CHAPTER 8 #2
“DARIO!” Rafe barked after a moment, when I didn’t move.
The guy who he had been fighting with had gotten back to his feet and was coming at Rafe with a knife this time.
I was about to scream in fear, but Rafe just threw his arm up to block the stabbing motion, then smashed his other fist into the guys arm so he dropped the blade.
He kicked him again, getting some distance between them, then he pulled a gun from the back of his trousers and shot one single bullet.
It landed right between the eyes of the guy he’d been fighting and he fell down dead with a loud thud.
I knew I should have reacted to that. Screamed, recoiled, something. But I didn’t. I just stared at the body on the ground, relieved that he hadn’t been able to stab my brother.
“Cara, it’s just me, sweetheart,” Rafe said as he dropped to his knees beside me. He must have pulled off the coat he’d been wearing because he draped it over my shoulders and wrapped it around me.
“Rafe?” I whispered.
“I’m here. I’m right here,” he soothed as he very softly took my hand into his and just held it.
“Boss?” I jumped when the guy who worked for Rafe appeared behind me. I glanced around to see the guy he had been fighting was also on the ground, likely dead now too. “We have to get out of here. Someone will have heard that shot and called the police.”
“Get Dario!” Rafe barked, startling me again.
I lifted my head and looked to where Dio had been before.
He was still there, but he had moved on from pummelling the man’s face, mainly because the man, who had attacked me, no longer had a face.
It was a bloody mess of blood and tissue.
Dio was kicking him now, that feral look still on his face, which was also covered with blood like he had painted it there.
His hair was soaked with red too, and his fists were clenched and held at his sides.
He looked as though he had bathed in blood in his clothes, he was so covered, and I had to look away from him and the mutilated mess he had made, before I threw up.
Don’t get me wrong. I was relieved and glad the sonofabitch who hurt me was dead, but it was too much gore for me to process.
“Don’t!” Dio yelled and I quickly turned back to him.
He was holding back the guy Rafe had sent to get him with a hand between them.
“I’m fine. I’m fucking fine!” he growled.
He used his bloody hands to push his wild hair back from his face and it slicked backwards, held there by blood and who knew what else had come from the face he had annihilated.
“Cara? We have to go. Do you know if there are camera out here? Security cameras?” Rafe asked me.
“Yeah,” I nodded as I tried to find my voice. My throat was raw from screaming and I was shaking so hard the words would barely come out, but I forced them. “B-but I think that they…the other men….they s-said they disabled them.”
“Brax, check the cameras. Cara says they’re disabled, but make sure, then cover up your bloodied shirt, and bring the car around here,” Rafe ordered, in a tone so calm and collected it rattled me. How could anyone be that calm after what we just went through?
“He’s dead, Cara. He’s fucking dead,” Dio told me breathlessly as he approached us.
Again, I was glad the monster who had violated me was dead, but seeing Dio that way, it had unnerved me to say the least. I found myself turning from him and pressing my face against Rafe’s arm.
He lifted his arm up and instead gave me room to hide against his side.
“Clean up, for God’s sake, Dar. You’re scaring her,” Rafe hissed as he held me against him.
“Shit. Sorry. Fuck!” I listened as Dio seemed to move away from us, then there was silence.
“How badly are you hurt, Cara? Do I need to get you to a hospital?” Rafe asked me softly.
“No hospital,” I whispered, not even moving my head to look at him. I didn’t want to see him, or anything to make me feel that what had just happened was actually real. I didn’t want to believe it could be.
I heard the car pull up close to us, then Rafe was asking me if he could pick me up.
I simply nodded. He had saved me, and I doubted he’d have done that if he meant me harm, but even if he did, what was the worst that he could do to me?
Nothing could be worse than what I had been through in the last few days, let alone the rest of my life.
Right then I didn’t even care if he carried me off to kill me.
Surely I could find some peace and safety in death?
I had definitely given up on trying to find any in life, that was for sure.
