Life In His Hands [Book I] (Completed)

Life In His Hands [Book I] Chapter XIX

        Danny’s POV

        I stood staring at the door that had just been closed on that little girl. What was she doing here? Why had they brought her into this? She had nothing to do with all of this. It had been Alex we had the problems with, not her, and he was dead, so where did Ellie fit into the situation? Alex had spent the majority of the last three years trying to protect her from this side of the world, but now, there was nothing he could do. Now, it was up to me. I wasn’t going to let them hurt her. She’s a child for God’s sake.

        I turned to see the perpetrator grinning at me. How dare he? Did he never learn his lesson? Look what happened last time he’d taken things into his own hands. He hadn’t only nearly killed Jasmine, he’d put his own life in danger. Did he really think that Boss was going to let him get away with that? If he did, he had a big reality check in the shape of a baseball bat hurtling towards his head. What goes around comes around. Literally. “Hoist with one’s own petard” was the exact expression Boss used and quite frankly, I agreed with him.

        My face scrunched up into an angry expression and I glared at him. I wasn’t going to give in this time. It was one thing locking up a fully-grown adult – that was bad enough, but it was a whole different kettle of fish when a child is involved.

        “Don’t glare at me like that, Daniel,” he told me as his arms moved from his sides to a folded position across his chest and he shifted his weight onto his left foot like a stroppy teenager.

        “Well, what do you expect, Anthony?” I asked, using his full Christian name, knowing that it would piss him off. “You nearly killed Jasmine and now what? You’re intending on succeeding with the girl?” There was something inside of me telling me that as much as I froze when he hit Jasmine, I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.  If he so much as raised a hand to that girl, there’d be a body bag in the local morgue with his name on it.

        His grin faded into a scowl and I could see the memories of that night running around in his head. Snorting a laugh, I watched as his hand reached up to his head and touched the spot where there was a scar from the blow. On the one hand, he, like Jasmine, was lucky to be alive. However, on the other, he should thank his lucky stars that Boss didn’t whack him with nearly as much force as he did Jasmine.

        He suddenly seemed to jump from his thoughts and brought himself back to the present. His scowl turned menacing, his breathing sped up and his eyes turned red in anger.  My eyes darted to his hand, which was now twitching and shaking and they grew wide as I realised a little too late and I felt my body slam against the door behind me. I heard a little screech from inside the room as someone – probably Ellie – jumped in fear from the sudden loud bang.

        “You’d better watch your back, Daniel.” He scowled at me. “Before you know it, this will all be over and each and every one of you – those two included - will cease to exist. So, please, enjoy all the time you have left on this miserable, godforsaken planet and don’t worry too much about it, because I’m sure you won’t feel a thing.”

        He grabbed my shirt and yanked me towards him, before shoving me backwards into the wall again and turned and walked away. I pushed myself off and rubbed my back and the back of my head where they had both made contact with the door and sighed wearily. I then realised that I hadn’t made a mistake in trying to break Jas out before. What I had tried was the right thing to do. My mistake was the method in which it was attempted; it was all wrong. Now, we were all going to die.