The Dutiful Wife [COMPLETED]

25.

A week later...

Tuesday | 8:27 a.m.
October 15, 2019

Antoinette "Ann" Mackey
My eyes shot open after a horrifying dream about being shot and I quickly sat up. Shyanne and I had gotten released from the hospital last night. After being shot I woke up to my mother and father at my bedside in the hospital. They'd told me that Emil had phoned them the night it had happened and they almost wrecked their car trying to make it to me and their grandchild. My parents lived in a different city hours away so I didn't see them as often as I would've liked when I was with Shiloh because he'd moved us away when we'd gotten married. Over the past few years, I'd grown even more distant from my parents because I thought by staying away I'd be protecting them from Shiloh.

This man had ruined my life. He'd shot my uncle, killed two of my friends, gotten one pregnant, robbed banks, beat me, raped me, kidnapped our daughter, and kept her away for a year, and he'd tried to end our lives. I wasn't angry about me being shot. I was angry and hurt for our child that he'd shot her. I couldn't understand how a father could do his child that way especially one as young and as innocent as our baby girl. Shyanne was still so very young and I prayed she wouldn't remember that night. I'd called out her father's name multiple times as he shot at us and I wondered if she fully understood.

My heart broke for her because she loved her father and he'd gone as far as...shooting her? He was so sadistic that he'd kissed me that night. After he'd shot me those last two times I pretended to be dead in case he decided to go for a headshot. I'd even heard the psycho laugh.

I'd lost so much blood that night and when I finally woke up in the hospital I'd learned that I wouldn't be bringing me and Emil's baby into the world. There was no way it was Shiloh's baby. I'd only slept with him the day he wanted to negotiate and it turned out I was already pregnant then.

The first three bullets hadn't hit anything vital and had passed through me but the last two to my abdomen had. I'd lost my spleen. The hemorrhaging from being shot there couldn't be controlled and doctors had to remove it. I'd been shot in the liver and by the grace of God, the bullet hadn't hit the major artery in the center of my liver. It had struck in the periphery though which was still pretty bad.

I was alive and I should've been happy about that the moment I opened my eyes in the hospital, but what was the point if I'd just wake up to more bad news? I'd lost my unborn child, my best friend was dead, Emil was in jail, and Shiloh was still walking the goddamn streets. If there was anything worse than hell then I was there and I didn't know how to find my way back to earth.

I could hear Beyonce's "Break My Soul" blasting from the living room and I knew what that meant. Shyanne loved that song and whenever it came on she'd just sing her little heart out. I tossed the blanket off of me and carefully eased out of bed. I hissed at the pain and held my stomach as I slowly made my way across the room and out the door. I walked down the long hallway until I got to the living room and there she was standing on top of her grandparents' coffee singing her little heart out.