Prepare the divorce and ruin your husband by Mark Twain 15
Chapter 15
I dropped to my knees with him, clutching him so tight my chest hurt. “No, baby. No. Mama’s here. Mama’s alive. You don’t have to say sorry anymore.”
He cried harder. I cried harder. We shook together like two people pulled out of the
same grave.
For the first time since hell swallowed me, I knew it was over.
We were alive.
Colt stood a few steps away, silent. Watching. Letting us have this.
When Ryle finally calmed, he still clung to me like he was afraid the ground would open again.
Colt spoke quietly. “He’s under treatment.”
I looked up, my eyes burning. “Treatment?”
“For the abuse,” he said, his voice hard now. “Your son was broken down piece by piece. He still kneels when adults raise their voice. He apologizes hundreds of times a day. Sometimes for breathing.”
My heart cracked open.
“He wakes up crying,” Colt continued. “Calls for you. Says sorry in his sleep. It’ll take at least a year of therapy. Maybe more.”
I couldn’t breathe. I pulled Ryle closer, my tears soaking his hair.
“I failed him,” I whispered.
“No,” Colt said firmly. “You survived. That matters.”
I turned to him then. My whole body was shaking. I wrapped my arms around him without thinking.
“Thank you,” I cried into his chest. “Thank you for saving us. For everything. For not letting us die.”
Colt didn’t hug me back.
He placed his hand on my shoulder instead. Heavy. Possessive. Real.
“Bella,” he said quietly. “I didn’t do this for free.”
I nodded.
I already knew.
“You know the price,” he continued. “David is finished. Completely. His name erased.
His empire burned. And when the dust settles, you don’t walk away.”
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My throat tightened. “I will become your wife.”
“Yes.”
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I looked down at my son… At his small hands clutching my shirt… At that life Colt dragged out of the sea.
I nodded again. “Okay.”
That night, Colt summoned his assistant.
Documents were laid out on the table like contracts with the devil.
“New names,” Colt said. “Clean. Untraceable.”
He looked at Ryle. “From now on, you’re Clyde.”
Ryle blinked, confused, then nodded like he always did.
Colt turned to me. “And you.”
He slid the papers forward.
“Nadia Joseph.”
I stared at the name. Isabella was dead. The woman who begged. The woman who trusted. The woman who was handed to hell.
I signed. I held my son’s hand. And somewhere deep inside me, the broken pieces stopped bleeding and started sharpening.
David and Roxanne buried me once. Next time, I would be the one standing at the
grave.
A year passed since Colt pulled me and my son out of the sea, and some mornings I still wake up thinking I am drowning again, thinking my lungs will burn, thinking I will hear David’s voice somewhere close, cold and disappointed, like it always was at the
end.
Ryle is better now, not healed, not fixed, but better, and that matters more than anything. Therapy almost every day at first, then slowly less, and he still apologizes too much and still flinches when voices rise, but he laughs again, real laughs, the kind that shake his shoulders, and sometimes he sleeps through the night without crying for me. The doctors say trauma lives deep in children, and I nod, because I already know that. Trauma lives deep in me too.
Colt never treated us like fragile things.
One afternoon he placed a knife in my hand and said, calm as if we were talking about weather, “Hold it like this, Bella. If your grip is weak, your fear will travel straight to your wrist, and fear gets you killed.”
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My hand was shaking and I hated myself for it. “I have never hurt anyone,” I said, my
voice thin.
He looked at me for a long second and then said quietly, “You have been hurt enough
for ten lifetimes. This is balance.”
Gun training came next. The sound made my ears ring, my heart slam, and I dropped it the first time. I expected him to snap, to yell, to mock me. He didn’t.
He crouched in front of me and said, “Breathe, and look at me. You survived worse than this. Don’t let metal scare you.”
Later, with the arrows, he stood close behind me, adjusting my arm, his voice low. “Distance teaches patience. Patience wins wars.”
That was when I understood who he really was.
Not just powerful. Not just rich.
Colt Blackwood ruled the west. Real power. The kind that doesn’t need to shout. Bigger than David. Bigger than everything David thought he owned.
…
I asked him one night, after Ryle was asleep, “If you are this strong, why didn’t you just
end him?”
Colt smiled slowly, like the idea amused him. “Because I want you to,” he said. “I want you to look him in the eyes when it’s done. I want him to know exactly who destroyed him. And I want to enjoy that.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t need to.
Then one night he came home bleeding and smelling like alcohol and iron. His shirt was ruined and his knuckles split open.
I panicked. “Colt, you’re hurt. Sit down. Please.”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, but he let me help him anyway.
I cleaned his wounds with shaking hands and he watched me like I was something precious, like I might disappear if he blinked.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered.
He touched my cheek gently and said, “I want you to.”
That night, he didn’t touch me like I was owed. He touched me like I was chosen. Slow, careful, almost reverent, and I cried into his shoulder because for the first time in years, I wasn’t afraid.
After, he fell asleep.
I went back to my room quietly, my heart heavy and light at the same time.
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The next morning, he was himself again. Cold, composed, untouchable.
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He slid an envelope across the table. “There’s a banquet,” he said. “Mafia families.
Peace talks. Lies dressed in suits.”
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