Page 91 of Sweet Poison

Montana

“I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself.”

I remained silent because now, more than ever before, I understood that Anya's well-being was in my hands. The best method might be to cooperate with them, but I kept my eyes shut and tried to recover my mental clarity so that I could seize any opportunity to escape that came by. For the moment complete submission was the only thing that was going to work in our favor.

They kept us around the dining table. I opened my eyes to look at Anya and I couldn’t believe it was only a short time ago we had sat at this very table with light hearts and peace. Now we were basically hostages to gruesome men. Our lives were on the line, and there were dead bodies in the house with us. It was incredibly terrifying, but this was not the time to indulge in my emotions, so I took a deep breath and focused. The men seemed especially angry because of their dead companions. I soon learned from their conversations that it was a man named Luca.

Because we were a clueless child and a troublesome female, they didn’t censor themselves as they spoke angrily to each other. I figured out from their conversations they must be Mafia or something and they wanted this man Luca to do something for them. As their conversation went on I suddenly realized that Luca was Cole!

Luca was Cole?

I turned to look at Anya in astonishment. If Luca was Cole, then Anya must be the girl they called Bianca.

“Bianca,” I whispered.

Immediately the child turned her head.

Yes, that was her name.

“Shut the fuck up,” one of the men snarled.

I looked away quickly.

Jesus! Everything was a lie. All of it. But finally, it all made sense. The designer shoes, the stupid beat-up car, his effortless sophistication, the high specification panic room that must have easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build.

Cole, or rather Luca, was running away from these people, but they wanted him back. They needed him back for some reason. He was valuable to them. They had gone to all this trouble to come looking for him in a tiny town like Bison Ridge. I remembered Cole, well Luca, telling me he was good with numbers. The way he instantly remembered my number, without even repeating it back to me, even though I had called it out only once in a crowded, noisy schoolyard.

One of the men made a sudden noise and my eyes swung over to him.

We were seated now, and not dead … yet.

But that was probably only because they were waiting for instructions.

Anya had been forced to record the voice note to her father, and they were no doubt going to use that to manipulate him. Maybe they planned to kill him after he gave them whatever they wanted from him, especially since he killed two of their guys. I was sure this was going to be the case, and so it dawned on me more than ever that keeping Anya safe and escaping could be the only thing that could save us all.

I looked at the little girl, and she lowered her head. She was surprisingly calm, and I wondered if it was because of her history with her dad, which I could see could have been a cakewalk. She was used to dangerous situations like this, or was it because she couldn’t process the extent of the danger we were in? Regardless, I gazed at her until she finally noticed I was looking at her, and then when she lifted her head, I managed to work up an encouraging smile for her.

She seemed confused by it, but she returned a tremulous smile. From the pain I could feel on the bruises on my face, I imagined that there was no way I could appear comforting to her.

"At least I don't have a gun pointed to my head any m-" I whispered. But before I had even finished my sentence another blow was struck across my face.

Anya gasped and began to cry.

“I said, shut the fuck up,” a man’s voice bellowed close to my ear.

"Do we need her?" one of the other men asked. "Isn't it just the kid?"

"Boss said we should keep both until he gives us the signal."

My blood turned to ice at their words. I was left in wonder at how casually they talked about my death right before me and right in front of Anya. She cried even harder because she heard every word. I tried to calm her down.

"I'm fine, sweetheart," I mouthed, terrified that the men would attack me again.

"Shut up," one of them shouted to Anya, but she couldn’t. She cried even harder from terror.

One of the men started to approach her then, and I yelled. "Don't touch her. She'll be fine. She'll stop."

He ignored me, and then he hit her across the cheek. It wasn’t too hard, but the sting was enough to make her go crazy.

---