by Lannah Smith
“I gave you everything,” my father angrily spat at me, slapping me again before I could recover. This time, I lost my balance but Rodney caught me before I could fall and pulled me upright. “Everything,” my father slapped me again. “My money was yours to use however you wanted. My properties, my people, everything that I had was yours. But this is how you repay me?”
I couldn’t answer. I was trying not to faint. Blood trickled down the side of my mouth.
“I've been very accommodating to you. Didn't I leave you alone all the while you were growing up? I let you do as you please. whore yourself as you please. My only request was that you marry my good friend, Montecarlo. Yet you ran away. You fucking ran away and now he’s dead!”
Good riddance.
Good fucking riddance.
Because there was no way I’d marry an old man who raped women and children. I’d rather die than be the wife of a criminal who owned a massive drug cartel. The only reason my father wanted me to marry him was that he wanted that drug cartel. I’d rather die than return to that life again.
But my feelings didn’t matter to him. Never had, never will. Since childhood, I had lived in a world where no choices were given to me, especially since I was a woman. So I made a choice. And that was to run.
Spittle ran down the sides of my father's face with each obscenity he shouted as he continued to inflict his punishment on me. Rodney’s hands were tight on my arms, so tight they hurt. Dan kept screaming through his gag and I was terrified, not for myself but for him. The monster’s wrath was on me now. I was terrified Dan would draw his wrath to him instead.
“You’re like your mother,” my father said, finally stopping his punishment. He took a deep breath, stepping back, adjusting his tie. “Just like your mother.”
My chin was covered in blood from the cut in my lower lip, dribbling onto my shirt. I could barely see through one eye but I still managed to glare at him, happy to find my eyes dry.
“Unfortunately, you’re too much of a coward to take your own life.”
I fought the irresistible urge to hit him. The monster was the reason why she took her own life.
“You are such an asshole,” I muttered.
He went solid for a half-second before another blow, this time to my gut, hit me.
“Dare you find your backbone now, daughter?” he sneered. “You shamed me. Shamed me. And if you didn’t have any use left, I would have gladly let you slit your wrists and let you join your mother in hell.”
An anguished scream burned inside my throat but I swallowed it down, fighting back tears of grief and tears of rage. I wished I was stronger. I hated feeling powerless. But he was right. I should have just killed myself. Then Dan wouldn’t have been caught in my mess too.
My father and his men had their attention on me that they didn’t notice.
But I did.
I held my breath as Dan rose from the floor behind them, finally escaping from his binds. My gaze met his eyes, furious eyes that were scanning the damage on my face.
Run away.
Dan’s eyes went to my father and I read the intent in them. Terror gripped me so hard I almost whimpered.
Please run away, Dan.
My father noticed where I was looking and he turned. Dan slammed a fist into his jaw when he did, knocking him to the floor. Rodney quickly released me and in my weakened state, I collapsed on my knees to the floor. He threw a punch at Dan. But Dan was quick to evade it and struck Rodney in the gut.
“Dan!” I screamed when Oscar took out a gun, barely noticing the pain shooting through my lip. “Run! Please run!”
“I’m not leaving you,” he snapped, hitting Oscar’s wrist, making the gun fall to the wooden floor. “You run! Go, April! I’ll take care of them!”
There was no way I was leaving without him.
“It’s me they want! Just go!”
“No!”
Fighting Rodney and Oscar one on two, Dan had forgotten my father. But I didn’t. My eyes cut to him just in time to see him take the gun from the floor and aim it at him.
"No!"
Too late. It was too late.
The sonic click of a gunshot tore through the air. My body froze and my breath left me all at once when Dan's head snapped backwards, spilling blood in the air. My eyes instinctively closed at the sight. The next thing I heard was something heavy landing on the ground with a resounding thud. Then there was complete silence.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't look.
Inside me was a beast raging, wanting to claw my father's eyes out, wanting to kill them all.
I wanted to scream.
And scream.
fucking scream and never stop.
Wanting to weep and hurt them the way I was hurting right now, with a pain that went straight to my soul but I was paralyzed. My eyes opened and they fell on the floor. At the dead body in front of me. Blood spread out around Dan's head, soaking his hair. And the light was gone from his half-hooded eyes. My throat tightened.
Dan was dead.
My beautiful Dan who had just told me that he was a father was now dead.
Oh, God.
My stomach constricted.
His pregnant wife.
