I was exhausted, frustrated, & LITERALLY on my knees, sobbing uncontrollably, pleading with my fiancé to tell me what I needed to do to make the relationship work.

"Baby, look, I'll do anything, I'm sorr--"

My voice broke and suddenly, I stopped.
 
My stomach twisted into a knot so tight that I immediately felt the mixture of Bud Light & Patrón swirling in a way that I knew wasn't going to end well for me. I started blinking my eyes, hard, trying to get the tears to clear from my eyes so I could focus.

Focus, Ravynn! Am I-- ... Is he-- ...

As my eyes came into focus, my own thoughts drifted away. . .

I had no words. . . I could feel the blood slowly draining from my face.
 
Still on my knees, I became wobbly and fell backward, halfway catching myself, my hands clumsily smashed into the floor, my silver bracelet cutting deeply into the soft flesh of my wrist.

As I looked at Tony*, he was half--sitting, leaning against the pool table, slowly drawing a long drag from his cigarette.

Everything went dark around him as if a spotlight of darkness had been ushered from above, beaming down on him, like he was on a theatrical stage.

And the corners of his mouth, ever so slightly, were curved upwards.

It was a smirk.

He was freakin' smirking, laughing at me.

And how still!

He was so eerily still. . .

But nothing compared to what I saw next. . .
 
Is he--? Is that--

I began to squint, trying to sharpen my sight because my brain wasn't computing what I was seeing.

Then, I think I actually heard my heart stop beating.

Because everything went silent.

I'll never forget what I saw that night, or the exact moment that I realized I knew NOTHING about the man standing in front me.

But what I did know, from that night on, is that:

#1) There was something VERY WRONG with my Tony
#2) I was determined to find out what it was and
#3) Whatever it was, he was  A MASTER AT HIDING IT FROM PEOPLE .

But he wasn't hiding anything from me that night.

It was his eyes.

Or...it was something in his eyes.

You guys, they were   twinkling  , as if I was holding an eighteen-flame, gothic candelabra out in front of him, and that stare --

that sinister stare, as if something not--human was looking back at me, & his brown eyes were GONE !

They just looked like black circles of the swirling abyss staring back at me, LAUGHING AT ME , sadistically  ENJOYING  the pain I was in.

He was getting off on this.
 
Did he think this was some sort of game? That's SICK!

To this day, I  have no idea what he was thinking, and frankly, I don't want to know.

But the story doesn't end there, in fact, it gets worse.

I was about to find out one of the BIGGEST secrets that he had been hiding from me since day one.

How I wish paid more attention  to the signs & RED FLAGS  because I could have saved myself a lot of grief, pain, permanent mental trauma, money, therapy, & time.