Dante's Second Chance

Annabelle has had it.

She was ready to make a break for it even if it killed her.

She was sure it would kill her anyway or at least someone else would suffer for it.

"I am sorry, Mum," she whispered in the dark.

She knew her mother would never understand why she had done it.

Just as she didn't believe her when Annabelle told her what he was doing.

She never had. And Annabelle had finally realised that she never will.

Her mother's dream man could do no wrong.

This was her only chance, and they would never escape if she didn't take it.

She couldn't do anything for her mother, but she could do something for Cathy.

Her breath caught in her throat when she heard the heavy footsteps nearing the door of the room she once shared with her sister.

He was the one who told her mother she needed her separate room now.

"She is a big girl now and deserves her privacy."

Like always, her mother agreed with him.

Then the nightmares had started.

Subtly at first.

Then it got worse

She started sweating as terror wanted to envelop her.

Images of many other nights like this came to her mind and she started shivering.

The shuffling feet got closer.

She knew he was doing it on purpose.

The bastard.

On other nights he had tried to be sneaky about it, but not tonight.

Tonight, he was sure that no one would be around to disturb him.

He believed she was all his, and she knew he would torment her with the fear of his approach even before he entered.

Over the years, she had learned that the fear turned him on more than any other thing.

He loved to see her trembling body just as much as he loved to ruin it.

Annabelle flinched as he kicked the door open.

A whimper escaped her before she could stop herself.

She bit her lips hard to stop her trembling body from giving her away.

She couldn't afford to fail now.

She had spent months planning this.

Failing now would spell doom for her.

And then for Cathy.

Still, bitter tears squeezed out of her tightly shut eyes as the stench of alcohol reached her long before she felt his shadow over her.

"What is this? Are you pretending to sleep, brat? Are you shy now, baby girl? I thought we were long past this," he added with a cruel chuckle.

She flinched as his ringed knuckle grazed her cheek so roughly that it left a sting on her olive-toned skin.

"That's what I thought," he said as he bent down and slurped at her face with his rough, alcohol-soaked tongue.

Annabelle shuddered visibly and that got him angry.

The sudden slap made the metal frames of her worn bed squeak loudly in the room.

The sound was like a gong in her tortured head.

She expected the hit. She always expected it.

Yet when it came, the pain was always worse than the last.

He hardly hit her face when her mom was around. Not that it would have made a difference, but he seemed bent on keeping up appearances.

But today, no one was there to hear her, even if she cried out loud.

He gave her another slap and Annabelle merely groaned through gritted teeth to avoid crying out.

He grunted and smashed the bottle in his hand against the headboard.

The piece of bottle stung as it pierced her back, yet she didn't cry out.

"Please, don't ask me to strip," she prayed with everything in her.

Not because she had not done it before, but because that would blow her cover.

Please, please, please. She pleaded to whatever powers were listening to her at that moment.

She heard the sound of his belt unbuckling in the silence.

She tensed as the belt switched in the air. The sharp crack as it landed on her back sent reeling pain into her brain.

"He is going to kill you."

The realisation dawned on her like a revelation.

For a moment, her battered soul almost welcomed the end.

Death would mean it was over and done.

But almost immediately, Cathy's face showed vibrantly in her mind.

The cheerful face so vivid that she blinked in the darkened room filled her despair.

"No, I can't let him do this to me. Not now," her momentarily cowered mind reared its head.

She must finish what she had started these past months.

He wouldn't be winning tonight. If she didn't die first.

There was a difference to the beating this time. He always gets to business after roughing her around for a while.

He always said he wouldn't want her to lose her strength for the duty she was to perform.

At first, all he would do to keep her quiet was to threaten to go to Cathy's room.

Then he started using his hands on her, even while bruising her body.

As the belt came down on her again, Annabelle knew she was done for this time.

This was different.

Yet she was afraid to do what she had planned to do all along.

She was sure he would kill her before she got the chance.

Then she would never be able to save Cathy from this hell.

"If only your godforsaken mother was any good," he grunted a moment later.

Annabelle's screaming nerves almost made her not notice the sound of the belt dropping.

He climbed the bed immediately.

"You know what to do, you whore. Strip before I get here. Yet you always make me say it. That was your punishment. You will know better next time."

He dragged her downward, making the pieces of the bottle on the bed pierce her arms.

Annabelle could feel blood ooze out of her arms as he roughly flipped her over.

The pain of the shard in her back launched her upwards as she automatically brought out the hand she had under the cover.

Before Tad Whitaker could react, Annabelle stabbed him in the chest with the toxin-coated knife.

"You..."

