by Anne Connor
I go straight to the basement suite, down the corridors that I built. I know this place like the back of my hand, and I track her. I know where she is.
Passing through the space quickly, time seems to speed up. I make my way through a dark, damp hallway filled with mechanical equipment. It’s like the engine room on the Titanic; it’s where everything that runs the casino is housed. All of the machines we need to keep things moving.
My uncle has an office down here, but I take the back way to where I know they take the girls. My uncle can’t outrun me anyway, but I’m careful not to run into him, either.
I get closer and closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. The hallway veers off to the left, and I feel no hesitation as the blood pumps through my veins, fueling me.
I’ve never been so clear on what I need to do in my whole fucking life.
In the next hallway to the left, there’s hushed voices behind one of the doors. More than one man’s voice. It’s my cousins.
I put my back to the door and try to hear. Cherry’s in there with them; I can feel it deep inside my bones. I can sense her, and the way they’re talking, I know there’s a girl in there with them.
I know it’s Cherry. My Cherry.
I’ve never stood guard outside a door like this before, because I’ve never had to. No one’s had to. No one comes down here, not unless you’re in the family and you have the clearance. I have the clearance. Maybe Uncle hasn’t told his men to not give me access. Maybe I’m about to be fucking ambushed by his men, fuckers more ruthless and vile than my own flesh and blood.
But even though I’ve never been outside a door like this one, I know what goes on inside.
Right now, though, I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that she isn’t making a sound.
I put my hand on my holster, ready to take my gun out. But I don’t want her to get caught up in the crossfire. She never asked for this. She never wanted any of this.
I cautiously check the doorknob. The door’s locked. I pivot around and put my back against the wall of the narrow hallway opposite the door.
I cock my pistol, and with one swift movement I pummel the doorknob with a rapid fire of three neat bullets straight through the door.
“What the fuck!” Kevin yells out from behind the door as I muscle through, putting my shoulder down and barreling into the door.
I stand at the doorway as time slows down. I see Kevin grab his pistol and crouch down low as the door swings open before me, the smoke from the gunfire filling the room. Their faces are painted with expressions of surprise and fear, and Kevin hides behind his gun like the cowardly piece of shit he is.
I point my gun toward Michael. He has his hands on Cherry’s throat. Her eyes are half-lidded, and all of the color in her cheeks has been drained.
My heart clenches as I look at her, thick tension filling the room as the smoke slowly begins to dissipate. Michael’s left his gun on the table next to his bottle of nasty grain alcohol. I don’t know if he uses that shit to cope with what he does or to make it easier for him to do it.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kevin asks evenly, coming toward me slowly. “You should have known to stay away.”
“Just let her go, and we won’t have a problem.” I match his movements, stepping slowly over to Cherry. “Just let the girl go.”
Michael moves behind Cherry, stroking her hair and tipping her face up. Her eyelids flutter open, but she’s clearly been fed too much alcohol and I don’t know if she even knows I’m here, let alone knows where she is herself.
“She likes it, man. She’s a little slut. She’s probably wet for me right now.” His hands stroke her hair and he traces his fingers along her mouth. Fury rises inside me as I cock my gun and train it on his brother.
“I will not hesitate to blow your brother away, fucker. Let her go. Now.”
Michael steadies his jaw and spits his words at me.
“He’s your brother too.”
My arms steady as I feel the cool pistol in my hands.
“I said now.”
Kevin cocks his gun and steps back toward the door. I keep my gun trained on him, the fucking coward moving toward the exit.
“Sean, get the fuck out of here,” he shouts, keeping his eyes on mine. “I’m not going to have my brains splattered on some dirty mattress because of some fucking whore.”
Cherry’s already hurt. And they’ve tried to take her away from me. They tried to take away the one thing that I’ve ever really wanted. And they were ready to destroy her. Take away the spark from behind her eyes.
I’ve never killed a man, but that doesn’t make me good. And right now, what they’re doing to Cherry is wrong. It’s dead wrong.
“She’s not a whore,” I say, the blood rushing through my ears in slow motion. “She didn’t ask for any of this. Drop the gun and let her go. Now.”
The weight of the gun in my hand has always excited me, but maybe that’s because I never had to pull the trigger to pump a bullet into a man.
I line up the barrel with my cousin’s chest as he backs out of the room away from me, and time speeds up to match my thoughts.
“She belongs to us now,” Kevin growls, his words frantic and frenzied.
I squeeze the trigger and pump a single bullet into my cousin’s chest. I’m poised and ready for more. I will not stop until he is stopped. The gun falls from his hand as Kevin lunges for the table to grab his piece. I pivot around, spinning to match his furious intensity, pushing a single bullet through his chest to match his brother’s.
The gun is light and falls from my hand easily. Michael sputters and coughs, blood pooling inside his mouth and dribbling down his chin as I kick the gun away from him.
I rush over to Cherry to take her out of her restrains, keeping an eye on Kevin. He’s reaching out for his gun, stretched out across the dirty mattress where he would have hurt Cherry, but he can’t reach it. He’s too weak. Deep red blood pools out from his chest slowly, making an ink blot on the mattress beneath him.
