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My mother followed, landing right next to me with a terrible thud.
She scrambled up onto her knees and wrapped herself around me. Her dark hair hung down over my face as she covered me with her body until I felt like a turtle tucked inside her shell.
My eyes darted around, searching for my father. And there he was, already on the floor, his knees pressing into the carpet. Tears streaked down his square face, leaving glistening trails in the dim light. I wanted to run to him, but another man held my attention.
He stood tall, maybe even taller than the tall man, his eyes filled with a dark intensity that sent shivers down my spine. There was a stark white scar on his tanned cheek, round in the middle, then branching out like spider legs. I swear I could see them moving.
In his hand, he held a weapon—a gun, shiny and black. My breath caught in my throat, and my body trembled uncontrollably. The world around me seemed to blur, distorted by the sheer terror that gripped me.
“Please, Dorian,” my father’s voice cracked. “Please, just let them go.”
“You think you can beg your way out of this, you wanker?” the man with the spider scar sneered.
My mother held me even tighter, her body trembling against mine. I clung to her, my small fingers gripping her clothes as if they were the only anchor in this storm.
My father’s face was etched with anguish, his light gray eyes filled with a mixture of sorrow and fierce determination. “They haven’t anything to do with this. Let them go.”
The man with the spider scar smirked, a cruel twist of his lips. “You should have thought about that before, shouldn’t you?”
I couldn’t understand the cruelty in his words, but I felt it deep in my bones.
Through tear-filled eyes, I glanced at my father. His eyes locked with mine for a brief moment, a silent, secret message passing between us. “Your mum and I love you, Heidi,”he said without saying.
“I’m so scared, Daddy,” I told him.
When he flinched like I’d struck him, my heart hurt, and I wished I could take it back.
“Bring the slag here,” the man with the spider scar barked at the tall man who’d dragged my mother from my room.
“No!” I screamed as her cocooning warmth was wrenched away. She reached back to me as the tall man shoved her down on the floor next to my father.
I was alone. Separated by mere feet that felt like miles.
Crying, I scrambled after Mama on my knees, but my nightgown caught beneath me and the man with the spider scar stepped into my path, his eyes gleaming down at me with a twisted satisfaction.
“Stay quiet, little one,” he sneered, making the spider legs move more.
I shrank back. I cowered closer to the floor.
The short man from my room crouched down next to me. “You’re going to want to watch this, poppet,” he said right before he grabbed my hair again and yanked my head up.
I tried to fight. I tried to be savage, punching and kicking like my mother had.
But the man just laughed and gripped my hair harder, making pain shoot through my scalp like lightning bolts. Then something cold pressed against my temple. Without seeing it, I knew what it was. This man had a gun, too.
My heart pounded, threatening to burst from my chest. I stopped fighting; I wasn’t brave and fierce like my mother.
“Let her go!” my father barked, but the man with the spider scar hit him over the head with his gun’s barrel.
And then the spider-man was coming toward me.
“Please!” my mother cried. “Please, don’t do this, Dorian.” She reached out her hand toward me. It was right there, but I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t reach her.
“Not in front of her, for God’s sake,” my father begged.
Then all three of the men were beside me, one on either side of me and one behind me.
I’d fallen into a pond once. It had been early winter and the water so cold it stole my breath and seeped into the core of me in a flash. That’s what this felt like, surrounded by cold, shivering to the bone, gasping for breath.
