Into Darkness (Whitsborough Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Whitsborough Chronicles Book 2

  INTO DARKNESS

  C.A. Rene

  Copyright © 2020 C.A. Rene

  All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental, the characters and story lines are created by the author's imagination and are used fictitiously.

  No copyright infringement intended.

  No claims have been made over songs and/or lyrics written. All credit goes to original owner.

  Cover Design By: Macy Chow

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Playlist

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Whitsborough Chronicles

  Dedication

  I’d like to dedicate this book to COVID-19 and Fortnite, the former for forcing me into confinement with my crazy family and the latter for frustrating them-and therefore me-then having it bleed into this book.

  On a serious note: Thank you Husband for watching, feeding and bathing the kids while I was quarantined with my computer. Love you.

  Playlist

  Rihanna ---------- Rehab

  Kendrick Lamar ----- Swimming Pools

  Macklemore ---------- Can’t Hold Us

  Eminem ---------- Survival

  Rihanna ---------- S&M

  Ginuwine ---------- Pony

  Refugees ----------Killing Me Softly

  Billie Eilish ----------- Bad Guy

  Lady Gaga ---------- Monster

  Billie Eilish ------ My Strange Addiction

  Niykee Heaton, Migos, OG Parker -- Bad Intentions

  Nicki Minaj ----------- Yikes

  Buckcherry ----------- Crazy Bitch

  Lorn ---------- Acid Rain

  Bhad Bhabie, Tory Lanez ----- Babyface Savage

  Bali Baby ----------- Big Bad Wolf

  Saweetie ---------- 1of 1

  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7H3qeHLvD7yYHYeBt7S2AQ?si=bDQnz6ykRZm7X90uOKtumQ

  Prologue

  “I forgive you.” He whispers, dropping his head to his chest.

  I chuckle dryly, reaching out and grabbing a handful of his hair, lifting his face to mine. At that moment, a dry flake of Tommy’s blood floats off my face and lands on his cheek.

  “Thank you, I’m going to need it.”

  I jam my forefinger into the gunshot wound on his shoulder and revel in his screams. His blood pumping out around my fingers and down my arm, feels like a warm soothing bath.

  “I doubt my mother forgave you for taking her from me.” I grab his chin, smearing it with his blood. “We were all each other had.”

  “She... knew it… was going to happen.” He’s panting. His leg wound is losing a lot of blood and I can’t have him dying too soon, I’m just getting started. I look around his office and see a fancy looking Burberry scarf, that’ll do.

  I apply the makeshift tourniquet and I look into his eyes.

  “Thank you, Mija.”

  I start to laugh and slap him hard across the face. Finally, the meek mask he’s been wearing drops and his eyes become cold. “There you are, Papa.” I grin, “it’s finally nice to meet you.”

  “My son will come looking for me.” He says between blood coated teeth.

  “Carm?” I put my finger to my nose, tapping lightly, “I killed him.”

  The alarm in his eyes sends me into another round of manic laughter.

  “Your mother would not want this.” He pants out.

  Just the mention of her from his mouth sends me into a red void and what little restraint I had on my anger is gone. I punch him in the face and feel his nose crunch under my knuckles, his yell of pain awakens a hunger.

  “We’re going to have so much fun.” I say, as I reach out and tweak his crushed nose.

  His whine of pain makes me giggle.

  1

  “Hello twin.”

  His voice still echoes in my head as I’m walking down the dirt road and the crunch of gravel under my feet is the only sound out here. I press my hand to my chest and feel the slow rhythmic beat of my heart. I was shocked when his turquoise blue eyes met mine but that was it. No excitement, no nothing. For a girl who’s had very little family her whole life, to learn she now has a half brother and a twin brother should be overwhelming. I should be full of happiness or something. Now that I think about it, I didn’t even ask him his name. Did our mother name him? Or was he taken right at birth? My father said he was with me for the first six months of my life so that must mean my twin was there too, right? So, what happened? Did my father separate us right away or have someone do it after he was put away? That sounds more like something he would do to punish her because my mother never once mentioned a brother, let alone a twin. Nothing was ever said, and if I ever brought up anything about family, she would lose it.

  There were too many secrets she kept and I’m wondering how the fuck she slept at night. How could she look at me and not feel some sort of guilt about keeping a whole family from me? My aunt and uncle and now a twin brother too. This woman had a whole other life and I was part of that false persona.

  The breeze catches on my ponytail and blows the hair across my face. The one thing I really love about Canada is that the air always smells fresh. It has a floral blend mixed with the smell of freshly mowed lawns. I really don’t miss the smell of car exhaust and garbage from the overcrowded New York streets. Up here in Muskoka though, the air is crisp. It has just a slight touch of pine and fresh sea water. I fill my lungs up and try to feel some contentment.

