A/N: #5 - I like round numbers, don't you?
TRIGGER WARNING: Aggravated Stalking, Violence, Armed Assault
APoV
I wasn't expecting the intruder to be a woman. Sexist, yes, but at that moment, holding a table leg, surrounded by a sea of destruction, I was at a total loss. Ray told me that I had always been a proud little thing, but I had never quite understood what he meant until I realized that this bitch had destroyed everything I had left of value. Nothing had escaped her swath of violence. Even the deflated Charlie Tango had felt her wrath, ripped from my bedpost. All was in disarray, but I didn't understand why. And the silent spectre at my door wasn't talking.
I gazed at the remains of what had once been my sanctuary filled with anger and sorrow. I felt like Humpty Dumpty… All the King's horses and all the King's men… broken… irreparable… violated. I'm not a collector for collection's sake. Maybe because I liked to travel light and when I was with Carla, we moved often during her marriage with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Called-An-Asshole-To-His-Face. So I got used to keeping only what could be easily transported if one needed to get the heck out of Dodge.
My unexpected guest was dangerously beautiful, her sharp edges tempered by long lashes over catlike eyes the color of Darjeeling. Petite, dark hair… I was sensing a theme and didn't like the treacherous direction of my thoughts. My relationship with Christian was over, and yet I knew that she wasn't here to distribute religious tracts.
"Why," I cried out, all of my pain and frustration packed into one plaintive word. "Who are you and why are you in my apartment?"
Hoping against hope that I was wrong, I gathered my courage, attempting to stare this stranger down. Instead, I found her gazing back, the emptiness of her gaze, a dark, unforgiving void. Her train had left the station.
"What do you have that I don't?" Ghost-Girl asked in a near whisper. "You look like us, but Master lets you sleep in his bed. And he allowed you to be seen with him in public."
And then I realized this person must be one of Christian's former associates. I suppose I'd guessed this was directed at me, but I'd stupidly clung to the belief that Christian wouldn't have put me in this kind of position. She might've even been one of the people Christian volunteered as a mentor when I told him I wanted to talk to Kate about sex. Would wonders never cease?
"I don't know if you know this, but Christian and I are no longer together. So you've come here for nothing. I think it's time you left."
"No, Anastasia, I think I'll stay. I have questions and you have answers, so I'll be staying until I'm satisfied. It's about time you got back home. I've been waiting for you all day."
Just how long has this crazy bitch been in my apartment? "How did you get in?" I asked, stalling for time as I attempted to formulate a plan to end this confrontation safely. This bitch was clearly not playing with a full deck, because instead of accosting Christian, she chose to target me, a person who didn't know her ass from Eve.
"You're wearing Kate's dress," I stated flatly. Is this the type of woman that turns Christian on, and would I have ended up this fucking crazy years after he dumped me?
"Oh, I know. I liberated it from her closet," she said slyly, looking me up and down, "She has great taste, and my clothes were a little worse for wear."
On second thought, perhaps this creeper is crazy like a fox. The same woman calmly shooting the shit in stolen clothes virtually destroyed everything in my home, single-handedly, like some vengeful Tasmanian Devil, apparently because of a guy I no longer fuck. If they arrest her, she probably wouldn't spend a day in jail. This type of person doesn't end up in prison. No, they forward people like her to expensive charlatans, or worse, underpaid court-ordered psychiatrists, for evaluation. Then they administer meds, whereupon they're released to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting populace. Somehow, I doubt this bitch can afford to replace everything she destroyed.
I guess it'll be left to Christian to pony up the funds to repair and replace what his broken sexbot damaged. Looking around, I might just have enough scraps of fractured furniture to host a bonfire. Damn, if he doesn't owe Kate and I big for this. I reach for my cell, recalling too late that I left it on Christian's breakfast bar when I left the apartment. And I hadn't bothered to turn my old phone back on. For days I've been walking around unable to phone someone in case of emergency. Note to self: Never let that happen again.
