Chapter 24 - Cecilia
CECILIA
Queen of absolutely fucking nada.
I paced the cell like a neurotic animal caged in a zoo enclosure, looking for a way out but knowing damn well I was doomed. They’d be gone all night.
All of them.
Something about that just made me feel uneasy, insecure.
It was crazy, but at least here, with them, I was protected.
Sure, I was living in a prison cell with someone who didn’t even speak, and maybe I was too damn stubborn to take the easy way out sometimes.
But Ronan Zerkos didn’t own me, and if it took sleeping down here to prove it, I would do it again and again.
He thought he had the right to control everything I did, everyone I…
I bit my lip at the thought of Mateo’s hands on me this morning, the feeling of his hard erection pressed up against my hand and how quickly he made me come undone with just his fingers.
I closed my eyes as I remembered the feeling of Ronan inside me, wildly pounding into me with so much passion I thought I would burn from his touch alone.
He took everything I dished out and begged for more and it was the epitome of everything we stood for.
Constant whiplash.
A teeter-totter of love, and hatred that never touched the ground to let us off.
We were destined in the stars, no matter what my papá said.
I had a taste of his blood and I wanted more. I wanted to bathe in it and baptize myself until I became new. I wanted him to suffer for my sins the way I’d been suffering for protecting him all those years ago. How dare he think that this was about some guns, some money? Puta madre.
Men could be so fucking stupid.
“ARGH!” I screamed, throwing my plastic cup of water against the wall, causing Chiyo to jump off her bed in surprise.
“Sorry,” I said, sitting down on the concrete floor.
It was cold enough that I could feel it through the layers of the gray sweats I had been accustomed to wearing the last couple of months. The lack of underwear didn’t help my frozen-ass situation, but I preferred it to the idea of those three jackasses picking out my underwear again.
“So, do you not speak English then, or are you actually the mastermind I’ve pegged you for?” I asked her as I realized this was the first time we’d been alone together.
Oksana was still on the fifth floor as far as I knew, and I had a feeling they wouldn’t be letting her out until one of the guys got back. Chiyo looked at me and just shook her head. I pressed my lips into a thin line and narrowed my eyes at her.
I wasn’t fully convinced, there was no way.
Right?
Where did he get these women from?
The day drew out longer than any day I’d ever spent in my life.
Maybe it was the fact that it was the first time none of them had come down here.
Had I really become so attached to their presence?
I could literally hear the seconds ticking on a clock hanging on a nearby wall and it was slowly making me more irritated.
My rage was bubbling up inside me, roaring to come out and I didn’t have anyone to direct it to except the poor badly bleached blonde huddled into the corner staring at me like I was neurotic. Maybe I was.
The lack of any stimulation was what drove me insane.
At least when they were putting me in the box, or physically torturing me, my mind could work a way to pull me out of the present.
Moments like this, where it was just fucking boredom though, that was what actually made me feel fucking psychotic.
I tried to shake the crawling feeling under my skin as anxiety cocooned around me like a prickly wool blanket again.
I knew the cameras were on and I couldn’t let them see how much I was struggling.
If they knew this was a bigger punishment than anything else they’d done to me before, I would be fucked with a capital F.
I heard Fletcher whistling the little theme from Kill Bill like he always did and jumped back into my bed before he came into view.
I laid on my side and pretended to be asleep, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with one of the assholes' grunts.
I heard the jangling of the keys and within a few seconds, the bars were slamming shut and ringing out through the empty concrete floors.
Fletcher walked through the room without even glancing at me, his red waves falling in his eyes as he carelessly dropped a plate with a cold sandwich at the foot of my bed.
I kept my eyes closed as he made his way to Chiyo.
He placed her plate at the side of her bed and sat down, dipping the mattress with his weight.
With a gentleness I had never seen from him before, he carefully tucked a lock of her bleached blonde hair behind her ear, and whispered, “Perfection.”
She lowered her head with a smile, there was a shyness to her that reminded me of myself. Just a kid, with a stomach full of butterflies over a blonde boy who cared too much. These days it didn’t seem like he cared at all, and I wasn’t even sure I knew him anymore.
It felt like I was intruding on an extremely private moment between them, but I couldn’t stop watching and I had no plans to look away.
I was bored as hell and it was so sweet to watch something so innocent unfold right in front of me.
His hand draped over hers as he brought her fingers to his lips and softly kissed each one.
They sat in silence, the barrier of language differences making it impossible for them to communicate but at the same time proving it was transcendent. There was something there, something so tangible and real that broke all laws of common sense.
There was love there.
And it made me fucking sick to witness it.
I was jealous.
Not of her or of him, but of the fact that they had found love together while here I was running from it in every corner.
He picked up the sandwich and brought it to her lips, she smiled at him with her hands folded in her lap as he fed her each bite, giving her time to chew before lifting it back up to her mouth again.
