Unmissing(48)

She slices a hand through the air, her bracelets clanging. “You don’t fight evil with evil.”

But if I don’t, who will?

Seeing that man in handcuffs serving a measly twenty years for kidnapping and attempted murder would be a slap on the wrist compared to the hell he put me through. And knowing his luck, he’d be out in fifteen for good behavior.

“All due respect, I’d hardly call myself evil,” I say.

“That may be true,” she says, her clear blue eyes wilder than usual. “But you don’t fight fire with fire . . . that only makes more fire.”

“So I should kill him with kindness?” I sniff. I’m pretty sure I’ve been more than kind to him by not going to the police the first chance I had.

“Use the proper channels,” she says, smacking the tabletop. “Go to the authorities, tell them who you are and what happened, and let them handle him. Then and only then can you get your identity back.”

I rise from the table and help myself to another glass of tap water for my parched throat. I can’t recall a single incident in my life when anyone listened to me talk for hours.

“He’s slippery,” I say. “He’d weasel his way out of this. Put a second mortgage on his house to hire a lawyer, find a loophole, and walk away unscathed. Plus, I don’t doubt he’d try to finish the job should he get the chance. Once an opportunist, always an opportunist. In any scenario where Luca’s walking around a free man, I might as well be walking around a dead woman. Again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I have it on good authority he’s currently liquidating,” I say. “And why would someone liquidate a lucrative business empire if they weren’t planning on skipping town? He knows I can go to the police at any time . . . he’s getting his ducks in a row.”

“People have all kinds of reasons . . .”

“I’m not exactly in a position to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Leaning back in her seat, she raps her knuckles against the table. “This doesn’t have to be as hard as you’re making it, Lydia.”

I keep my back to her. I adore this woman, but she doesn’t get it. And how can she? She hasn’t lived through an ounce of what I have. I’m sorry she married a closeted gay man and that her daughter got caught up with the wrong crowd, but she doesn’t get to tell me I’ve made my life harder than it has to be.

I endured nine years at the hand of the devil himself.

I nearly bled to death on the earthen ground of a forest miles from civilization or help.

For six months, I lived under the radar. I shoveled literal pig shit in exchange for under-the-table pay that amounted to half the minimum wage. I collected cans from the side of the highway until I had enough for a fifty-cent gas station snack cake—which was occasionally the only thing I’d eat for days. I fielded suspicious questions from police who were certain I was walking the streets in search of johns, drugs, or both. I slept in the rain and cold. I drank from creeks. I bathed in the ocean.

But the hardest thing I ever did . . . was walk up to Luca’s door.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s all downhill from here.

I’ve come too far to take the high road, to let him win.

“You’ve lost an entire decade of your life because of him,” she says. “Why give him another second of your attention? He probably likes it. Deep down, he’s probably getting off on seeing you again.”

She doesn’t know Luca like I do. That’s not how he works. She hasn’t seen the silent panic in his eyes as he tries to stifle his reactions in my presence. She doesn’t know that his frozen demeanor is nothing more than a mask to disguise his crumbling interior.

My being here terrifies him.

And maybe not in the same way he terrified me.

But terror is terror.

“I’m not saying you should forgive and forget,” she continues. “But maybe consider going to the police and letting him be someone else’s problem so you can focus on yourself. Don’t give him another minute of your life. He’s already taken so much.”

My phone vibrates. I flip it open to find a small, grainy picture of a swaddled infant with pitch-black hair.

“What is it?” Delphine asks.

“Luca’s wife just texted me a picture of their baby,” I say.

“She thinks you’re friends, doesn’t she?” Delphine asks. “All this time you’ve been spending with her.”

“I think she’s scared I’m going to take Luca from her, and this is her way of begging for me not to break up her happy home. If she only knew . . .”

I fold the phone and toss it on the counter, cupping my hands over my nose and mouth and exhaling.

Delphine comes to my side, placing a palm gently on my arm. “It’s okay if you like her, Lydia. She’s not the one who hurt you.”

“This is probably one of the best days of her life,” I say. “He’s probably sitting right next to her, and she has no idea who he really is. What he really is.”

“Or maybe she does.” Delphine lifts a shoulder to her ear.

I lean against the counter, replaying various conversations I’ve had with Merritt over the weeks and the way her pretty face lights in Luca’s presence. Nothing that’s come out of her mouth has given me any indication that there’s more than meets the eye or that she’s aware of her husband’s sadistic side. She’s a typical vapid, materialistic, West Coast housewife trying desperately to maintain her cushy lifestyle and picture-perfect family.