I had not forgotten the day Aston came to take Ben from me. How could I? It was etched in my memory, the last moments I had with my son. I had no idea what would happen when I started looking for a way out, trying to figure out how to escape the country with no passport and no identification. With a baby.
I was a naive child at the time. I should have run immediately, gone into hiding somewhere and used the money to buy Ben and I paperwork. But I didn't understand how anything worked. I didn't understand the urgency of everything. I was wrapped in this little cocoon, inside the walls of the old man's estate, where I thought I was safe from the outside world. The old man was dead, and the threat was gone.
If I would have had any foresight, I would have understood that the real threat was out there, still lurking, just waiting. The man who had been obsessed with me, who had tortured me as a child, who had broken me once before.
It was an idyllic week I spent with Ben, after the old man's death, and before Aston showed up. The truth was, it was an idyllic couple of years before the old man died. It was like all of the pain from before had never happened. He banished us to a guesthouse on the property far from the main house. Out of his sight. The prior torment was over, and Ben had room to run and play, an expanse of manicured lawns and a home that was vastly more than I had when I was a child.
Two years of relief in a series of years full of suffering.
And then Aston arrived. How he found me, I didn't know. I didn't understand the extent of his reach back then.
~ ~ ~
Ben pressed his little body up against my leg, his arms wrapped around my knee. I bent over to scoop him up, kept him against my chest as he whimpered, sensing something was wrong almost immediately.
"Meia," Aston said. "It's been a long time."
"Please." I begged him, trying to be calm, trying to keep myself from falling apart, there with Ben in my arms. I had to be strong. For him. I clutched him tight to me, as if by holding him I could keep him from being taken away. "Whatever you want, I'll do it. Don't hurt Ben."
All I could think about was that Aston would kill Ben, right there in the garden where he'd been happily playing, oblivious to any kind of evil that existed in the world around him. Please don't let Aston kill him, I prayed silently to a God that had never heard me before, pleading for my son's life.
In front of me, Aston smiled, the expression only making him look more sinister and threatening. He gestured to the men who were with him. "Take the boy."
I screamed when they tore Ben from my arms. I screamed as he was taken from me, tears streaming down his chubby cheeks as he wailed, terrified of the men who carried him to the waiting vehicle. "Please, Aston," I pleaded, falling to my knees in the damp grass at Aston's feet, the first of many times I would beg him from this position. "Please don't do this. You can't take my child."
He looked down at me, his eyes cold. "Whether he lives or dies depends entirely on you," he said.
~ ~ ~
When I finished the story, I finally allowed my eyes to meet Hammer's. I felt his hand, still on mine, a comforting gesture. I couldn't imagine what he must think of me, the mother who let her son be taken away from her, who had been unable to figure out how to escape the clutches of the monster who did it for two years. Two years in relative freedom. Not chained. Not kept in a dungeon someplace. I had an apartment, designer clothes, access to a penthouse. Access to money when I needed it.
I was terrified Hammer would look at me and see someone who had not tried hard enough to find her son, who lived in fear instead of bravely trying to rescue him. I was terrified he would see me as irreparably damaged, soiled and broken.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Meia," Hammer said, his voice hoarse. "I can't...there's nothing I can say."
"You must think I'm horrible," I said. My heart raced, and I pulled my hand from his, anticipating his judgment.
A look of confusion flitted over his face. "What? Fuck. No. Are you kidding? What the hell kind of man do you think I am? Why would I think you're horrible?"
"All of the stuff that's happened -"
"Shit, Meia," he said. "I can't fucking imagine. Hell, my kid's not much older than your sister. I can't even..." He shuddered, his face contorted. "What those animals did...what Aston has done to you…”
“What I’ve done, Hammer…” I said. The things I’d done while with Aston were grotesque, made a thousand times more so by the fact that I was doing them in order to keep the bastard from killing my child.
“You survived. You've done what you had to do to survive."
"So much has happened, Hammer. I don't know if I can - I don't know what to do anymore." I didn’t know if I could have sex. Certainly not for pleasure. I didn’t know if I could feel anything for someone else in that way.
"Listen to me,” Hammer said, taking my face in his hands. “I swear to you on my life, I will do everything in my power to get your son back from Aston. You won’t belong to him anymore. I will kill Aston with my bare hands.”