I own no one but my own people
Amaro walked back towards the nurses station where Amanda sat in one of the overstuffed waiting room chairs with her head bowed and her phone up towards her ear, Elliot's words still ringing in his ears.
He struggled to find any one word that Elliot had said that wasn't true but he couldn't because as much as he hated to admit it, her old partner was right.
Amaro had actually been there when Lewis was in the middle of raping and torturing her. He had been there and he left because Olivia had gotten him angry over something he knew she didn't believe and if he had thought about it even for one second he would have seen it was all a lie and she was trying to send him a message that she was in danger.
Lewis was the one who had actually committed the crime but Amaro was the one who hadn't stopped him. He was just as guilty as the man who hurt her...
With that thought weighing him down he felt he might fall through the floor, he walked over to Amanda who was still looking down at the floor, tears silently streaming down her face as she muttered into the phone.
Amaro wanted to give his blonde colleague some privacy but then he heard it. That one word that took this whole case into a whole other ball field and that made his eyes widen and his jaw drop to the floor. "Pregnant."
He bent down in front of her and lifted her head up, his eyes still wide and his mouth open. "What's going on?" he worded silently, silently begging her to get off the phone she she could explain to Amaro what had happened and why that word was being associated with his partner.
Amanda held up a finger to tell him to wait before she turned her attention back to the phone. "Yes, Sir," she mumbled, her accent seeming to thicken the more emotional she became. "Barba is actually on his way to the hospital, he texted me about fifteen minutes ago to say he'd be here within the hour. Yes, Sir. Alright, Sir, I'll see ya when you get here."
With a hard swallow Amanda hung up the phone and put it back in her pocket, her blue eyes glistening with tears.
"Amanda, what the hell's going on?" Amaro demanded from his place on the floor. "Who's pregnant?"
Amanda sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded towards the the hallway that led to Olivia's room. "Liv was."
Amaro's face fell as the blonde's words rang in his ears. She had said 'was', not 'is.' Olivia 'WAS' pregnant... He swallowed hard before he spoke again. "Wha... what do you mean was?"
Amanda tried to speak and tell him what the doctor had told her but when she opened her mouth the only thing that emerged with a sob so she quickly shut her lips again and shook her head as a fresh wave of tears made their way down her face.
"Amanda," Amaro began as gentle as he could under the circumstances. "Tell me what you meant. Olivia WAS pregnant?"
Amanda nodded again only this time she forced the words through her emotion. "The- the doctors asked Fin if there was any chance she could be pregnant and he just said she was in a sexual relationship with her boyfriend so they did a blood test during the surgeries... She was about five weeks along but... but everything Lewis put her through caused her body too much stress and she... she miscarried..."
Amaro's whole world seemed to come crashing in around him as Amanda's words reached him. This couldn't be happening. Not now. Not when Olivia had so much more to be dealing with. She had finally gotten something she had been wanting her whole life only to be ripped away from her and he didn't know if the fact she probably didn't even know she was pregnant would make it better or worse when she got the news that the attack had caused a miscarriage.
This is fucking great," he muttered. "Her boyfriend is in a coma, she was raped and tortured for twenty hours and her baby's dead... Where the hell is the justice or fairness in the world?"
Amaro shook his head in revolution, sickened by the hardships that had fallen on his partner. "I'm gonna go see how Brian's doing. Have you gone to see her yet?"
Amanda shook her head as well. "No. I tried to see her but a nurse told me she specificity asked that I not see her." Tears flooded her eyes once more. "She thinks I'm gonna look down on her for what happened but I'm not. Hell I think she's stronger today then she was last week for surviving what the son of a bitch put her through."
Amaro's face fell as Amanda took a quivering breath and she wiped the fresh tears away. "Go see how Brian's doing," she instructed as she sat back down in her designated chair. "Maybe you can bring her some good news."
Without giving hi a chance to comfort her she reached in her pocket and pulled out her phone, immediately dealing with the phone tag she had been put in charge of.
Amaro placed a hand on the blondes shoulder, giving her a gentle smile for good measure, and headed down the hall to where Brian was.
He paused outside Brian's room and glanced inside, swallowing hard when he saw the scene.
Cassidy was lying in a bed with more tubes and wires hoked up to him then Olivia had, his whole top of the head covered in thick white medical gauze, his eyes firmly shut to the world around him.
Joanne was sitting by Cassidy's bedside, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief as she held his unresponsive hand, her short red hair disheveled and unkempt, not that he could blame her in any manner what so ever.
