“Arran!” Cal called as he stumbled, fighting to remain upright without his brother’s support.
I was torn between helping him stand, and getting to Arran before he lost his shit, and killed every fucker who laid hands on Cara. I got it. That was all I wanted to do too – make those pieces of shit bleed and hurt, hear them scream for mercy and beg for death, until I felt that they had each suffered in the way they had made Cara suffer – but we also needed to question them first. We needed to know what the fuck the Russians were up to, so we could deal with this new Pakhan and end this whole fucking mess fast and bloody.
“Stop him!” Cal growled at me when I hesitated. “Cara doesn’t need to see or hear anything else!”
He was right of course, so I set off running after Arran, but I was too late. Arran already had a knife in his hand, probably taken from another of our men, and he had one of the bound prisoners pinned on the ground beneath him, bleeding from a beating he had already, rapidly dished out.
“Arran,” I ground out.
Arran didn’t reply, didn’t even acknowledge I was there. I was pretty sure he was gone to his blood lust, his entire body taut, his jaw locked and his teeth bared as he used the knife he held to slice open the shirt of the fucker beneath him.
It remained quiet as Arran slashed the first few deep cuts across the chest of the rapist, but it didn’t take long for Arran to get pissed with that, and he started cutting deeper. The screams and wails began finally, as blood trickled, then poured. The piece of shit beneath Arran writhed and put up a weak fight to escape, but he was no match for Arran’s fury and vengeance driven mania.
“Just fucking kill me!” the fucker growled, pain clear in his trembling voice.
“Way too soon to be fuckin’ beggin’ yet, pal! I havnae even gotten started.” Arran grinned dangerously, swiping a blood covered hand across his forehead and leaving behind a trail against his pale skin. “I’m gonna take my time removing every single piece of ye that touchedher. Every fuckin’ part,” he hissed.
He moved his knife to start taking fingers from the bound hands, and his prey screamed piercingly, the sound filled with the terror Arran was looking for.
While I took immense pleasure from the sound too, it also jolted me to awareness. Cara could hear all of this, and Cal was right—she had endured way too much already. I took a deep breath and stepped forwards, putting my hand on Arran’s shoulder and squeezing tight.
“No more, at least not here, Arran. Not with Cara so close. She’s been through enough,” I told him calmly.
“She needs vengeance!” he growled as he turned to me with rage radiating from every inch of him.
“She’ll get it. We’ll make sure of that, but she doesn’t need to see it or hear it. She just needs to feel safe right now.”
“No one touches them. I’m gonna make every fuckin’ one of them pay!” he raged as he got to his feet, and swiped the blood covered knife, which he held tightly in his hand, against his jeans.
“Was it all of them?” I asked as I looked over to Cara briefly, and then back to Arran for the answer I dreaded.
“Yes.” He nodded and glared all around him at the bound fuckers with a look that promised them so much more than just death. “Yeah, all except Mikhail Kozlov, but that bastard’s no’ here. He must have got away,” Arran explained.
“We’ll find him,” I pledged. “Anyone who touched her is going to die.”
“Eventually, but no’ until I’m sure they’ve felt every bit of pain and fear Cara was forced to feel!”
“They’re going to feel a hell of a lot more pain and fear than that,” I promised as I looked around between the terrified-looking prisoners myself. “Get them out of here!” I barked at the men guarding them. If they stayed within my sight any longer, I’d make what Arran had started look like child’s fucking play!
“Dar,” Rafe called. I hurried back to where he and Cara were. He was on his knees again, looking to me with fear and desperation when I got to him. “I’m getting nowhere here. What can we do?”
I glanced behind me to Cal, who still stood unsteadily where I left him, then back to Rafe again. I felt sick about what I knew I had to tell him. Losing Gia was going to break him. No matter what, she was his sister. Even just finding out what Gia had done would break him, but to know she was gone too, along with what Cara had been put through that night, and how I knew it would set her back, I worried he wouldn’t be able to come back from it all.
“Let Cal try. We need to talk,” I told him, and his face dropped further as he read my expression.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded as he rose to his feet and stared at me.
“Come over here. Cara doesn’t need to hear any of this,” I told him. Cara had already been forced to watch Gia be gunned down. She didn’t need to go through Rafe being told the news too.
Cal and Arran—who had returned to help his brother stand again—crossed with Rafe as they all moved. Rafe was obviously reluctant to leave Cara, just as I had been, but he had seen enough on my face to know what I had to tell him was bad.
“What’s going on, Dar? I need to stay with Cara,” he told me as soon as he got to my side.
“You can, but I need to tell you something first,” I told him, my heart racing, and my stomach in knots. I was about to tell the brother I loved and always wanted to protect, that one of hisworst fears had been realised, and for the first time in my life, I doubted I was strong enough to face the task.
CARA
“Hi, beautiful,” I heard Cal say.