  Still nothing.

  The therapist my parents procured for my sanity says, I have locked away my humanity to protect myself. It’s PTSD at its finest. I don’t care and I tell her as much, which helps affirm her prognosis. There is a laundry list of drugs she wants to put me on to help me feel but I absolutely refuse, I have never done anything harder than marijuana and I don’t ever plan on it. I’ve seen what people become on that shit… I’ve beaten people who have wasted their whole lives for it. So, I basically tell her where she can shove those drugs each time we talk. I just don’t care what she says or what anyone says for that matter. This darkness I’ve succumbed to is cold and it feels like I’m finally where I belong. If I’m meant to pull myself out then I will do it without the help of a prescription.

  This therapist is constantly trying to get me to open up about what happened while I wa
s taken. I keep to the story of being drugged and waking up covered with blood and not remembering a single thing. I know she doesn’t believe me; I can see it in her eyes and I don’t fucking care.

  The new parents have patience I will say that because the girl they brought home no longer exists. If they had trepidations then, well I could laugh at what they must be feeling now. They still treat me the same with love and attention but I can see it in their eyes, they wonder about what is going on inside of my head. When my birth mother was killed by my mobster sperm donor in our burning home, I was damaged, but I’ve always been a little on the dark side. Something my mother wasn’t, she was kind and sweet and I never saw her raise a hand to anybody. But me? I love to fight, to pound flesh with my bare hands, that’s why MMA was a lifestyle for me. I always wondered why I was so different from her, why I craved the fights and lusted for blood. She always evened me out, gave me extra sweetness for my rough edges. But after the death of my mother, my inner fire started to dim.

  Then my aunt and uncle took me into their home and lives. I am loved beyond anything I dreamed of and they provide me with every single thing I need. After the adoption, I’ve formally started calling my aunt and uncle, Ma and Dad. I used to want them to be proud of having me, of feeling like I fulfilled their need for a family but after I was taken, I lost that.

  After I got into that vehicle with my murderous father and all the events that unfolded afterward, my life has turned upside down. When I close my eyes, I can still see blood, smell blood and hear the screaming. I was gone for seven days-168 hours-more or less and for half a day I succumbed to that deep darkness inside me.

  I go through the motions of my day to day, mostly locking myself up in my bedroom and sneaking out to Vin’s every night. He’s my light in an ocean of black and for that short amount of time I’m connected to him, I can feel the warmth and love. I have felt this numbness before, but I have never been stuck in it for this long. When I fight I let myself become numb, no emotions to cloud my judgment but I can usually bring myself out of it after a few hours. This time I think I stayed in too long, I let the inky black evil part of my soul devour me so I could do what I needed to do for vengeance. Revenge is sweet, I don’t care what people say it really is sweet.

  The only other time I have any feeling is during my nightmares, I guess they aren’t nightmares really, more like vivid memories. But they do scare me when I’m awake because I can’t believe how far I went. I can’t believe I sank so low into the dark pool. I’m not saying my father didn’t deserve it, he fucking did and to be completely honest, I’d do it again in a heartbeat, for my mother and for Tommy.

  I haven’t really processed Tommy’s death yet, I’ve compartmentalized him away. If I linger too long on him the familiar feeling starts to swirl deep in my stomach and the red starts to seep into my vision. Carm says Tommy was found in his room at the foster home and the police are buying that it was a suicide. Dumb asses, there would have been blood if he shot himself, but his blood was pooled inside that ring. He said the home isn’t giving a funeral, just burying him at the local cemetery. When I’m ready to visit, I’ll ask for more info.

  Anger-raw and debilitating-is the only other feeling I have besides numbness. I can no longer get a grip on it. Once I’m triggered it’s like a fucking tsunami. Luckily for everyone it’s been laying pretty dormant and I haven’t had much to trigger it. My parents are sweet and patient, my therapist reads the cues I send off and Vin is just so in-tuned to me I’m sure he can sense what lies just beneath.

  The gravel in the road is beginning to jab into the soles of my shoes and the extra weight on the waistband of my shorts is annoying. Carm was adamant I start to carry a gun on me at all times. The feel of the metal against my lower back is cooling. At first I refused him, the last time I had a gun was when I’d lost myself-no, gave myself-over to the darkness. The night I used four bullets. Carm insists I ‘pack heat’ and says him and the twin are here for a while, he also wants me to begin shooting training. Whatever.

  He says a Jennifer Talia is out looking for me apparently and I can’t place why her name sounds so familiar. She was the late wife of Raphael Torres and she’s pissed I killed him. Boo-hoo, bitch. I wouldn’t change a fucking thing, no matter who the fuck is after me. That man killed my mother and he stole my twin brother.