Amaro took a deep breath and walked in, giving a timid knock on the door as he did. Joanne turned from her son's bedside and gave Amaro a sad smile.
"Hello, Detective," she offered with a sniff and a wipe of her eyes. "How are you doing?"
"Fine," he lied through his teeth as he walked in, almost afraid to make a noise. "How are you?"
Joanne shrugged as she turned back to her unresponsive son. "This is the third time I got a call in the middle of the night to come see my son in the hospital." She blotted away more tears. "You think it'd get easier but it doesn't. And it's... it's never been this violent before."
Amaro swallowed hard as he slowly walked over to her and sat on the other side of Brian's bedside. "Did... did anyone tell you what happened to him?"
Joanne shook her head, not looking away from her son as she sniffed away more tears. "The blonde Detective said he was attacked but other then that nothing. That's all anyone would tell me. But I don't understand why someone would wanna hurt him like this."
Amaro swallowed hard as he nodded. He deserved to have his story told. "Mrs. Cassidy... your son... he was attacked but it wasn't random. Brian was at Olivia's house and there was a very violent and dangerous man who broke in."
Joanne snapped her head up to look at Amaro, her eyes, a mirror image of her sons, held a look of shock. "Oh my word! What happened?"
"I don't know exactly but I'd be willing to bet my life he went down defending Olivia."
Joanne's hand threw to her mouth as a fresh batch of tears spilled over her eyes. "Good havens. Is Olivia okay?"
Amaro hesitated for another long moment. More then anything in the world he wanted to tell her 'yes.' That Olivia was fine and she had bested the Beast who was in lock up and she was out side in the waiting room as they spoke.
But he couldn't lie to this woman. She seemed too kind and genuine to not tell the truth over what happened, no matter how much he wanted to.
Amaro took a deep breath before he spoke, his voice threatening to betray his tears he wanted so desperately to shed. "She was attacked by the same man who attacked your son. She was... she was raped and tortured. She's gonna be okay," he told her when he saw Joanne throw her hand up to her mouth while tears glistened in her eyes. "She's awake in this very hospital as we speak."
Joanne's bottom lip trembled unmercifully as she shook her head. "How... how could anyone be this... who would do this to them, they never hurt any body! Olivia or my Brian!"
"I don't know but I plan on getting to the bottom of it, I promise. This... this beast isn't getting away with this. I promise you, I will personally get this freak."
Amaro knew until Lewis was in custody, the woman sitting before him could care less about empty words. Joanne turned back towards Brian, her hand never stopped stroking his. "You were never his biggest fan," she admitted with a tear filled half smile. "After he started dating Olivia he told me that he still was weary of you but there was only three people in this world he'd trust to look after her. Himself, her old partner, and you."
Amaro shifted culpably in his spot and had to look at the readings on a monitor to keep Joanne from seeing the guilty look in his eyes. Her lips twitched as she looked back up to Amaro. "He really does love her."
Amaro swallowed hard as he nodded, still unable to face her. There was a soft knock on the door and both Amaro and Joanne turned towards the door where a nurse smiled sweetly at Joanne. " I need to change his bandages," she explained as see walked in with a cart of medical supplies.
"How long will this take?" asked Joanne as the doctor rolled the cart up to Brian's bed.
"About a half hour or so. You can stay but I gotta warn you it's not gonna be pretty..."
The older woman sighed and nodded as she shook her head and stood up from her chair. "I think I'm going to stop in and see Olivia," she told Amaro. "I can't even begin to imagine having all that happen to you and not have a single family member in with you."
Amaro nodded and offered Joanne another grateful smile before the older woman left the room and shut the door behind her. He stood by and looked down at Brian as the nurse began to slowly unravel the dressing.
When the last blood soaked layer of gauze was taken away, it took all Amaro had to keep his lunch down.
Lewis had gotten him bad. There were several lacerations that was deeply embedded in his skull and nearly all of his hair had been shaved away. How the hell he survived the beating would forever be a question to the Cuban detective.
After another few minutes or so of silence Amaro finally spoke. "So... So honestly," he asked the nurse as she examined the wounds. "What are the chances of him coming out of this alive?"
The nurse shook her head. "I'm not sure but judging by these lacerations, if he does wake up, he's probably gonna be a changed man."
"What do you mean changed?"
