Chapter One
ANISSA
Shots blast through the house. I’m not sure who’s shooting. Not sure who the good guys are or the bad. My mother is standing in front of me, gun locked and loaded as we huddle in her office.
I want to ask questions, but seeing my mother strapped and ready makes me shiver with fear. I didn’t know she could hold a gun, let alone be an aficionado. But here I am, scared out of my mind while I stare at my mother, who appears to be a Green Beret incognito.
“What are you going to do, Mom?”
“Keep you safe. That’s all I want, is to keep you safe. Listen, Nissa. If something happens to me, you gotta run, okay? Don’t look back, don’t worry about anything else, just run.”
“I’m not going to just leave you.”
She turns to me, her steel-gray eyes holding my own. The frown on her face is one I saw many times as a child when I’d done something stupid. “You run. These men won’t care if you’re innocent. They will hurt you in awful ways. You run, baby.”
“Why are they after you?”
Footsteps become louder in the hall. The doorknob shakes. My mother gestures for me to hide behind the large oak desk in her office. A room that had so many fond memories for me as a child has now become a vision of my nightmare.
“Behind the desk, now,” my mother mouths, and I listen because at this moment, I’m too scared to question anything.
I huddle under the desk's corner. The irony of the many times I’ve played hide and seek in the same spot isn’t lost on me. But this time, I’m not hiding from someone who’s going to tickle and kiss me. This time, I’m hiding from someone who wants to hurt me. Watch me bleed out, begging for my last breath.
I cover my ears as they kick the door in, praying to whatever higher power is up there that my mother is the victor in this battle.
“Finnigan, thank god,” my mother says before a squelching sound takes over the room, followed by nothing but footsteps.
I clamp my mouth with my hands, preventing any whimpers from escaping, but all I want to do is burst into tears.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,’’ a deep voice with a hint of an Irish accent taunts. “I know you’re here. Bella would never leave her precious daughter alone. I’ve got all day, but do you?”
Steel toe boots emerge as he walks around the desk and sits in my mother’s leather wing-back chair. I move further back, praying that he doesn’t check under the desk, but my prayers go unanswered as his large hands grab onto my hair and pull me out from under the desk. “Looks like the cat found you, little mouse.”
Before I can say anything, my hands are bound with thick beige rope, and he uses the knot in the middle to drag me behind him. My eyes gaze down at my mother’s lifeless body, her limbs severed, drowning in pools of her own blood.
My body is numb. My hands shake in their shackles, tied and bound by a monster who just killed my mother in cold blood, with no care at all. I’m not sure why he hasn’t killed me, and I’m already dreading what my future holds. I’m sure they’ll rape me, pass me around like a prize, the spoils of whatever war this is.
This man won’t want someone to clean his house or cook him dinner. He’s going to want things I’m not sure I can give, and when I say no, he won’t accept that as an answer. He’ll simply take what he wants because to him, I’ll be nothing more than property. I’ll be the same as a piece of furniture, at his beck and call to use and abuse any way he sees fit.
The air in my lungs is obsolete. I’m cast into hell with no hope of escape. I gasp for air, desperate for breath. My legs give in, turning to jello, and my butt crashes onto the cold hardwood floor.
A large, clammy hand grabs my upper arm and pulls me. My knees scrape along the granite floor, but I don’t care. I want to die right here so that all the horrors waiting for me disappear because this is just the beginning of my nightmare. From this moment on, all joy vanishes, and only tragedy remains.
The man my mother called Finnigan moves. Hands aren’t on me anymore. I try to move, but my legs don’t want to work. I’m helpless, a willing victim discarded on the floor.
I’m lost in the commotion. Gun’s blast. Blood now covers my mother’s once pristine hallway.
“Get the fuck up, slut. Right now is not the time to be down on your knees.”