  Carm says he’s going to be texting me from his burner phone, so no names or anything. He wants us to stay in touch but I don’t care either way. He will be useful to me though, because I will be needing an ear in New York. If this woman is out for me I will need to take her out first. Fuck, if I can commit patricide, I can do just about anything.

  For now, I just need to keep it together, continue to control the need to fight and just be normal. I have Adri and Travis coming here soon and I haven’t seen them since before the kidnapping. I know I can’t do the old Ember who drank and partied because I need a firm grip on my control. But I can fake it, I’ll pretend to drink and to laugh, even if it slowly kills me more inside. Texting them these past few weeks has been tough. I don’t have any want to keep up with their day to day when I don’t even care about my own. I still care about their well-being of course and I would still kill anyone that threatened them, they are my family now too, but I can’t muster the feelings for their everyday ups and downs. Trust me, Travis and Adri have ups and downs every fucking day. Those two will either crash and burn or end up married at eighteen with a kid on the way.

  Turning seventeen feels so anti climatic, I’ve been looking forward to this day and now that it’s here it feels no different. Tonight, at midnight I will officially be seventeen, but inside I feel twenty-five. I look at the teenagers around me like Travis and Adri and see that their life experiences just don’t add up like mine. Our lives are so different, I just don’t see how I can compare them. How could they ever understand what I’m going through? I don’t think I would ever be able to sit them down and tell them everything I went through, the lives I was forced to take and the torture I inflicted on my own father. I don’t see how Adri would be able to look at me the same and Travis-superstar baseball player, Travis-who has lived in a mansion on the hill his whole life, could never understand.

  I purposely left Vin out of that, because he also hasn’t had the greatest life. His father never wanted him and his mother struggled to raise him. He watched as she cried and he found out he actually had a half brother who was adored by his father. So, he has some experience and his soul has a darkness similar to mine. That’s why he doesn’t push and he doesn’t have any expectations. He gets it, he gets all of it. My anger, my apathy and most of all the walls I’ve built. As long as I love him, he is content.

  And I really fucking love him.

  2

  She’s not here.

  The cabin is completely empty and she’s not down by the water either. My heart rate increases and I feel like it’s practically jumping out of my chest. My mouth goes dry and I have a lump lodged in my throat making it difficult to breathe. I leave for twenty minutes and her ass is missing. Where would she go? Did someone take her again?

  I dump the groceries on the table, not caring if the ice cream melts and run back out to my Hummer. I have to find her before anything else happens to her. I don’t think she could handle another thing right now. I jump into the vehicle and open my glove box. I see the gleam of metal tucked inside and close it again. I’m not taking any chances and if I find her with anyone, I’m shooting first and asking questions later. I know my way around a gun and I’ve had enough experience with them.

  Why the fuck did I leave her alone? Knowing nothing has been found in her still very open case. I’m so fucking stupid! I slam my palm against the steering wheel and let out a few colourful curses. Why didn’t I make her come with me? What if she was being followed again? I didn’t exactly look out for a tail on our way here.

  I turn left at the driveway since I came in on the right. She must’ve gone this way
towards the public beach because I obviously didn’t see her on my way here. The back of the Hummer fishtails as I gas it out onto the gravel road with haste, I’m feeling like I don’t have a lot of time. My intuition is screaming at me that something is wrong.

  “Fuck!” I scream out.

  Ember means the world to me and she’s become my family. Just her and my mom, no one else matters. Sure, I have a dad, but he was too busy playing house at college with another woman while my mother was raising me and just barely out of high school herself. To rub salt in the wound, he never acknowledged me. Even though my mother gave me his last name to spite him. I have a half brother Travis who is the apple of his eye and I resent him for every single thing he possesses. His life was easy and filled with happiness, while mine was hard and filled with a sad mother. I don’t blame my mother for the childhood I had, she did her best. She did her best while Travis had dinner at a fancy table with both happy parents each night and was tucked into bed with a book and a kiss. Fucking dipshit.

  Then Ember came and brightened things up, she brought with her the sun to my clouds. The one spot of colour in my life of black and white. Yeah, I sound like a fucking pussy right now but it’s the truth, she saved me. I was drowning in a pit of self loathing and hatred and she broke through and dragged me out. So now, I’m going to save her right back. She’s been lost and I can see the anger inside of her, it pours from her eyes. I watch her sometimes as she zones out and I can see the flashes of pain and sadness that comes over her. She has it locked up so tight and I know one day it will explode. The look is familiar because I was there, and I know it’s only a matter of time until she’s lost for good.

  I just wish I knew more about what happened to her because then I could determine her trigger. We all have one.

  Mine?

  Travis Greene. He knows it, too.