CHAPTER 5
RAFE
“CARA!” I just managed to catch her as she passed out and fainted right into my arms. Luckily, I’d stood when she started to try and move, so I was able to get a hold of her quickly.
She was so light in my arms, it terrified me.
She couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, and she felt so fragile against me.
She was shaking hard and her whole body was as cold as ice.
Her hair was dark, just as it had always been.
Most of it was curled up into some kind of knot on her head, but stray strands hung loosely and I saw the curls in them she had always had.
Her face was dangerously thin and her eyes were ringed with dark circles, her whole face blotchy and red from hours of crying.
Her eyes were exactly like my own, I had noticed as she watched me so warily, a feature we both took from our mother.
“Dario?” He rushed over to me and felt for Cara’s pulse. I remained silent as I cradled her close and just waited.
“Her pulse is steady, but pretty slow. I think she just passed out, but she’s likely dehydrated.
Kyle said he tried to get her to drink, but she wouldn’t respond to him,” Dario explained.
I knew Kyle had briefly spoken when we entered the tiny box that apparently passed for an apartment, but at the time all I had been focussed on was seeing the sister I had been searching for, for so long.
“She’s so cold,” I told him and he felt the back of her neck, and nodded his agreement.
“We don’t know how long she’s been sat with that body.
Her clothes are covered with blood that has soaked into them and dried hard.
She’s definitely in shock too. We need a doctor to check her over,” he told me, all of which I would have realised if I could just make myself think straight through the panic for Cara.
“Sit here with her for a minute and I’ll arrange a secure hotel and the doctor Kyle mentioned before, to meet us there.”
“Yeah,” I nodded and moved to perch on the end of the rickety bed that sat at the centre of the room.
It made a loud clunk when I lowered my weight onto it, and I cuddled Cara closer in case it fell to pieces beneath me.
“See if you can grab any of her stuff. She’s not coming back here,” I added.
Dar just nodded, as he shucked off his suit jacket and draped it over her back, then he left the room.
“You’re coming home with me, sweetheart. I won’t ever let you down again, I swear it,” I whispered.
I had failed her so epically the day I sent her off on that flight with our mother.
I had thought I was so smart back then, so sure my mother would do as I told her and just sit pretty until I could come to take Cara back.
I’d been an idiot and Cara had been taken from my life for so many years because of it.
I’d never ever forgive myself for that, as well I shouldn’t.
But seeing Cara now, I already knew she had been through so very much worse in the years we were apart.
She was too thin, too pale. There were two small scars I could see on her face – one just below her hair line on the right side of her forehead, and a bigger one near her left ear that looked more recent.
Her hands were rough and dry, and I had a feeling she had been working incredibly hard for some time, to have caused them to end up that way.
She looked exhausted and worn down, and that wasn’t just from the nightmare she had lived for the last two days.
It ran deeper than that. I had seen it in her eyes when she spoke to me.
She was ready to give up and I dreaded to think what had gotten her to that point in her life.
What had she been through? Were there more scars on her body?
How many times had I failed her as she waited for me to just keep my promise and come for her?
I needed the answers to all of my questions and so many more, even though I knew they would tear me apart with guilt.
But they should. It was the least I deserved for what I had done to my sister.
***
“Rafe? Can we talk for a minute?” Dario asked me.
We were in the penthouse of a high rise hotel in the city.
Cara hadn’t woken as Dario helped me get her into the car, then back out again and up to the suite.
It had been a relief when Kyle showed up with his brother in tow, shortly after we arrived.
I really had no clue what Cara had been through.
For all I knew she could have been in that crappy flat when those men arrived there.
They could have hurt her and I wouldn’t even know, so I needed the doctor to check her over.
I had to know for sure that she was unharmed, physically at least.
I stood from where I had been leant against the doorway of the room Cara was laid in. I had settled her in the centre of the large bed in there as soon as we got back, and in it she had looked even smaller and more vulnerable.
