Forgotten bride 03 becom.., p.1
Forgotten Bride 03-Becoming Benjamin, page 1
part #3 of Forgotten Bride Series
BOOK THREE OF THE FORGOTTEN BRIDE SERIES:
BECOMING BENJAMIN
BY PHILIP ANTHONY SMITH
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COPYRIGHT © 2025 PHILIP ANTHONY SMITH
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
THE MISTAKE
THE NEW HOME
THE CHOICE
THE BEGINNING
THE FIELDS
THE SLOP
THE CHERRY
THE NEWS
THE DIRT
THE PIPE
THE CANDLES
THE FALL
THE WRETCH
THE OLD FLAME
THE TEST
THE CROOK
THE SCREAMING
THE SHEET
THE BALL
THE PERFORMANCE
THE BRAKES
THE KING
THE GOODBYE
THE DARKNESS
THE LAKE
THE BLAME
THE MORNING
THE CLARITY
THE DATE
THE HEARING
THE MOVE
THE SMASH
THE END
THE GRAB
THE SAVIOR
THE DECISION
EPILOGUE
A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
THE BRIDES SALVATION
THE WOMAN HE LEFT BEHIND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PROLOGUE
ALEX – 2024
Icouldn’t fucking believe it. I was crouching in the bushes, mouth agape, totally dumbfounded, helplessly watching as my maniac of a father inexplicably held his hand out to Olivia on the roadside. He was desperately urging her to get into his car with him, only mere minutes after I had just released her from her decade-long captivity in the bunker, and to make matters worse, a part of her looked as if she was actually considering hopping inside. Instead of sprinting in the opposite direction like any sane person would have done, she remained rooted to the ground a few metres away from him, brandishing the rough-and-ready knife that she had painstakingly made herself back in the bunker, swishing it from side to side like a woman possessed, whilst my father persistently walked towards her in an attempt to calm her nerves.
What on earth was he playing at?
This wasn’t what we had agreed.
His involvement was meant to be over.
Instead of complying with my wishes as he had promised, he had stuck his oar in where it wasn’t wanted once again, and as usual, I had absolutely no idea what sinister plot he might have been hatching in the back of his diseased mind. I wondered whether he would take out his revolver and put a bullet between her eyes, drag her to the trunk of his car for her never to be seen again, or worse still, tell her the full, unadulterated truth of why she had just spent a decade of her life locked up, away from her family. My palms began to sweat when I realised that they were about to speak to each other, and I anxiously dried them on the back of my trousers.
“Who the fuck are you?” Olivia spat through a clenched jaw.
“My name’s Hank,” Dad softly said, cautiously creeping even closer.
“Just stay back!” she threatened.
“It’s okay. I just want to help. Folks around here have been looking for you for a long time, Olivia.”
“How the hell do you know who I am?”
“Your face was on every news channel for months. I’d recognise it anywhere. You’re that missing British lady, right?”
I nearly instinctively jumped out of the bushes to put an end to their exchange when I saw that Olivia looked like she was about to collapse. She was still wearing one of the same jumpsuits that we had provided her with on day one, and it barely hid the years of punishing neglect we had put her through. Her knees were scuffed and bloodied, violently shaking and almost clattering together as my old captive tried to maintain the distance between them. For a brief moment, I thought she was about to succumb to exhaustion and plummet to the ground, but to my surprise, she steadied herself at the last minute before threateningly pressing the blade against her wrist. My heart stopped thumping when I realised that if she had moved her hand even an inch, she would have bled out on the tarmac in a matter of minutes, and my entire plan would have been left in tatters. Before I dared act, I saw Dad discretely raise his hand up in the direction of the bushes where I was hiding, signalling me to hold back, leaving me with a furrowed brow and helplessly watching from the sidelines as he continued to enact his mysterious plan without my consent.
“Are you Benjamin?” she timidly asked.
“I don’t know a Benjamin; I promise I’m not going to hurt you. I think your husband still lives in town with your daughter. We can go find them,” Dad said warmly.
“Nathaniel and Aurora?”
“Yes, please let me take you to them. Just put the knife down and get in the car.”
“No!” she shouted, raising the blade again. “It’s some kind of trick! You’re him!”
The car’s passenger door creaked open, and an unknown little boy totteringly jumped out of it, clutching a woollen blanket to his face for comfort and fearfully making his way to my father’s side. I watched in horror as Dad put his arm around the boy, lovingly pulling him in tight, but without knowing the context, the seemingly innocent image sufficed to win Olivia’s trust, so she immediately dropped the knife and fell to the ground like a bag of bones. He rushed over to help her up, then carefully led her to the car and guided her inside, gently putting her seatbelt on and tugging on it twice to ensure it was securely fastened. He casually beckoned to the boy to get back in and then stood at the driver’s side door for a moment, gazing into the bushes with a triumphant wink before he jumped in and pulled away.
