Melina managed to get out of sex that night by turning in a little early, complaining that she didn’t feel well. She pretended to be asleep when she heard Lucia enter the bedroom. She felt her skin crawl when Lucia got into the bed next to her and brushed up against her.
Melina wished she could fall asleep, knowing that the faster she did, the faster tomorrow would come. But all she could do was lay there for hours, wondering about what other dark secret the killer she lay next to might have confessed to in the journal that couldn’t have been any more than ten feet away from her.
Unable to sleep, she quietly crept downstairs and into the kitchen. She browsed through the contents of the refrigerator, even though she didn’t have much of an appetite. She reached for a plate of strawberries and turned around just as the refrigerator door was closing. A split second before the door closed, the light spilling from it illuminated Lucia, who had come up behind her. She looked incredibly creepy and intimidating, this woman who once turned her on. Melina let out a startled cry and dropped the plate she was holding. “Lucia, goddamn you!”
“I’m sorry, babe,” she said, flicking the light switch on. “What’s wrong? Why are you so uptight?”
“Why’d you have to scare the shit out of me?” Melina shouted.
Lucia simply stared at her.
“Well, are you going to help me pick this mess up, or what?”
“Of course. I just don’t understand what’s gotten into you.”
“What’s gotten into me is that I feel like shit, I can’t sleep, and now you sneak up behind me and scare the living daylights out of me. That’s what’s gotten into me. Any more questions?”
Lucia bent down to help Melina pick up the fallen food. “No, not really. But I guess I was just wondering how you could be too tired for sex, but not tired enough for food.”
“I think eating takes a lot less energy than sex does, Lucia, and I didn’t say I was tired. I said I felt shitty.”
“Something else going on that I don’t know about?”
“All I can say is that I’m still not at all thrilled with the idea of having some madman’s child. Is that enough for you?”
“I guess it will have to do for now. Why don’t you go on back up and get back into bed and I’ll bring you something.”
“Don’t bother. Having the shit scared out of me has a way of snuffing what little appetite I might have had,” Melina spat, leaving Lucia to wonder if it was just wacky hormones she was dealing with or if in fact something else really was going on.
Lucia cleaned up the remainder of the mess and then turned the light out in the kitchen. Having lived in her house for as long as she had, she didn’t need any lights to see her way through the dining room and to the stairs. She could walk around the entire house blindfolded.
She was about halfway up the stairs when she realized that Melina’s sudden change seemed to start with the discovery of the wall safe.
Melina awoke the next morning. Right away an odd feeling came over her. Something wasn’t quite right. She glanced at the other side of the bed to find it empty.
She didn’t remember hearing the alarm clock go off.
She looked at the clock next and was shocked to find it was already after 9:00. She was about to assume Lucia was at the store when she suddenly heard movement in the hallway before the killer entered the bedroom.
What in the world was going on?
She approached the side of the bed in a cautious and almost suspicious-like manner. “Feeling better, Princess Melina?”
Princes Melina.
Gothic Beauty.
No!
“I – I’m ok,” she said, trying not to stammer. “Why – what are you doing home?”
“I was worried about you.”
“Worried?”
Lucia nodded.
“But I’m ok. You know it’s just part of being pregnant. You should still go about your life as usual.”
“But you are my life,” Lucia said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
And that’s the problem, Melina thought bitterly. I’m so much your life that you had to go and kill my Ari. Because you just had to make me your life. One hundred percent of it.
“Yes, I know, Lucia, but I can’t expect you to hold my hand all the time either. Besides, I like a little space every now and then. So please, if you want to make me feel better, go back to the store, ok?”
“Well, I kind of need a day off myself every now and then, babe, and tomorrow we head up north. But I promise I’ll stay out of your way. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Lucia walked over to the closet and opened the door. She reached in for the pull-chain, then stepped inside the walk-in closet. Melina could hear her fumbling with something, but couldn’t see what she was looking for. She didn’t appear to have anything in her hand when she emerged from it a few minutes later. She really hoped she hadn’t changed the safe’s combination.
“You done organizing the closet?”
Funny she should ask.
“No, not quite. I might finish up today unless I get too damn dizzy and end up having to lay around all day.”
“Well, you’ve got a doctor’s appointment coming up. We’ll let her know how you’ve been feeling and see what she recommends,” Lucia said before leaving the room.
I’m sure she’d recommend I spend less time with killers, Melina thought angrily to herself, amazed at how much she’d come to hate the woman she once admired and looked up to so much.
Melina spent the next several hours pretending she didn’t feel well, but in reality, she felt fine in the physical sense. Emotionally she was swimming in a sea of anger, hatred and fear. It took every ounce of strength she could muster to keep from exploding. She wanted to confront the woman and strangle the life right out of her. But she knew that would almost certainly only get her killed. And so she kept it together for Ari. Regardless of the fact that Lucia had been Ari’s mother, she was going to help bring the psycho to justice for Ari’s sake no matter what it took. And she would be of no use dead.
