Maryssa ----------------->
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Fisher
WAHINGTON DC
I watched as Maryssa got out of her car and walked up to her apartment. I had been following her since she left Fourth Echelon. When Forrel had reared back to hit her, she tensed up and got ready for the impact instead of cringing away. Either she had combat training which meant she was either really bad at it and needed more help or she was being abused.
I knew she wasn’t trained to notice a tail, so I didn’t have to try that hard to follow her. It was keeping up with her car was the problem. I was on foot. I stood across the street from her apartment in the pouring rain. As I watched, she flipped the lights on and then I saw the first hit. It was a terribly telegraphed hit, the slap rearing way back, but it appeared that she turned into it. I ran across the street and found the fire escape. I couldn’t get in the front door. I kick jumped halfway up and grabbed the bottom rung. Pulling myself up, I climbed up and found the window that led to her apartment. I saw her get hit again and she cried out as she went down.
“You stupid bitch!” a man shouted. No wonder she spent so much time at head quarters, if this is what I had to come home to, I would spend as much time away as I could. Popping the lock open, I slid the window open and dropped soundlessly into the apartment.
Maryssa
APARTMENT
I walked into my apartment and hoped he wasn’t home. Let him have found some hooker at a bar and have taken her to a motel somewhere for the night. As I closed the door, the light clicked in and I felt my heart fall. I swallowed and put a smile on.
“Hi honey, I’m-” I never got to finish as he slapped me across the face. He was high as a kite and drunk out of his mind. I hated him like this. I managed to stay standing, but the second one sent me stumbling across the room. My cheek stung and I could taste blood in my mouth. I stayed standing.
“What’d I do?” I asked. He grabbed my arms and shook me. He screamed incoherently at me as my head snapped back and forth. He punched me in the stomach and I hit my knees. Then he was on me. I curled up into a ball and covered my head with my arms. I could feel him pounding my sides, arms, and hips with his fists. I managed to shove him off me once and get to my feet. I kicked him in the stomach with the blade of my foot like Abby had showed me but it went nowhere. He punched me in the face and I screamed as I hit my knees.
“You fucking bitch!” he screamed at me. His next punch never made contact. I kneeled there shaking in fear waiting for him to hit me, my eyes squeezed shut.
“What makes you think you can abuse Maryssa like that?” a threatening yet too familiar voice asked. I looked up to see Fisher standing there holding my boyfriends raised fist. Fisher didn’t give him a chance to respond as he grabbed him by the throat and threw him to the ground. Planting his boot on my boyfriends chest, he stopped all of his movement.
“Fisher, don’t kill him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” I said. I knew it was a lie and so did Fisher, but it was a lie I had been telling for so many years that I didn’t even think about it now. The lie was the only way I could make sense of him when he was like this.
“You are a bad liar Maryssa,” Fisher said to me and then directed his next sentence at my boyfriend. “You are going to leave; you aren’t going to come back. If I see you here again, I won’t be your only problem.”
