Chapter 20

MINA

Before he could take another breath, I had a knife to his throat and was pushing him back into the house, my fingertips barely touching his chest.

He stepped back so fast he almost tripped and fell. He spread his arms to either side to balance himself and lunged for a gun that lay on a table beside the door.

"Don't fucking touch it," I said. The tip of my knife was right against his jugular. It would be a simple matter to slice it open.

He froze, his hand hovered over it before he pulled his arms back in.

"Where is he?" I snarled.

"I don't know," he stammered. "I swear. He contacted me through a mutual acquaintance. Offered me ten grand to come here. That was all. I never met him and I don't know why he wanted me to come here."

His voice was high. He seemed ready to piss his pants.

"Who is this mutual acquaintance?" I asked.

"Let me guess." Gianni followed us inside. "Courtney?"

"I never met her either," he insisted. "She was some chick I met online. For all I know, she doesn't even exist. I needed the money, that's all I fucking know. I'll swear on anything you want. My phone is over there, on the table. You can see all the conversations I had with her." He jerked his head to the side.

"Pick it up," I said. If this was some kind of trap, the phone could be hiding a bomb or who knows what else.

He inched over, scooped up the phone and offered it to me.

"Open it," I said.

He hesitated.

Gianni scooped up the man's gun from the table and aimed it at his temple. "You heard the woman."

The man swallowed, but tapped on the screen to open the phone and enter the message app. He offered it to me, but Gianni took it first.

"Let's see what this motherfucker has to say for himself."

"Are you having fun without us?" Hunter stepped inside the house, Parker behind him.

"It looks like it," Parker said. "I like a woman who knows how to handle a knife."

"Don't even think about it or you won't be able to handle anything ever again," Gianni said pleasantly. "You'll find life more difficult without hands."

Parker chuckled. "Chill out, I was just making an observation."

Gianni grunted and returned his attention to the phone. "Dick pics? Really? You're old enough to know better."

"I thought she was legit," the man whined.

"Well, StudMuffin69, I think you've been had," Gianni said. "Or should I say, Frank."

"Stud muffin?" Hunter cracked up laughing. "He wishes."

I ignored him. "Is there any indication of where Kurt is right now? Some reason why he set this up?"

"My guess is he hired Frank here as a distraction." Gianni tossed the phone back on the table. "I don't think he knows Jack shit."

"I really don't," Frank said frantically. "All I know is what you saw there. I was told to take that flight to Sydney, make sure those two noticed me and come here." He tilted his head towards the twins, the movement subtle and nervous.

"Was he supposed to contact you with more instructions?" I directed the question at Frank and Gianni.

"If there's anything else, he deleted it," Gianni said. "Or Kurt hasn't contacted him again yet."

"Parker and I will report to Reuben," Hunter said. "He'll want to know if this has something to do with us and not Mina."

I watched Frank's eyes for any reaction to Hunter saying my name, but discerned nothing. If this was anything to do with me, he didn't know about it.

"Now, what do we do with Frank here?" Gianni asked. He picked the phone back up and tucked it into his pocket. "If Kurt tries to contact him, he can go through me. But it seems to me that if Frank doesn't know anything, he's no use to us."

"Please," Frank groaned. He swallowed hard. "I don't know anything, I swear. You have my phone, I can't contact him again. I don't know where he is. Fuck, I don't even know who he is. He might not be real either."

I wished he wasn't, but he was, and the reality was that he'd want to speak to Frank about this whole incident. After Kurt ran, he might have assumed I died in that cage. Frank seeing me would be proof that didn't happen.

But only if I left him alive.

I pressed the blade more firmly against his throat.

"Daddy?" A small voice came from the back of the room.

I looked away from Frank, to see a girl of five or six years old, standing in what looked like a bedroom doorway. She wore pyjamas that covered her feet, so she was head to toe in pink and purple unicorns. Her dark hair was messy, her eyes looked heavy with sleep. We must have woken her up.

"What the hell?" Gianni whispered, echoing my thoughts.

"It's okay, Holly, go back to bed. Everything will be okay." Frank slid a smile in her direction, trying to be reassuring while clearly scared out of his wits.

It was my turn to freeze. My mind went back to a night a bit over five years ago.

A tangle of dark curls. Huge eyes that looked back at me with no hint of understanding.

She shouldn't have been there.

She wasn't part of the plan.

I should have known.

I should have anticipated.

I should have been able to stop myself.

