Page 97 of No Fear
“Oh, God… don’t. Don’t. Craig! I’m yoursister! Don’t!”
“You’re not even stuttering. You’re not scared of me anymore huh? Well, I can fix that.” He ripped at her shirt again and she bucked, trying to get him off her.
Shewasstill scared of him though. That was the thing. She’d just found a way past it. Hadn’t let herself think of what might happen if he got around the others and got to her. She couldn’t have thought about that and agreed to this plan. So she’d only focused on Remy. She’d focused on doing her part for the family and getting rid of Craig once and for all. But she’d still been scared of him, and now, with him holding her down and ripping at her clothes like a madman, she was absolutely terrified.
He’d lost him mind. He was crazy. And where the hell were her boys at? Why wasn’t Remy rushing through the door? Or Ford? She wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold him off.
“Craig! Stop!” She screamed as she threw all her weight into freeing her arms and managed to slide one loose.
She reared back and punched him in the nose with every ounce of strength she had left in her body. It knocked him backwards and he sputtered in shock. She took advantage and scrambled out from beneath him. A quick glance showed blood spray the hand he’d used to cup the wound. She’d broken his nose which gave her a momentary feeling of pride before she saw him snarl and head her way again.
Rachel scrambled to her closet. She just had to get to her closet. The vent. She kept her gun hidden in the vent. If she could get to it she could pull it out and point it at him and he would have to stop, he would have to stop or she would shoot him. She would shoot him if he made her. If it was between the two of them, she would have the guts to save herself this time.
“Nooooo!” She screamed when he latched onto her ankle at the same time her hand brushed the vent, which was wide open and empty.
He jerked her backwards and then grabbed her hair, slamming her face forward into the carpet and making her head spin all over again.
The gun wasn’t in the vent, she remembered too late. She’d taken it to the salon and Colt had put it away for safekeeping. But the note she’d left behind as an insurance policy for Skylar to find was gone too. She’d been distracted by the seemingly untouched room. She’d thought he hadn’t been in here but he had. Craig must have found it which meant he knew that she knew everything. Those were the secrets he thought she’d spilled. He knew. She’d come back here with nothing to defend herself and he was going to kill her. She was overpowered and all alone just like she’d always feared she would be.
Where was Remy?
“You fuckin’ bitch.” Craig snarled, flipping her over as he spit in her face, “I shoulda killed you years ago. Saved me a shitload of trouble. My mistake but I can fix it. I’ll just have to bury you next to your whore mama. Nobody’ll even miss you.”
“Th-Th-That’s… not… t-true.”
An eerie red blood-stained grin spread over his face, “There’s the stutter.”
He was going to kill her. She knew it as simply as she knew the sky was blue or the grass was green or that she loved Remy Bomar more than she’d ever known was possible. Craig was going to kill her and it was all her own fault.
If she’d told Remy sooner, they’d have gotten to Craig before he knew what was coming. He wouldn’t have been able to sneak his way in here, past the others. Because she hoped he’d snuck past them, that he’d found a way around them and that he hadn’t already done something horrible to the men she’d only just begun to consider her true family.
No. No. Her mind screamed. Remy was fine. Safe and fine. Sitting out there somewhere in the dark with his brother, completely unaware of what was happening in here. Because if he knew, he’d be here and she hoped that when he did realize something was wrong, that they’d missed something, that he wasn’t the first one through the door. She didn’t want him to be the one to find her body.
Tears prick her vision again but this time it wasn’t for herself. It wasn’t because she had protected this man who cared so little about her that he would kill her with his bare hands. It wasn’t because he was supposed to be her brother and care for her. She only cried now because she knew how badly this would hurt Remy.
He’d asked her not to do this. Not to go. Not to involve herself. But she’d insisted and he’d been right. She’d gotten herself hurt. Worse, if she didn’t fight, she was going to get herself killed.
Big hands landed on her throat and she tried to scream again, “Remy! Help! Remy!”
“What the… you’re callin’ for that fucker? When he sent you away? You’re a stupid fuckin’ bitch ain’t ya! He aint’ gonna help you. Ain’t even gonna care you’re gone.”
Craig tightened his hold on her throat and her entire body bucked, trying to get the air she so badly needed into her lungs. He didn’t know Remy was out there. He’d believed her message that they were done. Which meant Remy was alive and unhurt. He was okay. And if she was going to die, then at least it was knowing that.
She scratched at Craig’s face with her free hand and he released her throat to smack her again. She sucked in a gasp of air but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. He easily pinned her arms with one hand and used his other to press against her airway. Stars began to dance in her vision and the entire world started fading to black. The roaring of her desperate, oxygen-deprived blood in her ears was so loud that she wasn’t even sure the sharp noise she heard was real until a second screeching bang rang out a moment later.
Craig jerked above her, his hands leaving her throat as he grasped at his chest, and she sucked in a gulp of air. The stars were still dancing and the entire room was spinning. Her brain was still in a lull and it took her an extended second to see that the reason Craig had stopped choking her to death was because he was now clutching at his own throat.
A giant, gaping hole had opened up just below his chin and off-center by a couple of inches. A second hole had torn through his shoulder but it was the neck wound that was hemorrhaging blood. Dark red liquid poured out of the wound faster than he could try to shove it back in. His fingers and clothes were soaked in it within the blink of an eye and she felt the warmth trickling down onto her as it left him forever.
All of it must have happened in the span of a second or two but it felt like hours that she watched her brother try to put his own blood back inside him. His wide, gray eyes, so much like her own, panicked and scared but still so angry when he finally saw the hopelessness of it and stared down at her. And then he was gone, the light went out of him and his entire body slumped over to the side, just beside her, almost as if he’d decided to lay down to take a nap all of a sudden but didn’t have the energy to get all the way off of her.
“Rach! Rach! Rachel!”
Somewhere in the fog of everything, she could hear someone desperately screaming her name but it all felt so far away. As if maybe she was still asleep and this had all been a nightmare and the screaming was just Remy trying to wake her up from her bad dream. But when someone grabbed her shoulder and shook her, when she opened her eyes, she knew that it was real. It was all real.
“Rach? Baby? Oh God…” Remy was there at her side, shoving Craig fully off of her and dragging her into a sitting position as his hands glided over her, checking for wounds, “Are you hit? Oh God, did I hit you? Where’s all the blood coming from?”
“I…I…” The words stuck in her throat and it took a couple of tries to get them out, “It’s not mine.”
