Chapter 2
Three days later
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She could hear the water dripping down a cold concrete floor. Each drip sending a piercing pain in her already aching skull. She could feel the cold floor on her body piercing through skin and chilling her to the bone. Each breath she took felt like ice sliding down her throat and settling in the pit on her stomach. She tried to sit up but her bones felt so weak it made her stomach nauseous. She didn’t know where she was or how she got in this situation. That last thing she remembers was driving out into the desert road to find the place she was suppose to drop the money. She got out of the car and looked around. Nothing was there. Then everything went hazy and the world dropped away. And now as the pounding in her head worsen she fell back into that fitful sleep she woke up from.
It was the drip, drip, drip that woke her up again. The sound of the dripping water hitting the concrete made the throbbing in her head worse. She was in the same position she was in the last time, apparently not moving at all during her time of unconsciousness, but there was new aches and pains all over her body. And the room didn’t look the same so she had to have been moved. But seeing as she didn’t get a good look at it in the first place, she really couldn’t tell.
A door opening at the far end of the room startled her, so she whipped her heard around to see who was coming in but that only made her head spin and her stomach attempt to get rid of the nothingness that was in it. At the sound of a door closing she laid her head back down and waited for whatever was going to happen to happen.
“I know your awake, Mrs. Wentworth. So really, there’s no need to pretend. But wait, you’ve been pretending for your whole life, haven’t you? So it’s more like second nature to you, isn’t it?”
The voice was muffled behind what sounded like a ski mask. But it sounded deep, so she assumed it was a man. The way he said the words suggested an underlined aggression or resentment, but she didn’t know who she was talking to, to put a face with the aggression and what did he mean she has been ‘pretending’ she whole life.
She felt his hands on her shoulders but couldn’t do anything to push them off. He pushed her to a sitting position and made her look into his eyes.
And felt her own widen.
He smiled.
“So I see you recognize me.” He said. “Or you think you do, anyway.” He commented off-handedly.
The confusion must have shown on her face, because his grin widen even more as he stood up from his crouched position, and reached up to take off the ski mask to reveal who he really was.
When the face of her husband stood in front of her, her heart stopped and her blood ran cold.
“Reed!” she crocked “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
He just smiled “like I said, you think you know me…” he pauses for a minute and just stares at me.
“You see, there are things you don’t know about your husband. Things I don’t think he would want you to know. But I’m going to tell you anyway. You see, your husband didn’t grow up in the best of circumstances. He wasn’t always rich. Or even well off for that matter. He didn’t have a bad childhood thought. I think I’d call it normal. But what he didn’t know at the time was that he had a twin brother that his parents had given away because they couldn’t afford to raise both of them. So they give one up. Me, Rain Wentworth, just because I didn’t grow up with the name doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve to use it if I want to. I didn’t find out that I was adopted until my adopted parents died. They had set up a system for me to find out everything after they were gone. They left a document with the lawyer, that had the name of my real parents and that I had a twin brother also. When I read his name, something seemed to click for me and I realized that I had been missing out on what should have been mine also. I realized that night that there was a reason I was the one they have given away. Because they didn’t think I would be good enough for them. So they just got rid of me.”
He paused for a second and just let me pounder what he was saying. Most of what he was saying was new. She didn’t know her husband had a brother or that he had been given up for adoption. He had told me he was an only child. But maybe he didn’t know that he has a twin brother. She thought about that for a while and dismissed that thought. He had to have known. His parents would have told him or he would have figured it out somehow after his parents had passed. And something else that didn’t make any sense. He said he realized that he was missing out on what should have been his too. What does he think he’s missing? The question started to bother her so she asked him.
And he got mad.
She didn’t see his hand move. On second he was standing there, the next she was foot away from him with her hand covering her cheek. As the tears gathered in her eyes she could see him coming for her again. She tried to back away faster but she was going too slow even to her mind. He caught up with her in seconds and grabbed her by the hair.
“Do you realize what my life has been like?” he screamed in her face. His gripped tighten on her hair and she felt tears spell over onto her cheeks. But she didn’t cry out or answer. She knew there was no point. He was past all though of not hurting her in some way.
“I’ve had to live in homeless shelters and parks and … other places that I won’t even dare repeating. It is wrong to think that my brother would miss a couple million with all he has now. You’d think he wouldn’t mind handing his brother something to help him out, to help out his twin.” Apparently he liked to talk with his hands, because with every word he said, his arm would drag her to a different part of the room. She was pretty sure that when he was finishes with this littler tyrant, she would have a good chunk of her hair missing.
“But you know what, I can see that he doesn’t care form me so I’m going to take what I want and he’s not even going to know it’s missing . He’s going to be so worried about you that he won’t have time to worry about his business. And I’m going walk up to his bank and demand they give me twenty million dollars. And he won’t even know what hit him.”
By the end of his little speech, he was talking more to himself then he was to me. But he was talking with his hands, and with each sentence coming out of his mouth caused more pain for her. He started to use his fist on her. And each blow was passed; he seemed to find more passion in his cause because the blows became harder and harder until it became a time when she didn’t feel the blows anymore. And the world turned black.
