Mafia King (Young Irish Rebels #2) - Vi Carter Page 0,12

him, and I was mortified, so I had lashed out like a child, allowing my darkest thoughts to fire themselves at him.

I dig my hands into the wooden floor as I think of calling him a savage. Stupid. Childish comes to mind, and that’s how he had looked at me. Like I was a child. More heat rises along my chest, and I want out of this wardrobe. I want to get away from my thoughts.

I keep replaying that moment of seeing him for the first time, how he had rounded the vehicle like he had just stepped out of one of my magazines. My stomach squirms, and I keep dying all over again. I need to pull myself together. I rise in the large wardrobe that accommodates my full height of five-foot-five inches. Beside him, I may as well have been the size of a mouse. I reach up and pull one of the old-fashioned steel hangers off the rod.

I pour my frustration into opening the hanger. Stupid man. My temper flares as I think of how easily he had pushed me into the wardrobe and left me here. A lot of time has passed. I thought he would return, apologize and release me. That hasn’t happened, and I don’t believe it will. Once I get out of here, I need to restrain myself and show better control.

Using the hanger, I push it out through the small crack in the door. No light filters in, so it must be night time now. I push the hanger up, and it hits something solid. I needed to get that out of the way so I could open the doors. Using all my strength, I wriggle, push and pull the wire but whatever he lodged in the door isn’t moving. I finally give up. Sweat has made a path down my back, and I push my hair out of my face. Small spaces and me sweating do no good to my hair.

I drop the hanger and carefully sit back down. I’m tempted to start counting again, but my mind keeps drifting between the journey here and seeing the savage for the first time.

Savage didn’t quite suit him anymore. But I refused to call him by his name. If I did, that allowed an attachment to form, and that was one thing that would never happen.

Noel had once gotten three lambs, and I remember so clearly how he wouldn’t allow me to name them. I had tried on that first day in the shed when I had seen the tiny little things. But he had said I could bottle feed them, play with them, but I wasn’t allowed to name them. That was the only rule that came with me helping him out. So I had, of course, agreed.

As they grew, I had forgotten the reason Noel had gotten the three lambs. Food. That’s why we got them so we would have organic lamb and none of that water-filled meat. That’s what my father called any meat that came in plastic. He said they were filled with water and drugs.

One morning I had heated the three milk bottles and made my way to the shed. I had walked in on Noel. My three little lambs lay dead on the floor at his feet.

Fluffy, Speedy, and Rocky.

That’s what I had named them. Even now, my heart thumps a little harder when I think of their small, still bodies on the cold cement shed floor.

I never formed an attachment with our food again. I’d learned the hard way. I didn’t allow Noel to see my tears. I had left and opened the bottles at the side of the shed, where I emptied the contents down the drain while the tears poured from me.

My mind slows even further, and I start to drift off. The small minute details assault me. The things I hadn’t noticed when we were being shot at while in the tunnel. As I replay the scene in my mind, I remember the rumble, the undercurrent that I had heard before. It was the sound of a motorcycle. My father had one. It had been years since he took it out, but I remember the roar of the engine late at night when he returned to us.

I also remember the smell of something burning, something that weighs you right down, like when a drill is powered up, there is a slight smell of burning, maybe it’s fragments of steel from the head of