Laughing Eyes: Bittersweet Familia (3) (17 page)

Danny

“Aiden, come in. Can you hear me?”

Nothing, the line was dead. Not for the first time in the last two days, panic tore through me. Not much got under my skin, except for now with the realization that things were beginning to spiral out of control.

Taking a gamble, I approached the house which up until ten minutes ago, had been teeming with armed guards. The first level was in complete disarray. Glass lay shattered over the floor, violent splatters of blood staining the broken furniture. Bodies lay slumped over makeshift barricades, victims of my own bullets.

Upstairs, a woman’s cry and a man’s raised voice sounded my alarm. My stomach was betraying me, the dreaded thought of what I would find twisting my insides.

It all came down to now.

To complete the mission, end the savagery cultivated by one man and ensure Anna made it home safe.

I took the stairs two at a time, my Glock poised, ready, and expecting. Muffled cries of desperation filtered down the hall like an attack on the senses, a slightly ajar door my main focus. Stopping in my tracks, I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply. The small voice pleading and begging behind the wall was breaking my heart. I knew it was Anna. I knew she had been hurt. It was an awful gut-wrenching feeling that perhaps I was too late.

“Peters!” A deep male voice, one full of self-righteous pride called out, pulling me from my vengeful thoughts.

“Come in and claim your beautiful prize.”

***

Nudging the heavy door with my boot, it creaked open making my presence known. Nicolas knew I was here. He had a fucking scent like a wolf. Over the last day my mind had imagined a lot. I was guilty of possibly imagining the worst at times, preparing me for what I would find courtesy of a sadist. But nothing compared to this. Nothing could set the fear running through one’s veins quite like this.

“Danny!” Anna’s petrified voice shook all my nerve. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she clawed desperately at the arm wrapped around her neck. El Leon looked a picture of evil, his sharp as fuck hunting knife drawing a path of blood just under her ear.

A pained sob broke free from her sweet mouth, my world coming to a crashing halt. In that very moment, all color drained from my face, my palms sweaty.

For all it was worth, my gun was trained at his smug face. He was playing it clever, carefully concealing himself behind Anna, knowing that the first chance I had he would be wearing one or more of my bullets.

But I couldn’t shoot.

The terrified plea in the beautiful pair of eyes before me had me rendered useless. He wanted me to shoot. He wanted me to miss and hit Anna. I stared back, pleading my own message to her. I wanted to say everything would be ok. I wanted her to believe she would survive this, that we would have a future together. 

“You don’t look happy to see her?” El Leon’s voice was hard, mocking, his eyes taunting me, knowing he had the upper hand.

“Let her go,” my finger twitched on the trigger.

“You are quite the marksman, Peters. I could use a man like you on my side.”

“What do you want?” Somehow I knew it wasn’t about recruiting me into his death squad. I looked to Anna and my heart constricted, her fear drowning all hope. She was trying desperately to stay strong, but her whimpers betrayed her.

With her being used as a shield, a knife to her throat, I couldn’t take the chance. The window of opportunity was slim to none.

“It’s a little too late to ask what I want, isn’t it Peters? What I wanted was for you to fuck off out of my business.”

“This is my job, don’t take it personally.”

“And arms production is my job, soldier, and I just so happen to take every bit serious. Including the part when an exquisite young woman such as this walks into my presence,” he pressed the knife into Anna’s neck, leaving her begging for mercy.

I had lost my breath. Somewhere it was lodged in my chest refusing to expel.

“Hurting Anna isn’t going to change things!”

He considered my words for the briefest moment, a sly smile creeping onto his face. “I happen to think it’s going to change things a great deal, don’t you? I think you are forgetting just how much you owe me. You’ve destroyed all I have worked for. If I weren’t the one it was happening to, I would congratulate you on your efforts. Fact of the matter is, I am your target, and therefore you have become mine.”

“This has nothing to do with Anna,” I knew my reasoning was falling on deaf ears. I was stalling, knowing that he was edging closer to the punch line.

Nicolas sighed heavily, his face slipping into a dreamlike state. “I’ve grown rather fond of her, you know.” The knife slid further causing another rivulet of blood, his other hand out of sight. Anna winced, her teeth bared, skin glistening with sweat. “Her taste, the way she feels around me,” This time, his taunting eyes looked to mine, “She knows just what to do to satisfy my…particular needs.”

His sickening words cut to the bone and were only reinforced by the fresh new tears gliding down Anna’s cheeks.

What had he put her through?

His words ate away at my raw nerves, Anna’s distress ripping me further apart. “You fucker!” the words escaped as a low growl.

Anna squirmed as Nicolas leaned in mouthing something in her ear, his cold blue eyes trained on me the whole time.

“Don’t, please,” she begged to the man who only pulled her in tighter, an urgent warning to me flashing across her pained face.

