Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Seraphina
I’m pretty sure that there are cameras in the apartment we’re being kept in.
So we had to work fast. We knew that they would be coming in to get our family out of the apartment at some point.
So that was our window to get out. We did our best to say goodbye to our parents, Isla and Colby.
Then we went into the bathrooms and shifted.
I hated that I couldn’t stay with them, I wanted to hold each of them for as long as I could.
Oliver told me to use the pain I was feeling and turn it into anger towards the ones that did this.
He was right. I would mourn the loss of all of them once we were out of here. And we would get our revenge.
“We should be able to see each other from the bathrooms. We need to strike together, if we don’t, they might overpower us. Depending on how many they bring in,” Oliver says quietly to us.
“I hope all of them come in. I want to kill every fucking one of them,” I growl softly as I frown.
“We will get our revenge, Phee. I promise you that. Even if we have to come back here to do it,” Archer says as he hugs me.
“So the plan is we attack any of them that comes in. Follow the same path they use to take us to the milking rooms. I’ve seen a door leading to the loading dock that they leave open—” Oliver starts to say.
“Because they’re idiots,” Archer adds as Oliver and I nod.
“They are idiots. But I don’t know if they’ve realized that I saw the open door to the loading dock.
Don’t lose sight of each other. We don’t know what’s out there.
And I’m pretty sure they’ll try to shoot us.
So keep moving. I’m hoping there’s grass that can camouflage us. But if not, we’ll find a way to hide.”
“After we get out, we need to find clothes. Then, our next step is to get our money and IDs and get to Illinois.”
Our parents made sure everyone had a set of identification and money stored in a place no one knew about.
It was just in case anything ever happened.
They did this after we started hearing stories about the kidnapping ring in Illinois and in other places around the world.
I wish we had been able to leave sooner.
My parents were trying to do this the right way, by getting our visas in order before we left our home.
Because we didn’t know how long we would be there.
Now I wish they had just said fuck it and left.
The three bathrooms are close to each other, and we left the doors cracked open.
There was no way for us to know when they would come to take our family away.
I could see my brothers’ noses as we waited, sticking slightly out of the small crack of the door.
We finally heard the door open and voices, sounded like six different ones.
There’s three of us and each of us can take down two grown men easily, more if needed.
I hear the front door open and footsteps coming into the apartment. I look over to my brothers as we wait for them to come towards the bathrooms. It feels like forever before we finally hear voices.
“Where are the other three? Fuck. Did you morons give them the serum so they can’t shift?”
“That wasn’t my job,” I hear another say.
“That’s everyone’s fucking job, you asshole.”
“Whatever.”
They’re still bickering as I hear them taking their guns out.
After a few minutes, I hear steps as they come into the hallway.
I coil back and wait for them to open the door.
When my door opens, I attack without hesitation.
I only need to bite them once. So I bite each leg I see.
I see Archer’s tail as he leaves his bathroom and I follow him, keeping my body against the edge of the wall.
We all kind of match the color of the walls, so I know it’s a little harder to see us, even if you were paying attention.
We reach the loading dock doors and get outside.
The sunshine I feel energizes me. I haven’t felt it in so long, I’d almost forgotten how good it felt.
Suddenly I’m overwhelmed with sadness, my dad loved to bask in the sun.
He would roll around in it whether he was in his human or snake form.
It always made me laugh. I make another vow to make sure we kill whoever’s in charge of what happened to us.
I don’t know how long we’ve been moving, but I know we need to figure out where we can shift back.
We stop and huddle together for a bit. Staying low enough so that hopefully no one sees us.
After we rest, we start moving again. We come up on a house that has a clothesline with clothes flapping in the wind.
We inch closer and make sure there’s no one around.
We shift and grab some clothes off the line.
I commit the address of the house to memory so that I can send them some money later, for what we’ve taken.
We head straight to our hidden stash to grab our money and passports.
“I hate leaving them here. We can’t even make sure they’re taken care of,” I say as I start to sob.
Oliver and Archer hug me, I grab onto both of them as I cry.
“They all know how much we love them. I know that they understand why we couldn’t stay there. You know that dad and mom would’ve told us to leave. That we need to make sure we’re okay. And I promise you, we will get our revenge.”
I nod and wipe my face. We will get our revenge on the ones who did this to us. But first we need to get to Illinois. I pray that the families there will help us figure out who’s responsible and how we can avenge our family. I also hope that the ones we bit are dead. And I hope they died in agony.
Apollo
“I found some information that indicates there are more testing facilities. Like the one that Samantha was running here. I found some in Italy, Japan and Australia so far,” Sebastiano Mancini says as we’re all sitting in our weekly council meeting.
After we have our family meeting, we’ll head to town and have our public one tonight.
Every week, the Lake Renegade council has a meeting.
Anyone in the family is welcome to join in and we talk about anything that is going on with the families.
We’ve also opened it up to business owners in Lake Renegade.
Because of this, we hold the public part of the meeting at the hotel in town.
But we still have the family one at the Cimaruta MC clubhouse.
“Are all of them run by Samantha? Was she the head of the whole organization?” my baba asks.
“No. I don’t even think Samantha is the head of the operation that took us. I think she was just the head of the facility here.”
“Fuck. How did we miss all of this?” Ares asks.
“We were so focused on getting Sakura and her family out that I overlooked a lot of things. I’m sorry.”
“This isn’t your fault. I never even considered that there could be more to this whole thing,” my baba says.
“I never heard anything about other facilities. I thought ours was the only one,” Satoshi says to us.
“Not even the cleaners knew about the other places,” Hanako adds. She’s a cleaner herself, she’s been one for a long time.
“How are they able to stay under the radar? I mean, they’ve hidden from the cleaners.” I frown.
“The only way I can think of is that they kill all the shifters they take. And I think they take isolated shifters. Even the families, like ours, we weren’t part of a clan.
It was just the four of us. Because of that, I feel like we made it easier for them.
No one missed us when we were taken. Samantha only realized her mistake after she took us, I was a cleaner and they would miss me if I disappeared.
But she also knew that I wouldn’t stay quiet if she let us go.
So she used our babies to keep me in line.
I wish we hadn’t listened to her. But we held out hope that maybe she was lying and they really were alive,” Hanako explains.
“Are the cleaners considering letting Samantha out?” I ask.
“They’ll ever let her out. She’s definitely on the never-getting-out list.”
“Do we know if Samantha’s in touch with her kids?”
“They did come and see her a few times since they were released. The last time was a month ago.”
“Why are they allowed to see her?” Ares frowns.
“The cleaners don’t believe in cutting family ties. It’s because they still hope for rehabilitation.”
“But you said she’s on the never-getting-out list,” I remind her.
“She is. But they won’t deny her visitation. But it is recorded, voice, video and they’re not allowed to be alone. There’s always someone in the room with them. They’re also not allowed to touch each other.”
When I glance around at everyone’s faces, we all have a similar look.
I don’t understand why they give someone like Samantha any privileges.
She’s a psychopath that killed shifters just to fuck with their DNA.
And then she tried to kill my brother. Fuck her.
If it were up to me? She’d be dead. I don’t care that she’ll never be let out of the cleaner’s facility.
The fact that she’s talking to Matilda and Paul has me worried.
They did things because she told them to.
What’s to stop them from doing it again?