That feeling dissipates as soon as I look around and notice the complete destruction of my room. The windows are smashed, the walls spray-painted with:
HAVE FUN YOU BITCH!!!
My mattress is sliced open, and my clothes and other belongings clearly met the same end in complete and utter destruction.
“What the hell?” I gasp, unable to believe my own eyes.
With a desperate cry, I turn to the dresser, but it’s the same. The socks have no soles, the panties no crotch, and my bras have no cups. Not a single item is spared her destruction. This is next-level sabotage. The kind that screams just how personal and hateful the act is.
Why? Why would she do this?
When I peek into the bathroom, I notice my toothbrush and other essentials are still there. But I don’t reach for them. After the massacre in my bedroom, I’m not trusting her not to have messed with my other stuff.
“Time’s up,” Raffaele declares from the front door.
“One minute,” I argue as I look for my teddy, praying Sabrina didn’t find it.
I find the old bear under my bed. “Thank God,” I mumble just as I spot something else. My small handbag with a wrist strap. When I look inside it, my ID and a few bills are still there.
It’s big enough to also house my phone. I discreetly slide the device into the zipper pocket. Maybe if I’m lucky, Raffaele will forget I had it. And while the local police won’t be any help, I can use it to… I don’t know, call the police in Alaska or something.
When I emerge from my bedroom, I’m clutching both Onyx and my teddy to my chest. “I’m ready.” The words taste like sour defeat as I force them past my lips.
“That’s it?” he questions, arching an eyebrow. “No clothes or toiletries?”
Unable to find the words to explain my sister’s actions, I gesture to my bedroom. “I don’t think there’s anything worth bringing.” A bitter laugh I’m unable to stop accompanies my words.
Turning his broad back to me—completely unconcerned about me trying to run—Raffaele strides into my bedroom. He returns less than two minutes later, finding me still rooted to the same spot.
“Let’s go.” That’s all he says.
Raffaele leads me down the stairs, his hand on the small of my back like a brand burning through my sweater.
Each step takes me further from safety, from everything I know. The bakery seems to watch my departure with the quiet sadness of an abandoned friend.
Outside, the February air bites at my cheeks, the cold a shock after the warm staleness of the apartment. Raffaele’s sleek black car waits at the curb, engine purring softly, exhaust creating ghostly plumes in the frigid night. He opens the passenger door, waiting expectantly.
I clutch Onyx tighter, his purring vibrating against my racing heart as I slide into the leather seat. The door closes with a solid thunk that sounds like finality.
As Raffaele walks around to the driver’s side, I take one last look at the bakery—at the faded sign, the dark windows, the home I’m being forced to leave behind.
I have no idea where he’s taking me or what will happen when we get there. I only know that I’ve been collected, like a debt, like an object, and there’s nothing I can do but hold on to my cat and pray we both survive.
Chapter 7
Raffaele
The woman beside me is so tense I can practically hear her muscles straining. She’s pressed herself against the passenger door like she’s trying to melt through it, putting as much distance between us as the confines of my car will allow.
Her pale blue eyes remain fixed on the snow-covered streets outside, watching Cleveland’s lights blur past the window. The cat in her lap—Onyx, she calls it—stares at me with unblinking yellow eyes, as if calculating whether I’m a threat to his mistress.
Smart animal.
February’s brutal chill has emptied most of Cleveland’s streets, leaving them eerily silent under a fresh layer of snow. The heater purrs quietly, but Alina still trembles slightly. Fromcold or fear, I can’t tell. Probably both, considering the tatty excuse for a coat she’s wearing.
A stoplight catches us, the red glow painting her pale skin in blood-tinted shadows. I take the opportunity to study her properly. Even in profile, with her face half-hidden by that curtain of red hair, there’s no denying Alina Brewer is beautiful.
Not in the fake as fuck Instagram-ready way of her sister, but in a way that’s so real it feels like it’s pulling you in.