He continued feeding her this way until the entire sandwich was gone, and every so often he would pick up her glass of water and give her a drink to swallow the dry sandwich down with.
Once she finished the entire thing, he put the plate on the floor and climbed into the bed with her, wrapping his arms around her as he took the position of the big spoon.
Imust have fallen asleep watching the show because when I opened my eyes, Fletcher was already gone from the kennels, and Chiyo was fast asleep on the other side of the cage.
I didn’t even know what time it was, but I was itching to get out of here and hoping the guys would be home soon.
At least when they were around, I had something to focus all of my anger into.
It was easier to tell myself that, than to admit the truth.
That I felt something.
I heard a loud crash far off and the sound of multiple guys yelling through walkie-talkies in another room coming through their radio feeds.
The ever-familiar sound of guns firing off in the distance jarred me into the present moment.
I rushed over to Chiyo. I’d learned to stay calm through these moments with practice.
Being able to handle complete chaos had become my own personal superpower.
I heard shouting from a distance, and my brain ran a million miles an hour when I couldn’t discern the words from the two languages in my brain.
I shook her awake and before she could yell from surprise, I clamped my hand over her mouth and pressed my fingers to my lips in signal.
She nodded her head in understanding, so I let go, and grabbed her and pointed under the bed.
“Get in, ok?” I asked her, hopeful that maybe she comprehended the message I was trying to send.
Her eyes were full of fear and darting towards the kennel door. Guns were going off like crazy and getting louder and louder and I knew we were running out of time because there was absolutely nowhere to hide.
“Don’t say a fucking word.” I told her again trying to get the point across as I gave her a pleading look pressing my index finger to my lips again as she laid on the ground under the bed.
I grabbed the blanket on her bed and draped it over the edges so that it fell to the floor, covering the gap and hiding her from plain sight.
But we couldn’t both hide, not for both of us to make it.
An empty cage would get searched, but maybe if I was in the open, she had a chance.
If I could give her that chance, then it didn’t matter what would happen to me.
The reaper had finally come for me and probably the only thing that would save my soul from damnation was maybe this one act of humanity I could provide this innocent girl.
I couldn’t allow Ignacio to take her as well.
I accepted my fate and sat on the bed patiently until the guns got so loud it was obnoxious, borderline painful. Fletcher appeared and my heart leaped with a relief that was just as quickly doused by a wave of fear as a gun came into view, pressed to the back of his head.
The gunman stayed silent, he was a tank of a guy and towered over Fletcher with a face that resembled a bulldog.
There was an automatic rifle strapped to his back on top of the pistol he held in his hands, finger boldly on the trigger.
He grunted and pushed Fletcher with one hand, forcing him to stumble forward into the kennel door.
He looked wrecked, his face purple and already swelling from some sort of cruel beating.
The way he clutched his side let me know he already received a courtesy bullet.
His eyes widened in alarm, and I could see he was frantically searching the room for Chiyo as he fumbled with the keys.
His blue eyes found mine and I did the slightest of tilts with my head in the direction of the empty bed.
His shoulders dropped with a sigh of relief. Looking at the burly guy behind him, I could see the defeat as it washed through him before he underhand tossed the keys inside of the kennel towards my bed. He sealed his fate, and I couldn’t hide my shock with the move.
“If I let her out, my boss will kill me. You might as well do it, because I won’t betray him.” Fletcher said looking back at the kennel hopelessly, and before I had a chance to even appreciate his sacrifice the bulldog’s laughter rang out, followed by a single gunshot.
“NO!” I screamed out from shock but also to silence some of Chiyo’s whimpering from underneath the bed.
Fletcher’s body fell to the ground with a sickening thud, and the giant man kicked his body to the side as he stood in front of the cage’s door.
He pointed his gun at me with one hand and held up five fingers with the other.
He started folding one finger down at a time.
Before he got to three, I stood and grabbed the keys, dropping them once before I got to the door.
With shaking hands, I tried to focus on the one person I might be able to save tonight from my uncle’s brutality.
I remembered the door locked without the keys and if I could do this well, I could keep Chiyo alive a little longer.
I turned the key in the lock and pulled it out quickly, throwing it back into the room as I pushed my way through the cage door and threw my knee into the bulldog’s balls.
He barely grunted in pain, but it was just the second I needed to close the door behind me, hearing the lock as I tried to faked a futile attempt to run for it.
Before I could take three steps, he was yanking me by the hair.
I felt the intense burning of my hair being pulled, forcing a scream from my throat that turned into a yelp as he slammed me against the wall.
The force of the impact against my back knocked the breath out of me. Panic and the pain from colliding against the wall had me stuttering my breathing as I struggled with tiny sips of inhales.
I was fighting to take a single full breath when he knelt down in front of me and knocked the gun against the side of my head, darkening my vision. His pale blue eyes were the last thing I saw before I succumbed to the dreadful pitch black nothing.