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Levi skips through the footage, keeping a keen eye on the timestamp and stopping a little over twenty minutes ago. We watch the classroom with bated breath, my gaze flicking between all the little screens, watching the parking lot, the hallways, and Sebastian’s classroom.
My heart pounds, the fear like nothing I’ve ever known, not even when I was thrown into the deepest pits of Giovanni’s cells, not even when I thought the boys were dead and gone, not even when that monster stood over me and forced my legs apart. Nothing will ever compare to this kind of fear.
My whole body shakes, and when Marcus walks in behind us, he immediately pulls me into his warm arms, but before I lean into him and steal whatever comfort he can offer, I see a black SUV come to a screeching halt outside the school, the tires flying up over the curb.
A gasp tears from deep in my chest, the tears making it hard to see the screen clearly. I hastily scrub at my eyes, watching with crippling horror as two armed men storm out of the SUV and race toward the school—a school filled with innocent, young lives.
I hold my breath, and my grip on Roman’s hand tightens with every second. Finally I see them, and my whole fucking world shatters.
Surgei Dragoni’s nephews.
“FUCK,” Roman roars, tearing his hand from mine and pushing it through his hair, pacing across the short distance, his tone so sharp it makes the principal jump.
My knees give out, and Marcus catches me, holding me up as we watch the Dragoni nephews infiltrate the school, breaking through the heavy locks on the front gates with ease before running straight for the front doors, welcoming themselves over the threshold.
Marcus stands as still as a statue, not even the hint of his breath against my ear, while Levi leans back in his seat, dragging his hand down his face. My gaze is drawn to the screen with Sebastian’s classroom, and I can’t help but look at my son, so blissfully unaware of the horror about to come his way.
Mere seconds pass when I see the whole classroom jump, their heads snapping up as though they’d heard something out in the hallway, and my blood turns to ice, desperately wishing this surveillance system has audio capabilities. I watch as the teacher lowers her hand from the whiteboard and cranes her neck back over her shoulder toward the small window in the classroom door.
There’s concern etched in her eyes, enough to warrant her dropping her dry-erase marker and striding across the room to the door. She presses right up against it, peering through the small window and adjusting her stance as she tries to look down the long corridor. And then I see the exact moment she sees them.
Mrs. Hutchins turns white and spins around to face her students, she scans over them as my gaze flickers back to the footage of the hallway. The two Dragoni nephews quickly storm through the hall, eating up the distance between them and their target, and my heart beats wildly out of control.
I shake my head, terror closing around my throat like a vise as I watch the kindergarten teacher call out something to her students. Their little heads whip up with fear in their eyes and, within seconds, they’re scrambling out of their seats.
My gaze remains locked on my son, watching as he stands. He takes the hand of a little girl who looks terrified and silently leads her over to the corner of the classroom, the one corner somebody from outside the room wouldn’t be able to see. Anyone looking through that small window would see an empty classroom, but considering the mess left behind for those children to have witnessed, it’s clear the hiding tactic didn’t work this time.
Sebastian stays with the little girl, pushing her behind him as if to protect her and keep her calm, the same way his daddy and uncles do to me, and at that moment, I’ve never been so proud of my son. We’re raising him right, even though some things could be heavily questioned.
The kids crouch drown, keeping as small as possible as my gaze flicks between the classroom and the hallway. They’re running out of time. The Dragoni nephews are almost on them.
Mrs. Hutchins races through the room, grabbing some kind of blanket, and is in the middle of throwing it over the top of the students when the door is violently kicked in. The wood splinters across the room as Mrs. Hutchins whips around, her arms going wide as she takes a protective stance in front of the kids.
The terror in her eyes is like nothing I’ve ever known, more than I’ve ever felt myself.
Despite the lack of audio, I can visibly see the screams tearing from the children’s mouths, all of them except my son, who remains standing with his head held high. I watch with undeniable pride as my son grabs the blanket and pulls it the rest of the way over the girl he holds dearly at his back. It’s clear that this little girl is someone special to him, perhaps he has a little crush, and it kills me that he hasn’t found it within himself to tell me about her.
