064

CATALINA

Since the very first second I woke up today, it felt rough. Not because it seemed like like getting out of bed was achingly painful, since that's always been true, but because I was convinced that I'm about to jump back to everything I've been trying to avoid for weeks now. I inhale sharply as I slip on the last of the two, creme colored heels.

The maroon dress had two slits just below my hips, allowing the silky fabric in between to flow with every step I took. I could hear my heels clicking against the marbled floors down the hallway. With a gun strapped around the tight, secured fabric of my underwear, right at my lower back, I effortlessly leave the hotel building.

Night was supposed to be gloomy, but my nights were always the opposite. They were rapid and dangerous, but the mere fact that I couldn't handle that, is a reason I shouldn't attend this party.

Driving there, I'd tense every other second again and again. I grip the steering wheel tightly, palms sweating lightly from the anxiety. A large dose of adrenaline nearly fuses inside of me with every other emotion I'm feeling. I was going to instantaneously combust if I added another spiral of emotion on top of the many I already experienced.

Upon arrival, I parked the car a few yards away from the building. In fact, it was needed considering the many cars that aligned the streets by the sidewalks. Sam didn't know about this, and I'm glad I decided not to tell her that I was going to throw myself into a battlefield. Purposely. I chose to keep these details to myself. Yet the reality was they weren't details at all, but much more colossal.

Thinking was for the weak. Or so it felt in that moment. I stood straighter and swallowed any of my intuition to feel incredibly frightened. Realistically, and on the topic of survival, I should have ran away and forgot about this all. But, I can't. Not the way my legs took me inside the building, even past the guards who saw me and had said nothing.

I wanted them to see me. And it was obvious they had. I walked alone, without anyone by my side. I suspected almost that my father knew I would be here. That somehow, by not reminding my grandmother to speak nothing about my current placement to my father, information was passed to him that he shouldn't have.

So, I knew he was expecting me. I finally felt like I knew what was going on, which is what I felt like I needed for so long. Yet, it felt foreign and with my self-doubt reminding me that I am never the smartest person in the room, I didn't believe it.

Men glanced in my direction every so often, noticing me. Not only men, but women eyed me suspiciously. They knew who I was, but their confusion settled much more prominently when I was seen with no one guarding me. With no one holding my waist, warning me aggressively to do what I'm told. Reminds me of similar, previous events.

Everyone chatted among each other quietly, the sound of a violin gently piercing the low murmurs of the room. I was offered white wine, which I took in my hands with a polite smile, but knowing my father's lessons, I didn't take a sip.

"Miss Gates," a man with a thick, familiar Italian accent says behind me.

I turn around, careful not to spill white wine over my hand. My eyebrows raise, and I remember this face clearly. "Marco," I say, recognition masking my terror.

He gazes me up and down briefly before sighing out, "You look like you've been in paradise."

"Paradise," I murmur gently. "Not the word I would use. Now tell me, did my father send you? Hoping that he'd call me over the nicest way he can?"

Marco looks taken aback, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips. "I...yes, he did. He wants to see you immediately."

"I figured," I mumble lightly. "He hasn't heard of me in weeks."

"Last time he did, you had left with Styles."

A soft hum escapes my lips and Marco visibly looks tense. I squint my eyes slightly, feeling an assertion bubbling with every confident word I forced out. My insides were churning with fear, while my heart played the strings of my intuition like a harp.

"Follow me, Miss Gates," he mumbles, turning around. I follow to the point where we're at a hallway, silent and untrusted in the ways of socialization now that we're in a perimeter very guarded by my father.

I keep a hand behind my back in case I am forced to use weaponry. My lips press tightly together and I inhale softly just as Marco opens that door. A door that once fully ajar, my father sits at the front of a desk, setting himself on the edge. His sharp red suit makes me nauseous because it is such a bold color. It is the color of the plenty of blood I've seen shed all my life.

Our eyes lock, and he seems to be surprised at my appearance. I do not shed away the courage I've built up to this moment. So with very little intentions of seeming like my old self, I stand even when the door closes behind me.

A few guards stand around, looking focused on me and my every room. I don't ruin the eye contact I have with my father when he states, "You look marvelous. I wonder how you managed to survive. Surely not with the help of your boyfriend."

I swallow painfully and firmly respond, "I survived on my own. Clearly, you underestimate me."

"I do, I really do," he hums, waving a hand around as he spoke. His eyes are squinted just slightly now. "You know...I checked my safe this morning. Maybe...four hundred grand was gone. We looked into the footage, and you wouldn't believe who we saw!"

My jaw clenches. "Me. I'm sure four hundred grand isn't enough to make you suffer and cry. So, let's talk about how I ensured my own safety while you were gaining your own benefit in work."

"I was looking for y --"

"You weren't looking for me," I interrupt hastily. "If you were, you would have found me weeks ago. And that's something we both know."