In a panic, Annabelle pulled the knife out of his broad chest, ignored the blood that splashed her face and stabbed him in the stomach with all her strength.

The force made Tad stumble backwards, and he fell off the bed.

He fell right on the path that led to the door.

The shock held her in its grip for two seconds before she quickly got out of bed.

More glasses pierced her skin while she was getting up, but in her adrenaline-stoked state, she didn't notice at all.

She almost squealed when she saw him trying to get up. In her panic, she backed away from his direction.

"Why wasn't the toxin working yet? Jose had said it would work immediately," she thought in fear, wondering if all she had done would be in vain after all.

He was sweating heavily as he pinned her with a deadly glare. "You...are...dead." he gritted out as he held onto the side of the bed.

He reached for the knife to pull it out, then thought better of it.

An insane thought came to Annabelle's mind to pull out the knife and finish him off, but she was not a murderer.

She only wanted to make him unconscious. She had thought the toxin would work. Why wasn't it working?!

"I...will...cut...your...worthless body...into..."

"Now!" Annabelle's mind screamed, and she ran towards the door with one thought in her head.

She would die fighting.

He grabbed her and caught the nape of her gown.

"I got..."

Annabelle turned back and punched his hand wrapped around the knife.

Tad yelled and staggered backwards.

Annabelle was crossing the threshold when she heard a loud thump in the room behind her.

She didn't wait to see if she had killed him or not.

She tore her bloody nightgown off her head and winced as the cloth pulled at the glasses still on her back.

Blood oozed out of her back as she tossed the tattered nightgown aside the remaining top and bum shorts she wore underneath.

She picked her packed bag out of the tiny washroom where she had already stowed it.

Annabelle did not look back once at the home of her youth that had turned into a place of horror for her in the past two years.

She locked the door from outside and tossed the key as far as she could into the bushes behind their bungalow.

She did not doubt that he could get out through the windows or break the door, but she was determined to be long gone before then.

There was no back door for him to pass through, but she was not worried about that.

When he burst through that door, she would be long gone.

Before he thought of calling her mother, she would have picked Cathy, and they would be far away from the woman who couldn't protect them from her monster.

"Or maybe you have killed him," whispered her subconsciousness.

Annabelle took her mind off that possibility as she started walking away from the town she had known since birth.

Everywhere was dark already, and she didn't see a soul on the street as she looked briskly towards the main road.

Stoneraine was a laidback town, and it would have been strange if people were not already sleeping in their homes by that time.

Annabelle just needed to get to Arcadia before morning.

That was where Jose's sister would be waiting for her with Cathy.

Tears of joy stained Annabelle's eyes as she pictured her sister's innocent face and her arms itched to hug her at that moment.

"Soon enough" she promised herself as she kept working faster.

Tad had never allowed her to keep money of her own.

She knew it was because he knew she might want to run away.

But then Jose had handled all that.

All she had to do was give him what he had always begged her for.

Annabelle felt no regret as she patted the small cash in the pocket of her bum shorts.

What mattered was that she had pulled this off. It was too late for her, but not for Cathy.

The cold bit her exposed skin and the pain in her body flared, but she didn't dare stop.

Tad could be dead, or he could have escaped the house already.

Either way, she didn't want to be caught anywhere near Stoneraine by morning.

Jose had told her his sister was leaving Acadia the next morning. If Annabelle did not get there to get her sister, she had no idea what would happen to her.

All she had was a piece of paper with the number of the sister on it.

She was to call with a payphone once she got to Acadia.

What if...?

Picturing Cathy's trusting face in her mind, Annabelle started running once she got close to the main express.

"Wait for me, Cathy. We will soon be together," she murmured to herself over and over again to numb her pain and to keep the sudden fear at bay.

What she had not stopped to think of in her moments of desperation was just coming to her mind as the crickets called to each other and her heartbeat thumped in her ears.

What if Jose lied to her? What if no sister was waiting for her? What if he and his friend who were supposed to take Cathy away from her mom did something to her?

"Oh, you fool," she suddenly sobbed as the possibility hit her.

He had promised that Tad would become weak and unconscious immediately. The toxin touched his blood after all, yet the bastard was still standing for some minutes.

Tears started streaming down Annabelle's face as her tortured mind started bringing up images of a lot of things that could have happened to Cathy.

"No, please, no," she mumbled to herself as she burst out of the path she was coming from onto the main road.

The car came out of nowhere!

Before Annabelle could turn back from the sudden movement, the car had caught her side and lifted her in the air.

She crashed hard onto the asphalt with a sickening crunch.

Her mind tried to hold on to Cathy's image.

