by C. A. Rene
To Redemption Copyright © 2020 C.A. Rene
All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental, the characters and story lines are created by the author's imagination and are used fictitiously.
No copyright infringement intended.
No claims have been made over songs and/or lyrics written. All credit goes to original owner.
Cover Design By: Macy Chow
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Playlist
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
About the Author
The Whitsborough Chronicles
Dedication
First I told you, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, then I warned you to grab a meal and some wine, and finally I'll leave you with this... Did you find your way To Redemption?
Playlist
Monster-------------Skillet
GOOBA----------6ix9ine
Eyes. Lips. Face (e.l.f.)----------iLL Wayne, Holla FyeSixWun
Level Up----------Ciara
Bullet With Butterfly Wings----------The Smashing Pumpkins
Dangerous----------Kardinal Offishall, Akon
Tap In----------Saweetie
B*tch From Da Souf (remix)----------Mulatto, Saweetie, Trina
Bitch Better Have My Money----------Rihanna
Only Girl (In The World)----------Rihanna
Bad Bitch Anthem-----------Trina
Heartless----------The Weeknd
Down with the Sickness----------Disturbed
My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark------Fall Out Boy
In The End----------Linkin Park
I See Red----------Everybody Loves An Outlaw
Prologue
“Yes,” his voice rings loud and clear. “Jack Craven holding for Antonio Torres.”
I hear his fingertips begin to tap, tap, tap on top of his desk, a nervous habit he could never quit. I know who Antonio Torres is, he’s a mobster from New York.
“Antonio!” He bellows good naturedly into the phone. “All is good here my friend, how about you?”
The dealings with this mob family have been shaky at best. The ‘friendship’ is new and I know Jack is still digging around to see what dirt he can find on the Torres’ in particular. The more you know the better the blackmail.
“The family is doing well. How about your sons?” He lets loose a jolly laugh and I can hear him pat his stomach. “Boys will be boys.”
“I actually need a favour, Antonio. For my family.” There’s a pause, “I need protection for me and my daughter.” Another pause, “my older daughter, the younger can stay with her mother. I need her and I to disappear, not now… at a time I specify.”
Why is he planning this with Rebecca? Why is he leaving Debra behind? So many questions and I have no answers. This is what happens when you are a female in this house, you know nothing.
“I would need a new identity for us and to effectively erase the current ones. I know it’s a lot to ask. I have the money and I have the connections to get you situated here in Canada. Imagine if you went international?”
The pause is long and the pit in the base of my stomach only grows. There’s no one I can tell here, everyone is in Jack Craven’s pocket. I have to find out more and protect both Rebecca and Debra.
“I can do that.” I hear his relieved exhale, “how about I pay you a visit? Great! I will see you in two weeks.”
I hear him replace the receiver on the phone and then the distinct sound of his decanter being opened. I can hear his bourbon being poured and his greedy gulps.
Backing away from the office door, I turn and walk to the back door. I see the two sisters playing in the yard, so young and so innocent.
What does he have planned for them?
1
I once referred to Whitsborough as a Disney Princess… I was fucking wrong. This place is the complete opposite, more like Ursula, Maleficent, and Jafar combined… times one thousand. Every villain in the whole Disney Universe comes here to fucking party. The worst part? Looks like my family may have had a hand in a few pots of evil stew.
I’m sitting in Shelby across the street from Travis’ and watching the bulldozers and wrecking balls prepare for demolition. Sitting in the backseat are the totes Emmett and I hauled from the storage unit. They contain diaries belonging to our mother and business documents belonging to our grandfather, most of which have been redacted. The amount of shit I have to investigate and figure out is growing by the day. Not to mention how many people I have to kill, that list also grows by the day.
I watch as Vin turns away from our little family circle and his eye catches mine. His plush lips curve into a small smile and his dimple appears in his cheek. He starts Ryerson University in the fall for dramatic arts. He deserves it and I can’t wait to see how it will help him improve. Adrianna will start at a community college so that she can stay here close to us. Emmett, Travis, and me? We decided to put off further learning. Travis has a company he will have to start interning at and as for Emmett and me, we have family business to sort out. After that? I don’t know. I don’t even know if there will be an after that for me, but I will make sure there’s one for everyone else in my family.
I get out of the car as soon as I see one of the construction workers get behind the controls for the wrecking ball. I want to see this up close and watch the euphoria I know I will see on Travis’ face. This house is a true den of evil, the demons that reside here need to be permanently abolished. His father was the Whitsborough Rapist for many years, raping over fifty teenage and young adult women, his mother loved to help lure those females to him, and his birth mother was continuously raped and impregnated by the evil piece of shit. I still to this day, regret letting him get out of it by simply cutting his wrists. I wish I could go back and do tremendously horrible things to him.