She rose from the bed and showered and ate a light breakfast. As she was eating, she realized that if Lucia had any suspicions about the safe it may actually ease those suspicions if she worked on the closet while she was home. And so she waited a while before she set to work on the closet while Lucia was down in the living room watching TV.
Melina slowly started going through various boxes, casting a glance at the forbidden safe every so often. She wanted so badly to take a chance of quickly unlocking the safe and reading just a few pages of the damning journal, but she knew it would be a foolish risk to take. Lucia could sneak up behind her any second if she wanted to, and she did, about ten minutes after she’d announced that she was going to do some organizing.
“Feeling ok?”
Melina glanced at the woman. She stood leaning in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, eyes black as coal. She gazed intently at her.
Melina nodded. “Not too bad, I guess.”
Lucia continued to eye her intently and Melina was starting to get uncomfortable as if she weren’t already uncomfortable enough. But then Lucia said, “Let me know if you need anything and don’t push yourself to do too much.”
“Ok,” Melina muttered.
The remainder of the morning passed by agonizingly slow. At times Melina thought she would scream. She wanted to run from the house and be gone forever from the woman who had killed her one and only true love, but she urged herself to be patient for just a little longer. Just until she could talk to Nara. But how could she convince her that her own mother was a cold-blooded killer? She would have to see the journal for herself. But perhaps seeing it written in her mother’s own hand wouldn’t be enough to convince her.
Melina’s break came in the late afternoon when she was lying down after claiming to feel nauseous. If there was any good to the child that was growing inside her, it was that it provided enough excuses for her to get out of having to do things.
She had been lying there and wondering, for the first time since learning of the pregnancy, about the child itself. How much of its father’s craziness would it possess? If it were a boy, would he grow up to rape women as well? If it were a girl, would she grow up to abuse men? Would either one abuse children?
And then Lucia had entered the bedroom to tell her that a friend was having an emergency and needed her help.
“What happened?” Melina asked.
“Her car broke down and she needs a ride. Unfortunately, her towing service will tow her car, but they won’t give her a ride.”
“Do you need me to come with you?” Melina asked, hoping to thwart any suspicions Lucia still may have.
“No, it’s alright. Just stay put and rest up. You’ve done enough for today. I’ll be back soon, Princess Melina.” She quickly bent over to kiss Melina, then took off. It was just as well. Had she lingered any longer Melina would have lost it for sure. Resisting the urge to wash her mouth of the contact she’d had with the killer, she waited until she heard the SUV drive away. Then she glanced at the clock.
Nara would be home now.
She scrambled out of bed and dressed as quickly as she could. Then she made her way into the closet and began working the safe’s combination.
A creak or a thump of some kind from downstairs.
Or was it outside?
Just hurry, hurry, hurry!
Melina’s trembling fingers made it nearly impossible to work the dial. Maybe Lucia had changed the combination after all.
No! Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. There was no reason for Lucia to suspect that she knew how to open the safe. No reason at all.
Just as she was beginning to fear she really had changed it, the lock released itself. Melina quickly swung the door open, snatched up the journal, then relocked the safe.
Next, she dashed downstairs, grabbed her cell phone, and stuffed it in her handbag along with the journal. She considered calling Nara first and asking her to pick her up down the street but didn’t want to waste another minute in the house.
She burst out the door and into the balmy afternoon. She ran to the closest place which she didn’t think would be one of the first places Lucia would search for her if she came home to find her missing before Nara could get to her. Once she was inside the diner, she pulled her cell phone out of her handbag and called Nara.
Please let her answer! she silently begged. It rang twice. Each ring seemed to last an eternity.
“Hello?”
“Nara!”
“Yes?”
“It’s Melina. I’m at Ragetti’s. The diner on Milan Street. I need you to pick me up as fast as you can. Now!”
“Ok, but what’s wrong, hun?”
“Don’t ask questions. Just get here like yesterday and don’t call or say a word to anyone. My life depends on it.”
“Do you want me to come into the diner?”
“No, I’ll watch for you. Just hurry!”
“I’m on my way.”
Melina clicked the cell off and waited more impatiently than she ever had before in her life. She fingered the journal in the bag that contained her mother-in-law-turned-husband’s deadly words. She wanted to read more of it while she waited but didn’t want to miss spotting Nara as soon as she pulled up either.
Deciding it would be five minutes or so before Nara arrived, she yanked the black leather book out and randomly flipped through the pages as she stood close to the diner’s front windows. Lucia’s writing only filled about one-third of the journal. She skimmed through the horror of what she’d done to Ari, along with confessions of befriending her online as “Gothic Beauty,” just as she had suspected she had.
Wait! What the hell was that about killing Clara?
In her peripheral vision, a blur of motion just outside caused Melina to glance upward and through the window.
To her utter horror, a silvery blue SUV much like Lucia’s came looming towards her.
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