1
Bianca
It’s the worst feeling when you’re yanked from a blissful dream.
One second, you’re blanketed in the most wonderful scenario and the next you’re so disoriented it takes you a few seconds to pin down where you are.
Tightly drawn curtains would leave the tiny room pitch-black were it not for the flickering TV screen. I sit up in my bed, unsure for a moment what woke me up.
“Get dressed,” Vaughn commands, making my head snap left. He’s by the bed, in his wheelchair, a travel bag on his lap, open and empty.
In the artificial blue light, his features look terrifying. Dark, swollen half-moons under his eyes, ashen skin, sunken cheeks, chapped lips... a grotesque image straight from a horror movie. My heart’s rhythm picks up. Memories break through the sleepy dam in my brain.
“Now, Bianca. They’re here.”
They.
Either Noretto’s or Willard’s men. I swallow hard, stretching my hands and legs and shaking my head to dislodge the sleepiness fogging my mind.
“Where?” I ask, shoving the covers aside, adrenaline flooding my system like a disease.
Vaughn’s already by the coffee table, unplugging his tech and shoving everything into the travel bag at the speed of light.
For a fifty-something-year-old shadow of a human being in a wheelchair, he’s surprisingly fast.
And surprisingly calm.
“Three men,” he says in a hushed, stilted voice, turning his wheelchair around as he continues packing the equipment.
He looks almost see-through. Pale to the point where his skin has acquired a ghastly grayish tint. Eyes like a porcelain doll’s: beady and lifeless. He’s a dead man walking. The burden on his shoulders weighing him down.
He doesn’t say it out loud, but the sacrifice he made to get me out of Noretto’s claws eats away at him little by little.
He traded one daughter for another.
And I’m not even his actual daughter to begin with. We don’t share DNA. I’m just his late wife’s illegitimate child. A teenage mistake she left at an orphanage.
Why he sacrificed his relationship with Hailey, his flesh and blood, to help me might forever remain a mystery. Vaughn doesn’t talk about it. No matter how many times I broach the subject, I’m met with the same old reply.
“My relationship with Hailey wasn’t salvageable. Carter’s sunk his claws too deep. My daughter’s gone. There’s nothing left of that sweet little girl she once was. She’s not mine anymore. She’s his.”
Resignation twists his features whenever he gives that speech. Resignation and pain. So much pain it’s a miracle it hasn’t killed him. Itiskilling him... slowly.
“Forty-five seconds,” he tells me as if I’m not moving fast enough and need encouragement.
I’m on my feet, throwing a pair of sweats over my PJ bottoms and pulling on a matching hoodie. My head spins as I power through the haze, darting into the en suite.
All our belongings are in two small suitcases, packed and ready to go. I zip them up, my fingers trembling so hard it takes three tries.
“Twenty seconds!” Vaughn denotes from the living room as I wheel both suitcases out, leaving them by the door.
We’ve done this before.Threetimes, but never in the middle of the night. No wonder my moves are a bit sluggish.
I trip over the suitcase as I dart to the bedside table for my useless, sim-card-less phone, headphones, and a worn copy of my favorite book. Vaughn’s by the door, having shut off the TV’s view of the street outside.
I mentally chastise myself for not glancing that way while the surveillance footage was running. I should’ve checked what spooked him this time.
“Ready?” he asks through gritted teeth, his voice tight. “You’re too slow, Bianca.”