"Look. This is ridiculous. I don't know you. You could leave right now and we could forget all about this. Honestly, I don't know why you've come to me instead of any of his other subs. I'm not with him anymore. He sent me flowers and I left them in the lobby of my job. We're not compatible. We don't want the same things. You have nothing to worry about."
Though I attempted to sound reassuring, I didn't have a clue what made her tick. I couldn't find my in.
"Oh. I'd like to believe that. And I would, except for the fact that he sent you a few things here, too. As far as you not being compatible, I don't think he's gotten the memo."
I hadn't seen evidence of any deliveries, but I guess I'd have to take the loony tunes word for it. Maybe she sent them away.
She looked me up and down, scathingly, assessing me. "No, you may not look like much, but Sir obviously thinks you're more," she spat at me contemptuously. "What do you have that I don't? What makes you so fucking special that Master is sending you flowers, clothes and fruit baskets? And let's not forget about the singing telegram!"
"What?!" I questioned in dismay, realizing I'd somehow seriously miscalculated my position. No longer able to pretend that this interview would come to a satisfactory conclusion, I made to move as far away from this crazy bitch as possible. But as my room was the smallest and she was standing in the doorway, movement was limited. There was nothing to use as cover and though we were of a size, I knew I couldn't overcome the force of crazy.
At this point she was gesticulating wildly and muttering to herself. She even started pacing and grabbing her hair. Had she been with Christian long enough for his mannerisms to rub off on her? This 'confrontation' was going nowhere, as she certainly appeared to have all the fucking answers she was pressing me for so insistently.
I couldn't believe it. Our entire relationship, if one could call it that was a fucking lie. He might have thought his relationship with this batshit crazy bitch was over, but just like Christian, she doesn't seem to have received the damn memo. It may take two to tango, but this insane witch is A-OK with dancing with herself.
She's torn up my apartment wall-to-wall, and now she wants to have a chat. Perhaps I could talk her into a seat and a cuppa… if only I could find somewhere to sit that's not broken or shredded. What the hell? Was this her idea of marking her territory? If so, her inner-GPS is broken too, because Escala is in the opposite direction.
Then why hasn't she gone over his house and planted her damn flag instead of vandalizing my property? Oh, I see. Perhaps she tried that already… and had nothing to show for it, and wouldn't you know…Anastasia Rose Steele, you are the weakest link!
Does she think I have any sway with Master Grey? Oh, how deluded of her if she thought that. And I still have the sore ass to prove it. Hell, he's probably already contacted Mrs Robinson for a replacement. I'm through being the whipping post for these emotionally and socially maladjusted idiots.
What do I have that she doesn't? Let me think… Free will, perhaps? Self-respect? Common decency? Who knew that would be a turn on? But when it came right down to it, Grey was right. The incompatibility couldn't be overcome. I wanted love and he wanted to hurt me. Our desires were diametrically opposed. Yes, I had fallen in love with him, but I'd also stepped in shit before and gotten over it.
We were never going to work and I resented like hell that this chick has ensconced her skinny ass in my house and was reminding me of what had already become my worst life experience excluding Carla's third husband. Why do people think that I have all the answers to their fucking problems? And she was wearing Kate's dress. Who does that? I can even smell my shower gel. Did she take a break to freshen up? She was still filthy, but telling her she missed a few spots might be a bad idea. What kind of presumptuous asshole is she? This is surreal.
In the couple moments it took me to register all of this and come to the realization that I was going to have to get myself somewhere safe, or at least safer than here, Ghost-Girl gave me yet another reason for my mounting terror. She was armed. While one hand frenetically slapped her hip, the other swayed gently with the weight of the gun.
That was the moment I knew it would be her or me, because the cavalry wasn't coming. I was terrified. I was angry. And she had left me with absolutely nothing to lose.