I couldn't avert my eyes from him even if I tried. He was the one thing that anchored me to life. When I thought everything was hopeless for me, he gave me hope. And now he was dead, pieces of his brain dotting the floor like the petals of roses that had scattered across it.
Dan was gone.
Because of me.
I could hear my father talking to his men in the background but I couldn't focus. All I could think of was Dan. Of his wife and child. Of the happy family life that he was supposed to have with them.
Then I was jerked painfully up the floor by the arm. My trembling eyes went to my father who was holding me. Stony-faced and infuriated, his eyes held a clear message.
Now that the monster caught me, he would never let me escape again.
Chapter 6
Christopher awoke from deep sleep with a jerk when a spiked heel dug painfully into his side.
"Hey, bully."
Still hung-over, he flinched at the voice and rolled to his back. A haze of interrupted sleep hanging over his head, his eyes found Hannah Austin, also a friend since high school, staring down at him with irritation on her features. Though she looked magnificent in the floral sundress she was wearing and her red hair floating over her shoulders, he still didn’t appreciate her barging into his hotel room and waking him up.
Wearily, he narrowed his eyes at her.
"You're the fucking bully, Hannah," he growled, pushing her foot off the sheets. "What are you doing here?"
A clatter made her head turn around. William Carter, her fiancé, looked up at them apologetically. He was bent down, trying to clean up the mess on the table. With platinum blond hair and blue eyes, Christopher considered Will as one of his closest friends, something he was already beginning to regret since Will couldn’t quite control his fiancée.
Christopher almost growled.
What the hell were the two of them doing here?
"Maybe I should just order coffee for him instead?" Will asked Hannah, leaving the empty bottles of alcohol on the table alone.
Before he could ask the both of them to leave him instead, Hannah had her glare on him again, her hands on her hips.
"Move," she hissed, her green eyes flashing with deep annoyance.
His brow lifted. "Where?"
"On."
He closed his eyes and smirked. "Don't give me shit so early in the morning, Hannah."
"It's not morning." He felt her sit on the edge of his bed. "It's the afternoon."
"And I don't need you to tell me the time."
“How many days have you last shaved?”
“I just shaved yesterday morning for Emmy’s concerto, Mother.” He sucked in breath and tried to pull in patience with it. Will this woman ever stop nagging him? “Terry wou
ld kill me if I went there looking like a fucking hobo.”
“Then do it again,” she instructed. “And for God’s sake, cut your hair.”
"Honey," Will called out. "Leave the grizzly alone."
Christopher peeled one eye open. "Please,” he said wryly. “Listen to your fiancé." Then he lifted his head and glowered at Will. "And I'm not a grizzly."
"Your attitude's like a grizzly," Hannah pointed out irritably.
"I'm a man," he pointed out in return.
"And your sense of humor is currently nowhere to be found, Skull."
Sighing, he let his head fall back on the pillow. He didn’t need this shit right now. But he couldn’t exactly kick her out without her causing a tantrum.
Hannah tugged on the sheet to get his attention again. He gave her his eyes.
Then he said, "I'm naked under this sheet."
She shrugged. "I already know."
"Do you want to see my dick to compare it with Will's? Because you might give the ring back."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said with a scoff.
Will was acting like he heard nothing. He probably got used to their banter already. His phone started to ring and with a resigned sigh, he excused himself and answered the call by the window of Christopher’s hotel room.
"His father still hates you, does he?" Christopher asked Hannah.
She looked at him and grinned. "He doesn't hate me."
He gave her a knowing smirk.
"Fine," she conceded with a shrug. "He does. He especially hates the fact that he has to deal with me now that Mom has already handed most of the business to me."
Of course, old man Carter would hate that. That old asshole still believed that women belonged in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.
"I could already imagine the skinny bastard's face," he mumbled.
Hannah whacked his shoulder. "Don't call my future father-in-law names."
Snickering, he closed his eyes again and sighed. His head still felt like it was trying to split itself open. Last night’s meeting had ended in the bar across the hotel he was staying. Thank fuck he didn’t take a girl home after. Hannah would have definitely liked that.
Damn it.
He shouldn’t have told her where he was staying. And he should definitely not have stayed in the only hotel her family owned in Chicago.
"Do you want me to set you up for a blind date?" she asked him in a hopeful tone after moments of silence.
His lips twitched. "No."
"She's really nice," she insisted. "And she has a really nice rack."
He chuckled. "Still, no."