The blood on my hands was hers. I never meant to spill a drop, but I had. She died in my arms. I felt the life slip away from her. Bit by bit, drop by drop. There was nothing I could do or say to stop it from happening. The second our lives intersected, hers was over.

Her body went still and cold while I held her. So tiny. Small and innocent and gone. Her pale yellow pyjamas turned sickly orange with her blood. The smiley faces on the fabric grinned at me in accusation. Mocking me.

I fucked up.

I fucked up badly and she paid the price.

I stepped back from Frank and lowered the knife. "No one said anything about a kid."

"Her mother had to work late," Frank said. "She brought her in through the back so she wouldn't be seen. This wasn't about her."

"No it wasn't," I agreed. "She shouldn't be here." Like that other little girl wasn't supposed to be there that night. She was dead because of it. Like Holly would have been if Kurt set a trap for us all.

"I'll take her home," Frank said. "I don't need to be here either." He stepped backward towards the little girl. Held out his hand to her.

"Word of advice," Gianni said. "Stay away from creeps on the Internet. There's a lot of shady people out there. You got paid?"

"Yeah," I did," Frank said. Holly slipped her hand into his.

"Then take it and get out of here," Gianni said. "Don't talk about what happened here and don't look back."

Frank picked up Holly and rested her on his hip. "No one will hear about this from me. I swear that on my daughter's life." She clearly meant everything to him. He wouldn't say anything to anyone, if only because we knew she existed too. Some people wouldn't hesitate to use a child to further themselves. Especially someone like Kurt. I didn't want to think about what he might do to her if he got anywhere near her.

I put the knife away and watched while they hurried to gather Holly's things and slip out the back door.

"You okay, sweetheart?" Gianni asked. "You look like you saw a ghost when that kid appeared."

"I didn't expect to see her there," I said. That much was true. The rest was something I wasn't ready to talk about yet. What would he think of me if he knew? My own father sent me to Kurt when he found out. If someone who was supposed to love me would do that, then there was nothing I could put past anyone, no matter their feelings for me. I may find myself back in that cage, or dead.

No, that was better kept to myself.

"I'll be having words with those twins about missing that piece of vital information," Gianni said. He twirled the gun around his middle finger.

I might have a few with them myself. In the meantime, I had more questions than answers. Why had Kurt wanted Frank to lead the twins here? I remembered what Daze said about him being smart and meticulous. There was no way in hell he'd do all of this for no reason. If he wanted to distract us, then there was something he wanted us to be distracted from. What the fuck was he up to?

"Come on, Reuben and Damon will want to know you're okay." Gianni took a step towards the door.

Before he stepped outside, he stopped and turned around. "I might not be the handsomest or smartest guy around, but I know when something is up. I saw the expression on your face when you saw that kid. Something happened. I don't give a shit what it was but I'll tell you this."

He pointed a finger in the direction of my nose. "It wasn't your fault. All of this, it might just have been some kind of set up. Some way for that prick to fuck with your head. If that's all it was, don't let him get to you. He doesn't deserve to live rent-free in your head. He deserves a fucking bullet in his."

He lowered his hand and nodded once like that was that, end of story.

I pressed my lips together and rolled them a couple of times. "You might be biased."

He didn't know the circumstances and he wasn't going to hear them from me tonight.

He was guessing, based on his feelings for me. Feelings that were sweet, but were they misplaced?

Seeing that kid standing there tonight brought everything back into painfully sharp focus. Maybe Kurt was fucking with me, but he'd succeeded in rattling me. He'd gotten right back into my head. Reminding me of who and what I was.

I wasn't sweet little Mina anymore. I hadn't been for a long time. Longer than most people knew. Everyone except my father, and a couple of other people, including Kurt.

"If I'm biased, I don't give a shit," Gianni said. "I meant what I said. Whatever the fuck went down, I don't blame you for it. Not even if anyone else does, you've more than paid the price. I'll fucking tell them all that too."

He fixed me with a look like that was that, whether I liked it or not. His determination was endearing, as was his blind faith. He'd made up his mind and no one and nothing was going to change it for him. Or so he thought. The reality might end up being very different. He might end up being the one with his heart torn clean out of his chest.

"Yeah," I said softly.

We stepped out the front door of the house and back down the steps.

We reached the street as Frank bundled Holly into a small hatchback. The vehicle looked old enough to back up his story about needing money. It had definitely seen better days.

He glanced over his shoulder at us before quickly jumping into the driver's seat. The door slammed behind him with a thud before he roared off down the street and was gone.

A heartbeat later, the house beside us exploded into flames.