Sienna Roberts rocked slowly in the dark, her vacant eyes frozen toward the fireplace in a moribund stupor.

The fireside blazes oscillated on her widened, dilated eyes; while deep within, she grappled with the devil in recurring flashbacks. Visions of her stepfather’s giant hands muffling her screams as she smothered. Memories interlaced between last night’s horror.  

Unable to breathe through her clogged nose, she opened her mouth and inhaled deeply. Her tongue slid across the salty, butter-splashed, minerally metal taste of blood on her split lips. Heartbroken.

Earlier, the whiskey’s delightful and sophisticated fragrances engulfed the room with alcohol, oak, sweet vanilla, toffee, and caramel from the night’s festivities. But the guests’ departures quickly transformed the lively celebration back to a dull lonesomeness of an empty room.

Music and laughter turned dismal silence. All but an occasional pop and crack of cherry, apple, and almond woods simmering in the grate, and the squeaky rocking-chair’s rhythmic creak.

Flames flickered across the 8 x 12-feet rectangular pier glass/overmantel mirror. Thousands of frame-encrusted diamonds sparkled with brilliance. Black with frosted gold etchings: costing nearly two-million dollars.

A woman once seemingly blessed with everything: to those unaware of the incestuous abuse of her youth.

Sienna’s beautiful face battered and disfigured in an abstract design of horror: smudged make-up, lipstick, and streaks of mascara trickled down in tears of pain and regret.

Her features harmonious, aside from a previously celestial, most likely, broken nose. Blood dripped on her white pearls and soft pink blouse.

Her right-eye swollen shut—below a two-inch curved cicatrix, from a past altercation—an arched crescent around her orbital bone. The cut practically hidden inside her eyebrow by a masterful surgeon’s tiny stitches and blended-in with crafty micro-blading.

She hadn’t phoned the police: probably figuring, why bother. Questionably late, the bumbling force of habitual deadbeat dawdlers never arrived on time for the action or before evidence turned stale.

The crushing madness of her victimizer’s retaliations; and for what she never knew. Recent desperation and her pleas for help, repeatedly ignored by law enforcement.

The husband’s power, social prominence, and image of impeccable character always flipped the domestic struggles’ blame to her: the spoiled, spendthrift, poor-white-trash wife. His conniving and deliberately created façade had branded her an angry alcoholic. Although, she had never had the slightest buzz or drunk more than two standard 5-ounce pours of wine at any time in her life.

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Judge William T. Roberts bounced through the early morning courthouse and greeted his male encounters with hearty handshakes, pats on the back, and his phony Duchenne smile.

Mister personality, his pearly whites bleached to perfection. He stifled the ladies with his special attention: bear hugs and kisses, on hands, foreheads, cheeks, and smackdab on the prettiest lips of those unable to turn quickly.

An adulterous drunken pervert, his brigade of eager supporters lacked the slightest inkling of his shortcoming character flaws. He nodded, waved, and bowed down displaying his graceful nobility fit for a king, disguising his demonic heart of stone.

The previous evening, after becoming enraged, he beat his beautiful wife’s face to nearly pulp for the umpteenth time. He then spent the remainder of the night with his pastor’s wife at the Crescent Springs Motel, a dump on the outskirts of town.

But tender hearts mustn’t feel sorry for Pastor Gurley—his own closet chocked full of skeletons—that very night, he had frolicked between the sheets with his daughter’s best friend, an extramarital treat half his age.

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Judge Roberts’s secretary eased around the desk and greeted her boss with a touchy, feely embrace. And he rewarded her coquettish welcoming with a stiff pat and firm squeeze of her voluptuous derriere, or round rump, whichever you’d prefer.

“Sybil, hold all my calls please. I have some pressing issues before court.” He winked and smiled. She blushed, her mind clearly not on business.

“Okay, Judge. Your first case begins at 9:50.” Sybil returned to her seat. “Is there anything else I can do,” she asked? Eyelashes fluttering.

“Everything should be in order.” The judge hurried into his office and the door clicked shut behind him.

