as much as possible, especially at shelters like Sarah's, and she'd helped raise a great deal of money for these kinds of shelters as well. Mia had done absolutely everything within her power to rid Genovia of its dirty little secret once and for all, and I knew that what was happening was in no way her fault, which was why it hurt me so much to see it in her face how she was blaming herself. This system of abuse had been around longer than Mia and I had even been alive, and because it had been around for so long, it was even more politically powerful than she was, even though she was the Queen.
"Monsters, huh?" said Knight as he stomped into the room and pulled up a chair in the circle and took a seat. "So you think we're monsters? I'll tell you who the real monsters are. The real monsters are man-hating, man-eating feminists like you and that pathetic excuse we have for a ruler. Monsters are people who convince weak, sniveling wenches like my wife that they're being abused just because their husbands are real men who run their own homes the way they ought to be run, and that they have the right to take our kids away from us for weeks, months at a time. No child should have to go four months without seeing their father. My kids want to see their daddy again, and it's monsters like you that are preventing that." Then he held up his gun and said, "Well nobody is going to prevent it much longer. My kids are getting their father back. Soon."
"Your kids," Mia said in disgust. "Your kids?! Give me a break! You are not concerned about your kids! Your wife, your son, and your three daughters came in here four months ago covered in bruises. You're obviously the bodybuilder. You tell me how those bruises got there." The instant she said that I was filled with fear of what he might do to her. And sure enough, in that next moment, he walked up to her and punched her across the face as hard as he could, and her glasses fell off her face and blood started dripping from her nose and mouth, while horrified gasps were heard all over the room.
"Stop it!" I yelled. "Leave her alone! If you want to hit somebody, tough guy, hit me, but leave the women out of this!"
"Oh, look what we have here: a traitor. A male feminist. Just what I need! Boy, you've been brainwashed by all the feminists in this world. The only way a woman will ever respect you is if you teach her to respect your fists first. Otherwise, women'll only take advantage of you and make all the decisions, and you'll be nothing but weak, worthless silly putty in their hands. Obviously, our Queen's daddy was never around to teach her a lesson like a real man would have, or we wouldn't have all this crap to contend with from the Protection Act. If it weren't for Mia Thermopolis, the women of this country would still know their place."
"Wrong! If it weren't for your choices and the choices of a lot of creeps like you in this country to commit acts of violence against your families, then they wouldn't feel the need or the desire to use the resources provided to them by the Protection Act to get away from all of you in the first place!" I yelled at him. He then responded by punching me in the face as well. I responded by telling Knight, "You beat up and abuse your wife and kids, and you attack an innocent young woman who is tied down to a chair with no hope of defending herself, and then you hit another person who's tied down and also unable to defend himself. Wow! What a man!"
In that next second, he held his pistol to my temple and told me, "One more word, wise guy, and you're dead. You got that?" Naturally, I said nothing and responded instead with a simple nod.
For the next couple of hours, Knight and the others continued to terrorize everyone in the shelter. They got in our faces, yelled, and threatened, and they threatened the women and children they were holding in the living area also. And if someone said something that angered them, like Mia and me, they too got a bloody nose or a bloody lip, or the threat of a gun held to his or her head. Finally though, it all came to a head when Knight and one of his accomplices, Fred Ashland, came back in the office where we were and started arguing.
"We're not getting anywhere, man," Ashland complained to Knight. "It's been two hours. We may have friends who are cops and police detectives in high places, but they can only hold the rest of law enforcement off for so long. Eventually they will discover what's going on and the shelter's location and show up here. Then what do we do?"
"They'll crack, Fred. I know they will. They just need a little more time, and maybe a little more incentive," Knight replied…just before holding the gun to Danielle's head. "Maybe I just have to kill one or two of you first, or maybe one of the women or one of the children."
Despite the fact that she was understandably terrified, Danielle looked him in the eye and told him, "Go ahead! Kill me! I'd rather die anyway than put Gracie and her children back in that hellish existence they used to have with you!"
"As you wish–" he said as he got ready to pull the trigger, but Mia stopped him.
"Wait!" she cried out. "Stop! I can help you."