As soon as his car was out of sight, I sprinted down the asphalt in the opposite direction in order to give chase in mine, which I had concealed under some branches an hour before. I hopped in, turned the engine on, and immediately peeled out onto the road, frantically stamping on the accelerator so I could find out what fate was about to befall her. My thoughts were racing faster than the motor I was driving, wondering what sick and twisted plan he had for Olivia, whether she would ever see the light of day again, or, more importantly, if she would still be alive to do what I needed her to. He was meant to assist me with his years of experience, not take over the whole shebang unbidden at the eleventh hour. If she thought I was bad, well, to quote one of my favourite songs from the mid-seventies: you ain’t seen nothing yet.
By the time I reached Hammerdale’s main street, I spotted Olivia standing unsuspectingly outside Dad’s car, showing her gratitude to him sitting in the driver’s seat. Much to my relief, he had dropped her off outside the Sheriff’s office, but without knowing what mad plot was unfolding, it only added to my increasing confusion. I took out my binoculars and split my attention between her and Dad, fervently hoping that she would quickly decide to walk inside the office so I could confront my father with both barrels. When they eventually bade farewell to each other, she had a bizarrely long introspective moment, seemingly undecided whether to walk through the doors or not, swivelling her head left and right as if she didn’t recognise the Sheriff’s office or hadn’t stepped into one before.
“Hurry up, you stupid bitch,” I grumbled to myself.
I quickly lost sight of Dad’s clapped-out car, which vanished from view when it turned off the main street into a side one, and I did consider gunning it down the road, hoping that Olivia wouldn’t recognise me, but before I made up my mind, I saw Dad emerge at the junction again. After a few moments, his headlights were killed, then flashed twice as if he was waiting for me, so I bit my lip in anticipation, nervously jostling my leg around while Olivia was still taking her own sweet time. Finally, after a few more endless minutes, and just when she looked as if she was about to walk into the Sheriff’s office, a dog walker must have startled her because the two of them had an awkward exchange with each other before she finally made her way through the doors. As soon as she did, I started driving again and parked up beside Dad, who barely registered my arrival. I wound down my window, impatiently slapping the chassis of my car from the inside to signal for him to do the same, and then I leaned out of it with insatiable fury bubbling away in the back of my mind.
“What the fuck are you doing, Dad?” I yelled.
“Funny—I was just about to ask you the same question,” he chuckled dryly.
“You promised me that you’d stay out of this!”
“No, no, no. You asked for help, and this is what help looks like, son. You just don’t get to decide when my help stops,” he nonchalantly replied.
“No. I begged you to stay out of this. You’ve done enough damage already.”
After pulling out a cigarette, Dad shakily lit it and drew a good few puffs on it before, to my surprise, his trembling hands managed to drop it inside his car by accident. I almost laughed at the bizarre slapstick comedy that followed, giggling to myself when he began to erratically move around in his seat to try and retrieve it before it burned a hole in his leg. However, when he started cursing under his breath and disdainfully shaking his head, I quickly stifled my amusement. When he finally got a grip on it, he flicked the smouldering cigarette out of the window, almost hitting my car, and I watched it land on the asph
alt in a flurry of embers before turning back to him, finding that he was staring back at me with utter contempt.
“Are you alright?” I asked with a slight mocking giggle.
“Never better,” he grunted before leaning out of the window as much as he could. “So, son, I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” he announced.
“Oh?”
“When were you going to tell me?” he asked.
“Tell you what?” I worriedly responded.
“About you fucking Olivia’s husband.”
My blood ran cold when I realised that he finally knew. The jig was up. His unexpected statement immediately threw me off balance, leaving me fidgeting nervously in my seat, awkwardly readjusting my grip on the steering wheel with an unfocused look on my face and desperately casting around for a convincing reply. He was patiently waiting for me to say something, literally anything, with a weird smile spanning his face and rhythmically tapping his fingers on the dashboard. I could feel my cheeks filling up, and as I began to blush, the words seemed to struggle to leave my mouth.
“I-I don’t—where did you hear that?” I stammered.
“Save it. You’re a fucking embarrassment, you know that? I always knew you were a pervert, even when you were a kid. I mean, the way you looked at your mother…” he scorned before he looked away from me in disgust.
“I’m not a fucking pervert,” I sternly interrupted.
“You managed to convince me you wanted to reconnect with me after everything that happened, learn the family business, and maybe salvage our family after everything you did to us.”
“I did, but—”
“Then you told me you had the ‘perfect target’ in your sights: a reasonably attractive British woman of child-bearing age who was thousands of miles away from home with virtually no family, and you wanted retribution because she’d wronged you.”
“I know.”
“I even turned a blind eye to your little psychological experiments instead of selling her as we’d agreed, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I mumbled.
“You’ve been lying to me since day one, haven’t you?” he chastised.
I sullenly nodded.
“You know, when I found you at your lowest moment all those years ago, that was the first time that I had ever felt truly proud of you, but to find out you did the whole thing just so you could seduce her husband makes me feel sick to my stomach,” he explained with a disdainful headshake.
“I don’t know what to say—I’m sorry,” I meekly uttered.