The judge's pleasant expressions faded as he sat at his desk with a deep sigh. He opened a box, removed a cheap burner phone and turned it on. Then, he slid a business card from under his desk-calendar’s edge and dialed the number.

He fidgeted with his G2 Limited pen between his fingers, as a raspy, grating voice answered his call. “Hello, it’s your turn . . . so, speak your piece.”

“Hey, listen up. Do you remember what we talked about week before last?”

“Sure . . . so, when, where, and how?”

“Tomorrow night. My wife will head to her sister's for her niece’s five o’clock birthday. The party lasts ‘til 8:00 . . . but kids' crap always runs late. It’ll take 20 minutes for the wife to drive back . . . so, wouldn’t expect her home before 9:00.

“I want you hidden in her bedroom when she gets there. She can only sleep in total darkness. With the blackout drapes you can’t see your hand in front of your face during the day . . . so, at night, it’s pitch black.  

“Your hearing will have to do the job. When she walks in, just grab her around the neck, cut her throat, and let her flop. It should make a gruesome mess.”

“Got it, boss.”

“Don’t screw this up or we’ll both spend eternity behind bars. You know the house, and her bedroom to the left at the top of the stairs. So, get it done. Your money will be waiting. Oh, and one last thing . . . don’t worry about the alarm, Sienna never sets it. But I’ve texted you the code just in case.”

The judge clicked the phone off, pulled out the sim card, broke it in half, then pitched all three pieces in the trash and covered them in shreds of paper.

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“Hi, Sienna, what time can I expect you? Why not be a princess and come early. I could use the help . . . say about 4:00?”

“Listen, Teresa, I don’t think I’ll make the party.”

“What! What are you talking about? Heather would be crushed if her favorite auntie wasn’t at her party.”

“Teresa, I’m her only aunt.” Teresa laughed. Sienna smiled, rolled her eyes, and shook her head. “I apologize, but I look like a monster. And Heather can’t see me like this.”

“Oh, no, not again.”

“Yes, and this time he beat me unconscious. I have a severe concussion and need more plastic surgery.”

“Oh, Sienna, honey . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, this is the last time. It won’t happen again. I’m leaving.”

“Do you have enough money or a place to go?”

“Yes, I have plenty of cash, credit cards, and a friend picking me up. But right now, I only need space, time, peace and quiet.”

“But what about your car?”

“I’ll just leave it in the driveway. Don’t worry about me. I’ll contact you soon. Tell Heather how sorry I am about missing her birthday.”

“Okay, Sienna, please be careful . . . I love you.”

“I love you too, sis.” Sienna hung up and wiped the cascading tears from her cheeks.

            _______________________________

Hell-night arrived. Judge Roberts drove around killing time, careful not to show up too early. At 9:40, later than it should have been, the assassin remained cool and waited behind the door.

Once the judge saw Sienna’s BMW in the driveway, where it was expected, he wheeled his Mercedes in and parked behind.

Everything looked fine up the sidewalk, through the front door, and into the entrance foyer. The alarm unengaged, he eased up the curvature of the circular stairway.

Thinking as he climbed the stairs: Yes, she got what she deserved. A bloody corpse, the only way I’d ever let her leave me. I’m the man. And what I say goes.

He decided against flipping on a light, wanting to do what seemed natural. Any other night he would have stumbled drunk in the dark to his bed. Tonight, he would just fall over Sienna’s crumpled body on the floor. Then, call the police and report his wife’s tragic murder.

He reached the bedroom’s doorway and entered. On his second step, passing the doors, the floor squeaked loudly, and a swift arm wrapped around his head at eyelevel. The pointed tip of a razor-sharp hawkbill knife pierced his neck just past his left carotid artery and slit his throat all the way across and around past his right carotid. The judge's head almost coming off in the executioner’s clasped arm as his body collapsed to the ground.

The killer scampered down the steps and out the door—never to be found. Sienna had picked the perfect evening to flee her abuser.

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What a difference a day, week, or three months make in our lives.

Bird shadows fluttered across the sparkling moonlit lake of Sienna's new mountaintop Carolina home. She consoled in the comfort of her dead husband’s fortune. Kissing the soft, full lips of the man who butchered the mean old bastard and set her free.