Page 1 of The Players

PROLOGUE

CARMEN

Everything hurt. Carmen shivered, lying on the kitchen floor. The cold from the marble tiles seeped into her bones, turning them into shards of ice. Yet, somehow, her cheek that wasn’t plastered onto the floor felt burning hot.

Why couldn’t she move?

Something dripped down her cheek and got caught on her broken lips. A coppery taste; blood.

Her breath caught as the last gruesome hour of her life came back to her with the velocity of a Mack truck. Then she heard the most hated and feared sound in the universe—her husband’s voice.

“There’s no more loyalty left in this world. You think you can just leave me? I’ve bought you, slut. Paid good money for your virgin body. You can’t leave me. You willneverleave me!”

Carmen’s head pounded. She tried to open her eyes, but her vision spun.

Oh, God. She’d told her sister she was going to leave Franco. Jazzy had left to get her a moving truck. Any minute now, she could return. She didn’t want Jazzy to get caught up in her mess. Jazzy wasn’t anything like her—she was brave, bold, and would fight Franco with her every breath.

He will hurt her.

She desperately tried to get a view of her surroundings, but all she could see were Franco’s boots through the slits of her eyes. He kept on talking, though she could barely make anything out of his words anymore. There was a loud ringing in her head, and it felt as if any second she could pass out.

Still, like nails on a chalkboard, his voice penetrated through her foggy brain.

“The cold, barren slut actually believed she could leave me.”

Barren. Ah, yes, one of the reasons he hated her so much. The very thing he taunted her with.

Another shiver went up her spine. A dark, distant memory, scratched against the surface of her brain, trying to escape its prison.

No. I don’t want to remember. I want to forget the past ten years of my life. Please, God, take me to your kingdom. Let me have peace.

Something crashed against the wall. From the sound of it, it must have been one of Franco’s whisky glasses.

Then she heard her sister’s voice.

“Franco, please. Carmen’s bleeding. Let me call an ambulance.”

Oh no, Jazzy was already here. Carmen tried to make a sound, warn her sister off, tell her to run and save herself. No one knew better than her how unpredictable Franco was when he got drunk. Or the monstrous things he was capable of. Another dark memory resurfaced but she quickly pushed it away. She’d vowed to never think back on the night he had finally broken her.

Franco snorted. “Why? I didn’t shoot her. I just broke her leg, so she can’t fucking walk away.”

“There’s a lot of blood,please.”

It killed her to hear Jazzy’s pleading voice. She’d never heard her little sister beg for a thing in her life.

I’m not going to let him break you too, sis.

“Don’t know why she’s bleeding like that. She never did before.”

For some reason, the mention of blood pushed their conversation into the background. She could feel it now. A cold, yet somehow still warm feeling from her belly all the way to her thighs. Her heart started pounding and she felt sick.

No…

The next second, when she heard Jazzy mention Franco had a gun, her heart froze. She forced herself to shut out her brain for all and everything but her sister’s safety. That was the only thing that mattered right now. Not her pain, not the tears streaming down her face for something that would never happen. The only thing she could think of was keeping Jazzy safe.

I’m not going to fail you too, Jaz.

When she re-opened her eyes, she saw Franco had lifted Jazzy by her hair. Her anxiety reached peak level when he waved a gun in her sister’s face.

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