I didn’t reply to Big Phil when he spoke to me because I was simply too weak to. I hurt all over, and felt like never moving again. I heard more talking and shouting coming from both parties on the phone, but I couldn’t pay attention any longer and I allowed myself to fall into sweet, sweet darkness.
“Wake up.”
Those two words were the first thing I heard, the second was my own heartbeat, and the third was my scream as it tore from my throat. Pain. So much fucking pain. It filled me from head to toe and it was constant.
I opened my eyes and whimpered when I realised I was still trapped in Hell.
“Please,” I pleaded to no one. “Please, help me.”
My voice sounded scratchy, and felt like it needed a big glass of water to soothe away the ache in my throat.
“They’re in the building,” Big Phil mumbled, making his presence known. “I just buzzed them in.”
I had no idea who he was talking to; I looked at him and found him gazing out of the window with a gun in one hand, and a glass of brown liquid in the other. My eyes lingered on the gun for a few moments, and I prayed to God that he wouldn’t use it.
“Wha-what are you sayin’?” I asked as I lifted my right arm and used my hand to press against my left wounded shoulder in an attempt to stop the pulsing sting.
“The Slaters,” Big Phil replied. “I just buzzed them into the building, they’ll be here soon. I unlocked the front door for them.”
What?
“Why?” I asked, trying to control my sobs. “Why did they come?”
“For you,” he replied and took a sip from his glass. “I told you they would.”
“You can’t hurt them, please, just—”
“Be. Quiet.” He growled. “This isn’t about you anymore. You can leave if you want to, you have served your purpose.”
I made an attempt to sit up, but hot pain filled my leg keeping me from doing so. When I jerked in response to the pain, I fell to the side, off the sofa, and hit the floor with a sickening smack.
“Branna?”
Kane.
“No!” I cried. “Get away!
I heard quick paced footsteps, then a loud bang as the door to the sitting room was swung open and cracked against the wall.
“Oh, my God,” I heard Kane rasp.
I tried to turn over to see him, but I couldn’t. I was so weak, and hurting so much that even breathing was a struggle.
“Kane,” I groaned. “Get out.”
While you still can.
“What the fuck have you done to her?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“It looks worse than it is,” Big Phil responded as he turned around. “She brought most of it on herself if I’m being honest.”
“Kane,” I rasped as I forced myself to roll onto my back. “Run, he has a gun!”
I reached up with my good arm, gripped onto the arm of the sofa and pulled myself into a sitting position. I blinked when I saw Kane standing mere metres away from me. He was dressed… odd. It looked like he had on hospital scrubs, and booties people wore over there shoes when then didn’t want to get dirt or stain on a floor.
“He doesn’t want to shoot me,” Kane replied to me, but kept his eyes on Big Phil. “He wants me to suffer like I made his piece of shit kid suffer. A bullet will be too quick.”
Fear gripped me when Big Phil dropped his glass to the ground and didn’t flinch when it smashed to pieces. I screamed when he lifted his hand that contained the gun and pointed it directly at Kane’s head.
“Where are the rest of your brothers’?” Big Phil asked, sounding eerily calm.
“At home… it took a lot of convincing, especially with my oldest brother who wants to tear you limb from limb for hurting his woman… but they know ending your miserable life is my task. Mine alone. I’ll make you pay for everything.”
Big Phil sneered. “The student has come to take out the master, huh?”
“Something like that,” Kane growled through gritted teeth.
Big Phil gestured to Kane’s cover-ups with the gun he still had trained on him.
“You want no trace of you ever being here, do you?” he humourlessly sniggered. “If you manage to kill me, you won’t need to have gone to such extremes. This apartment may look nice because I did it up, but the rest of the place is a dive. No cameras, no security, and no paper trails. The son of a bitch who owns this place made the rooms sound proof too, he runs a brothel on the first five floors, and I’m pretty sure he runs a drug cocktail lab on the sixth.”
“Is that why you picked here?” I asked, my voice sounding like sandpaper. “Killin’ us, and then yourself, won’t draw attention… not until your rent is due at least.”
Big Phil sniggered, and I took his merriment as a big whopping yes.
“You’re going to off yourself?” Kane probed Big Phil. “Really?”
“What’s left for me once you’re dead?” he grilled.
Kane didn’t acknowledge the question, instead he asked, “Do you really want to shoot me, or do you just want me to hurt? All those times you hit me and stabbed me with needles to punish me, and now you switch to bullets? Have you lost your creativity? Does burying a hell-bound child do that to you?”
I wanted to tell Kane to stop, because with each verbal jab, Big Phil’s face was getting redder and redder.
“This is for Johnny.” Big Phil suddenly exclaimed then surprised me by dropping the gun to the floor. “This is for everything you have put me through.”