In a moment of confusion, two gun shots exploded in the room. Ducking to the side, I was too late. The impact of Nicolas’s bullets pierced my shoulder, my gun falling on impact, Anna’s desperate screams echoing with the blast. A fiery heat assaulted my body, blood running down the length of my arm, dripping onto the plush cream carpet.

“Don’t even!” he hissed as I moved to collect my Glock, “Kick it.”

I hesitated in doing something that would leave me completely defenceless. With a knife to Anna’s throat and a gun pointed straight at me, I had little choice and it destroyed me on the inside knowing that I was falling short of the game.

He cocked an amused brow, “You’re not in a position to argue, marine. Kick your fucking gun!”

The muscle in my jaw twitched uncontrollably, the desire to destroy this man in the worse possible way filled my soul. Doing as he ordered, I watched as my weapon landed just shy of his feet. Nicolas’s eyes were exactly as the gypsies had described.

Cold.

Empty.

Dangerous.

Yet what I saw creep into them in that very second of my surrender chilled me to the core. Nothingness was replaced by something far worse.

Laughter.

El Leon, known as the emotionless monster, was laughing.

Anna

Danny had come for me after all.

He was going to save me from Nicolas and take us away from a place that was close to destroying everything we believed in.

But that wouldn’t be the case. I could see it etched on his face, his eyes bearing the heavy weight of sadness and fear.

The knife pressed harder against my neck, skin tearing beneath its blade, the pain unbearable. 

When I winced, so did Danny. As tears fell down my cheeks in what seemed like an endless stream, he swallowed the heavy lump in his throat just to take another breath.

I had known Danny for less than a month, but I loved him. I loved everything about the man who had risked his own life to save me. In a flash I was taken back to the first moment we met, caught in a derelict house not knowing the fight Nicolas has in store for us. The vulnerable man who now stood before me, I planned to spend my life with.

It wasn’t meant to be.

Fate was not smiling at us from above. It had long since abandoned this hell, leaving two love struck beings to bear the hurt of being torn apart.

I knew it.

Danny knew it!

Danny

The obnoxious mocking laugh filled the room, trapping us within its taunts. Using his fist, El Leon pushed Anna’s face to meet his, holding her head in an awkward embrace, his mouth possessively claiming hers in a vile display of dominance. He pulled away, a self-righteous smirk gloating his win before he whispered again into her ear.

A choked cry broke through the silence as his words resonated within her. In an instant, a moment that would embed its claws in me forever, Anna’s eyes flew open, a mixed look of terror and sorrow as she made a sudden move to escape.

She looked to me, her chin wobbling in hysteria, both arms reaching for me in desperation. Instinctively, I moved to get her away from Nicolas, but it was too late.

“Danny, plea—”

Her screams were cut short. Her attempt to break free thwarted. I watched, helpless, the distance between us too great for the micro seconds it took.

His knuckles were white, his hold on the knife handle strong and defiant. There was no turning back, no erasing what was about to happen.

I watched my world be torn apart as the polished blade sliced cleanly across Anna’s slender neck, its metal instantly covered in a thick coat of blood.

Her name repeatedly broke through the lump in my throat, but I couldn’t hear my own words. I watched, now a broken man as the life vanished in a flash from her beautiful green eyes. Those eyes that had sucked me in from the beginning.

There was no last final goodbye, no look of adoration between us. It had been taken, ripped away by a ruthless psychopath.

I ran. I ran to close the space between us, catching her falling body that Nicolas so carelessly discarded.

She fell limp in my arms, her familiar scent assaulting my senses, ripping my heart straight from my chest. Cradling her, we fell to the floor, her long thick hair fanning out like the angel she was.

“Anna,” I choked, trying to cover the wound in a futile attempt to save her. My tears fell on her face mixing with her blood, my heart aching like a motherfucker.

It was too late. I was too late.

Blood flowed endlessly, staining her tanned skin, soaking greedily into the cotton nightie. “Anna, please, please, please!” I begged her lifeless body. She stared up, eyes only for me, not seeing, no longer knowing.

Nicolas rounded on us, his footsteps slow and deliberate, taking time to admire his kill.

“Why?” I said, struggling through the wave of emotion flooding through me. “Why did you have to do that to her? She is an innocent, you fucker!” I was seething and I didn’t know why I was questioning his lack of morality. My body was waging a war, stuck in a world of grief while rage bubbled up from within.

“A shame really,” he said, the tone void of all emotion. “If you hadn’t turned up I would have kept her as my own.”

“I will fucking kill you for this you miserable sack of shit,” I didn’t care that he was the one with all the weapons. I knew I would never leave this earth before him. He would pay for taking Anna’s life. He would pay for it all.

“This is my fucking job, don’t take it personally,” he spat before the butt of his Glock cracked above my temple.