This – the attack – it was the final straw.
I couldn’t take any more, and I didn’t want to keep trying, always hoping for things that never came.
***
Rafe carried me into the hotel wrapped in the blanket he had covered me with in the car.
My leggings were in tatters and my underwear was gone completely.
I knew I was bleeding down my thighs because I had felt it, but I also felt numb to it all.
The entire drive back there I had sat in Rafe’s lap, curled up as tight as I could, my face pressed against his bloody shirt in a desperate attempt to just hide from everything.
Dio and Brax had gone in separate directions when we got off of the elevator, and so it was just Rafe and I that walked into the suite that I had fled from earlier.
I was relieved for that at least. I wasn’t ready to deal with more people around me.
“I need your help, Tesorino. I don’t know what you need right now,” he told me as he sat down and settled me in his lap.
“Me either,” I uttered as I lifted my head just enough to meet his eyes. “I think I’ve had enough now, actually Rafe.”
“I won’t let anyone hurt you again, Cara. You just have to try and trust me.”
“I know. I think I believe you,” I whispered. “But I…I think it’s too late. I’m so tired.”
“Of course you are. You’ve been through so much, but once we get you home you can let me look after you. Terza and Gia too. You won’t be alone any more. You’ll have all of us to be there for you, whatever you need.”
He wasn’t listening to me, and I understood that.
He didn’t know what had happened to me before the last few days.
He didn’t know that I was already fighting so hard to just get through every day of the nightmarish life I lived, and nor did he know the horror of the fears, memories, and lasting scars of my past. He didn’t know I had been hit, hurt, abused, starved, manipulated, and so, so much more in my childhood.
He just saw what had happened that week and assured himself I would get better – that I’d get over it all.
While he’d spent the last eleven years searching for me, I’d been fighting a constant and never relenting war that I had just lost, for the last time.
“A bath,” I said instead. “I think a bath w-would be good first.”
“I think we can handle that between us,” he told me with a forced smile. I nodded and clung to him as he stood and carried me through to the en-suite I had used earlier. There was a large claw-foot tub in the corner, which fit in perfectly with the lavish theme the small room had going on.
Rafe set me down on top of the closed toilet as he set the taps running and threw in some of the complimentary body wash to make bubbles.
“You used to love a bubble bath when you were little. I could never get you to get out, not even when your fingers went all wrinkly and the water was too cool to sit in any longer,” he told me.
“I seem to remember bribery worked quite well,” I reminded him tiredly.
“Two squares of chocolate and I was anyone’s.
” I slumped sideways and leaned my head against the cold tiles.
I knew I should be falling apart, but I didn’t have it in me.
I was so tired and drained. Rafe studied me, then came closer and crouched before me, placing his hands on my blanket covered knees.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Cara. I don’t even know how many times I’ve failed you in your life. It’s little wonder you don’t trust me,” he told me.
“You’re a good brother, Rafe. You always were,” I told him as I placed my hand over his. “None of this is your fault, nor is what happens next. Mum took me from you. You tried to f-find me. You tried to save me. That means more than you can know.”
“I want the chance to be a good brother again, sweetheart. Please just give me a chance,” he pleaded.
“Everything will be okay,” I told him, not able to give him the answer he both needed and wanted. I pressed my hand to the side of his face and used my thumb to wipe away a tear that was running down his cheek. “Everything’s as it should be now, okay?”
“It will be, when we get home. I’ll make sure of it,” he told me, and I just nodded.
“Maybe you could find me some clothes and get some food while I have a soak?” I suggested.
“Yeah.” He swiped at his eyes and forced an emotional smile. “I’ll do that. You need to try and eat. I’ll see if we can bring that doctor back to take care of you too.”
“I’m okay, Rafe. Everything’s gonna be better now,” I assured him.
“It is,” he nodded. “I promise it is.” I watched as he got to his feet and backed towards the door, as if he didn’t dare leave me. “I’ll be close by so just call out if you need me, okay Gioia?”