Aimed at my heart - Chapter #4 - by Tessa Kelwyn

POV Mara

They ripped me from sleep by the ankles and wrists, sheets tangling around my legs like the nightmare hadn't ended, just changed shape.

A forearm pressed across my chest, crushing breath from lungs that had been, seconds ago, full of Adrian's name in my dreams.

Another hand sealed my mouth, and I tasted leather and cigarettes and the specific terror of being caught defenseless.

My body knew before my mind did—too many hands, too much weight, the choreographed violence of professionals who'd done this before.

The front door hung crooked in its frame, splintered at the latch but pulled mostly shut, angled to hide the damage from neighbors who'd learned not to look too closely anyway.

My head cleared in brutal flashes: the smell of cut wood from the destroyed door frame, footsteps that moved with practiced synchronization, and voices I recognized not by name but by the familiar cadence of family.

Mare Nero family. My family, here to eat their own.

They dragged me down the hall, my bare feet finding every imperfection in floors I'd walked ten thousand times.

The overhead kitchen light blazed like an interrogation, and there they were—my parents, hauled from their bed like animals to slaughter.

My mother was in her thin robe, the one with tiny flowers I'd bought her last Christmas. My father was barefoot.

Both with zip-tied wrists, both wearing the gray mask of people who would learn their daughter's real job any minute now.

"Mom," I tried to say, but the hand over my mouth pressed harder, and I tasted blood where my teeth cut the inside of my lip.

Three men arranged themselves around us with the casual efficiency of experience. One reached past me to swing the broken door mostly closed, sealing us into this private horror.

"Who was it?!" The voice cracked from my left like a whip.

"Who paid you?!" Behind me, breathing hot on my neck.

"What did you tell them?!" Straight ahead, the one who mattered most, the one whose hands stayed steady.

My tongue felt thick and foreign in my mouth. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The words came out wrong, too high, too desperate. Nothing like the enforcer who'd broken a dealer's teeth yesterday.

That woman was gone, replaced by a daughter watching her parents' confusion crystallize into understanding—their little girl who did "private security" was something else entirely.

"Try again." A finger jabbed into my chest. "Names. Who turned you?"

"I don't—" My voice shattered. "No one. I didn't do anything."

"Mara, just tell them," my mother begged, and the sound of my name in her mouth made me want to scream. She still thought there was a way out of this, still believed in negotiations and reason and mercy.

"Quiet," one of them said, and the backhand that silenced her made a sound like dropped fruit. She crumpled sideways, blood threading from her nose, and my father made a broken noise that wasn't quite human.

"Please," I heard myself say, the word scraped raw. "They don't know anything. They're not part of this."

"Everyone's part of this." The man in front of me stepped aside with the terrible calm of someone checking items off a list. The one beside him drew his gun in a motion so smooth it looked like art.

Time stretched like molten glass.

I could see my mother trying to stand, my father reaching for her with bound hands.

I could see the gunman's finger finding the trigger with the patience of someone who'd done this enough to be bored by it.

I could see myself in the kitchen window's reflection—hollow-eyed, mouth open in a scream that hadn't started yet.

Two shots. Fast. Precise.

The sound was smaller than it should have been—suppressors eating the noise—but somehow louder than anything I'd ever heard.

My parents dropped where they stood, and I learned that bodies don't fall like they do in movies. They just stop, like someone cut their strings, everything that made them human evacuating in an instant.

For one impossible second, there was only ringing in my ears and an animal sound that might have been coming from me.

The kitchen floor bloomed red around them, and I thought absurdly about how my mother would hate the stain.

The barrel found my forehead, metal cold as truth against my skin.

I couldn't breathe, couldn't think past the weight of it, the perfect circle of nothing pressing into me.

I wanted to fight, wanted to reach for the Beretta that should have been under my headboard but was three rooms and a lifetime away. My fingers flexed uselessly, muscle memory trying to grab a gun that wasn't there.

"Last looks," the gunman said, almost gently. "Any final truths you want to share?"

I stared at my parents' bodies and felt something fundamental break inside me. They'd died thinking I was a liar. Died not understanding why their daughter had brought death to their door.

The taste of metal filled my mouth—blood or fear or both—and I prepared to follow them into whatever came next.

A pause stretched between heartbeats. The trigger finger tensed.

Pain exploded at the back of my skull—blunt, efficient, dropping me into darkness.

My last thought was that Adrian would text tomorrow and I wouldn't answer, and he'd never know why.

* * *

I woke to buzzing fluorescents and four gray walls that could have been anywhere or nowhere.

My body cataloged damage automatically: wrists zip-tied to metal chair arms, ankles bound to the legs, a band across my chest tight enough to make deep breathing impossible. The taste of copper in my mouth. A headache that pulsed with my heartbeat.

A table waited a few feet away, its surface arranged with the neat precision of someone who took pride in their work.

Duct tape. Rubber hose. Pliers. A box of Morton salt. A towel. My stomach lurched at the implication, at the careful domesticity of implements that would remake me into whatever truth they wanted.

The door opened with institutional efficiency.

Two of the men from my apartment entered first, the third hanging back to block any impossible escape.

One carried the towel like a promise. Another fingered the hose with the casual familiarity of someone reuniting with an old friend.

"Now then," the lead said, voice conversational. "Let's try this again. Make it easy on yourself. Who else knows what you know?"

"I know nothing." The words came out steady despite everything. "I told no one anything because there's nothing to tell."

He studied me with the patience of someone who had all night, all week, forever if necessary. "Someone sang, little girl. They pointed at you, said you were selling family secrets."

"Then they lied." My throat felt like sandpaper. "I don't know who or why, but they lied."

He took a step closer, and the other two flanked him, a choreography of intimidation they'd perfected over years of practice.

I forced my spine straight against the chair's metal back, refusing to give them the cringe they wanted.

A voice cut through the hallway, sharp and unexpected. "What's going on here?!"

"Family business," someone answered from outside, defensive. "We have a rat. She's in the room now. We're having a talk."

"A rat?" The corridor voice moved closer, authority in every syllable. "Let me deal with her myself."

My chest tightened with new dread. This was about to get worse in ways I couldn't predict. Footsteps approached the threshold with deliberate calm. The latch clicked.