Page 9 of In My Blood
“Yeah?” Rafe answered impatiently, he set the phone down and set it on speaker, then rose to his feet and moved behind to where the dry bar was.
“Mr. De Santis. I’m sorry to bother you sir, but someone has called the office looking for you,” Graham, one of our security guards explained. I knew his voice because he had a thick Yorkshire accent that was tough to mix up with any other person we employed.
“Who is it? It’s after hours,” Rafe said. He poured heavy measures of whiskey into two tumblers and handed me one, sitting back down with the other in his hand.
“I know, and again I apologise sir, but it’s just…I thought…”
“Spit it out, Graham,” Rafe snapped. His temper was shorter than usual and I knew he was pissed the Russians thought they could fuck us over. I was too, and I would be first in line to handle it if those pricks needed to be taught a lesson in manners.
“She said she’s your sister, sir. She was upset and it’s hard to understand her, but I’m sure she said she’s your sister.”
“You mean Gia?” Rafe clarified, but he had set his glass down and was leaning forward closer to the phone, as was I. Everyone in the building knew Gia. She’d practically grown up there, and if she had been calling, Graham would have known her voice, not that she’d call the office. She’d just call Rafe, or me if she couldn’t get through to him.
“No. Not Gia. I….I didn’t recognise the voice,” Graham replied.
Rafe and I shared a look of astonishment before we both shouted at the same time, “Put her through!”
CARA
I don’t know how long I sat there. I knew I had to move, and still I couldn’t. The night went on forever, and still I sat frozen, shaking and gasping to breathe through my panic. By the time morning came again I was too exhausted to gasp for breath and my heart had slowed somewhat, but still I was frozen. The blood on the floor around me had started to dry and my leggings felt crusty with the blood that had soaked into them and dried there.
Whoever had done that to my Mum, had to have been long gone, because no one came out to attack and mutilate me in the same way. The apartment around me stayed silent except for my own breathing and the street noise coming from outside the windows. At some point in the early morning my exhaustion won out and I dropped off to sleep, waking soon after with a panicked start, only to find my mother’s head still sat there opposite me, staring at me. Her eyes had clouded over and her skin was a shade of grey I would never ever forget. The lake of blood remained but it was cold, the smell surrounding me, of blood mixed with something putrid, even stronger now.
The sound of the door of the apartment across the hall being slammed closed way too hard, jolted me back to some form of reality. I started to question why the apartment next to us, and the one across the hall hadn’t heard what went on in my apartment the day before. Did they hear and just not care? Why didn’t they call the police?
Finally I forced my gaze away from my mother’s dead face and looked down at myself. My hands were covered in blood, because they had been sat at my sides in the pool of blood that had sat there with me all night. I was so cold my body was shaking against the hard floor and I ached in a way I had never known before.
I forced myself to stand and instantly dropped down to the sofa, my legs too stiff and numb to hold me up.
My eyes automatically looked around me between so many pieces of my mother. I hadn’t loved her. Not for a long time. I wasn’t sure if I ever had to be honest. She’d never been a mother to me, and she delighted in making sure I knew that I meant nothing to her. But she was still a person. She had never done anything in her life to deserve the death she got.
Anger surged through me and I found myself bunching my bloodied hands into fists. My family had done this. Would they return to kill me too, once they realised I was there? Did they leave because they didn’t know I lived there? There was only one bedroom. after all, and it wasn’t like we had photos of my Mum and me smiling together all around. There wasn’t a trace of me in that place except for one small basket of clothes, and a plastic bag with some toiletries all hidden in the cabinet under the window which looked untouched. A part of me wished they had just waited for me. Maybe it would be easier if they’d just killedme the day before. My fight would be over and I wouldn’t have to fear anyone coming after me anymore.
I’m not sure what I was thinking when I eventually pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the internet browser I rarely used. Maybe I wanted to bait them so they would come and find me, and end my misery once and for all. I was angry, I know that, and telling them I wasn’t afraid of them was definitely on my mind, but more than anything, as I searched for my brother’s name on the internet for the first time ever, I think I just wanted a chance to ask him why he never came for me. I needed to know if he was the reason our mother was before me, massacred. I needed to know why he stopped caring about me, because he was the only person in my whole fucked up life who ever had, and I missed that so very much.
I didn’t really take in any of the information on the search I ran. I just saw an image of my brother next to the name of a company, and I called the number that was listed for that company, based in London. Rafe looked the same as I remembered him, and it made me miss him even more than I had for the last eleven years, which shouldn’t have even been possible, but it was. All of my anger at him faded as I saw his face again, for the first time in so many years.
A man answered the call, and when I tried to speak it came out hoarse and rough. It took a few attempts for me to push the squeaked words out that I knew he needed to hear – that Rafe De Santis was my brother and I needed to speak to him. I was put on hold, and I almost lost all of my nerves and hung up as I waited and waited, but the music droning in my ear stopped and I heard a voice I never thought I would again.
“Hello? This is Rafe De Santis. Who is this?”
I gasped deeply at the strange sensations that ran over me at just his voice. Fear came first, and I had expected that. My Mum had drilled it into me for years that I couldn’t trust Rafe any longer, and I had started to believe her when he never came for me. I had questioned everything I ever thought I knew about my brother. But there was relief too, that he was alive and safe, because the fear that our Dad had killed him for helping my Mum and I escape had haunted me for years, ever since I was old enough to realize that was a possibility. Then came excitement that my brother was finally there on the phone, and despair at how much I so desperately missed him. .
“Hello? Cara? Is that you, sweetheart?” he asked, and I crumbled. Hearing him say my name and call me ‘sweetheart’ was overwhelming. How long had I wanted to hear his voice? “Cara, if that’s you, I’m here. Just talk to me. I’m right here.”
“W-was it you? O-r w-was it him?” I asked, my voice trembling so hard I could barely get the words out.
“Was what me? What’s happened? Are you safe?” Rafe asked all at once.
“Mum!” I screamed. “Was it y-you?!” My anger came out of me like a living breathing thing and I ripped my throat out with the screeched words, but I had to know. I needed him to tell me.
“I haven’t had anything to do with our Mum since the day you both stepped on that plane,Tesorino. I don’t know where she took you, and I have spent every single day since then, just trying to find you,” he told me emotionally. Tears filled my eyes and any energy I had found to be angry rushed from me. I collapsed down onto my side on the sofa and stared at my Mum’s face again, the phone held tightly against my ear.
“You pr-promised, Rafe. You promised…you told me you’d come for me,” I sobbed. “Why didn’t you c-come and s-save me?”
“I tried, Cara. I tried so fucking hard. I looked for you everywhere. I hired investigators and reported you kidnapped. I did everything I could but you and Mum, you were just gone. I tried to keep my promise but I….I couldn’t and I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry,” he told me shakily.
“He f-found us. Mum…she…she’s dead. He knows where we are,” I explained weakly. I don’t even know how he heard me because my voice was less than a whisper, It was hours since I drank anything, and all of the crying and frantic breathing had ripped my throat raw, not that I cared about any of that in that moment.
