From Hatred to Chaos to Love

C H A P T E R - T W E N T Y

A knock at the door brought Kelly Severide from his slumber.

"Severide, who is it?" Leslie calls sleepily from the next bedroom.

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" he grumbles, kicking off the covers and crawling out of bed, checking the time on his way out and his phone read 2:48

Who the hell would be pounding on the door at three in the fucking morning?

The knocking never stopped.

He was so tired that all he did was open the door, not even looking through the peephole.

"Help me," she mutters before passing out.

The woman fell forward, allowing Kelly's arms to wrap around her waist and stop her from landing face-first on the floor.

Kelly picks her up bridal style and carries her up to his room.

"Shay!" He yells as he hurries up the stairs.

"What? Who was at the door?" She asks, appearing at his door, looking exhausted but immediately seemed to wake up as she noticed who Severide was carrying. "Is that Alyssa? What the hell happened?"

"I think she was raped," Kelly says, setting Alyssa Torres down on his bed. "She passed out as soon as I opened the door."

Alyssa's black dress was ripped in so many places that it was a miracle it was still in one piece and had been pulled up to mid-thigh and pulled down so far that half of her black bra was on display. One of her heels was broken, seemingly from running or tripping. Her hair was messed up, makeup smeared, tear marks streaming from her eyes, hand marks around her neck. There were bruises on the inside of her thighs. There were also bruises on her knuckles and knees from fighting back and being forced to kneel. She had rope marks around her wrists and ankles. There was blood between her thighs, some was semi-dried, and more was still running from higher up.

Kelly had never seen the woman in such an awful state and it made him both enraged and broken-hearted just to see it. He stared at the woman and could feel his heart breaking as he looked at the form she was in.

"We need to call an ambulance and the police, Kelly," Shay says, also looking at the woman.

"No, let her sleep. We can deal with this when she wakes up. If they wake her up, nothing good will happen."

Kelly draws the blankets up to her chin, covering her exposed body, and walks out of the room with Leslie.

"She just showed up?" Leslie asks as they stand outside of the room, still watching the woman.

"Yeah, I don't know what happened," Severide mutters, too distracted by Alyssa to give details.

Shay nods before heading back into her room, wanting to get some rest before all of the chaos started.

Kelly looks at Alyssa one last time before heading downstairs and laying on the couch.

He grabs a blanket from the back of the couch and drapes it over himself but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't fall asleep, he just kept thinking of the woman upstairs in his bed and what the hell had happened.

The man was replaying when he'd first opened the door. What if he hadn't gone downstairs? Where would she have gone? Would she just have kept knocking until he came down? Would she have stayed outside the door until someone opened it or saw her?

The main question on his mind was why had she come to his apartment? There were about ten miles between them. Why hadn't she just knocked on some random person's door and they could've taken her in and then taken her into the hospital? Why had she walked ten miles in broken heels to this man's apartment?