Taking my blade out of my pocket, I slice through the plastic ties holding Cherry in place. She’s so out of it, I just hope to God she won’t remember this.
I prop her up against me, looping my arm around her small waist. She’s nearly naked, covered only with a dirty t-shirt.
My heart clenches as I step around Michael, my boots tracking through his blood.
“Sean.” He speaks through the blood filling his mouth, the light slowly diminishing from behind his eyes. “We were brothers.”
“No,” I say. “We stopped being brothers the moment you took her.”
I drape Cherry’s arm around my shoulder and guide her through the hallway, leaving my cousins behind. I don’t want to stick around to see them die. I don’t take any pleasure in taking their lives away. The only thing that matters now is Cherry. Getting her to a safe place. And keeping her there for good.
I put my jacket around her waist to shield her. They stripped her, tied her up, but she is not broken. She is stronger than this.
We bust through the back exit of the casino and into the hot, bright sun. Making our way to the strip, I see a throng of people crowded around the front of the hotel. I stay back. I need to keep Cherry safe, and I don’t want to draw any attention to us. She needs to get to the hospital and she needs to get there now.
Then I see the red flashing lights of an ambulance. I crane my neck to see through the group of people assembled on the sidewalk. Everyone wants to get a piece of what’s going on. Everyone wants to see who they’re hauling away.
The looks on their faces as they glance at each other tells me something’s really wrong with the unlucky fucker they’re hauling into the back of the bus.
Cherry begins to stir, and I look down at her. Her red hair is matted to the back of her neck, and her pale skin, still perfect and pure, is marred with a few cuts.
“What’s going on?” she says, looking up at me. Her eyebrows knit
together in the middle as she bites down on her bottom lip. I reach down and brush my fingertips lightly over the cut in her top lip.
“We have to get you to the hospital just to get checked out,” I say softly. She nuzzles her head into my chest and sighs deeply.
“Who is the ambulance for?” she asks, defeat coloring her voice.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But it’s not for you. Not today.” I kiss the top of her head and brush her hair away from her forehead.
“Sean…” Her voice trails off and she looks up at me. The fire in her eyes burns and blazes, but she isn’t angry. The spark inside her is her will. Her strong, rebellious, beautiful will.
“What is it, Cherry?”
“Thank you.”
Cherry
Sean doesn’t leave my side while I’m being checked out. He brought me through the Emergency Room entrance, but now I’m in one of the doctor’s private offices on another floor in another wing.
“Nothing a little bit of rest and a good meal won’t cure,” the doctor says, putting the stethoscope around his neck. He takes my chart from his desk and looks at it thoughtfully. “Miss Davenport? Any relation to Frank Davenport?”
Sean takes my hand and squeezes tightly, flashing me a small smile.
“Yes,” I say, clearing my throat. “That’s my father.”
The doctor puts down my chart carefully on the exam table where I’m sitting, giving us a small nod and pushing his glasses further up his nose.
“I’d like you to stay here overnight, just for observation. We just want to make sure everything’s good.”
“Thank you,” Sean says. “Anything you recommend. We’ll follow your orders.”
“I’ll have the room reserved and come back in a few minutes for you.”
The doctor leaves the exam room and Sean wraps me up in his arms.
“You’re coming home with me after this,” he says, brushing my hair away from my face and putting one of his strong hands around my waist. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”
I don’t know exactly what happened, but I don’t know if I want to right now. All I know is that I’m exhausted and I want to sleep. I want to sleep next to Sean. I want to feel him, have him wrap his arms around me.
I swallow hard as my eyes fill with hot tears, my chest pooling with confusion and anger.
But not anger toward Sean. I don’t even know what I’m angry at, or why.
“What’s wrong? Come here.” He pulls my body toward him and hitches my legs up around his waist. I hold onto him like my life depends on it.
“What about your uncle?” I choke out. All I remember clearly is someone taking me from Sean’s house. And then his cousins brought me into the hotel, and there were girls like me there, and then they brought me into a room...that’s the last thing I can remember. The doctor filled in the details on what happened to me. Thanks to Sean, it wasn’t something worse.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says.
“And your cousins?”
“You don’t have to worry about them anymore.”
A wave of relief washes over me. I don’t need to know what happened to them. All I know is that they were bad, bad men, and I wasn’t the first girl they tried to hurt. Thanks to Sean, though, I’ll be the last.
I look up at Sean as his hands snake around my back, pulling me in closer. He leans down and crushes his lips to mine with an exuberant intensity that I’ve never felt before. It’s clear and pure, and fills me with desire.
“I was thinking, maybe you could stay with me for a while. You know, after you get better.” He nuzzles his mouth into my neck, making a trail of kisses up my neck, nipping my earlobe with his teeth.
I inhale deeply, and let it out shakily.
“I’d like that.”
His strong hands come down my back, lower, bringing me toward him again. I can feel his hardness pressing up against me, through the thin paper robe they gave me. I’m about to get lost in him when he pulls away slowly at the sound of voices outside the door.
“Don’t move,” he says, giving me that smile I haven’t seen in days.
