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“Cillian!” Dahlia’s scream pierces through me with more impact than the bullet. The force sends me crashing backward onto the dirt floor.
My head smacks against it. Even I hear the sickening crack.
“Run,” I roar at Dahlia, the word ripping up out of my throat like a fireball. But I’m fading. I can feel it. The thunderous sound of bullets morph into the pitter-patter of rain, the flashes of light grow brighter, whiter, until that’s all I can see.
“Stay with us, kid.”
Lorcan. His hands under my armpits, the floor moves underneath me. “You’re going to be all right. Just hang in there.”
It takes every last drop of energy to speak. Even then, my words are slurred and sound a million miles away.
“Leave me. Save her. Get my girl.”
And then everything goes black.
Dahlia
It all happens so fast. The gunshots, the screams. My feet leaving the ground and then being bundled into the back of a van, along with Santiago’s lifeless body.My former father-in-law, and not by choice.
He rolls onto my feet when the driver peels away, tires screeching.
I’ve been here before. Not here, in the back of this windowless van, but in this situation. Nimo’s fist wound into my hair. His mouth inches from my face, spittle flying as he screams at me in Spanish.
“You stupid fuckingputa,” he snarls at me, punctuating each word by slamming my head against the side of the van. With his other hand, he clutches at his stomach, which is bleeding profusely from where I stabbed him with the Bonsai tree scissors I hid in my bra.
I’ve been here before but this time it’s different. This time, I’m not shivering in fear, praying to a God I’m not sure can hear me. I’m crackling with adrenaline, desperately scouting my surroundings for an escape route. Because this time, I don’t care about saving myself. Cillian is the one that needs saving now.
It happened in slow motion—Santiago dropping like a sack of potatoes next to me. I turned just in time to see Lucky draw his gun and shoot Cillian. He hit the floor, yelling at me to run.
Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay.
It’s instinctive to yelp when my head connects with the side of the van again. This time, Nimo slams it with extra force. “I’m talking to you, you little bitch,” he growls at me. “Did you hear me? I said you’ve been gone for three-hundred-and-eighty-nine days.” He lowers his mouth to my ear. “That means three-hundred-and-eighty-nine punishments. Each worse than the last.”
Anger rips through my body and it’s more vicious than the searing pain in my skull. I try to twist my head out of his grasp, pointedly looking down at his bloody stomach. “If you live that long,” I hiss.
That earns me another slam into the wall. I wonder how many of these I can suffer before I’m rendered unconscious. I can’t afford to be knocked out, unable to fight back, so I clench my jaw and close my eyes, twisting my hands against the rope around my wrists.
I never thought Lucky would do it, give me up to Nimo. He loved to dangle it over my head like a storm cloud, taunting me, teasing me with the fear of having to go back to the man I feared for four years. That was his power over me.
I crack my eye open just enough to look at Nimo. When he walked through the factory door, it was like I’d seen a ghost. Studying his face now as it contorts in pain, I’m still struggling to believe it’s real. That this is the same asshole that knocked teeth out of my mouth. That donkey kicked me down the stairs when I told him my period was late. This asshole ripped my life to shreds like it was tissue paper.
And I’m not scared of him anymore.
I’m about to tell him so when the driver yells something in Spanish. Nimo winces and he straightens up, then barks something back, panicked. The engine roars louder, I’m thrown back in my seat as the van picks up speed. Then the barking turns to screaming and there’s a flurry of Spanish words being thrown around above my head, none of which I can understand.
The impact knocks all of the wind from me. It comes from the side of the van with an almighty crash, slamming my head into the side wall harder than Nimo ever could.
Instantly, everything goes black.
Cillian
My head feels like it’s going to float away from my neck. It’s light and painful and when I try to open my eyes, a sharp pain stabs through my forehead.
“I knew I recognized her.”
What?
I try again, forcing my eyes open. The bright light burns my retinas, but I push through the pain.