Seemingly fed up, he replies, "I didn't find you. But I did find your lover boy."

I felt my throat dry when he signaled someone off, and next thing I know an unconscious Harry is thrown onto the floor. Not a word comes from him nor a noise. And this worries me to no end. I felt a sharp burn in my back muscles, feeling my heart drop to my stomach and my eyes prickling with awaiting sadness.

I stare at the body, unable to keep tears from escaping my waterline. One sniffle and I was done for, asking, "What did you do to him."

My father shrugs. "I don't know...must've been tough. Boy is knocked out cold."

I grimace with tears and emotional pain. I stare, witnessing the stains of blood all over him and the bruises that mark across his skin. Long hair tussled over the floor, flopping over his face and preventing me from seeing him.

"I hate to...have been so wrong. You know I don't do well with being lied to. Harry...he lied quite a bit. Only to be close to you. And what makes me so much angrier," he snaps, "Is the fact that you turned your back on me to be with someone who's betrayed me."

There's a slight pause where I can only stare at Harry's unconscious body, tears accumulating rapidly in my glassy eyes and rushing to my pinkish cheeks. I inhale through an open mouth and loudly state my broken-hearted words. My left index finger jabs into my chest as I speak, feeling an unbearable amount of pain because what my life is, is once again tossed into the light.

"I love him. That's why I chose him. Because I'm more than capable of handling myself. More than capable of protecting myself, of loving someone else so much that I could give my life for them. I am more capable than you think, than you have ever imagined. I'm here not because I want to come crawling back to you, but because I want to to make the announcement. That because I am your daughter, and I am in constant danger, there is nothing that makes me any less than capable."

My father has a lack of emotional expression. So, he doesn't react as he lowly responds, "What is your point, really? What seems to me is a very sensitive, dramatic eighteen year-old who thinks she loves some damn killer that will eventually let her down."

I feel a tinge of heat from anger and frustration on my face, hovering over me like steam. "If so, then you will let me handle the aftermath. Let me take the charge, because you're not going to take charge of me or my actions or the love I give to another person. You don't own me, and that's it."

"You think you're going to waltz in here and talk to me like that?" He whispers, tipping his head down and narrowing his eyes at me. Ice cold eyes that dig profoundly into his meaningless cruelty.

"You think you're going to stand there and control me?" I fire back, eyebrows furrowed. The tears that well in my eyes are warm and uncomfortably blurring my eyesight. "'Cause there's no where in Hell you're going to do that anymore."

A silence takes over once again. My father, with one wave of his hand, demands one of his men to grab Harry and hold him up right. He pulls his head back roughly, length hair now allowing his facial features to reappear. I feel like I will throw up when I see the bloody mess that is his face. The clean finish of bruises up and down his skin and the blood that still drips from a freshly opened wound behind his ear. Blood stains his bottom lip and drips down to his chin.

The pale green of his eyes is almost unnoticed, though the way I stare at him it's obvious he's almost conscience, regaining some strength to stand on his feet. A gentle groan escapes his throat, revealing his awakening, yet aloof state.

"You think this!" He yells, referring to Harry with fury, "-- will support you?! You think this piece of shit, with his second-nature cunning little mind, will love you?! He's a professional con, a liar, a fucking devious mind player. A killer. He has no reason to love you, therefore he won't. A benefactor is his limitation, so he won't go beyond it. He does not love you Catalina. If anything, he wanted to gain something from you. And you know what that is?"

I'm silent, swallowing down a very painful force in my throat.

"That is your affection," father states simply, breathing in heavily. "And once he gets enough of it, once he knows what it's like to be admired by someone so lastingly infatuated with him, he'll get tired of it. He will no longer have an interest in it. And he will leave you."

Mid-way through an angry sniffle, my heart nearly bursts at the sound of Harry's broken, husky, and tortured voice. He sputters words out through the blood in his mouth. "Cata, no. That's not true," he desperately states, nearing the sound of a cry. "I love you...baby, don't listen to that bloody bastar--"

He gets another blow to the face by man one's companion, which shuts him up and pulls a cry out from his drenched, blood red lips. I desperately look to my father with building up anger. He only says, "Permission to speak wasn't granted."

I have the courage and the vexation to pull out the gun from my back, taking initiative like I should have all these fucking years. Like I should have been learning to defend myself earlier in my life. This is what I get for not knowing that in the past. My jaw clenches when a few men raise their guns up at me, seeing that I've aimed my own loaded, and fully ready, gun at my father.

In slight surprise, my father stands up straighter and snaps, "Catalina."

"What!" I scream furiously, feeling my throat burn with the volume I used. "WHAT! You think because you've always had this leash on me that you'll continue to hold it now!? Even when I've been through so fucking much and you've only been there to make sure I'm okay and then toss me away in a room!? Lock me in because you're afraid you'll lose what everyone else wants! My LIFE wasn't worth anything to you, it was keeping me ALIVE for the things I was worth that were necessary to you!"