Sarah and the others gave her alarmed looks, as did I, but for different reasons. The others may have feared that Mia was going to crack and give out Gracie's personal information, but I knew Mia better than that. I knew she was up to something, that she'd formed some kind of plan in her mind, and my gut instinct didn't like it one bit.
"You're going to tell me where my wife and kids are?"
"I can't. I don't have that information. But what I do have are connections."
"Connections?"
"Yes. I don't go around advertising this, but I'm actually from a very wealthy family, and my family and I have connections with some of the most powerful people in Genovia. Let's just face facts, here. Regardless of whether you start killing people or not, you are not going to have an easy road ahead of you. If you follow through with your threats and start killing people here, especially if you start killing children, no matter how many buddies you may have in high places in our legal system, there's still a chance you could go to trial, be found guilty of murder, and get life in prison or maybe even the death penalty. And even if you don't do any more harm to anybody here than you've already done to us, the longer our hotline stays down and the longer you hold us hostage, the greater the possibility is that the police eventually will catch on to the fact that something's not right here and start trying to find our shelter's location, once again, regardless of how many friends in law enforcement you may have. And you could still wind up doing time because of everything you've done. You are running that risk. Your best bet is for someone as well-connected as I am to use her connections to track down your family's whereabouts, and to use her connections to keep you and your friends out of trouble. With my connections, I do have the ability to do that for you."
"Is that a fact?" he asked her, although it was obvious he was skeptical.
"Yes, it is."
"Just how well-connected are you?" he questioned.
"I'm on a first-name basis with the Queen," Mia answered, and then he and Ashland instantly laughed out loud.
"Boy, Angela, you must really take me for a fool, or be one yourself as women always are."
"You know, speaking of the Queen, now there is a woman who's a fool!" Ashland said with a laugh, which made me want to knock his lights out, among other things. "Mia Thermopolis should watch it. She's really made a lot of men in this country angry. She's messed a lot of things up for a lot of people."
"What I wouldn't give to have just five minutes alone with that pathetic, stupid woman! I'd teach her a lesson she'd never forget!"
"What if I could get the Queen in here?" Mia asked Knight.
"Angela, no!" I whispered. By now I was frantic inside because I had some idea of what Mia was trying to do.
"What are you talking about?" asked Knight.
"Let's just say, hypothetically speaking, that I did have the ability to give you some time alone with the Queen like you wanted. If I could do that for you, would you let everybody go?"
"Yeah, I would. I'd give anything to get revenge on that stupid, worthless little twit for taking my family away from me. But let's face facts, here. Even if you are telling the truth about being wealthy and having a lot of connections which I doubt, no matter how well-connected you are, there is no way you or anybody could possibly get the Queen of Genovia in here, so stop wasting my time!" Knight yelled as he struck Mia across the face once again.
"Stop it!" I yelled. "If you want to hit somebody, you hit me! You leave Angie out of this!"
"Take my wig off!" Mia cried out. "You said you'd give anything for the chance to get revenge on the Queen of Genovia, even if that meant giving up your hostages, right? Well, you're about to get what you wanted. Take my wig off." Despite the blows to her head and face she'd suffered, her wig had still stayed on because Mia had done an extremely good job of securing it to her head since she had no intention of ever losing her disguise while she was outside the palace.
"Angela, no!" I said.
"Do it!" Knight ordered Ashland. "Take off the wig."
"This is dumb. What? Are you expecting to take it off and find that it's the Queen of Genovia underneath that wig?"
"I said do it!" Knight yelled.
"Wait! Stop!" I said.
"Why shouldn't we take off your girlfriend's wig? What are you so afraid of?" Knight asked me.
In that next moment, Ashland painfully ripped the blonde wig off Mia's head, and everyone in that room saw it that the volunteer known as "Angela" really was the Queen of Genovia.
"I don't believe it," Terri gasped.
"It is the Queen," Sarah whispered in shock.
A few seconds later, Ashland started swearing at Knight, and then he yelled at the remaining three accomplices to come into the room to see it for themselves that they had, in fact, played a part in committing crimes against the reigning Queen of Genovia.
"I am out of here, man!" Ashland hollered at Knight. "I'm out of here! I am done! I am not getting the death penalty for you!"
