Page 17 of Untamed

“No!” I scream, the sound ripping out of me. “Let me go! I need to go to them!”

With a sudden jerk, I tear free of his grip. Everything spins around me, but I don’t stop. I run toward the wreckage, toward the flashing lights and twisted metal, toward the two people who still haven't moved.

“Jordyn!” Matteo’s voice bellows behind me, desperate, but I barely hear him.

A police officer catches me just before I reach them, grabbing me by the waist and hauling me back. I thrash in his arms, screaming, kicking, punching at his chest trying to tear away, but he holds firm. “Let me go!” I sob, reaching out toward them. “Mum!” I shout. “Daddy!”

Through the wall of bodies, paramedics, officers, firefighters, strangers...I see it.

They pull my mother’s body out first. Her arm dangles loosely as they lower her onto the asphalt, her hair matted with blood.

Then they pull my father free. His head lolls to the side, his face cut and bloodied, terrifyingly still.

I scream so hard my vision blackens at the edges, but it doesn’t stop what happens next. I watch, helpless as the white sheet is pulled up, fluttering gently in the breeze before settling over my mother’s body. Another over my father.

“No, no, no—” I sob, my knees giving way as the officer struggles to hold me upright. They’re not gone. They can’t be...

The world ruptures, the radios and shouting blurring into a single, unbearable noise. I claw at the officer’s arms, still trying to reach them even as the reality crushes me.

The finality of it slams into me like a freight train.

A hollow, ragged sound tears from my chest, a sound I don’t even recognise as my own. My knees buckle, and this time, it’s Matteo who catches me fully, lifting me off the ground as I fall apart in his arms.

“Come on, Jordyn,” he murmurs brokenly, pressing my face into his chest as he carries me away from the scene. “You don’t have to see this.”

But I already have. And no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes shut, I know I'll never unsee it.

The smoke. The flashing lights. The white sheets covering the only people who ever truly loved me.

Everything inside me goes ice cold,numb...like my heart has simply stopped.

It was in that moment that I realised. I would never be whole again.

I go limp in Matteo’s arms, my sobs fading into nothing, as the world around me dissolves into darkness.

I don’t know how long I was out, but I wake to silence.

The kind of silence that feels thick and heavy enough to crush you.

For one fleeting, fragile second, I forget. I blink up at the ceiling, the moonlight leaking through unfamiliar curtains, and I almost believe I'm still back home. That if I listen hard enough, I'll hear Mum humming in the kitchen while she cooks our Sunday roast, or Dad calling out for someone to put the kettle on.

But the longer I lie there, the more the truth creeps in. The hollow ache in my chest expands. Consumes me. The sting of dried tears on my skin.

The distant thud of footsteps echoing down long marble hallways.

This isn’t home. This is the Russo manor.

And my parents are gone. They’re really gone. It wasn’t a horrific dream.

The memory slams into me all over again. The wreckage, the sirens, the white sheets. A strangled sob catches in my throat, and I curl in on myself, clutching the sheets as if they might hold me together when everything else has already fallen apart.

How could this happen? I should be home right now, in my bedroom, on my bed with my parents curled up on the sofa and Mum forcing my Dad to watch Eastenders and him complaining even though he secretly loves it.

Instead, I’m curled up in a bed that isn’t mine, in this beautiful house that feels cold and unwelcoming. A fear I’ve never felt before settles deep inside my chest, crippling me.

I don't know how long I stay curled up like that, staring blankly at the wall, breathing through the hollow, crippling ache in my chest.

The door creaks open, soft but careful, like whoever is outside already knows I’m broken and doesn’t want to shatter me more.

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