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Thankfully Luca and Trent managed to get Abby off of the property pretty quickly, then Trent called the episode into the police detective who was handling our investigation, just in case it was relevant.

The rest of the evening was spent with me curled up between the twins watching some episodes of a boxset we had gotten into. Trent joined us for a while, then he and Luca hit the gym.

By the time the twins left and I collapsed into my bed late that night I had all but convinced myself it was Abby who had hit me in that car, and who had messed with Dad’s brakes. I was so sure it had to be her that I actually managed to drop off to sleep pretty peacefully, almost completely convinced those monsters I had been so terrified of, were still thousands of miles away from me in the UK. I was safe. I could handle Abby. It was a much lesser evil to have to face.

CHAPTER 17

BLAKE

“That’s it. Such a good girl. You fight me. I love it when you struggle,” Slick-back growls as he looms over me, his hand wrapped tightly around my throat as he squeezes hard. I don’t know his real name. He may have told me at some point. Some of the guys, brought into my room by my mother, liked to introduce themselves, like what was going to happen was some pleasant deal being entered into by the both of us. Others didn’t bother. Either way I never took notice, the fear and panic rushing through my ears every time the door to my room opened, too deafening to hear a word spoken to me.

So I gave them names I chose. Names that related to the way they looked, smelled or to the things they did to me. Choosing those names gave me something else to focus on, other than what was being done to me. This guy, I had coined ‘Slick-back’ because of his hair, which was very thin and sparse and was always worn slicked back to his head with way too much gel. There were patches where he had no hair at all, and he tried to cover them with the overgrown hair that remained. He had been coming to my room regularly since we moved to the area with Mum’s latest boyfriend, about two years before. He had openly told me I was getting too old for his tastes now, at fourteen, but still he continued to return.

“Yeah, go on. Fight me, you little tart,” he told me, sounding almost giddy as I kicked my legs below where he was straddling me, and clawed at the hand wrapped so tightly around my throat that I was starting to see spots fill my vision. It had been too long since I got any air in and I was sure this was it, he was going to actually kill me this time. He had done this same thing to me so many times, but I was sure he had never taken it this close to me blacking out.

As the darkness around the edges of my vision became thicker and thicker I lost the ability to keep fighting and my body just stopped struggling. Maybe it’s for the best, I told myself. Maybe this is a better way to go than one of the other psychos who Mum brought to me, beating me to death.

I leapt awake at the sound of a blaring siren, much like the one we had heard that afternoon, but not exactly the same. I sat up, panicked, and looked around me, trying to work out what was going on.

The terror from my nightmare still had me in its grip as I realised he was still holding my throat. I couldn’t breathe! I grabbed for the hand at my throat, desperate for a breath of air before I blacked out, only there was no hand there.

Deep, hacking coughs burst from me as I scrambled to get to my feet, all the while my fuzzy brain was trying to work out what was going on and whereSlick-backhad gone. I looked all around me for the bastard, but all I could see was thick black smoke. That jolted me in to wide awake awareness and I realised it was a fire. My entire bedroom door and the area before it was engulfed in bright orange flames, the entire room around me so thick with smoke that I couldn’t take a breath in.

“BLAKE!” I heard Trent yelling, but he sounded far away. I tried to call back to him, but all that came out was deep, painful coughs that felt as though they were ripping my lungs from my body.

Realising I had to get out, I clambered over my bed to the patio doors. The door to the hallway was completely engulfed and I knew I couldn’t get near it, so the exit to the garden was my only option. I unlocked the door and pulled the handle, desperate to get out into the fresh air and get a breath in.

But I pulled the handle, as I had done so many times in the weeks that I had lived there, and nothing happened! I turned the lock again, sure I had made a mistake in my panic, but still the door wouldn’t move. I looked outside, my eyes filled with tears and burning painfully, then I saw it – a chain wrapped around the two handles of the doors. Someone had locked me in. I wanted to scream but knew I couldn’t even if I tried. Instead I turned and looked around me. I needed to try and break the glass. It was the only way I was getting out of there. I knew I had minutes at most to do it, because it felt as though there was no oxygen left in the room around me, and my lungs were screaming at me as my body became weaker and weaker. My head was starting to become fuzzy, but I knew I needed to try and stay focussed.

I picked up the chair from my dressing table and dragged it over to the doors. I was sure I had heard something about the corners of double glazed windows being the weak points so I held it by the legs and aimed the seat at the bottom corner of one of the doors. The chair was heavy – bloody Trent and his expensive tastes – and I barely got a swing on it before it hit the glass and merely bounced off. If I could breathe I’d have cried in despair, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe and I knew either I smashed that window or I died right there.

Turning the chair, hoping the thin points of the metal legs would be better to weaken the thick double glazed glass, I swung again. This time two of the legs hit the glass and caused a small spider webbed crack in two places. Ignoring the agonising coughs and my body’s desperate need for air, I swung again at the same place, and the spider webs got bigger. Determined not to die there in that room, I gathered every ounce of strength I had to swing again. My legs were shaking so hard beneath me, I was sure they were going to give up and buckle on me.

“Blake! Get back!” I heard my Dad’s voice, and when I looked up he was there, at the other side of the doors with the concrete birdbath, which usually sat in the centre of the garden, held in his arms like it weighed nothing. In the darkness I could just make out Trent and Luca running across the garden behind him.

With the ridiculous question in my head of how Dad had gotten the huge birdbath all of the way across the garden, I dropped the chair I still clutched and took a few steps backwards.

The fire had spread to the chest of drawers that sat close to the door of my room and also in the other direction towards my bathroom. It was climbing up the walls all around the door, the smoke around me so thick now I could barely see anything but the orange of the flames.

The sound of smashing glass brought me back to what mattered, getting the hell out of there. Dad had rammed that birdbath through the glass and made a huge hole, but it hadn’t smashed the whole panel. Now he, Trent, and Luca were all frantically kicking at the remaining glass.

I moved closer, ready to get through the second that hole was big enough for me to fit, not caring if I got cut up in the process. Bleeding and sliced up was better than suffocating to death, which was what was going to happen very soon.

“Blake, get low!” Luca roared, and I did as he said and dropped to my hands and knees on the floor. It wasn’t much better but the smoke was a little thinner.

My hand landed on something soft and I knew instantly what it was – Bonkers, the stuffed animal Trent had sent to me the day Dad came for me. Of everything in that room that I knew was about to be destroyed, that was the most precious. I tucked it under my arm, determined it was leaving that room with me. It had been one of the first signs for me that I could have a new, positive life if I trusted my dad and my brother. It was what had pushed me to reassess my decision to just end it all, and part of the reason I was still there that day. It was the most important thing in that whole room to me.

“Blake, come on!” Trent yelled and I hadn’t even realised he was in the room until I was scooped up into his arms and being carried through the now bare door frame.

The cool night air brushed over my sweating skin as Trent raced away from the house; Dad and Luca right behind us.

“T-the d…d-door?” I gasped between deep, hacking coughs.

“Don’t try to talk, tiny,” Trent told me as he ran around the house and through the gate at the side that led to the driveway. A fire engine was racing down the street towards us and I watched as the gates rolled open and allowed it entry to the driveway.

Trent held me close as Dad ran towards the fire engine, presumably to direct them to the fire before it took grip of the whole house.

“Trent!” Luca yelled, and when Trent turned towards him, he was waving us over towards an ambulance which was just pulling in behind the fire engine. Trent hurried that way and I was so relieved when the door opened and Grey jumped out of the passenger side.

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