The Runaway Sister

thirty | warm embrace

A/N

*cough, cough, cough* 

Sorry about that, loves. 

Ok, I've decided to not be that mean. 

Still a bit mean, of course. 

Nothingness has been eating away at me. It infests my heart. It squeezes onto me so tightly that I don't even remember how I am able to breathe. 

I gasp and gasp, yet I can never seem to fill my lungs with enough air. Every few beats, I wonder if I should just stop and hold my breath altogether. 

The days tick by. Or maybe it's not even days. Perhaps it's only been a few hours since I was dragged up from Benny's cell and thrown into mine. 

I wouldn't know the difference. I don't know anything down here in my cage. It could all be for the best. If I had a sense of time, I'd be aware of my life dwindling away. 

When I close my eyes, I see his small body. I see the way he looked at me, like he was already lifeless when his body was still beating with life. 

Right before I pulled the trigger, he opened his mouth once more to bid a faint farewell: "Don't go falling apart like everything else." 

Ginger brought me out once since then. He took me to a room many floors up with a window. The window revealed that I am being held in snowy mountains. 

"You may call me Mr. Ivanov," Ginger said, "it's a privilege I give to not many. Count yourself lucky, my dearest Miss Rhodes." 

He told me that I am a powerful being. He told me that I can bend the mafias of the world in half if I wanted to. He said with him, I am unstoppable. 

But do I want that? Do I want to feel like I am above God— that, if I ever so pleased, I could make lives fall apart and villages burn? 

Of course not. 

I stare at the ceiling. I gaze up at the glistening cement from the water on the outside of the Center. The cell is warmer. I have been given more food, but I don't eat it. 

It sits in the corner, staring at me. I don't stare back at it. My gaze remains fixed on the ceiling. If I look at anything else, I think I'll be sick. 

But in truth, I already am sick. Sick in the mind, that is. I was going to kill an innocent boy. I pulled the trigger. 

I was fully prepared to end someone's life. I was ready to make that decision, like I am God and I decide who is permitted to live and who is sentenced to death. 

And for what? What possibly gives me the right to choose who can go on, filled with energy, and who is ripped apart at the seams? 

He didn't even look at me. He closed his eyes right before uttering his small speech. He didn't try to fight nor argue. 

I was ready to end his short existence. 

But I didn't. 

Because the gun was empty. 

———

When I wake up again, I can practically smell the tension in the air. I hear footsteps storming down the hallways, people screaming frantic orders. 

What is going on outside? Is this some sort of training drill? Is this mafia base being attacked? And if so, by who? 

My heart screams at me: "It's your brothers! They've finally come to save you." Yet, my brain reasons with me: "It's been so long. What if they're never coming?"