Hannah heaved a great sigh. Christopher opened his eyes to look at her. There was sadness in her eyes, pity too but he didn’t let it anger him. Hannah just wanted him to be happy like her. Like the rest of their friends. And as much as Christopher wanted to be happy, without her, without the girl he was relentlessly and tirelessly searching for eight years, he knew he was never going to be happy.
He saw how she hesitated before she said, "Skull, about April..."
"She's out there somewhere, Hannah," he cut-in before she could finish her words, knowing it would finally piss him off. "She's close. I can feel it. I have to find her."
"It's been..." she bit her lip then released it to say, "It's been eight years."
He shook his head. "Doesn't matter."
Leaning forward, her expression set in worry, she said, "But Skull—."
"Doesn't matter," he said gently but firmly. "I'm still going to find her."
Even if it takes him years. He was going to find her.
The first girl he fell in love with and would always keep loving.
He was going to find April Locke.
"But she’s a bi - she's not even friendly," Hannah whispered in dismay, knowing she couldn’t change his mind again.
He laughed low. "You don't know her like I do, Hannah.”
She stared sullenly at him.
Because it was true. She didn’t. No one did.
No one knows about the time she extended her arm and pulled him out of the darkness and misery that was his life.
“But yeah,” he mumbled. “I can't deny that she was a bitch."
Because she was also the same person who brought him back there. In the dark. In his well of misery. Until Leon and John pulled him out and helped him stay in the light.
It had been deliberate. He knew that now. The bitch that she was back in middle school and high school was deliberate. And he didn’t know why. No one knew. Not even Emmy who had admitted that they were really friends and kept their friendship hidden until the night April disappeared after her high school graduation.
A muffled sound of a cell phone ringing took Christopher’s attention. He and Hannah exchanged glances then he started to dig around the bed. He vaguely remembered sleeping with it last night after making a call.
"You really are naked," Hannah started laughing, closing her eyes when the sheet wrapped around his chest slid lower and lower as he moved around.
Will, who had finished his call, walked up behind Hannah and covered her eyes with his hands. "You might get tempted to look," he told her with amusement laced in his voice. "It's a very nice ass after all."
"Sometimes, I get thoughts that you might be gay, Will," Christopher grumbled as he kept looking under the sheets. Not that there was anything wrong with that. But the guy says the weirdest things sometimes.
"I studied in a boy's school. There's a lot of ass there."
"Point made."
"He still needs more practice on how to talk like a regular person," Hannah muttered with a sigh. "At least he doesn't sound too formal now."
Christopher dug under his pillows with a wide grin. "Yeah, I still remember when he told me to have a nice day when I was about to leave-- ah, here it is."
Grabbing a pillow to protect Hannah and Will’s engagement, he placed it between his legs and slid his thumb across the screen, placing the phone on his ear.
"What?" he said irritably.
“Skull, fucking hell, Skull,” Alec muttered on the other line, his voice agitated and pissed.
Alarm bells rang inside Christopher’s head.
What the hell was it this time?
The Morettis? The Russos? Did his men fuck up the deliveries? Or was it another mess at the stables?
“What is it?” Christopher barked impatiently into the phone when Alec stopped speaking.
“Jesus, Skull,” Alec mumbled. “We... we found her.”
His body went still and his jaw went tight.
"Are you certain?" he whispered.
"Is everything alright?" Hannah asked worriedly and his eyes went to her.
Will's hands on her shoulders tightened. His face was concerned as well.
“fucking certain. She’s home.”
His gut lurched.
Home? As in her father’s home? Damn it. Why did her father have to find her first? What did he and his men miss?
"I swear to fucking God, Alec, if you're not certain—.”
Alec didn’t let him finish. “I’m certain, sir. I’m looking at the CCTV footages right now so I’m so fucking certain. I’ve already booked you a flight home. It leaves in an hour. I’ve also mobilized Jeremy and Lance, they’re down the lobby waiting for you.”
fuck.
fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Alright,” he knifed out of the bed. “I'll call you again."
Then he disconnected the call and threw it on the bed before moving to his closet, tearing the doors open.
“Skull, what the hell is going on?”
He glanced over his shoulder. Will was covering Hannah’s eyes again. He looked down. He’d forgotten to take the pillow with him.
There was no time to explain however. Heart pumping, he pulled on a shirt and jeans and found his wallet.
“Where are you going?”
He snatched his clothes from their hangers and dumped them on the bed. He paused briefly to lo
ok at them. fuck, maybe he should just leave them. He needed to go.