He leaves the exam room, slipping out and closing the door behind him softly. Through the closed door I hear the frantic voices of doctors and nurses, the kind of voices that you only hear when someone’s really in trouble.
Getting down from the exam table, I walk lighty over to the door, bringing my robe tight around me and opening the door a crack. Sean’s standing there in the hallway, watching the scene unfold before him as a man on a gurney is rushed through the hallway into one of the rooms down the hall.
I step out into the hall and watch Sean walking over to the room slowly. The man on the gurney is wheeled into the room and he’s hooked up to machines quickly. I recognize them, but I don’t know what each of them does. It’s a room like my father’s in, the nice one that Sean arranged for him.
I don’t want to watch anymore. That’s someone’s son, maybe someone’s dad, and it makes my heart hurt to watch. It’s not just because it makes me think of my own dad. It’s because that man has a family, too.
I turn to start back into my exam room when Sean turns around to face me. His face is stone and calm, but I can see the muscles behind his shirt flex each time he knots up his fists, curling and uncurling them. I walk toward him as he turns away from me again, and I put my hand on his back.
It’s then that I see who’s on the gurney.
Looking up at Sean, I search his face for answers. For even just a clue as to what he’s feeling, seeing his Uncle like this. I don’t know if it’s acceptance, or fear, or hell, even excitement.
My head swims with questions as I look back through clear glass window into the room. They’re cutting the old man’s shirt open with scissors. They’re squeezing gel from a tube onto his chest and charging paddles and calling clear!, and now they’re shocking his heart with electricity.
They do it again. I keep my hand still on Sean’s back as his uncle is worked on. I don’t know if he’s dying or if he’s being brought back from death. My heart is inside my throat as we watch. I want to turn away. I want to run and hide. But I stay by Sean’s side, because it’s what he’d do for me. It’s what he’s already done for me.
Someone calls out clear! again, and the paddles shock him again. The tension inside the room is thick and palpable, even from outside. They’re trying to save him. They’re trying to bring him back from the brink.
Again, someone calls clear. But it’s with less feeling this time. There’s less intensity behind it. The yellow light inside the hospital room seems to shift, being cast in a dull blue light instead as the doctors and nurses slow down and then finally halt, and someone checks and announces the time of death.
I gasp and throw myself into Sean’s chest, tears erupting from my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I gulp. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says, wrapping his arms around me. “Don’t be sorry for him. He isn’t worth it.”
“I can’t believe it,” I choke, my body flooding with relief. I’m sorry that Sean has lost family, but…
“What can’t you believe? He had it coming to him. He deserved it.”
“I can’t believe it’s over,” I mumble into his chest, his shirt beneath my eyes becoming damp. “I’m sorry, Sean. I know he was your family.”
“No,” Sean says, raising my chin and looking deeply into my eyes. He smiles; he looks as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. “Not anymore. Those people ceased to be my family the second they took something away from me. They moment they took you away from me and tried to hurt you.”
“But you lied to them,” I say, peering up at him. My hands come up to his chest and he takes my chin in his hand, tilting it up and crushing his mouth into mine, making me open for him, sweeping his mouth against mine.
“I lied to protect you,” he says. “The only thing I’ve ever really cared about. It was the right thing to do.
I had to protect you. I couldn’t let them have you. I wouldn’t.”
He pulls me close again, wrapping me up in his soft embrace. My fingers dig into the flesh on his chest, kissing him back as he kisses me. I want the moment to last. I need it to.
Sean
One Week Later
I check the address on my phone again to make sure it’s the right house. I peer up to look into the upstairs window. Cherry told me hers is the one with the white lace curtains.
The day couldn’t be brighter and sunnier. I get out of my SUV and slam the door behind me.
I haven’t seen her yet today. Today she’s at her house, babysitting for the young girl she often takes care of. Both of the little girl’s parents work at the hospital, and they both have the same shift today so they’ve left their girl with Cherry like they always do.
I wanted to keep Cherry with me, at my house, but she said she wanted that little bit of normalcy after everything that happened. She came back with me after we left the hospital, but today she insisted on coming home. She’s agreed to come back home with me tonight, though. But I don’t want to keep her locked up. Now that the danger’s gone, she doesn’t need my protection anymore. She can make her own choice to come with me or not. That’s not going to stop her from choosing to get into my bed with me, though. Let me make her feel better than she’s ever felt before.
I would have suggested sitting for the little girl at my place, but my house isn’t exactly the place for little kids to run around in.
Crossing the sidewalk and winding along the path cutting through the lawn, I go up to the house and ring the doorbell. I need to see her. I spent all day working with the funeral home for my uncle’s final rest, but I let his brother make most of the arrangements. Not dad, their other brother. I don’t think my dad wants to see his brother being buried. It’s not easy for him.
But for me, it’s easy to see him go into the ground.
My heart races as the door opens and I see Cherry standing there.
She’s more beautiful than the picture I had in my head, the one I brought up in my mind and thought about all day. Her beauty’s grown so much in just this one day. How is that fucking possible? I want to take her right here and now, throw her against the wall and make her wrap her legs around me.