I felt brittle and numb because I felt as if I could view this entire scene from outside my body. And even if I lost the fight, I would leave her body covered with proof of her sins. If she killed me, it would be a Pyrrhic victory, even if I had to seek my revenge from my fucking grave.
Where was my stalker when I actually needed him? Probably balls deep in a new sub that his good friend Mrs Robinson has sent him, someone who could meet his needs. It was just my damn luck to fall in love for the very first time with such an emotionally unavailable person.
"Annie, where's your focus? Get your head in the game. Now, your mom may not want me to educate you in gun safety, but I've never seen ignorance save anyone," Dad chided.
"'K, Dad. Sorry."
"So, what do you think is the most dangerous end of the gun?" he asked, motioning to the gun in its case. I pointed my index finger at the barrel of the gun.
"Well, that end is dangerous, but its not the most dangerous," he lectured.
"But isn't that the end the bullet comes out?" I asked curiously, a little perturbed, but mostly excited to learn this forbidden thing. Carla was on a trip and would be back in a few days.
"You'd think so, wouldn't ya? But the most dangerous part of a gun is the person holding it. Most guns can't do anything by themselves. The majority of guns still need an operator, a person, to fire them," he said.
"So what can I do if a person points a gun at me," I asked, frightened at the prospect of someone actually leveling a weapon at me.
"Well, that depends on the the person holding the gun. You'd be surprised how many people kill themselves because they don't know how to use a gun properly. Guns are like babies in a way. You gotta keep 'em clean, keep 'em dry and keep 'em entertained."
Laughing at Ray's simplistic views on gun safety. I imagined a gun wearing a diaper. "So how do you keep a gun entertained?" I joked.
"Practice. Take your weapon to the firing range. Learn how to keep it clean. And keep it dry. There are some mechanisms inside that can rust. Then you shoot the gun, it backfires and you're left with one hand. Not a good look," he advised dryly.
"Agreed. So about the person holding a gun on me…?"
"First, there's a huge difference between having a gun and knowing how to use one. That's why so many kids die while 'playing' with their parents' guns. Second, there's always gonna be some loon that buys a gun to feel 'safe' yet never bothers to familiarize himself with it. A gun license is no guarantee of proficiency. It just means you can legally purchase or use one. Third, if you're gonna run away, don't go in a straight line. Make the idiot work for it."
"Why'd you call that person an idiot?"
"That's easy. Any person that pulls a gun on my only child is a damn fool."
"You don't have to do this."
Calmly assessing my situation yielded dismal results. The pepper spray Ray insisted I carry with me worked best in close quarters, but I was hardly tempted to approach the crazy gun-wielding heifer. Hand-to-hand combat in such a tight space wasn't a great idea either. I'd been attempting negotiation, but didn't feel capable of reasoning with this insane person and arguing with her was out of the question.
"Yes, I do! The only way I can have Master is if I get you out of the way," she explains, as if that was supposed to make sense.
"OK. Let's say you get me out of the way. That won't guarantee that Christian will return to you," I said, attempting to reason with her. "According to Christian, when an arrangement is over, it's over."
"But Master said that to me, yet we still exchange e-mails," she replied, surprising the hell out of me. But then again, this wouldn't exactly be the first instance of Christian's rampant double standards.
"I don't think you understand the difference. Look, I don't even know your name…" I began.
"Leila," she supplied.
"So, he's e-mailing you. That's not the same as a BDSM contract. I wouldn't know. We never had one, so I don't know how that would work. But I don't recall him ever saying that he's ever used the same sub after a contract ends."
"Maybe not, but I was his very best, so he might make an exception since he's willing to squire you all over town."
"It's not what you think. It was all a part of our negotiations. We never had a contract."
"That's why I couldn't find one in your file in Master's apartment!" she exclaimed. Ding! Ding! Ding! She's acting like she's won a prize. She's been inside Christian's apartment? He has a fucking file on me! WTF!
