I ve always known that I would be different. In my family, we were meant to be hidden. Away from everything that we were to know. Everything that we were supposed to know.
I was like my father.
Something that my mother disliked. She didn t hate it but she had expressed her disappointment with me several times over the past few years. I ignored it.
I was about to die.
He held the gun to my head, wrapping his other arm around my neck. His breathing raspy as he pushed the gun deeper into my temple as I tried not to flinch from the pain. Knowing everything, every ounce of training that had gone through my life, nothing had prepared me for this. For the adrenaline that coursed through my veins.
I was excited. I couldn t show it. I didn t want to show it. He couldn t know.
Dad stood in front of him, wielding a gun as men and women stood behind him. My half-brother, Noah, was to his left. A smirk made his way onto his face, as did mine.
I couldn t die today. I wouldn t die today.
I wouldn t die because he would inherit everything. He would gain all the attention. All the glory that I was meant to receive. Everything.
I wanted that. I was going to get it. My sisters didn t want this, they had expressed their disapproval to my father. Hating that they had to watch their backs. Hating that they had to learn to shoot a gun.
One hated loud noises, the other found it hard to carry constantly. They were twins, one year younger than I was.
I remember the times that I fought with them. The times when they told me that I was going to die young. Yet at seventeen, I knew that I wasn t going to die yet. Something else was going to happen. Something fun, something that was new.
Snapping back to reality I realized he had shifted, creating a gap in the lower abdomen. In a swift motion, I moved my left arm up and grabbed a hold of his hand holding the gun. I ducked under and elbowed his abdomen. In and up. His breathing stopped for only a few seconds but it was enough for me to hit the floor, allowing my fathers men to hit him with a dozen more bullets.
Pain hit. It exploded in my lower back. Feeling among it with my hand, a warm wet substance came across my fingers. Blood. It was slowly leaking out of my back, a few inches above my butt. Gasping I tried not to move, but my legs felt faint, slowly losing all feeling. Dad was by my side in seconds. Calling several people in. Usually we would not go to the hospital. We had our own doctor, but he could not fix this. Damage was going to be permanent if we didn t go to the hospital.
I couldn t do my job if I was paralyzed.
Words came out of my mouth incoherently. Not knowing what I was even trying to say.
"Shush," Dad reprimanded me, his hand caked with blood, rubbing my hair out of my face as they turned me around. "Get her to the car now," he yelled and I felt my body being pulled up. I screamed at them to stop. To put me down, the pain excruciating. My hands found their upper arms and I gripped them tight. Sweat drifted down my face, covering my hair and neck. My breathing became labored. Black spots came into my vision.
Blackness came quickly and the pain had dissipated.
Beeping was the first thing I had heard. It was rhythmic. In sync with my heart beat. It was annoying.
I found it hard to open my eyes. Hard to see.
The room was clean. Mom was asleep in the chair, my sisters asleep on the couch. I wanted to talk, but my mouth was dry.
"Mom?" I questioned, the voice that came out was rough and hoarse. It sounded as though I had been trapped in the desert for a week with no water. She jolted up, awaking from her light sleep.
"Honey," She whispered, looking around until she found her quarter full water bottle.
"Here," Only needing a few sips, I gasped for air when I finished.
"What happened?" I questioned wiping my mouth from the water. "You were shot," She said quietly looking at my face for any sort of reaction.
"I ll call in the nurse," My sister, the elder twin Andrea, said. Stretching up. She reminded me of dad, how he carried himself. She was like him in that way. Carrying a thousand people on her shoulder at once, instead though she carried me and my dad. She was our own anchor that we had. She would keep us grounded and in reality. Her hair recently dyed to a dark blue that fit perfectly into a pixie cut. She hated long hair. Having to put it up, keep it out of her face, everything that had to do with it.
It was funny as Victoria, the youngest twin, was the opposite. She kept her hair flat-ironed and long, touching the middle of her back. She had refused to dye it, saying that she was keeping it healthy in a way though she ironed it every day. My hair resembled my mothers, keeping it a hazel brown with it just above my shoulders. It made it easy to pull back and braid at any time.
"Miss Smith," The doctor said, checking over my chart. "That was some gunshot wound you had." He chuckled before realizing I didn t have a smile on my face. He coughed lightly before continuing, "We had to do surgery, we got it out and it was a clean surgery. We would like for you to take it easy for the next few weeks, the bullet nearly hit your spine and could have permanent damage if you had not been here any sooner. It did hit a few nerves but it was nothing. We want you to keep weight off of your left leg. That was where the majority of the pressure was." He explained it to me.
"When can I leave?" I questioned as soon as he finished. "We would like for you to stay for a few more days before leaving, just to be sure," He explained slowly, as though I would not understand.
"I want to leave now," I told him directly, not wanting to beat around the bush.
"Leaving now would mean leaving against medical advice. You would have to sign a contract saying that you understand what that means. It s just for liability."
"I understand,"
"I can get a nurse to print it out along with bringing you the discharge paperwork," He left without another word, probably thinking I was insane for wanting to leave.
"How long was I out?" I questioned.
"Ten days," Mom said, ten days was long enough. I needed to get back to dad.
"Let s get out of here," I said, while opening the blanket that covered me.
"Hold on a minute," My mom said and touched my shoulders gently. "I think that we should stay here another day,"
"No way, dad needs me. I need him to see I m okay." I told her. Angry that she would suggest that I stayed.
"Okay," She said, smiling sadly. Her blue eyes staring into my green ones.
It had taken a while for mom to sign the discharge paperwork, during that time Victoria and Andrea had helped me get dressed. I wasn t used to having people help me.
They sat me down in a wheelchair before taking me out front. Mom left to get the car while Andrea talked about how she had failed her chemistry test because I was in the hospital. I could feel slightly bad. But I didn t, I know that she cares for me more than anyone and worries too much. She just didn t want to show it.
That seemed to be most of my family's problems. Caring but not wanting to show it.
Mom had pulled up in a 15 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. Her favorite car of choice.
We were fifteen miles down the road when I noticed we had taken a left instead of right. Left was leaving down, right was going straight home.
"Mom, you took the wrong turn," I mentioned, she looked at me through the rearview mirror. It didn t hold pity nor sadness.
"Mom?" I questioned when she didn t answer.
"We are leaving down for a bit, Ash," She told me calmly.
"No we aren t," I told her and my hand went to unlock it. We had just reached the outskirts and were going at least sixty miles an hour.
The door didn t open.
"Really Mom? Child safety lock?" I told her.
"It isn t safe for you. We need someplace new," She tried explaining before I realized what was going on.
"This isn t funny, let me out," I started shaking the handle of the car door excessively. Throwing a fit was what I did best.
"I m sorry Ash, you aren t safe here anymore. You never were," She tried again. I banged on the window, kicked my feet. Anything to be able to go back to dad. I needed to see him. I could still do this.
She kept driving.
