Familia

The Saving

The doorbell rang while Leonidas, his sister, Helena and the children were sitting in the living room, wrapping their gifts for Leona's birthday to come.

"Who is that?" asked Felicia, Leonidas' sister.
"I will see" he responded, and went to the door.
When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Tony, alone, standing here in his casual pose.
"Notice that I rang the bell this time" he joked.
"What are you doing here?" Leonidas asked.
"I was just wandering around and I wanted to say hi" lied Tony, "I'm a friend of your family now" he added with a wink.
"What's the real matter, Tony?" asked Leonidas almost right after Tony stopped speaking.
"Okay" said Tony as he put his sunglasses off and got close to Leonidas.
"Eduardo Greco is preparing something, he has some heads to shoot and he intends to start a gang war. He planned a shooting in one of the city's malls, don't ask me which one, I just wanted to make sure you and Leona wouldn't get out of your house in the next 5 hours, that's all man!" he explained.
But giving Leonidas' silence, Tony added: "She's in the house isn't she?"
Leonidas shook his head, eyes wide open, gazing into space.
"Where the fuck..." Tony could not finish his sentence as Leonidas interrupted him and muttered: "Cruza Center".
"Fuck!" Tony roared, then he immediately ran to his car and jumped inside without even using the door. Before leaving, Tony saw that Leonidas was stepping outside the house and shouted him "Don't even think about it! She still needs her father to be fucking alive!".
As Tony's car vanished in a flash, Helena and Felicia were staring at Leonidas waiting for him to give an explanation, but the man was standing at the door, gazing at the road, not making a sound. Only after a pretty long moment of reflection, the patriarch finally said some words.
"This mother fucker loves Leona" he muttered.
These few words were enough to draw Timothy's attention.

***

"Black and white balloons ...checked!" said Leona as she threw 2 packs of 20 balloons in the chart.
"What else do you need for your birthday?" asked Devon.
"I think I got it all, let's go pay for all that stuff now" replied Leona as she pushed the chart forward.
The chart was bursting at the seams, there were balloons, 20 packs of colored pencils for the kids who were invited, some costumes if they wanted to play, some firecrackers,...
Leona wanted to make sure everybody would have fun at her birthday.
"So how do you feel, miss 21? Are you excited?" asked Devon.
"I'm feeling good, feeling good..." said Leona, lost in her thoughts, "but my parents have been acting weird for three days now...I don't know what's going on, but that has for sure something to do with my birthday" she finally spilled.
"Well maybe they're affected that they're daughter slowly becomes an adult.." Devon said, trying to find an explanation.
"What are you talking about? I already am an adult." she immediately responded, "Nope,
that's about something else...Gosh, I can't believe they're not telling me everything, who am I? A stranger? I'm their daughter for God sake." complained Leona.
" That's okay if they're not telling you.." started Devon.
But he was interrupted. By gunshots.
Gunshots rang out everywhere and a widespread panic was sowed.
Leona bended down reflexively covering her head with her hands. As she was staring at the floor, she looked for Devon's feet but couldn't find them.
"Devon!" she called, but she couldn't even hear her own voice among all the crowd shouting.
"Devon!" she yelled, trying to find him in the running crowd. But all she could see were panicked people running everywhere in the store.
Her protective instinct pushed Leona to adventure among the over-excited crowd to find her boyfriend, instead of running to the exit of the store. But she barely took three steps when she felt someone grabbing her waist, and pulling her towards the exit.
First Leona thought it was Devon so she didn't struggle, she even deliberately ran towards the exit . But once they got outside, in the car park, Leona had a closer look to her savior and suddenly recognized him.
"You?" she asked in bewilderment.
"Come on Leona you should not stay here, it's too dangerous, you understand? Get in the car!" Tony said as he opened the car door in a rush.
The idea of getting into some stranger's car, even if it was to flee a shooting, didn't please Leona. Feeling the girl's hesitation Tony added:
"Leona do you want to fucking get killed? Is that what you want, huh? Do you want to end your days in this car park, lying in your own blood? No? So why the fuck are you not in the damn car yet!"
Somehow these words made Leona get in the car, which Tony drove at full speed to get far away from this dangerous place.