"He could have mental defects, memory problems, behavior problems, personality changes... One patient woke up from a car crash with extensive head damage, within ten minutes he was touching the nurses very inappropriately. He was a minister who had been happily married for twenty years without so much as looking the wrong way at another woman before.
Each brain is as individual as the person it's inside so any damage to it is gonna be individual as well, there's no clear cut way to say exactly what's going to be the end results from this."
Amaro shook his head in disgust. "That would be perfect," he grumbled. "A rape victim with a sexual deviant for a boyfriend. If he knew he was hurting Olivia like that, he would probably wanna go back into the coma."
All at once his face fell as a realization hit him like a slab of concrete. He hadn't told Joanne not to tell Olivia that Brian was in a coma...
Without another word to the nurse Amaro raced from the room and down the hallway. Ignoring Amanda who stood up like a flash the moment she aw Amaro sprinting by, he ran to Olivia's room and threw open the door to her room.
"Joanne, I need to talk to you!" he told her, praying with all his might that she hadn't brought up the coma to the fragile woman in the hospital bed yet.
But when Olivia snapped her head towards him, he could tell, just from the betrayed look in her eyes that was flooded with tears, that she already knew...
XxXxX
"He didn't do this! She's lying!"
"Detective Benson was raped and tortured for twenty hours right after your client gets out of prison!" Fin shouted. "You don't think that's a little bit of a fucking coincidence?!"
"She's obsessed with him!" Vanessa Mayer yelled. "She probably had rough sex to stage him for rape!"
"Rough sex? Rough sex, are you kidding me?" Cragen barked. "She was burned and bleeding and went into fucking shock after what Lewis did to her! None of that was fucking consensual!"
Vanessa wiped tears away angrily. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about! He's innocent!"
"He's the Devil," Fin spat. "And you either tell us where he is now or I swear to fucking God I will arrest you right here and now and I will throw you into a cell and throw the key down a fucking well!"
"I already told you I don't know!" Vanessa screamed. "Get the hell out of my house!"
"Where is he?" Cragen demanded, ignoring her request to leave. "Tell us where he is, and tell us now."
"Even if I did know, I wouldn't tell you! Now get the hell out or I swear to fucking God I will sue you, your precinct, and the whole NYPD to the point they can't even afford the paper to write parking tickets on! Leave NOW!"
Fin shook his head in disgust before he got up from the table and stormed out of the room and soon after the sound of him slamming the door shut almost shook the whole house.
Cragen stood up and looked down at her, his voice shaking with his rage. "You're defending a rapist and a murderer who completely broke a genuinely good woman's spirit last night. Right now I don't know who the bigger beast is; you or him..."
Vanessa narrowed her eyes at the older cop. "Leave," she snarled, clutching the edge of the her table so tight it left an indent on her palms.
Cragen stared her down for several moments before he stood up and walked out of her house. The moment she heard her door slam shut for a second time, she stood up from the table and stormed up the stairs to her bedroom, tears burning her eyes that she didn't bother to wipe away.
When she reached her bedroom she threw open the door, jumping back when she saw Lewis standing at the entry way. "What'd you tell them?" he asked as he looked down at her.
"That I didn't know where you were," she answered as she wiped away her tears.
Lewis cocked his head to the side as he looked over her. "You don't think I did that to Benson right? You know she's just setting me up?"
"No, I believe you, I do. It's just... it's getting really hard to believe that two women you had issues with both ended up in that state just to frame you."
Lewis shook his head and scoffed in disbelief. "I can't believe you. You really think I hurt her, don't you?"
"No! No, Billy, I don't, I-!"
"You really think I did all those horrible things to that Detective don't you?" he yelled. "You think I burned her and made her bleed and branded her, don't you?!"
Vanessa opened her mouth to argue when a realization hit her. She swallowed hard as she looked up at her boyfriend, feeling a fear she hadn't felt in her life. "They... they didn't mention her getting branded..."
Lewis' face fell as they looked at one another for what felt like a lifetime for the red headed lawyer but in reality was only a few seconds.
"Vanessa..." Lewis began slowly but she didn't give him a chance. As soon as he finished speaking her name, Vanessa sprinted away from him, only to have Lewis run after her, easily catching up with her.
He wrapped one arm around her and slammed one hand over her mouth while she screamed as loud as she could, kicking and struggling against his ironclad hold.
Lewis lifted her clear off the ground as easily as if she was a pillow and began to hurry back to her bedroom, her muffled terrified screams turning him on but she wasn't even close to his type to have fun with. She was far too young.
