Page 13 of In My Blood
“Rafe, we have to listen to him. We’re not there. He is,” I spoke up, but quietly. I didn’t want the other guys hearing me and thinking I was undermining our boss.
“You’ll listen to her closely? If she’s in distress I want something done to calm her. She’s suffered enough,” Rafe ground out, his jaw tense and his face set in pain and anger.
“I will. If it helps, my wife lived with PTSD for years after I met her. I know what signs to look out for. I’ll take care of her as much as I can while also maintaining a distance,” Kyle added. I looked to Rafe, and he simply nodded once, as though that was all the strength he had left to give.
“We appreciate you being there. Just keep her safe and watch your backs. We have no idea who did this right now,” I told Kyle.
“I have the place covered. I brought a six man team with me. We’ll keep her safe.”
“Send us hourly updates to this number, and call immediately if anything changes,” Rafe added.
“Done.” With that single word Kyle ended the call and left Rafe and I just staring at each other in silence.
“I need to know who did this, Dario. I need to make sure they can never hurt my family again,” he told me after a while.
“I’ll start work on an investigation as soon as we have Cara safe. I might need to stay in Chicago for a while though.”
“Whatever it takes. I don’t want whoever did that coming after Cara or anyone else. I don’t care if it links back to our business, or something my mother got mixed up in – I just want those fuckers gone.”
“Agreed,” I nodded. “Whatever it takes.”
CHAPTER 4
CARA
I lost all track of time as I huddled in the bottom corner of my Mum’s closet, which was built into the wall of her room.Was it still her room, if she were dead?I questioned. She wouldn’t need the tiny closet she complained about when we first moved in any longer, anyway. I knew that.Should I move her into her room?She wouldn’t want to be left out in the other room with all of those strange men, would she? But how could I move her when she was...no! Don’t think about that!
The men were still outside the door of the bedroom. I could still hear their heavy footsteps as they moved around the small room on the other side of the wall I cowered against.Should I trust them? Rafe sent them. But I still didn’t know if I should trust Rafe either. He told me he loved me and that he’d never stopped searching for me. He said Marcello – my once father – was dead and had been for years, but was any of it true? My mother’s screeched words rattled through my exhausted and frazzled mind like a tape stuck on an endless loop – her telling me that Rafe was as vile as Marcello. Her screaming that he would never come for me because he never loved me. Her raging that Rafe would kill me if he ever got his hands on me – because I wasn’t even his real sister and he despised me. Her telling me all my family would ever see me as was an abomination theywould be ashamed of and embarrassed to have in the family. Her cursing my very existence and telling me no one would ever love a mistake like me.
More tears came as I folded ever tighter into myself, the tiny ball I was, now hidden under a heavy sweater that had dropped down from the coat hanger above me and given me even more shelter that I desperately needed. My legs ached and my head spun. Trying to think straight felt impossible. My brain felt as if it were filled with a thick fog I couldn’t push through, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to anyway. Even though I had moved away from the living room, I could still see my mother’s cold, cloudy eyes just staring at me. The smell of her blood still surrounded me and I could feel it now dried on my hands, and up my legs, adhering my leggings to my skin and pulling with every movement, reminding me of the scene in just the room beside me.
Had I done this? Was it my fault? My Mum told me it wasn’t safe. She told me people were watching us and that I would get us both killed if I left the apartment, but I had just assumed it was more of her paranoia – those words were hardly new after all. I never thought she was right. I never worried when I left our apartment each morning, my only concern to earn enough money to medicate her and keep us housed and fed.
I medicated her! Had she even been aware of what happened when someone broke into our place to kill her, and cut up her body like they had? Had she been able to fight back? It was so unlikely with how thin she had been from the drugs and alcohol I gave her, all just to make my life easier! It was my fault. I knew that. I hadn’t loved my Mum, and she hadn’t loved me. That had been obvious my whole life, but especially in the last decade orso. Still she had deserved more than the end she came to, and a daughter who brought that death right to our doorstep.
