Born in Blood Collection Volume 1 - Cora Reilly Page 0,227

do with it.

One of the tied-up Russians was the man who’d hurt me and I knew that was why Matteo had chosen him as his victim.

I’d always wanted out of the world I’d been born in, this fucked-up brutal world I knew, but in this moment I made the decision to actually try to flee. No matter the cost, no matter what it took and what I had to do, I would escape this hell. How could anyone want to stay when they saw this?

I knew people got used to these things, but I didn’t want to get used to them. I could already tell that I had less trouble with blood every time I saw it. How much longer until the sight of someone being tortured would do nothing to me? How much longer until the voice in my head that said the Russian bastard deserved it and would have done the same to me if given the chance wasn’t a quiet whisper but a roaring shout?

Something brushed my arm and I jerked back, barely stifling a cry of surprise. Lily stood beside me, and then everything went very quickly. I opened my mouth to send her back up but at the same time her eyes settled on the scene in the center of the room, and I knew things would get very ugly. I’d heart Lily scream before but that had been nothing in comparison to the sound breaking free from her lips when she saw the blood and the men who’d lost it. I supposed it was close to the sound fluffy lambs made when they were being slaughtered.

I actually flinched away from Lily. Her eyes went wide, then dilated scarily, her face taking on an expression that scared the shit out of me. All eyes jerked toward us. Matteo released the Russian, narrowed his dark eyes at me, as if I was the one doing something wrong. Lily kept up her screaming, a high-pitched wail that made the hairs on my neck rise.

“Romero!” Matteo snarled, nodding toward my sister. “Take care of Liliana.”

Romero advanced on us. Tall and imposing.

Lily had always fawned over him, but now even she couldn’t see anything but the killer in him. His hands were red. Red from blood, and Lily completely lost her shit. I could only stare. I was unable to move. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice was telling me to talk to my sister, to try to calm her, to do something, anything, but that voice was drowned out by the terrified static filling my head.

The steel door slammed against the wall above our heads and then Luca was suddenly there. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Nobody replied.

Romero spoke to my sister in a soothing voice. “Calm down, Lily. Everything is okay.”

Really? The scene in front of us told a very different story. Nothing about this was okay.

Of course, Lily wasn’t to be calmed. Romero gripped her arm and Luca went to help him, but she was fighting them like an animal. How could such a skinny girl fight off two men?

Romero slung his arms around her chest, trapping her arms against her sides, but that didn’t stop Lily from kicking out at him and everything around her, and she still didn’t stop screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Shut her up! Aria will hear,” Luca growled. He tried to catch her legs but she lashed out and kicked his chin. He stumbled back, more from surprise than anything else. Of course they could have subdued her easily if they hadn’t been so careful not to hurt her. I took a step in their direction, worried that they might give up the gentle approach soon, but the ground tilted under me and I had to grip the wall again.

“Lily,” I said. “Lily, stop.”

She didn’t even hear me.

The tall, muscled guy took a few steps toward them as if he was going to interfere, but Matteo pushed him back. “No. Stay out of it.”

I’d forgotten about Matteo, but while I had watched Lily, he’d managed to clean his hands. They were still pink but at least not smeared with blood. His eyes settled on me but I had to look away. I couldn’t return his gaze right now. I had a feeling I wasn’t far from pulling a stunt like Lily and going bat-shit crazy on them. The coppery scent of blood hung like fog in the air, clogged my throat and nose, seemed to