“Fucking Christ!” I glanced above me and found Rafe stood there, his hand anxiously running over his jaw, as he stared at his sister with barely masked, heartbreaking fear.
“She’s conscious, but she’s not talking to me. She was terrified when I went to touch her hair,” I explained, and that was when I realised for the first time that my eyes were glassy with tears.
I watched as he dropped his hand and took a deep, steadying breath, then he dropped down to my side. The last thing I wanted to do was leave Cara. All I really wanted was to scoop her up and make her feel safe, but I couldn’t do that for her right then. So I got to my feet and backed away, knowing it wouldn’t help her being surrounded by men right then.
“Cara?” Rafe tried. “It’s just me,Tesorino. Just Rafe. Can you look at me, sweetheart?”
“Cara?!”
I turned just as Arran and Cal approached me, Arran holding his brother up as he hobbled on what looked like a broken ankle. It was Cal who had called for her brokenly.
“She’s terrified. Rafe’s the only one who has a chance of helping her right now, I think,” I explained hurriedly as I stopped them both. There were tears in Cal’s eyes and Arran looked like a broken man. “They made you watch,” I said as I realised.
“No’them! Gia!Giamade us fuckin’ watch!” Arran hissed with more anger than I had ever seen from him.
He was shaking, and his eyes were glassy before he dashed a trembling hand across them. Cal’s eyes were red too, and I could see the streaks down his cheeks where he’d obviously shed tears.
I glanced back to where they had been bound, and then over to the stage lights that had been set up opposite those chairs, and realised the pair of them had likely been forced to watch every fucking thing Cara had endured.
“Gia? What? What are you talking about?” I asked as Arran’s response registered in my frantic brain.
“She was part of this, Dario. She set Cara up, along wi’ Isabella, but when Isabella died, Gia decided to carry on wi’ the plan. Spiteful little bitch!” Arran spat.
I looked between them in shock.
“It’s true,” Cal agreed. “She t-told Cara she was going to enjoy making us watch Cara get hurt. She told them to hold a g-gun to my head…when Cara tried to fight back…Gia told them to use us to make Cara do what they wanted. She…Cara…she let them…for me…because of me…” A sob slipped from him and Arran pulled him in and held him tightly.
“It wasnae yer fault, lad. It was Gia, and those fuckers. There wasnae anything we could do,” Arran tried to soothe his brother, but his eyes met mine, filled with the same unrelenting rage that was consuming me.
“Where’s Gia now?” I asked. I didn’t know how we would deal with her for what she had done, but that could wait. Right now we needed to secure her before she made any more mess.
Cal pulled back from Arran’s arms and looked up at his brother shakily.
“She’s dead, Dario. Mikhail Kozlov, the new Pakhan for the Russians…he shot her. Cara tried to warn her, but she wouldnea keep her mouth shut. He shot her twice in the chest. She’sgone,” Arran told me quietly, so Rafe wouldn’t hear. “Cara saw it happen, the whole thing.”
I didn’t even know what to say. I didn’t know how to feel. Gia had been as much my sister as Rafe was my brother. I had loved her so much, even when she had made that really hard to do since Cara arrived. But after what Arran and Cal had told me, knowing everything that had been done to Cara was down to Gia? That changed things drastically. Cara had been destroyed and Gia had been there cheering on the men who had done it, aiding them, even.
“Where’s the body?” I asked.
“They moved it round the back,” Arran replied.
I looked over to Rafe. He was laid on the ground now, beside Cara, still talking to her, but she hadn’t moved a muscle and I didn’t hear her talking to him.
“Get Cal to one of the cars. He shouldn’t be putting weight on that ankle. I’ll get some of the guys to move Gia’s body round the front. Rafe will want to see her,” I sighed as the weight of just how badly our family had been impacted that night hit me hard.
Gia was gone. Cara had been violated, beaten, and who knew what else? Arran and Cal were badly injured. We’d lost men too. All because of the Russians. And Gia, apparently. It was so fucked up! So much to handle, when all I really wanted to do was hold Cara and soothe her agony in any way I could.
“I’m not leaving her,” Cal told me firmly, staring at me and daring me to argue.
“She’s in pieces, Cal. I don’t think she’ll let anyone near her right now. I might have to bring my Mum in if Rafe can’t get through to her. Maybe she needs a woman she can trust after…”
“Just let me try! You and Rafe…you weren’t here. You didn’t go through any of this. We did. We had to watch, Dario! We had to…to see everything they did to her. We lived it with her,” Cal ground out, his words trembling.
“Fine, but you can’t touch her. I tried and I think I made it worse. She’s terrified, and rightly so after what those bastards have done,” I hissed.
Arran growled in a way that didn’t even sound human. When I looked to him he was staring at the fuckers we’d rounded up. There were five of them now, all bound and on their knees, surrounded by our men.
I recognised it easily, as the red mist descended, his eyes darkening as his whole body tensed, but before I could even try to caution him, he released Cal and was moving across the vast warehouse.