I started to sob again as it all just became too much, the thoughts rushing and racing through my mind in a wild spiral that I couldn’t seem to keep hold of. I was so cold and sore, and I couldn’t stop shivering. Occasionally my panic completely overtook me and I’d start to gasp breathlessly, until I found a way to calm it down, or exhaustion won out and I passed out for a few moments – but that never lasted long.
Closing my eyes was a sure fire way to go back to the hell of what awaited in the room next door. That stranger – Kyle – he was close to the outside of the bedroom door, and when my sobs got too loud, or my fear too great to hold in the panic, he would talk to me through the door. He had a kind voice and he was soothing in a way, but I didn’t know him and I definitely didn’t trust him. I wasn’t sure I trusted a single person in the world right at that moment, and that was terrifying.
At some point Kyle came into the room. He said something about water, but as soon as I knew he was there, my panic came in a tsunami style wave and before I knew it I was screaming between my desperate fight to breathe, and slamming myself backwards in an effort to hide deeper in the closet, hitting the wall so forcefully, that I definitely hurt myself. Part of me knew something inside of me had snapped. This wasn’t rational behaviour, and I wasn’t the kind of girl who cowered in fear, but after seeing my mother like that….I broke. Something inside of me snapped and it had left me feeling so alone, afraid, and weak….so, so weak and exhausted. I had been fighting for so many years just to survive and for what? That? That moment where my past came back to destroy everything? If that was my fate then why the hell had I even tried to fight and hold on?
“Cara? Did you drink some water for me?” Kyle asked after knocking lightly on the bedroom door. He had told me earlier that he’d left the water outside the closet, but I hadn’t moved a muscle since then. I don’t think I could have if I tried. It was like my body was just frozen again. “You need to try and drink something. You’re dehydrated.”
“I’m okay,” I whispered to myself, even though I knew I wasn’t. My head just felt so fuzzy and heavy.
I lay it back against the wall and closed my eyes, instantly tearing them open again when all I saw was my Mum’s head staring at me with so much blame. She knew it was all my fault.
“I’m s-sorry,” I whimpered brokenly, but still she was there in my head, staring at me.
“Your brother will be here pretty soon, honey. Just hold on a little longer, okay? And please try to drink some water,” Kyle told me.
My brother. That was a lie, wasn’t it?He was my half-brother, and my mother had delighted in making sure I knew that. Gia was his sister, but I wasn’t – not really. That’s why he sent me away but kept Gia. That’s what my Mum told me and that’s what I had come to believe.
Could I trust him? Did I want to?The answer to the second question was easy though. Of course I wanted to trust him. I wanted him to love me the way he used to when I was a kid. I wanted him to hold me and make me feel safe the way he always used to before my world imploded. I wanted my big brother back more than anything else in the world, but I was still unclear on whether I could actually trust him.
If my Mum hadn’t been just paranoid about people watching us, was she also right about Rafe? Would he hurt me when he got his hands on me? Did I really care if he did though? If Rafe truly did hate me like my Mum said he would, then what was I living for anyway? My life wasn’t worth fighting for. It was miserable, endless, and terrifying. I had endured it to keep myself and my Mum alive, but she was gone now.What was I fighting to survive for?
My life spiralled through my mind like some sick home movie – the terror of living rough. The fear of sleeping next to so many unknown, and sometimes unsafe people in shelters. Hunger. The nightmare of living with men who hit me, or abused me. The pieces of me each of them stole – torn away from me in so many painful and traumatising ways. The strip club. So many unwanted hands and crude advances. The factory, and the monotonous days that never ended, for a wage that barely covered the meagre diet we ate, let alone rent, bills, and Mum’s pills. The constant threat I faced as not just a woman alone, but as a tiny, vulnerable looking woman, who wasn’t even in the country legally. I couldn’t even rely on the police to protect me. My Mum. The struggle and fight, every single day. The drugs. Justin.
