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But as I look closer and squint, I can see why: three black Jeeps were chasing them, and I can hear gunfire just below the mansion.
I leap to my feet with happiness and relief coursing through my veins when I realize that these must be people my father sent to get me! That little bubble of hope now boils over, and I bang on the windows when they get closer.
“HEY! UP HERE!” I call out, slamming my fists against the window as hard as I can and waving my arms in the air. “IT’S ME! HEY!”
I seem to get their attention just as they breach the mansion, but then one Jeep with five hunters trains their rifles on me and opens fire.
“HEY–!” My happiness is cut short when I watch all three vehicles shoot at me, even though I know who they are since I was the one who trained them. “What the fuck are you guys doing?!”
Suddenly, I’m yanked away from the window and thrown over a heavy set of shoulders. The scent of expensive whiskey assaults my senses, and I know immediately who pulled me away from what would be my rescue.
“Put me down!” I cry out, hitting his back. “Gabriel, what the fuck!”
He remains quiet and continues walking even as I hit and scratch him, then we reach a door, and he walks inside. Afterward, he throws me on the bed and turns to walk out, but I run toward him and pull him back.
“You better let me go, or so help me God–”
“Did you not just see your own people shooting at you?” he says in a low voice devoid of emotion. “Or did the hail of bullets mean they were just happy to see you?”
I blanch at what he’s just implied, then shake my head. “They probably didn’t see that it was me–”
“Katherine, you still look the fucking same as you did when I kidnapped you. Your so-called people, your guild, have all turned on you, and you have your father to blame for that.” He says, then pulls out his cell phone and turns it towards me.
“What about Katherine? Do we bring her in?”
That’s Xenia’s voice! She’s still alive after all this time! Thank God she managed to get help!
“No, kill on sight. She’s been gone for too long and has probably become Priest’s whore by now. Bring me her head along with his.”
My father's cold, callous voice kills everything I thought I still had left, and I sink to the floor with a hand covering my mouth. He’s set every hunter in his arsenal on me, including Xenia; if I thought I was as good as dead before, this has just confirmed it.
“Now, if you’ll fucking excuse me, I have cockroaches to kill,” Gabriel says before stomping out of the room and slamming it shut behind him.
I can feel my throat constricting, and a brittle sob escapes my throat while I clutch my shirt. Tears slip down my cheeks as my father’s words are on a constant loop in my head. I can barely hear the firefight through the whooshing sound in my ears and my weeping.
My soul doesn’t just feel shattered; it’s been crushed and put through a blender only to be flushed down the toilet.
My guild has given up on me, and my father has issued my death warrant.
After a while, I get up from the floor and amble over to the bathroom to clean my face. Crying for so long has left me feeling empty, and now it feels like I’ll never be able to cry again.
Is this what they mean by being all cried out? Because that’s exactly how I feel.
“The sooner you realize that your father is not this saint you’ve put on a pedestal, the better it will be for both of us.”
Gabriel’s words from a few weeks ago pushed through the fog in my head, and I know now that I need to stop thinking the world of him. Instead of sending people to rescue me, he’s sent them to kill me without prejudice.
I never thought he would sound so cold while referring to me; I guess I’m dead to him now.
I splash my face with cold water just as the bedroom door bursts open, and I realize then that the gunfire has died down. Rushing out, I see Gabriel hobbling inside the room with baobab bullets and arrows sticking out all over his body.
He looks at me through cloudy blue eyes and smiles. “Good; you’re okay,” he says in a wheezy voice before crashing to the floor.
My heart stutters, and I rush toward him, uncertain of what to do. The way he looked at me as if he was relieved that I was still here… as if he was relieved that I was okay. He didn’t have to bring me into, what I know now, is his bedroom.
He didn’t need to keep me safe. He could have just let my guild have me, and then everything would have been fine.
But he saved my life, and as I peer up at my freedom of an open door, I realize now that he never even locked the door when he left.