"I could almost understand why you trashed the apartment, but why did you have to fuck up my roommate's bedroom, too?" I asked, attempting to buy some more time.
"You mean Kate? Oh, she had it coming, too," she replied.
"Kate slept with Christian, too?" I asked shocked, hurt. Devastated. Disgusted.
"No, silly. Master wouldn't touch someone like Kate Kavanagh with a barge pole. I trashed her room because she's a slutty bitch and a whore of the first order. If you really knew her you wouldn't want to have anything to do with her. She and her family are poison," she reflected. "Did you know she practically demanded her father purchase her grades? I'm not surprised she made valley-dick-torian. I'm sure she probably sucked enough cock to earn her place fair and square. No, I learned all about her spoiled, entitled ass when I was servicing Master K," she pronounced, flooring me. Were there more people I knew involved in BDSM?
"I'm pissed at her because she constantly interrupted our sessions with her incessant whining and demands, and when she didn't get her way, she got in her mother's ear and she made him dump me," she complained.
"Celeste is Eamon's wife. He shouldn't have been having sex with you in the first place," I said.
So much for Christian's version of the truth. This bitch was nuttier than a fruitcake and had fatal attraction written all over her. One moment she's all about Christian, then another she's fixating on Mr Kavanagh who hopefully came before. I get an image of sleeping with everyone your sexual partners ever slept with and the people that they slept with and got an image of Celeste. Ew.
"That's easy for you to say, new girl. Everything just fell into your lap. And now I find out that you left Master?"
"You left him yourself! You're a hypocrite!"
"But he was supposed to chase me! He was supposed to send me flowers! And fruit. And pajamas. Not you! Miss My-Bed's-Too-Big-Without-You!" she shouted.
"What? You mean like, the song?" I asked, because that's not what I received.
"I'd show you the cards but I ripped them up. Sorry. I think Master wants you back, but we can't have that, not can we?" she asked silkily, rubbing the gun against her thigh like she was jacking it off. Apparently, she was one of those idiots that didn't give a shit about gun safety. Only she wasn't just aiming it towards the ground, but towards my downstairs neighbors.
"Well, despite Christian sending me things, we're not meant to be. We don't want the same things as I have already told you. I don't want what the other subs wanted. I don't want to be spanked or whipped. Or even beaten when I've crossed some arbitrary line that seems to move around like a flea, hopping at his whim."
"It doesn't matter what you want, bitch! What matters is that Master seems to want you any way he can get you and as long as he wants you, you're in my fucking way!" she screams at me, raising the gun in my direction.
Run! But there's no room to zig or zag, so I do the next best thing: I make myself small so she has to aim for accuracy. She's waving the gun wildly, trying to get a good bead on me.
Bang! The gun goes off, leaving a hole where my head was a second ago. As she takes aim again, I rush her with all I have. I'm not just going to stand here like fucking target practice until she gets in a lucky shot.
Her body smacks into the door, but she uses her other arm to grab me, pulling me down with her. Somehow, she was able to keep hold of the gun, which I attempt to knock away from her hand, unsuccessfully. I push up on my hands and knees only for her to knee my head into the wall. Disoriented, but determined, I struggle to keep moving because if she catches me still, she's going to kill me.
I take my fist and strike upwards, shocking her because she's probably never been punched in the puss before. I take this opportunity to stand up, while attempting to unbalance her. While I know how to fight, I've never experienced a knockdown drag-out struggle like this, especially with an armed person, tilting the scales in her favor.
She shows amazing strength as she again pushes me against the wall. Fuck, that hurt. We're both kicking out, shoving one another, each seeking the advantage. She punches me in the shoulder as I try to push her away. But as she lifts her arms, I realize this is my chance. I take both hands to try to wrest the gun away from her. I hear banging on the door to my apartment and loud shouts of my name, asking if I'm ok.
As I hear the sound of someone kicking in my door, Leila lifts the hand holding the gun, and suddenly another shot rang out and I fell heavily against the wall.