"Don't worry," he hissed in her ear as she dodged a swipe of her sharp nails. "I promise to kill you quickly. You ain't the type to have that much fun with."
With those words ringing in her ears, he pulled her into her bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
5 Days Earlier
"Olivia, wait! Liv! Fuck!"
Brian immediately tried to redial his girlfriend but got nothing but a few rings and then voice mail. He hung up and called back as fast as he could manage, this time the call going right to voice mail
With a frustrated yell Brian threw his phone down on the couch he was sitting on and put his face in his hands. "I can't believe this shit!" he groaned.
"Is everything okay?" the woman who had caused the commotion asked as she lowered the sketches she had drawn at Cassidy's request, moving a mousy piece of lackluster blonde hair behind her ear.
"No, Chloe, it's not!" Brian snapped as he looked up to glare at the fashion student who lived directly across the hall from him who he had once saved from a break in. "Why did you decide to talk right there?"
Chloe glared at him, putting a hand on her size eighteen hip. "I'm doing you a favor and you're bitching at me for asking questions? Really?"
"Yeah really!" he barked, "because now she thinks I'm cheating on her or something and now I get to deal with that because you couldn't wait the three minutes to ask me a question!"
Chloe crossed her arms in front of her well endowed chest. "I'm tired, Brian, I had class all day! You should be on bended knee thanking me for not only giving you a HUGE discount on this, but because I stay up late so I can talk to you about it because I know you work nights.
I'm trying to be nice because I know what it's like to be broke as hell and have your anniversary coming up and I think it's adorable you're buying her a custom jacket and purse, but I expect a little bit of courtesy from you for it!"
Brian's face fell as he sighed, rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger. "I'm sorry and you're right. I do appreciate you doing all this for me, I really do, Chloe. I just got over a huge fight with her and I'm already on thin ice. This might have just cracked it though."
Chloe's face fell as Brian shook her head. "She's the best thing that ever happened to me and I'm gonna lose her over getting her a custom made anniversary gift," he muttered with a sad sort of laugh.
"Why don't you just tell her you were working on her gift?"
"Because I want this to be a total surprise."
"Well if you let her think you're cheating, not that I'm not flattered I mean you're the whole package I just prefer someone who doesn't have one, then neither of you will be happy and the surprise will be ruined anyway."
Brian sighed and nodded. "Got it. And keep working on it but you may end up with a new purse."
Chloe frowned but deciding it wasn't her place to really get involved, simply nodded and puled out the last sketch she had showed him; a red leather purse with black leather borders with 'Olivia' written in cursive with gold colored thread as the stitching. "So are we going with this one? Like I said before I think it looks the sexiest."
"Sure," Brian told her not really looking at the sketch but instead was looking at his watch. "Just make the 'Olivia' a lot smaller because when it looks all big like that it looks a little tacky. I'm running late but I'll talk to you tomorrow alright?"
"Sure," said Chloe with a smile as she gathered the other sketches. "And I'm sorry for ruining this for you."
"Nah, you're fine. I should be the one saying sorry to you for snapping. You didn't know it was Olivia on the phone."
Chloe didn't argue with him and instead both stood up, bid one another goodbye, and without another word Chloe left the apartment.
When the younger woman had left Brian immediately tried calling Olivia again only to get the same response as last time. He tried calling her every few moments as he got ready for his shift, each time he heard her voice mail he was getting more and more frustrated. Finally he just started sending a barrage of texts, each one filled with an apology and begging her to call him.
Just as he was about to leave his apartment for the evening, a tiny ping sounded from his pocket. He fumbled to pull his phone out of his pocket and he looked at it as if he was seeing food for the first time after years of starvation.
But as he read the text, he felt his world crash down around him, unable to comprehend how a few elementary words could destroy his whole universe;
"From: Liv
11:32 PM
Don't contact me again."
Tears welled in his eyes and he had to take several deep breaths to keep them from falling. This week was turning out to be the very worst of his life. His anniversary was coming up with her in five days and they had already gotten into two huge fights with Olivia, the first because he dared to say he loved her and now because he was working on getting her an amazing gift for their anniversary.
He tried calling her again but he got nothing once more. Afterwards he tried to texting her again but got the same cold silence as before.
Realizing he on;y had fifteen minutes until his shift started and he was already going to be late, he texted her one final time, saying nothing more then a simple "I'm sorry" that he prayed she would take to heart before he left his apartment, shutting the door behind him.