Читать книгу How to Seduce a Cavanaugh - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 8

Prologue

Fear clawed at his small, heaving chest. It felt like long, sharp nails tearing into his very flesh.

He was aware of breathing hard, of being dizzy because he was unable to get in enough air.

A feeling of déjà vu oppressively weighed him down, pressing harder than an actual boulder could.

He’d been through this before, felt this way before, even though it was happening right before his eyes, so achingly vivid he couldn’t look away.

Not even for an instant.

Not even if his own survival depended on it.

Kane Durant was small for his age. But even if he hadn’t been, if he had been bigger and stronger than he actually was, he still would have been powerless against the big man.

Powerless to make him stop.

His father was a hulk of a man and only seemed to become more so when he was enraged.

Just the way he was now.

Enraged and spewing obscenities, hurling them at the trembling woman kneeling before him on the cracked vinyl kitchen floor.

The bruises on his mother’s face from his father’s last eruption were just now beginning to fade. The arguments, the rages, they were occurring more and more frequently these days, leaving an ugly rainbow of colors on every limb of her body.

The sense of constant anxiety never really went away anymore.

From the very moment he opened his eyes in the morning, Kane felt the frightening tension. Even during the lulls, which came less and less frequently, he knew it was just a matter of time before the next vicious outburst happened.

He’d been in his bed, fearfully watching the shadows moving on his ceiling when he’d heard his father bellowing, heard his mother crying out in fear and then in pain.

He was just a scrawny boy of ten, but the moment he heard his father yelling at his mother, he had abandoned his room and run into the kitchen to try to help his mother in any way he could.

To protect her.

Thin and fragile, she was no match against his father’s wrath.

Neither was he, but maybe together...

Kane had gotten to the kitchen just as his father’s anger had hit a new high.

The flash from the handgun seized his attention as he struggled to process what he saw. What his brain already knew. He was terrified.

He ran to his mother to block the bullet, to divert it from its course.

But he was too late.

The bullet from his father’s handgun had found its intended target less than a split second earlier.

His mother’s face abruptly froze, highlighting surprise and pain. And then she pitched backward. Blood poured freely from the newly created hole in her abdomen.

Kane opened his mouth to scream his protest, but nothing came out. Not a single sound came out to express his fear, his anger, his horrified outrage at the senselessness of it all.

Unable to voice his reaction, Kane put all his energy into attempting to stop the bleeding. But his hands were too small for the task. Blood squeezed its way through his delicate, ineffective fingers, underscoring his helplessness.

“Don’t die. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me,” he begged the woman who was already gone.

His voice only served to irritate his father further. “You love her that much, you little bastard? Then you’re going to join her!”

The next second he heard his father’s gun discharge. Felt something sharp and painful tear through his chest. Felt something else oozing out.

Blood.

Was that his?

Yes. He was bleeding. His blood was mingling with his mother’s.

He sank to his knees in slow motion.

At least it felt that way. The last thing he heard was the roar of the handgun again.

The last thing he saw was his father going down.

A cry of traumatized anguish tore from his lips. The sound of heavy breathing echoed in the empty room as he bolted upright.

In his bed.

In his bedroom.

Kane looked down at his torso, checking for bullet holes. There were none. Just the scar of one, but it had healed.

He was soaked, but it was with sweat, not blood.

Shaking, Kane dragged his hand through his hair, doing his best to reclaim some sort of calm, and then resigning himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to find it in what was left of the night.

The dream had found him again.

He hadn’t had it in a long, long time, but now it was back, forcing him back to square one. He had to work at getting himself back on an even keel.

Again.

He was exhausted—and restless beyond words.

Throwing off the covers, he got up. Beyond his window, darkness still embraced the city of Aurora, but there was no way he was going to go back to sleep. Not now.

Resigned, Kane made his way to the kitchen, fervently wishing he hadn’t given up smoking last month.

It looked as if his nerves were going to have to calm down on their own.

He bit off a couple of colorful words under his breath.

It wasn’t going to be easy.