I stand between Travis and Vin and grab each of their hands. Travis squeezes mine and takes a deep breath. The large metal boulder begins to swing and we all watch with bated breath as it slams into the second story. The loud noise it makes has neighbours coming out to the street to watch the scene.
“Damn, that just gave me a chub.” Emmett groans.
“Seriously?” I look over at him.
“Don’t encourage him.” Adri says and sho
ves Emmett’s shoulder.
The wrecking ball swings again and we watch as the roof crumbles in and glass begins to spray. We’re at the beginning of the driveway so nothing can reach us this far out.
“I’m expecting to hear voices like the witch from The Wizard of OZ, I’m melting.” Emmett does his very best witch voice.
I snort at that one, “I’ll get you my pretty!” I mimic the witch as well.
Adri snorts next and quickly covers it with a roll of her eyes.
“Hold on!” Emmett exclaims, “I can keep this going, and your mangy little dog, too!”
Vin is the first to detonate and erupt into full laughter, Travis is not far behind and Adri has her hand covering her mouth. Emmett and I share a similar snort then roll our eyes at each other. That’s been happening a lot lately, we catch each other doing the same thing at the same time or finish the other’s sentence and sometimes even waking up and meeting each other in the hallway in the morning at the same exact fucking time. I can only imagine how eerie that would’ve been if we were raised together.
Travis is the first to stop and I follow his line of sight to a hideous sphinx statue. There’s two of them flanking the driveway beside the gates. Then he walks across the street to his car and pulls out two bats. No way… is he going to get destructive too? He comes back across and immediately passes me a bat, like he knows this is something I would find pleasure in with him and he’s fucking right.
I wait and watch him with the others as he walks up to the first sphinx and swings his bat into its face with enough force to shatter the head into crumbled pieces of concrete.
“He had them commissioned to his likeness.” He growls.
I turn to look at the one remaining sphinx face and nearly choke on my own saliva. He really fucking did. Robert Greene was a narcissistic cunt who thought way too highly of himself without paying much attention to what everyone else saw him as. Like I said, cunt.
As much as I want to bash in the concrete version of that piece of shit’s face, I know someone else who is more deserving of it. I hand the bat off to Vin and motion for him to go and beat the shit out of his father’s smug mug. He takes the bat with a look of pure disgust and stalks towards the fucking statue. Then I watch his bulky arm muscles bunch and flex as he swings the bat back and slams it with all his force into its face. The whole top half of the statue literally explodes into a cloud of dust and pebbles. My man is a force.
As they bash in the rest of the statues the rest of us turn and watch the wrecking ball hit one final time on the second floor and the whole structure crashes down. The bulldozers begin flattening walls and moving debris. It feels like a colon cleanse but for the soul. I’m purging all the evil in Whitsborough, one fucking shit at a time.
I have Emmett with me in Shelby as we follow behind Travis’ Civic and Vin’s Hummer. “Call Carm on speaker.” I tell Emmett. He doesn’t ask any questions and does as I ask.
“Hermanito, what can I do for you?” Carm’s velvet smooth voice flows from Emmett’s phone.
“I need an update, Mano.” I tell him with an edge to my voice.
“Ah, mi hermana demonio.” He chuckles, “I have one. The guard that looked after the opponent that day was bribed by Wade to give the guy a knife. I have killed my guard slowly and I expect you will want to do something about Wade?”
“You betcha.” I snicker, “call a Head’s meeting for this weekend.”
“On it,” he agrees. “What will you do?”
“Not sure.” I grin. “Let’s just play it by ear.”
“Okay, I’ll see you Saturday and bring mi hermano demonio, tambien.”
“I’ll see if I can clear my schedule.” Emmett grins.
“Ciao.” Carm chuckles and hangs up.
“So, Wade is a dirty little bitch. Are you really going to play it by ear?” Emmett asks me.
“Of course not, I have every single detail already planned, but I will only ever let my immediate family know that. Understand?”
“But Carm…”
“Is in New York, with enough going on.” I cut him off. I know he’s fiercely loyal to Carm being that the man is his older brother, our older brother but I need to look after the family I have here in my house first.
“Yeah.” He relents.
“I’m not ever going to do anything to put him in danger and if by chance I do, I will always get him out of it. No matter what.”
“I know.” He nods and flashes me his smile. “I just worry about him there on his own, at least he has Trent now.”
