Choking On Sapphires

Part 78 Blue Veins

**This chapter contains graphic violence of a revenge nature.**

Alfie was a shadow of himself. He wouldn't have disagreed if someone had had the balls to point it out to him either. He was too tired and too close to redemption.

He exited the work truck from his bakery into the long and dusty warehouse with its wooden walls and contraband crates stacked almost ceiling high. The salt from the sea held it's natural tang in the air, clinging to his now red and patchy skin, as in Genevieve's absence it had bloomed fully into an itchy and red mess from stress and lack of care. He pushes back his greasy hair in an attempt to prepare himself for what he was about to see, but nothing besides the war could've helped him prepare to hold a stone face in the presence of the one thing he cared about the most being destroyed in front of him.

Cyrus Horne in all his American unearned confidence stands strong in front of the cars that brought him and his men. He sees the usual suspects behind Alfie, the Jewish boys from his bakery that served as muscle. What he hadn't expected was for the Shelby brothers to be there. Tommy stands lean and poised as always, an almost bored look on his face. The oldest Arthur couldn't have been more the opposite. His face was red and angry, mustache twitching and jaw tense at Horne and his smug exterior for what he'd done to his Genny. John acts as a wall for Arthur, ready to hold him back from bad decisions, the toothpick in his mouth almost snapping every time his teeth came down upon it in his underlying intensity, ready for a brawl.

"Where is she?" Alfie demands, stepping forward with the cane she'd given him for his birthday. He was worn down, in every way and image be damned he needed it to keep his energy up to potentially dismember the piss poor excuse for a man that stood before him.

"I brought her. Don't worry." Horne's smugness is obvious as he flicks a finger and the back doors, hidden from sight open and a bulking man carries out Genevieve's limp body over his shoulder. He moves to drop her with a thump to the cold, hard ground and Alfie points his cane at him.

"You don't fucking throw her on the ground mate or this will end before it even fuckin' starts." the veins in his forehead throbbing and spit flying with every over pronounced word.

He bends at the knee and set her on the ground, her body rolling out of his arms and onto the floor will a dull thud that he does not react to.

"There she is. See?" Horne motions with his hand towards her.

Alfie's face is held impressively still despite how he wanted to rip out Cyrus' neck with his own teeth. She was in such a state and he couldn't even see her face. What worried him was the blood. So much blood all over her torn and tattered, now filthy dress she'd been wearing at the party.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do wif 'is? She could be dead for all I can tell." he guffs out, cane still out and pointing now at Genevieve.

With another flick of his fingers, a man brings a bucket of water over and pours it down over her head. She awakes with a wheezing gasp, her hand moving up to her chest, her hair a black puddle around her head.

What she noticed first was that she was no longer bound. Her hands tremble and shake in pain and adrenaline, broken fingers and swollen joints ache as she moves to push her upper body off the ground, a veil of hair blocking her vision. She fails twice before finally locking her elbows and holding herself up. Alfie watches with a heavy heart as he sees her body shaking involuntarily. He wanted to run to her, to wrap her in his arms and sweep her away but he knew it wouldn't be going down that way.

"Now that that's established. Let's get to business." Horne says, ignoring the woman next to his feet.

She couldn't understand the words she heard, but with the eye that could still open, she saw a bright light. This light wasn't yellow tinged, it was spreading something she hadn't felt in what could've been days, warmth, over her skin. She moves her curtain of hair away from her face, the wet heaviness of it slapping against her back and the ground, revealing her face to the men who had come to save her. She raises it towards the light like a flower in the morning. Her skin the color of the iris and bluebells in her garden, a watercolor portrait painted across her, swollen and marked, showing the clear damage that had been inflicted upon her. John holds Arthur back, and he tries to hold in tears of anger.