CHAPTER 10
CARA
“Sshh!” I hissed urgently, turning to glare at Gia. She was getting way too excited because she was winning the game of Ludo that we were playing, and she’d let out a squeal that had my heart pounding really hard as I looked to the door with panic. “Rafe said we have to stay quiet!” I reminded her.
“Did she hear me?” Gia asked, her smile gone and her voice wobbling as tears filled her eyes.
“I don’t think so, but just stay as quiet as you can until we’re sure,” I whispered. I turned over from where we both sat on the carpet in the middle of our room, and crawled slowly and cautiously over to the door, pressing my ear to it so I could hear any movement out in the hall.
“I think it’s okay,” I sighed, my voice hushed, my heart beating too hard from fear. I turned to head back to Gia.
Tears were running down her little cheeks, and she was curled up, her legs pressed to her chest and hugged by her arms.
“I want Raffy,” she whimpered when I got close enough to wrap my arms around her.
“He’ll be here soon. He promised he wouldn’t be long,” I tried to soothe her, but I was scared too.
Louise had gone home for the night, as she always did when Rafe got back from work to stay with us for the night.
We knew we were safe when Raffy was with us.
But that night, as we settled in our room with him, to play games like we always did after dinner, there had been a knock at the door.
I hadn’t seen him, but I heard his voice.
Enzo. He told Rafe that Dad wanted to see him, right away.
I knew Rafe was scared to leave us alone, but no one said no to Enzo. He was almost as scary as our Dad.
So after making us promise to be good and stay as quiet as we could, he had kissed us both, then left the room, promising to be as quick as he could.
I didn’t know where he went, but it felt like he had been gone a long time, and without him, me and Gia were all alone.
If our Mum woke up, or worse, we woke her up, she’d come looking for us and get really mad.
She’d slapped us before, and last time I accidentally dropped a glass of milk in the hall, she came out and pushed me over while she screamed at me.
I got cut pretty bad on the glass and it had made Rafe so mad too, but not at me.
He told us that he was never mad with me or Gia.
Our Dad never came to our room to see us, so we wouldn’t see him at least. We only had to deal with him getting annoyed and angry with us at meal times, most of the time.
“Why doesn’t Mummy love us?” Gia whispered from where she was still curled up and shaking a bit, where I cuddled her.
“She doesn’t hate us. Rafe says she’s poorly. That’s why she needs to sleep so much, and why she gets cross when we wake her up. You know how grumpy you get when you don’t feel well, don’t you?”
“I suppose,” she shrugged. “When do you think she’ll feel better?”
“I don’t know. Soon I hope,” I shrugged.
The truth was that I was eight now. Old enough to question Rafe’s excuse for our Mum. How could anyone be poorly for so long? And even if she was ill, couldn’t she just try to be nice to us sometimes? Maybe she did hate us. It felt like she did.
“For now I can give pretty good cuddles, can’t I?” I asked her.
“Not as good as Raffy’s,” she teased as she lifted her face and grinned at me. Her eyes were all red and there were still tears on her cheeks, but she looked better now.
“No way! I give the best hugs!” I whispered with the best grumpy face I could fake, trying to hide my smile.
“You give the best sister hugs,” she told me with an even bigger smile, and I pulled her closer, holding her tighter.
“So do you,” I agreed. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling sure Rafe would be home soon, and he’d make everything better for both of us.
I jolted violently as two loud pops rent the air, opening my eyes only to find Gia before me, in that warehouse, blood spreading across her chest all over again, only this time it wasn’t sixteen year old Gia; it was five year old Gia.
She was ripped straight from my arms and was now crumbling to the ground before me, her eyes finding mine, the life flickering from them, but not the hatred she died feeling for me.
“Gia!” I gasped as I shot awake and sat up, reaching for her, even though she was already gone.
Tears were streaming down my face, my eyes stinging as I looked around me frantically, trying to orient myself. My room, I told myself. I was in my room.
Sun light was streaming in around the blinds and the spot beside me where Dio had been laid when I fell asleep, was empty. I was sure he’d already gone to begin his usual morning routine, starting in the gym.
