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"Mother, don't!" I warned her and stepped away from her hand that tried to reach for mine. "You supported father and look what happened. If you would have told me sooner regarding the fucking training, this wouldn't have happened."
"Son, please..."
"I said don't!" My voice roared out at the woman that it had never been raised at. "I can't even look at you right now. That's how much I'm disgusted." I glanced away at my one and only father who still had his back to me in shame. "I want you both to get out of the country immediately because if I see you guys again anywhere close, I will lose it and do something that we all will regret, something Belle will dearly enjoy. When I'm ready to see either one of you, I'll let you know."
Belle scoffed and shook her head, her eyes shoving daggers in mother's chest. "No one follows me. I'm going to go check up on Lina. Other than Belle and Mike, I don't need anyone else in there."
"But, Leonardo..."
"I said no!" I yelled at my mother once again and walked towards the door, opening it to head in Lina's direction. How is she going to be? How is she going to be feeling? How am I... I have always made sure that my little sister was safe no matter what, never letting the waft of our problems ever get to her and then all of a sudden she doesn't only get kidnapped, but gets raped by five different men.
My chest constricted at the thought of those bastards hurting my sister, touching her, bruising her in the worst way possible, breaking her strong soul and throwing it to mere nothingness. All I could see was red, crimson color of the blood which I would lay rivers of once I get my hands on those involved and each one of their family members. They'll regret ever even thinking about touching my family, especially my sister.
Faint cries and shouts penetrated my ears, forcing me to bolt in that direction. Stopping at the door of Lina's room, I noticed two women trying to pin my crying sister down onto the bed by her shoulders. "What the hell is going on?"
The two nurses immediately stood up and glanced at me before lowering their heads. "Sir, we're just trying to inject the medication into her."
I was too occupied looking at my heaving sister to listen to these two talk. Fat tears from her tired and swollen eyes streamed down her wounded cheeks in a rapid manner, stabbing my heart and ripping it right out. All my life I had seen her get angry, mad, sad, happy, and all the emotions, but she never cried. She had always been my strong little sister just like Leona. A fiery little lion in the family was what Lina was until now. Various spots on her face were covered in purple bruises from hard beatings. My eyes could hardly recognize the girl sitting on the bed who was dying inside.
"Leo," she cried out, her lips quivering and her eyes almost shutting due to the swelling and dark purple, almost black blotches around them.
My throat couldn't muster up the courage to say anything to soothe the unimaginable pain she was in. All I could do was glare at the two unknown women, forcing them to scurry right past us with a bow before I near the sobbing little girl that was huddled under a blanket. Belle hastily walked ahead of me and embraced Lina immediately right on the bed.
"Little birdie," Belle's sobs tangled with Lina's as they began echoing off the wide walls of her room.
I sauntered over to them with a heavy boulder resting upon my shoulder and I didn't know how to lift it. Placing a hesitant hand on Lina's shuddering shoulder, I attained her attention. She slowly pulled away from her older sister and looked up at me through her hazy vision, her barely visible eyes drowning in misery and her soul being ripped apart slowly.
"Leo," her voice was hardly hers as it passed through her swollen cheeks and out her busted lips.
My eyes welled up as her head helplessly fell against my torso in defeat against gravity and sanity itself. Putting my arms around her, I tugged her closer and rested my head upon her as her body quaked under my hold. Her cries got louder by each second as she finally gained some strength to wrap her arms around me. "They ruined me, Leo."
"Ant," I sat down next to her and lightly loosened her grip on me to study her. The swollen purple and black bruises fueled my anger even more as my fingertips lightly brush over them. Brown vibrant color of her eyes used to light up any room, filling it and everyone in it with happiness, now it only seemed dead set on ruin and misery. Wiping her tears away, I frowned at her appearance. Rope marks on her wrist reddened them immensely while other red marks all over her arms along with whip bruises traveled all around.
What did these monsters do my baby sister? What hell did they drag her through? I was known to be ruthless, but I never hurt an innocent little girl. What demons of purgatory were they to do something such as this to her?!
"You should rest, Lina," I tried to lay her down. "We'll talk later. Take some medicine and sleep it off."
"No," she rebelled in frustration and pushed my hand away that rested upon her shoulder. "I need you guys to know what happened, so you can hunt those assholes down and kill them for me." The way those words flowed out of her mouth cleared one thing up for sure; she wasn't going to be the same Lina that we knew. That Lina died along with her innocence when those men decided to strangle her will to live. She grew up way too fast in the worst way.
"Okay," I rasped out and waited for her to begin.
"They took me somewhere blindfolded and when I got there, they ripped the black cloth from my head and tied my hands up to two pillars using ropes. I lost track of time after a few minutes of those men taking turns whipping me with their belts. They would jerk me awake with their fists on my face." Salty tears pooled down her face and dripped on my hands that rested above hers in her lap. Belle's fingers dug into my shoulder as I could feel her anger radiating off her and fueling my own. From the corner of my eye, I could see Mike ready to slam his fist into something and I was ready to wipe out an entire city to find those who wronged my sister.
"This went on forever until I guess they got tired and finally left me alone for a while as I passed out on the spot due to the injuries. I was later woken up by the same five men. They took turns raping me and making me bleed brutally as hard and as badly they could." My eyes drifted away from her in shame that I couldn't protect her from such horrendous experience. In guilt of not being the best brother, I wanted to punish myself. I deserved it for being the worst brother who couldn't even shield his own little sister.
"When I would give up and close my eyes, waiting for the darkness to take me, they'd beat me again and again, treating me like their personal punching bag until a blonde woman finally walked in with a mask covering her entire face except her unusually blue eyes. She freed me and cut the ropes. My body fell to the ground and later the men threw buckets upon buckets of ice cold water on me to wake me up completely, but I had no strength left to fight back so I just laid there in the puddle of my own filth, my dress drenched completely. The woman kneeled down and pulled on my hair to say 'this should be a lesson for your family'."
"Did you notice anything about them at all?"
"The men had the Aguillard family crest tattooed onto their wrists like Astor and Alicio while the woman had the small Bonferroni tag on hers."
My anger toppled over the volcano, erupting it within me. Astor was behind this. He stooped to the filthiest level of hell and that's where I'd burn him and everyone that worked for him. His men had the family crest on their wrists while each and every one of my workers, legal or illegal, had the Bonferroni tag imprinted onto the side of their wrists. It was just a little circle that had lealtà (loyalty) engraved in extremely small and intricate letterings within it. Anyone that broke the pact of loyalty to the family met the worst fate.
Belle shouted into her phone, "I want all of the present and past blonde, blue eyed female workers from this country only in the warehouse in downtown Manhattan. I don't care if there're thousands, I want them all in by tomorrow morning or the tigers will have your head as breakfast, yeah?"
Mike did the same into his phone, instead it was for Astor. "Get all the dirt on him in here right now. I'm done playing games."
"Leo," Lina gripped my hand and forced me to look at her busted face. "Kill them all."
"Anything you want, little sister. Absolutely anything."