Then everything went black.

Dante Cazador pointed his gun at the unmoving figure on the ground.

He was in a very bad mood, and he was tempted to just shoot the piece of shit who dared to play a trick on him.

Whoever was pulling this must be an amateur or a newbie in town. No sane person would dare to pull this shit on him.

He cocked his gun and expected the person to jump up and start blabbing some apology, but the fool on the floor only stayed put.

Wow, must be an idiot who was done with life already.

His finger was already on the trigger when a second look made him pause.

Even in the total darkness of the moonless night, his sharp, trained eyes could see the body very well.

He already knew that it was a lady or a man disguised as one.

What made him pause was the fact that the person's legs were bare from the thigh downward.

If he didn't kill her, he was sure she would die from hypothermia soon.

Something was not adding up.

He signalled to his consigliere and the latter quickly put on the headlights of the car.

Dante's brow twitched when he saw the blood already soaking the asphalt.

It was oozing from the lady's head.

Good riddance. He was annoyed that he had not been able to get an answer out of the twit first.

He turned to leave, but he saw her in his mind's eye.

He knew what she would have said in this case.

"Shit," he swore as he tucked his gin in his waistband and bent down to scoop the girl up.

As he carried her, another image flashed into his mind.

An image of him carrying someone else just like this.

He had been too late then.

"Call Rafael to meet us at home right now!" he said tersely as he carried her to the car.

He got in beside her without looking at her face. He closed his eyes as memories tormented him.

"Boss, should I check first? She might be a ruse after all. We can send her to the hospital too."

"Angelo?"

"Yes, boss."

"What did I order you to do?"

"I am calling him, sir," Angelo Costa quickly dialled the doctor's number and gave him instructions.

***********

Dante shut himself in his office as soon as they got back to the estate.

He barely paid attention to the doctor, who was waiting at the entrance with his team.

He already knew Angelo would see to it that the thin girl was taken care of.

There was nothing special in the fact that he wanted to bring her home.

She needed medical care. He could provide it for her at his place.

Not that he cared much about what happened to idiots who go running into the streets without looking anyway.

The fact that they hadn't put on the headlights did not matter, she should have been more careful.

He didn't want any extra fawning on him if he took her to the hospital.

The estate was better. If she dies, her body could be disposed of without question. If she managed to survive and was innocent, she would be blindfolded when leaving.

And if she happened to be a spy like Angelo had suspected, then he would kill her himself.

Dante poured another generous hand of scotch into his tumbler and saluted the radiant woman with the beaming smile smiling at him above the mantle.

He downed the drink in one gulp and poured another.

"Isabella," he murmured as the scotch burned down his throat.

He wallowed in his memories for a while before turning his mind back to business.

Some bastard had decided to tail him today.

Whoever it was, was the reason why they had taken the route they took and switched off the headlights just to catch the asshole unawares.

Whoever it was must have thought he was easy prey because he didn't take his men with him that day.

It was supposed to be Isabella's birthday, and he had chosen to celebrate that every year instead of remembering her death or how she died.

Most heads would roll soon, he vowed. He must not have made enough statements if anyone thought they could toy with him with such child's play.

By the time he was done with the eighth shot, he was more than eager to discover that the girl was truly a ruse.

He would personally send her head as a lesson to whoever sent her. Then he would make them all pay.

Tainting Isabella's day with such nonsense was unacceptable.

A knock sounded at the door, and he knew who it was.

"Come," he simply said.

Angelo entered with a strange look on his face.

"What?" Dante asked impatiently.

"The girl we brought..."

"What about her?" Dante asked testily when he stopped talking. "If she is dead, just handle her body. I don't want to deal with any family."

"No, it is not that. Rafael said she would be out of danger soon."

Dante raised his eyebrows in question.

Angelo looked uncomfortable for a moment before clearing his throat. Then he moved closer to ask; "I was just wondering if you looked at her face?"

Dante was fast losing his patience. Was everyone around him going mad? He wondered in annoyance.

"If you have too much time on your hands, use it to look into the bastard who tailed us tonight. Find him, make him talk and make him pay."

"Yes, boss," Angelo responded and turned to leave.

He was almost at the door before he turned back. "Boss, I think..."

"Don't come back if you don't have a result for me," Dante said in a formidable tone that Angelo knew too well.

"Yes, sir," he said and left immediately.

One of the men manning the door pulled the door close.

Dante sighed in sudden weariness.

He didn't bother to go up to his bedroom despite how tired he was.

He soon fell into a fitful sleep at his desk, dreaming about gunshots, fire and a woman with emerald-green eyes.