“I mean gone! I went upstairs to check on her as soon as I got home from school, and she’s not there. There’s a lot of stuff missing from her closet…” Jenny stared at me with panic in her eyes.
“Fucking hell, let me call her.” I pulled my phone out.
“Hold on; I was texting her when you got here.” Jenny held her phone up. “She just responded.”
“What did she say?” I leaned over to look at the phone.
“She said that she needed to get away for a while. She went to spend some time with her sister.” Jenny had a perplexed look on her face. “Mom—left us?”
“Damn it!” I turned away from Jenny and tried to hide the anger on my face.
This is my fault. I pushed against her emotions too hard, and she couldn’t handle it…
“At least she’s okay.” Jenny sighed. “Maybe some time away will be good for her.”
“No.” I shook my head. “She left for a reason. Fuck!”
“What do you mean?” Jenny took a step forward.
I didn’t have any choice but to tell Jenny why our mother left. I just needed a moment to reign in my anger so that I didn’t say something I would regret. I didn’t get a chance to do either. A car door slammed—followed by another one. Jenny walked towards the door, and I put my hand out to stop her. A few seconds later, there was a loud pounding on my front door.
“Damien, open up. We’re here for Jenny.” The voice was rough and rugged—I still recognized it even after not hearing it for several years.
“Pennington,” I growled under my breath.
“Dad’s bodyguard?” Jenny blinked in confusion. “Damien, what is going on?”
“Go to your room and lock the door.” I pointed towards the stairs. “Now!”
Jenny was normally rather defiant when I gave her a direct order, but she must have sensed that something wasn’t right. She quickly ran up the stairs as I tried to figure out how I was going to deal with the problem on the other side of my front door—technically, it was two problems. If Pennington was outside, so was Martinez—my dad’s personal security detail, and they had come to take my sister back to Sinn Manor. I couldn’t call the cops. My mother wasn’t there—which meant my father had every right to demand that his daughter return to her so-called home. I was officially stuck between two enormous rocks and the fucking impossible.
“Open the door, Damien.” It was Martinez’s voice. “We don’t want to hurt you—but we aren’t leaving here without Jenny.”
The knocking got louder—then it got heavier. They weren’t asking politely anymore. They were coming through it shoulder first. Pennington was a giant. Martinez was a behemoth. Fighting either one of them on my own would have been a death wish, but fighting the both of them was just asking to nail my own coffin shut. If it was an early grave or my sister’s future, I was choosing the former. I took off my jacket, unbuttoned my sleeves, and prepared to get my hands dirty. The only choice I had was to catch them off guard. I grabbed the closest thing to me—a large glass vase that was way too expensive to smash over someone’s head, but it was all I had.
“This is it Damien—last chance.” Pennington’s words were followed by an enormous thud on the other side of my door.
I didn’t respond. I just waited. My front door was solid, and it would have taken someone the size of Pennington or Martinez to break it down without heavy-duty equipment. Unfortunately, they didn’t need it. The hinges were started to give. The lock wasn’t going to last forever. The door was already bending, so I couldn’t even give it some extra support with the deadbolt. My father sent them on a mission, and nobody failed Edgar Sinn, especially not the two that were the most loyal to
him.
Several harder thuds landed, and I saw the door breaking—then it gave them the last struggle it had before it opened. Pennington was the first one through, but he didn’t have his balance due to the momentum required to break through the door. I ran at him and drove the vase into his skull so hard that it shattered, and the pieces sliced into my hand. I ignored the pain. I grabbed a piece of it off the floor and came up ready to face Martinez as Pennington collapsed at my feet. He wasn’t out, but he was woozy enough not to be able to stand up.
“Damien, don’t do this.” Martinez held up his hands. “Your father just wants Jenny to come home.”
“Fuck what my father wants.” I squared off with Martinez with the piece of broken vase digging into my palm. “This is my house—you don’t come in here making demands.”
“I really don’t want to do something that will make it hard for me to look into my little girl’s eyes.” Martinez sighed and raised his fists.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that anyway. You work for the fucking devil.” I advanced with the piece of broken vase and forced him to take a step back. “You two need to leave; otherwise I will defend my home.”
I had never seriously hurt anyone before, much less maimed them—I certainly hadn’t ever killed anyone. I just wanted to be threatening enough to make Martinez decide it wasn’t worth the fight. His loyalty to my father was too strong. He charged me, despite the weapon in my hand, and I defended myself. The glass jammed into his arm and broke. I wounded him, but I didn’t stop him—and I no longer had a weapon.
Fuck. This isn’t good.
Martinez’s other hand connected with a right hook that I wasn’t fast enough to duck. It startled me, but I swung back and got him with one of my own. He was fighting with one good hand, and his other arm was gushing blood. That was the only advantage I had. He charged me again, and I tried to sidestep him, but something grabbed my leg. I looked down to see Pennington with two large hands clamped around my calf. He gave Martinez just enough support to catch me with another stiff right hook—then a knee slammed into my gut. I was doubled over and felt an elbow smash into the back of my skull. I was going down—it almost knocked me out.
“Stop fighting!” Jenny’s voice echoed in the room. “I’ll go with you! Just stop!”