“Yeah, it’s good that Trent decided to live in the compound and take over the head of security.” Much to Carm’s disdain. We know he had Emmett trained for that very position but finding me put a wrench in that plan.
I pull into our driveway just behind Travis and Vin. All of us being here eases the stress and I can properly watch each of them. It’s time to start rolling out my plans and it starts this weekend with Wade. I made a vow to rid this place of evil and I refuse to back down and let it mow me over, to do that means I need to sink back into the numb abyss. I need to go dark and my sole concentration will be turned onto Talia. She seems to be the beginning and the end to a lot of our problems.
“Let’s get these totes inside.” I say to Emmett.
Once we have them piled in the foyer, I look to each person. “These are our mother’s old diaries and notebooks. I also have a tote of my grandfather’s things. I was hoping we could go through everything with a fine tooth comb because I think we will find more answers than we expect in here.”
“Let’s get to it.” Travis claps and grabs up a tote.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Adri asks as she follows us into the family room.
“My mother was a victim of Robert Greene, we suspect she was raped by him in high school. We went by the storage unit today and found a bunch of her diaries. In one of them I found her venting that her father was sent a VHS tape of the incident and he didn’t believe her, instead he called her a slut. He believed it was consensual.” I explain.
“I also found some disturbing shit in a few of her younger diaries. Things her father was doing to her.” Emmett adds.
“Looks like our grandfather hired my father to help fake his death. A lot of the information on this sheet has been blacked out. But this was about a month before Raphael came to Whitsborough and met our mother.” I start filling them all in. “Raphael did admit to me about killing my grandparents when they refused to have anything to do with our mother and disowned her. But what if he didn’t actually kill them?”
“Could they still be alive?” Adri asks, sounding astonished.
“I don’t know. Maybe they did die that day or maybe they lived out the rest of their days and died naturally. On this paper,” I wave a sheet over my head. “It states that my grandfather wanted to relocate to New York and offered to work for The Rampage or an affiliate.”
There’s a few photos of them in the family albums so I go and pull those out too. I find a wedding photo of them and pull it out of the sleeve. They are young and it’s black and white. I search through until I find one of them with a younger Debra and my mother. This one shows a much larger man, his belly rounded and his hairline receding. The woman has platinum blonde hair and olive skin.
“Here,” I hand them both to Emmett. “Recognize them at all?”
“No,” he shakes his head and pulls the older version closer to his eyes. “Something about the lady looks familiar though. Or maybe it’s because you kind of look like her.”
I take the photo back and take a closer look at her face. I’ve always been told I had my mother’s smile and her eye colour. I can see the eye colour in my grandfather and Emmett is right, my smile is similar to my grandmother’s.
“Maybe.” I mutter.
“I’ve never seen anyone at the compound that looks like that.” Emmett shakes his head. “We should bring them to Carm though.”<
br />
“Speaking of,” I look at each of them. “I have a Head meeting this weekend. Carm found out that Wade did give that guy the knife. I will be calling in favour of a fight to the death between us.”
The room is quiet and Vin is the first to talk, “so you will be bringing in your knife too right? Fair is fair.”
“Nah,” I throw both hands in the air. “I like the feeling of killing with my bare hands.”
Adri looks worried and I know it’s because she never really did get over what happened at the fight when I was slashed. She has yet to come and see another fight and would rather just hear the highlights afterward. I don’t push it and I understand what I do isn’t for everyone. But fuck, I sure do love it.
“I want to be at that fight.” Adri says, surprising us all. “I want to see that guy die.”
“Okay.” I nod.
“Will the other Heads agree to that?” Vin asks.
“They won’t have a choice.” I shrug.
“Our mom was really pretty,” Emmett sighs as he looks through the albums. “I’m glad I at least have the chance to see her face. Carm has never known what his mother looks like.”
“He told me Raphael raped her and then after Carm was born he killed her.” I say.
“Close,” Emmett nods. “She was a regular.”
“What’s a regular?” Vin asks as he looks through a diary.
“She would sleep with the guards or whoever was around. I don’t know about her being raped but I can see our father not being kind. After she became pregnant our father waited and had a DNA test performed and obviously Carm was his. He looks a lot like him. Not too long after that his mother disappeared.”
“If she disappeared then why did Carm say for certain that our father killed her?” I ask him.
“Because Raphael admitted to it when he got out of prison. He must’ve been looking for some sort of redemption because he admitted many things. Like the fact that I had a twin sister and he was bringing her to meet me.”
“Kidnapping.” I mutter.