The Lions Den

Chapter Thirty-Seven Part II: When The Lion Dismantles Part of the Challenge

Matteo

"They took my sister, man! They took my fucking sister!"

Marcus' irate and distraught voice rang through my ears in a mind-splitting loop. I hated lying, and I hated it even more when I was being lied to. Yet, in this moment where the wind was being knocked out of me I never wanted to be lied to so badly in my life. My mind flashed to the powerful ease radiating off of her in valiant waves as I stared at her beautiful face through the meeting. The strides of her confident walk as she moved around the room as if she owned it just as she owned me and every crevice of my heart. I saw the smile on her face as she looked over her shoulder hours ago and told me that she loved me flash in a gut-wrenching loop in my mind. I felt everything holding me together snap.

Every time the image changed, Marcus' words echoed quieter and quieter with them. I don't know how long the words rang, and the same torturous images flashed in my head until Katerina's voice seeped through the nightmare I was in. I came to as the memories kept playing, fading gradually, or maybe all at once, into the background of the red curtain that separated us from the rest of the world. I felt one of her hands on my shoulder, while the other caressed my face gently.

"Matteo! Cuore mio (My heart) come back to me," Katerina's voice rang softly into my ear. I could hear her trying to remain calm, but I couldn't miss the pain in her voice as well that sent another twist into he knife plunged deeply enough into me. Taking a deep breath I reached for the phone in front of on the table. The background noise coming in from the other side of the line started to filter through into my world as the white noise dissolved away.

"Marcus?"

"You back now?" He asked tiredly, the irritation still there but not as abrasive as before.

"Yes. I would ask you tell me that I heard that wrong, but I know better. So I'll ask you what happened instead," I asked cooly. I knew I was talking, my mind was filtering out every word I said, but I still felt like this wasn't real. As if I'd blink and come out of this weird nightmare where I was left watching and feeling the shards of chaos fall atop of me from the outside looking in. But with every blink I took the change never came, the pain only elevated, and the laughter of the devil in my ear grew louder.

"We left lunch, and she needed to go by the drop off house to get or leave behind something she had stowed away. I was trying to convince her to wait til later to go get them when I could ride out with even more guys than I had with me, but she insisted that she'd be better off dropping off what she needed then instead of letting me do it later. So, I went ahead and took her. I had a deep SUV trailing me, with another on the way, so I figured nothing was going to go down. She went in the house, and as we were waiting we heard the tires screeching on the pavement.

It was around three cars full, but we leveled it out to two. It took her a while to come out, and I prayed she stayed in the house until I could get to her, and just as I was about to hit the door, she came out calling for me as some other men chased after her. I had it at first. Everybody else was holding it together, but that last group that burst in from the back of the house had us outmatched, and they got me with the men they had to spare. I heard her screaming, the cars starting up, the shooting still going on, and the next thing I know I got knocked out from the back of my head. I woke up to my crew laid out or gone chasing after them," he explained and I nodded my head despite him not being able to see me.