“Zane, I made a mistake. My family has nothing to do with this. You want to settle the mark—you can settle up with me.”
Emilie whimpers when Zane pushes the gun into her mouth and steps back. His dark eyes on Adrians. “It’s a hell of a mistake, brother. It’s a real shame, too, to destroy such a beautiful face.” Zane tilts his head to the side and smiles darkly at Emilie. “Mm, a darn shame indeed.” Zane sighs, pulling the trigger, and shoots her. A speck of her blood splatters on his lip, and he runs his tongue over, licking it off.
“NO!” Adrian bellows, watching as his wife’s lifeless body slid to the floor. “EM!”
“Aaron.” Zane waves his hand, signaling his partner, who came back from his search empty-handed, to shoot Adrian before he stops and looks at him one last time. “Oh, the boss sends his regards, brother.” He grins and turns his back to walk out the door, only stopping when he hears the pop of the gun and Adrian’s body fall to the floor beside his wife. Zane continues walking down the hallway toward the front door whistling the funeral march with Aaron hot on his tail. They halt just as they get to the door when they hear a cry from somewhere in the apartment. Zane turns his glacial gaze to Aaron to looks back into the apartment again. “I thought you searched for the children, you knucklehead?”
Aaron scowls, “I did.” Zane gestures with his head for him to follow the sounds toward the cries. Aaron rips the door open, pulls suitcases back, and sees a little girl sobbing at the back of the closet. Two-year-old Aria lifts her tear-filled honey orbs to the frightening man looming over her. Aaron sweeps her up into his arms while she continues to sob, and they go over to where Zane stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the photo.
“Wheres the other one?” Zane questions, narrowing his blue eyes questioningly.
“It’s just the girl.” With a shake of his head, Zane takes off down the hall, searching each room for Damien. When he comes back, he looks over Aria. “What do we do with her?”
Zane shakes his head slowly. “I’m not killing a baby. We’ll let the boss decide. Come on.” The two men walk out of the apartment with Aria in tow, the door slamming shut behind them.
Once the coast was clear and there were no more sounds, other than the precipitous thumping of his own heart, Damien slid the wooden door open slowly and crawled out of his hiding spot. Slowly, he stood up, walked toward the living room, and stopped when he saw his mother and father lying on the floor beside each other in a pool of blood. “Mo-Mommy?” He whispers, stepping closer one small step at a time. His wide gray eyes glimmering with tears, Damien rushes over to his mother and falls to his knees beside her. “Mom,” he shakes her. “Mommy, wake up.” He continues to shake her again and again. She couldn’t be dead; she would wake up and hug him, and everything will be okay again.
She wasn’t gone. “Mom, mommy, please get up. MOMMY!” he crawls over to his father and shakes him too, “Daddy?” Damien lifts his hand that was soaked with his parent’s blood before he crawls over to the phone and pulls it off its holder. Remembering his mother’s words from earlier on, he was to call for help. So, he did.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My mom and dad they won’t wake up,”
“Alright, sweetie. Don’t be afraid. Are they breathing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you see their chest moving up and down?” Damien looks at their chests, waiting for any movement, and shook his head.
“No, but there’s blood. A lot of blood..”
“Okay, sweetheart, I need you to stay put. We are going to send over someone to help them, okay?” Damien nods and drops the phone while he slowly shifts and lays his head on Emilie’s chest like he has many times before, waiting for her to wrap her arms around him and sing to him like she used to whenever he had a nightmare.
It didn’t seem real—not until the police and paramedics came. Damien sat in the corner of the hallway, blood-stained clothes and smears over his face hugging his knees to his chest, watching as they zip up the body bags that held his mother and fathers’ dead bodies.
It was then, in that very moment, that something inside of Damien died. He lifts his big gray eyes and looks over at the front door. “Aria…”
* * *
On the eighth anniversary of his parent’s death eighteen-year-old Damien stood before his parent’s graves staring numbly at the tombstones, his gray eyes cold and emotionless. Every day for the last eight years, he would have the same nightmare, reliving the moment he watched his parents get their heads blown off and those very men walking away with his baby sister. In one moment—just a blink of an eye—his life was taken from him. Damien clenches his jaw tight, and his hands fist firmly by his side.
“I swear first and foremost to God himself and then your grave that every breath I take from this day forward will be to avenge your death and find Aria. I will not stop, nor will I die till I find her and those responsible and make them pay for what they’ve taken from me. I’m going to rain hellfire on every single one of those sons of bitches. They will welcome their death once I’m through with them.”