Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
I can’t believe any of this and have to steal a look at Samuel who is nodding as Brynn speaks. For a moment I don’t believe any of what Brynn says. Sure, Dominic had hurt me a time or two, but this? Allowing a rape and then attempting to bury someone alive? It was extreme and I clung to that until Shavonne took out her phone and showed me images of Brynn. The selfie of her and Dominic together. An image of Brynn on the floor inside a house, in a puddle of her own blood. A photo of Boaz standing next to a black pickup truck and Dominic touching a rug. Images of Brynn in the hospital, eyes taped shut and her head wrapped in bandages after what is clearly a surgery.
“I have this scar because of him. I had a severe concussion and bleeding in my head,” she says.
The blood drains from my body as I look at all the evidence. And a true wife—one who loves her husband and would do anything for him—still wouldn’t believe this for a second. Because all wives think they’ve hit the jackpot and that their husband is perfect in every way. We’re foolish enough to believe our partners are the greatest people on earth and that we’re living in some fairytale happily ever after. But the truth is, marriage is hard work and sometimes it sucks. And it sucks even more when you realize your spouse is a monster.
Two nights prior to meeting Sam, Dominic had hurt me too. He revealed an ugly side of himself that I’d seen three times before. I liked to call it The Beast. He often kept The Beast at bay, but when it revealed its ugly head, it was cruel and relentless. I rub the top of my head, where my scalp still stings from when he grabbed a handful of my hair. We’d been arguing about his speech. He was mad that there was a typo, even after I said it was proofread—which it was. I told him I’d fix the damn typo and tried to leave the living room so I could go to my office and contact the proofreader, but he caught me by the hair and snatched me backward so hard I fell to the floor. That doesn’t even account for the time before that, when he gripped the back of my neck while I was cleaning the tub. He found out Samuel had come to my tea shop and was mad that I didn’t tell him about it. Or the time before that, when he managed to knock the wind right out of my lungs with a fist to my stomach because he caught me eating a slice of cake at a fundraising dinner.
Dominic may have seemed like a charismatic, endearing man, but he was a monster. And here these women were, presenting me with an opportunity to finally take his ass down. All these stories about wives setting their husbands up to gain freedom were always so farfetched to me, but now that I’m in it, it makes total sense. When your husband has power, you must be careful and you must always be one step ahead.
On this day, I agreed Dominic would never hurt anyone again once we were done with him, and we spent the rest of the day formulating a plan.
FIFTY-NINE
BRYNN
The plan was pretty clear.
Me and Jolene knew all about Dominic’s fear of “magic” and superstitions. To be honest, it wasn’t normal how terrified he was of something that wasn’t real. Though it was tragic on his mother’s behalf, we were grateful that he had a paranoid schizophrenic mother who filled him with such nonsense.
The man truly did worry himself to death about being cursed. In fact, Jolene mentioned several times in the hotel that if he spilled salt, he dumped some over his left shoulder so no bad luck would be brought down on him. He knew all of the common superstitions, like black cats and ladders, seeing the number 6 in a trio, and broken mirrors.
The plan was so stupid, it was brilliant. Dominic was a narcissistic jerk and believed nothing could stop him . . . so we had to make him stop himself. We wanted to torment him first, drive him crazy, because his biggest fear was winding up like his mother. Jolene said he went to a psychiatrist annually to make sure his mental health was stable. He thought she was unaware, but I get the sense that Jolene finds out many things on her own.
By tormenting him, we struck him where it hurt. We wanted him to feel helpless and backed into a corner. It was Shavonne’s idea to present the tea. She and Krystal spoke about what he’d done to me, and Krystal had tricks up her sleeve and ways to make people take a “journey” with her teas. It was illegal, of course, but no one had to know. Krystal provided a tea called Purple Sky to Shavonne. Purple Sky is laced with crushed LSD pills. Our thing was, if he’d drugged me, we’d drug him too. The thought of it almost made me laugh because it was so foolishly simple. The only problem was getting him to drink the tea. That’s where Jolene stepped in. She and Shavonne agreed that Shavonne would fake an identity and offer the tea to Jolene as a gift during one of his bigger rallies.