CHAPTER SEVEN
RAINA
I sit as still as possible, but I hear the feet come closer. With every step, I tremble more, hitting my stash of body wash beside me. Instead of being perfectly quiet, the bottle falling over gives me away. The curtain is wrenched back, and my eyes pop open and travel up a large body. He stares at me with amusement.
“Boo,” he says with a wicked grin.
He motions with his finger.
“Come out here.”
I shake my head.
“If you are here to kill me, just get it done with.”
With a smirk, he says, “Your mother and father are in the bedroom, also waiting to die. I want you all together.”
Immediately, I get out of my spot, and hit my head while standing up, but ignore it.
“Don’t hurt them. Kill me and let them be.”
He rubs the side of his clean shaven face with the barrel of his gun.
“You’d die for him? A rapist? A baby killer?”
Shaking my head, I admit the truth.
“No, but for my mother, I would.”
He takes my hair between his fingers, and stares at me like he’s fascinated.
“Hair as red as fire. Eyes as green as emeralds. You will look stunning in my cage.”
“Your what?” I gasp.
“My cage,” he says, confirming that I did indeed hear him correctly.
I jerk out of his hold.
“I don’t think so. You can kill me. I’m not going to be your fucking pet.”
He chuckles obnoxiously.
“Pretty little Firecracker. You will be my fucking pet, and anything else I want you to be.”
The way he growls ‘fucking’ makes my skin crawl. And I know, for a fact, I’d rather be dead than to be his anything.
I fold my arms across my chest, letting him know I’m not going along with whatever his sick plan is.
“Anything I do is my choice. You can kill me, but you can’t force me to do anything I don’t want to.”
He grins in response.
“I’m all about choice, Firecracker. I’m going to give you the chance to choose which of your parents lives.”
I nearly collapse with relief, but manage to contain it.
“My mother. Let her live. I don’t care what you do with my father, but please don’t hurt her.”
He takes my hand, and pulls me out of the bathroom to the bedroom, where my mother and father kneel, with two other large men standing over them.
The scary man holds his gun up, and places it in my hand, as I stare at him with confusion.
“You kill either your mother or father. You decide which one of them lives.”
“What?” I squeak.
“You heard me, Firecracker.”
One of the men glares at him.
“What are you doing, Kage?”
“Keeping her. And I suppose, if she chooses, her mother.”
So his name is Cage, and he wants to keep me in a cage. That can’t be a coincidence.
He growls in my ear.
“Choose, Firecracker, before I make the choice for you. I promise you won’t like what I decide for you.”
Holding the weapon in both of my hands, I slowly lift it in the direction of my father. I don’t want to kill him, because I don’t want to take anyone’s life, but if it’s between him and my mother, the choice is obvious.
The other two men step out of the way, as my father stares at me, with an expression that asks me to spare his life, as if I could. I don’t really have a choice.
“What makes you think I won’t turn and kill you instead?”
The man they call Cage chuckles softly.
“You’d be dead before you pulled the trigger, and then your mother would die a painful death.”
Raising the gun, I aim at my father’s forehead, hoping to make this quick. My dominant hand trembles slightly, but I steady myself.
I pull the trigger once, and fall backwards because the kickback is strong. I’m not even sure which is louder, the sound of the gun, or my mother’s deafening screams. She’ll never forgive me for this.
I sit on the floor with the gun in front of me, and stare at my mother on her knees, hands on her face, as she sobs ‘Gio’ repeatedly. Every time she cries his name, it feels like a knife in my chest. Not for him, but for her. My mother has been a mafia wife since she was eighteen, and essentially sold to him. She doesn’t know a world outside of him. He may not have loved her, but I think she loved him. And not only did I kill him, but I did it in front of her.
Reaching down, Cage takes the gun and tucks it into a holster under his jacket, before pulling me to my feet.
“We have to go. Our men will take your mother to my house. If you behave, you’ll see her later.”
“What?” I ask, as two men come in and take my sobbing mother out of the room.
“No. I did what you wanted. Don’t let them hurt her.”
He rolls his eyes at me like I’m an idiot.
“Nobody is going to hurt her. She’ll be fed, clothed, and will have everything she needs. I guarantee you, she’ll be treated far better than your father treated Bella.”
Bella, the blonde girl.
“Is she okay?”
He turns to me and narrows his gaze.
“You knew she was here, what they were doing, and you did nothing.”
The way he says it is like I’m a bitch who didn’t care, but does he think I had a choice?
“What was I supposed to do? Save her? Do you know what would have happened, Cage? I would’ve been killed, and then they would have continued doing what they wanted to her.”
He tightens his hold on my wrist, and pulls me out of the room and down the stairs.
“We have to get to the hospital. If she doesn’t live, my brother will go on a murderous spree no one in this state is prepared for.”
I’m taken to a Range Rover, and he points to the back door.
“Get in.”
I stare at him in disbelief, as the other men take off in two different SUVs. If it’s just us going in this one, I don’t understand why I have to sit in the back.
“I’m not getting in the back.”