The doctor – Xander, Kyle had told us his name was - was still with her.
He’d removed the blood-soaked clothes she wore with my help, and now Cara lay under a blanket in her underwear and a black vest. It had killed me to see how thin, and almost emaciated, she looked beneath the clothes she’d been hiding behind.
There were other scars on her body too. I had seen two raised lines on her left leg, and felt one on the back of her shoulder as I pulled off the top she wore.
I hadn’t had chance to see if there were others, but the ones I had seen had been enough to make me want to throw up.
I should have been there to protect her – to make sure nothing and no one could ever hurt her or leave marks on her body.
“Yeah,” I nodded to Dario, but I only took a step back and leant against the wall just around the side of the door frame. I couldn’t be any further than that from Cara right then. I was worried she’d be terrified when she awoke.
“I managed to get a hold of a cleaner. I had to go through Kean though,” He told me in little more than a whisper.
He had moved to stand right beside me, so that we wouldn’t be overheard.
Kyle was somewhere in the living area of the suite, and though he seemed to be a decent and trustworthy sort, I didn’t want him hearing about our business.
“It’s fine. I can handle Kean,” I agreed.
Kean was the head of the Irish family that we had dealings with in London.
He was a wealthy and powerful man, and probably one of the closest things to an ally that I had in the dangerous world I found myself and my family still trapped in.
He had contacts across the globe, but especially in the USA, so I understood why Dario had needed to use him to get a cleaner to take care of the bloodbath and my mother’s body back at that apartment.
“He’ll cremate the remains. Do you want the ashes sent to you? ”
“Yes. I don’t care what happens to the bitch, but Cara might, and I don’t want to take that from her. Have them brought to us and we’ll go from there. Did you speak to Kyle?”
“He agreed to allow us to deal with the scene and keep what happened under wraps. His team too. He wasn’t happy about it, but he understands the need to protect Cara,” Dario told me, and I nodded.
I had suspected Kyle was the honest type who would automatically want to report a scene such as the one he walked into, directly to the police.
“I’ll fix the lease and deal with the landlord once it’s been cleaned. ”
“Good. I don’t want anyone hassling Cara for any reason.”
“I have to tell you something else,” he hesitated and the concern in his voice had me turning to stand and face him. He looked worried and it instantly had me on alert. It took a lot for Dario to become stressed out.
“What? Tell me,” I ordered.
“I grabbed what I could of Cara’s. There wasn’t much.
Just some clothes and toiletries in a sideboard in the living room.
I packed what I could into a rucksack that I found, but I also found this,” he said as he held out a folded piece of paper.
I took it from him and unfolded it without letting myself think too much.
Whatever it was, I would face it because I had to.
Because Cara needed me to handle everything right now, just as I should have been doing for the last eleven years.
The piece of paper was some kind of hand written wage slip.
There was a scrawled down list of hours that must have been worked and a total amount of money at the bottom.
For the hours listed on the page - a lot of very late nights and weekends – the amount paid was insanely low, but that wasn’t what had Dario looking so concerned, I realised, when I noticed the printed logo at the top of the note sized page.
“A strip club?” I questioned, glancing up to him, then back down to the page to read the words again. “Cara was working here?”
“Looks like it. From what I saw in that place, your Mum didn’t work. There were empty booze bottles all over.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I growled angrily.
I don’t know why I ever expected anything good of my mother, but I had hoped that having Cara with her would force her to one day face her responsibilities.
Obviously, I was an idiot, and it looked like Cara had been the one to have responsibility piled on her too young shoulders instead.
The fact she had needed to resort to stripping for a pitiful wage made me feel physically sick.
“There’s something else,” Dario said, and I looked to him with apprehension.
I didn’t think I wanted to know anything else, but I had to, so I nodded once.
“These were in Cara’s coat pocket.” He opened his hand discreetly between us and I saw a clear zip seal bag, filled with pills that clearly weren’t prescription.