He raises his hands up, but I take one step closer, and the tension grows. "Catalina," he says a lot more gently now. "Put the gun down."

Ignoring him, I remark, "Let him go. Let Harry go right now, or I will react and I will regret it. And I won't care."

"You are very distraught right no--"

"Distraught?" I spit. "Distraught isn't even a big enough word to describe the conditions everything has left me in. Or the feelings I've had to swallow down because your greed got the best of you. First, you separate me from my mother."

I continue. "And then you treat Paige so unfairly compared to me so no wonder that girl hates me. Then you want to kill the man who nearly dies repeatedly just to save me because I actually matter to him. YOU PUT ME IN THE HANDS OF ALL YOUR FUCKING PROBLEMS...and you act like I'm the one in the wrong here."

A total silence. Again. This time my father, who is now completely still, doesn't say a word. There is a depressing, sadistic reality to all of this. Through the adrenaline and rush I've always expressed my life, there is nothing truly appealing about it. Harry watches, blinking and panting with pain. I can't take my eyes off my father with tears rushing down my cheeks, and a firm grip on the gun that threatens my own father's life. Could I do it?

I don't know at this point. Nothing is doubted.

"Shoot him."

"NO!" A scream leaves my mouth the second a bullet is fired. I scream so loudly, my own ears pop and ring, and my heart is going to stop. I can only think of the pain that surges throughout me and knocks deep into my temples that throb with insanity. My eyes widen. But it is not intended for Harry, it is intended for my father. It does not come from my gun, but it comes from the outdoors, shattering a window and piercing through my father's skull. At this, my face pales immediately and my heart launches into my throat. I gag in horror and my pistol drops to the floor with a loud clang, leaving every man in that room rushing to the powerful one that has now fallen.

The first thing that escapes my lips is a cry, one hopeless and afraid. Stunned, and disgusted at the body of my father. I fall to the ground just after I look out the window, and in a short distance I see a dark-haired male rushing off a balcony. I know that guy. I know him because I recognize the sharp jaw and defined features. Zayn.

But I don't give this thought as I kneel on the ground, body so weak. I crawl to my lifeless father, who's eyes are still open though his body is just gone from here. Fresh wound right at his forehead. I don't know how to react, so as the men push at me to get away, I go onto someone who's nearly slipping through my fingers, too.

"Harry," I breathe out, sniffling loudly and voice filled with emotion. His eyes flutter a bit, gazing up at me lazily before his eyes try to roll back. Feeling desperate, I grab the side of his face gently, kneeling by his lying body and loudly encourage him to stay awake. "Please, please," I repeat beneath my breath, voice faltering.

I order one of the men to get an ambulance. At first he stares, unsure whether to follow my demands. That is until I raise my gun and he's got his phone and out the door doing as he's told.

Harry coughs and rasps out, "Stop...stop crying. Please. I really...," he inhales shakily, giving me a look that was meant to be playful as best as he could in his condition, "...Don't like it."

Sniffling again, I shake my head and whisper, "I'm so sorry."

"I'm gonna be fine..." he exhales, insisting. "This isn't the first time I took a beating for you."

My fingers run gently through his brown, messy locks. The evidence of his pain remains in stains and bruises over his face. I grimace and use my free hand to wipe away my tears. With a soft voice, I tell him, "I want this to be the last time."

"I do, too," he retorts lightly. "Fucking hurts."

Through the mess that crying causes, I manage to break out into a brief, short laugh at his bluntness. I bite my bottom lip and the temporary amusement fades as I realize the mess. A few minutes go by and an ambulance is waiting for Harry. I let him be escorted to it before I glance back at my father's body. 

"What are you going to do with the body, Miss Gates?" Marco finally asks, concerned eyes looking to me. I look to him briefly, clenching my jaw tightly. 

"I don't know. You don't take orders from me or anyone anymore," I mumble. 

Marco's lips part, awaiting to say something and I watch him expectantly. He then shuts them tightly, seeming to rethink his words. I'm focused on the men who assist Harry towards the ambulance, whereas Marco stares intently at me. 

"We have no orders. We have no purpose...Catalina, your father is d--" 

"I know that. I can clearly see it," I snap out of defensiveness. "Arrange a funeral. Anything. As a favor. Not an order." 

"You're not going to take over? You aren't going to take your father's place?" 

"No." I firmly remark. "Never. I'm staying away from this and everything relating to it. It's over. Whoever takes over my father's position, should be aware of the consequences. I'm leaving and I'm never coming back."

With a final nod, Marco mutters, "It was nice getting to know you, Catalina." 

"You too, Marco." 

n. one more final chapter and then there's an epilogue. the realization of it all is hitting me pretty hard :s thanks for reading, guys. thank you so much.