Chapter 3

Bliss...

That was the name Tom and I chose five years ago, together, for the two children who were never born.

I've killed too many people in this life.

If I fall into the lowest pit of hell when I die, it would be no more than I deserve.

All I ever wanted was for those two children to have a whole, happy, easy life.

But they weren't only denied a safe birth.

Even the name I gave them myself was taken away.

Tears ran down to the corner of my mouth, so bitter my throat closed.

I asked Tom.

"So you'll finally admit that little bastard is yours?"

"Our children have been dead five years! And you couldn't wait to climb into bed with the woman who killed them, and give her a child of your own."

"When you hold that little bastard, when you rock him to sleep."

"Does it ever cross your mind that our children never even got one look at this world?"

"Shut up!" Tom's grip tightened.

"Maddie, the child is innocent."

"And what's between me and Freda Walker is nothing like what you think. I'm the one who wronged her first!"

"Tell me where they are, and I'll give you anything you ask."

I asked him.

"Does that include killing them?"

Tom's pupils shrank sharply. He cursed at me.

"You're insane!"

"How many times do I have to say it? None of this has anything to do with Freda or the children!"

I looked straight into his eyes and said it word by word.

"Tom, the one who's really gone insane is you."

"You promised me. You'd kill everyone who had a hand in our children's deaths."

"No matter how far they ran."

"If you can't do it, then I'll do it for you."

Maybe my words pushed Tom too far.

He ordered me locked away.

Every method he'd once used on traitors was turned on me, one by one.

They tortured me for a day and a night, and still I wouldn't give.

I only passed out, my body spent past its limit.

Tom had a basin of cold water thrown over me to bring me around.

He gripped my chin, his eyes cold.

The same way he used to look at old enemies.

"Madeline, I'll give you one last chance."

"Where are Freda and the children?"

My mind was slipping. Instinctively, I let it slip out.

"I don't know..."

Tom only closed his eyes.

The next second, countless snakes came pouring toward me, tongues flicking.

The slick weight of one slid over my ankle, and I woke all the way in an instant.

And it dragged me back ten years, to the first time I ever met Tom.

To the snake pit in the borderland wilderness, where I nearly died pulling him out.

I lived through that, but it left a scar in me that never healed.

For ten whole years after, there wasn't a snake in our home. Not even anything long and coiled shaped like one.

And now, for that woman, he was using the one thing I feared most to break me.

I screamed and shoved back to get away.

"Tom! You can't do this!"

"Get them away from me!"

But he stood outside the door, looking down at me from up there.

"You forced my hand."

As he spoke, the snake nearest me opened its bloody mouth wide.

Instinctively, I shut my eyes.

Then a woman's voice rose suddenly from outside the manor.

"Tom, what are you doing?"

Tom wept with joy and rushed to gather the woman and the infant in her arms against him.

His eyes full of the shock of getting back what he'd lost.

But I saw the other child, the one standing beside the woman.

Four, maybe five years old.

If my two children hadn't died, they'd have been exactly his age.

So Tom's betrayal ran far longer than I'd ever imagined.

I reached for the earring on my right side.

The moment the indicator light came on, I said, softly.

"Brother, I regret it. Come and take me home."

"And one more thing. I want Tom Barnes in hell."