"Neither am I!" yelled Al Lockton, the black man in Knight's group. "Doing anything to hurt the Queen is national treason, and if you get charged with committing treason in this country, you're dead! I might have been willing to do a little time to help you get your kids back, man, but I will not die!"
The other two accomplices echoed their agreement, and then they let the women and children in the living area go, but just as Ashland was about to start untying all of us, Knight stopped him.
"So what if we get the death penalty for treason?" he asked him as the other accomplices walked back into the room. "Have you guys forgotten what she's done, not just to my family but to all of yours as well? If it weren't for this pathetic excuse for a woman, we'd still have our kids today! Why shouldn't we take this opportunity to get revenge? How many of you haven't yearned for a chance like this? Why not take it?!" Lockton shook his head and left, but the other three stayed.
"Yeah, you're right," said Ashland. "She hurt us more than anybody else in our entire lives. Now it's time for her to get some of it back. It's time Her Majesty, the Queen of Idiots, was put back in her place again, once and for all."
The other two agreed, and Knight said, "It's time for her to learn a lesson."
"Wait!" I shouted. "Take me! Take me instead of the Queen!"
"Stop it, Lionel!" Mia told me, but I couldn't stop trying to protect her. I loved her too much.
"You're right, you see. Uh…Mia and I haven't made our relationship public, but the truth of the matter is, I am her boyfriend," I lied. Mia and I were still just friends with each other at that point. "And because her father's gone, I'm the only man in her life, so I accept complete responsibility for what she's done to your families with the Protection Act. I know you believe it's up to men to control the women in their lives, and I should have done a better job of controlling my girlfriend. So let me accept the punishment."
"Lionel, I know you're only trying to protect me, but just stop it! I am a grown adult and I am the ruler of this country, and I am responsible for everything I do, not my father or my boyfriend or any other man in my life. When it comes to dishing out punishment and revenge, take all your hatred out on me and on me alone."
"Fellas, you heard the lady. If she wants to be an independent feminist type of gal, I say we let her. Untie her and carry her upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Let's show her what happens to women in this world who are men-hating, independent feminists!"
"No, wait! Stop! Leave her alone! Take me instead!" I yelled, but it made no difference as they obeyed Knights orders and untied her and carried her upstairs to one of the bedrooms.
For the next three and a half hours, my friends and I listened in horror as Mia screamed and cried out in agonizing pain time and time again.
When I walked into our suite tonight, I found Mia sitting at her desk once again, buried in paperwork and exhausted. She'd folded her arms on the desk and laid her head down. Even though she'd only been out of the hospital a couple of weeks and had several heart problems, she was still stubbornly determined to do as much work as she possibly could for her country, like the fine queen that she was. As I watched her sleeping, my mind was haunted with memories of her terrible screams that night, and when I looked back on all the hell her body had been through, it was no wonder she needed to sleep. Like Clarisse and Joe, I just wanted to make the burdens she had to bear as light as I possibly could. I wanted to take away every ounce of the pain she suffered, and I wanted her to know nothing but happiness and love. I was determined to do everything in my power as a husband to make that evil night nothing more but a very, very distant memory in Mia's mind that no longer had the ability to hurt her.
I wrapped my arms around Mia's shoulders and woke her with a kiss on her cheek, and she sat up and looked up at me with a smile.
"Hey, Stud," Mia told me sleepily, and I returned her smile.
"Now you quit trying to turn me on," I teased her and she laughed. "You know you're still recovering from a heart attack."
"Well I personally wish everyone would stop going on about it so much. I've been home from the hospital for two weeks now. I think it is high time for us all to just put it behind us and move on with our lives."
"Now, you can't blame the people who love you for wanting to look out for you. And besides, you are supposed to be taking it easy. And I don't think working so long that you fall asleep at your desk from exhaustion qualifies as taking it easy."
"I was just taking a quick catnap, Lionel. That's all. I wasn't 'falling asleep from exhaustion.' I was simply taking a little break."
"Mia, sweetheart, it's almost nine o'clock. What do you say we take a break that's at least eight hours long, hmm?"
After a yawn, Mia replied, "Okay. I think I'll go along with that."
We shared a long kiss in that moment, and then we went to bed. And I held her close to me all night long.