“You’re fucking sorry? Do you realise how much heat we have on us right now because of you? Stephanie, that uppity blonde bitch, is now actively blackmailing my associates, the Sheriff she’s banging is sniffing around my network, and you’ve just released the woman who could blow up the entire operation, all so you could have your end away.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked timidly.
“Me?” he laughed. “This is your party, so I’m giving you one last chance to fix this. Anyone involved in this needs to be dead by the end of the week, or I won’t be held responsible for what happens next.”
“Dead?” I mumbled.
“Oh, come off it, son! You knew how this was going to end the instant you started it.”
My eyes were suddenly drawn to the back seat and to the little boy from the roadside who was pressing his hands up against the window, staring directly at me. My face crumpled up for a moment, and then I looked back at Dad, who had a maddened look in his eyes.
“Is he—” I started as I pointed to the boy.
“Not your concern,” he interrupted. “Focus on your end because I’ll be watching your every move very closely,” he sinisterly stated before turning his engine back on.
“Dad! Wait!” I shouted.
He ignored my plea, stamping down on the accelerator and quickly disappearing down Hammerdale’s main street. I pensively leaned my head against the steering wheel, desperately trying to untangle all the events of the last ten years into one coherent thought, wondering if there was even a possible course of action that could make everything right. When I realised the enormity of my task, I burst into manic laughter and slammed my hand on the horn of the car over and over again before I started to shake the steering wheel in a fit of impotent rage. Even though she still didn’t know it, the fate of my entire life was now in the hands of the woman I had just tortured for over a decade.
Life can be funny sometimes.
ONE WEEK LATER
1
THE MISTAKE
ALEX – 2024
Iwas going to fucking kill her. Positively vibrating in a violent fit of rage, I unyieldingly launched every single ounce of strength I had against the thick, steel door that separated me from my quarry, punching and kicking it until my battered knuckles were throbbing with pain and bloodied. I roared in fury until the sound quickly trailed off into a weary moan, and my hands defeatedly slid down the door before I dropped to my knees with the pistol still firmly lodged in my hand. After a second, I let out a manic laugh, hoarsely coughing and spluttering after it as I tapped the useless firearm against the heavy door I was futilely trying to break through with my bare hands.
Given the ludicrously comical circumstances, I felt compelled to take a brief minute to appreciate the sheer bitter-tasting irony of the absurd predicament I had placed myself in. My concentration had only lapsed for the blink of an eye, and somehow, Olivia managed to get her hands on a frying pan, of all things, to whack me across the head. Like some cartoonish and dastardly villain, I had lost myself in the big reveal, figuratively twiddling my nefariously stiff moustache as I grandiosely revealed every step of my fiendish plot to them. I just couldn’t help myself, could I? I had to exert my control on them one last time. The desire for the theatre of it was coded into every strand of my DNA, and I was a slave to the impulse.
I was quite literally trapped in a web of my own making, locked in my personal bunker, with Olivia and Nathaniel in the wind and the FBI probably hurtling down Hammerdale’s main street towards me. I was just sitting there, like an ensnared rodent, patiently awaiting my fate like one of them: just another sack of meat in a long line of my father’s victims who had spent time within a bunker such as this. Because of my heedless blunder, I was going to spend the rest of my life behind bars like some animalistic curiosity, prodded and poked by doctors and psychiatrists, and the mere thought of it made the simmering rage boil over inside me once again.
If only I had just taken a leaf out of my father’s book and put a bullet into Olivia’s head without a second thought, I wouldn’t be in that mess, and I could almost hear his disappointed tutting echoing against the concrete walls I was powerlessly entombed between. I had no idea how my father would react to my monumental failure, and the frenzy built within me when I realised that I had put his liberty and business in jeopardy too, all because of my ridiculous oversight. It wasn’t beyond the realms of imagination that he was watching the whole thing unfold, quietly wondering to himself how he would respond to such a colossal fuck-up. I repeatedly slammed the hilt of the pistol against the steel like a gong, wrathfully screaming and bellowing with every impact, not even making the smallest dint in the process.
“Are you listening?” I heard Olivia’s voice softly whispering between the violent clangs.
“Yes,” I disdainfully uttered.
“You took away ten years of my life. You stole a decade of watching my daughter grow up. You robbed me of both my dignity and sanity. You ripped my daughter’s innocence away from her and destroyed the love of my life. There isn’t a single conceivable punishment that could possibly make up for the evil you’ve done to us.”
I stood up and animatedly stepped away from the door, laughing to myself at her pathetic little laundry list of my supposed crimes, bouncing up and down on the spot, refusing to believe that she now inexplicably had all the power. For the first time in my life, I was actually hoping that Dad would drop in to help me and that I would hear Olivia’s skull crush against the steel door before he opened it to set me free.
“What are you going to do about that?” I challengingly mumbled.
“I was going to slam that door behind you and watch you rot in there like you did to me. I wanted to plague your every waking thought until the intense guilt was so powerful that you took that pistol you are holding, pressed it against your temple, and wilfully pulled the trigger.”