“Gia,” I whimpered, then the sobs escaped and I just let it come, knowing I was alone.
My sister died hating me. Our relationship ever since I came back had been painful and angry, but I loved her throughout.
I had loved her since the day Rafe lowered her into my arms just after she was born, and through all of the time we were apart.
She was the main reason I went back to the UK, because I missed her so much.
I just wanted the bond we had once shared as children, back.
God, I’d fucked that up so epically though. I should have known as soon as Gia started getting angry with me, that our bitch of a mother had a hand in it. I should have been smarter and done something to get through to my sister. I should have saved her!
I’d tried, I told myself, but there was so much doubt in my head about that.
I had finally lost my patience with Gia when she told those armed men to point guns at Cal and Arran.
I had been able to cope with her hating me to that point, even though it killed me inside, but when she put the lives of two good men at risk to get what she wanted – to see me hurt in such a vile and hateful way – it made me hate her too right then.
And maybe, I kept on thinking, maybe that hatred stopped me from trying hard enough to make her close her mouth and save her own life.
I should have tried harder to make her believe how dangerous the men she was dealing with, were.
She didn’t understand. How could she? She was just a kid.
This was the battle I had been fighting internally, over and over again, for weeks, ever since we lost her. No matter which way my thoughts ran, I aways came to the same conclusion – Gia’s death was on me. Rafe was grieving the last real relative he had because of me.
I didn’t think it was possible to hate myself any more than I did after what those men did to me, but that knowledge did it.
Not only did I feel weak, dirty, tainted, and so fucking broken, but I also felt guilt, to the point I was sure I was unworthy of anyone’s love, especially my brother, and the men who were fighting a losing battle trying to hold me together.
I had been hiding it as much as I could though.
I wanted my brother to believe I was doing better.
I didn’t want him worrying about me any more than he already did, because I wasn’t damn well worth it!
I wanted Cal, Arran, and Dio to stop looking at me like I was a bomb that may go off at any moment.
I wanted to look like I was getting stronger even if it was quite the opposite in reality.
So I cried when I was alone, and I hid in the bathroom, or my room when things got too much for me to hold back. I worked to keep busy doing the most mundane and insane tasks in the house, just to try and distract myself from falling apart.
And I took those pills. I hated myself for doing it.
I’d never felt more like my mother than when I scavenged through the trash can in my bathroom to retrieve them a week ago, and now I was turning into her, popping those unknown white pills in a desperate search for some calm in the storm inside my head.
It felt like failure, and yet I didn’t have the strength to care much about that.
They didn’t make me feel or look out of it the way my Mum used to.
They didn’t give me a high, or make me hallucinate.
They just seemed to numb me. Blur the edges enough for me to not get trapped in my mind.
They gave me a hazy feeling that made it easier to plaster on smiles and pretend everything was fine.
And I was convinced that pills that did only those simple things, could not be addictive like the drugs my Mum took, so I was safe to take them. I needed them.
At that point, they were the only thing that helped in the way that I needed them to.
Maybe if Cal, Arran, or Dio could carry me around all day and let me feel their skin against mine, grounding me to them and the present, I could cope without the pills, but that wasn’t going to happen.
The guys were crazy enough to give me that, but I wasn’t broken enough to ask for it – or at least I didn’t want them to know I was.
I wanted to find my strength, even if it was as fragile as a house of cards.
I wanted to project the person I used to be, and the pills were helping me build up to that again.
Only they were running out. I had enough left for a day or two, then I’d have to go back to reality with no comforting numbness, no blurred edges.
And that terrified me. I didn’t want to fall apart again, like I had before.
I didn’t want to lose the ground I felt I was gaining then.
My hands shook as I reached over to my bedside cabinet and pulled out the almost empty bag, shaking two of the innocent little tablets into my hand.
I threw them back, swallowing them dry, tears still streaming down my cheeks as the fear and horror of my nightmare played over and over again in my head.
Gia laid on that cold concrete, blood staining the daisies all over her summer dress, her bright blonde hair in bunches and her innocent eyes locked on me, hating me, blaming me.