Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 56760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
My feet barely hit the ground as I reached the market, eyes scanning the crowd for Nana. I spotted her in line for the peaches and ran to her, shivering and shaking, with tears streaming down my face.
When she saw me, Nana dropped her wicker basket on the ground. The people at the market seemed to take notice, and silently, they all left their stations and gathered around us in a protective circle.
“Did they hurt you?” Nana demanded as she enveloped me in a hug.
“No, but a man tried to take me,” I whispered, sniffling at the memory. “Was he a dangerous man, Nana?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “He was a terrible man, Rain.”
“You need to leave,” one woman I knew who worked a market stall told Nana. “Now.”
Nana nodded and dusted off my dress before addressing me.
“Rain, don’t be scared, but we need to leave this place.”
“Why? For how long?”
Nana’s lips thinned as she muttered, “Forever.”
“Why?” I cried out.
“So I can keep you safe.”
I didn’t get the chance to argue again. We heard a car screeching as it arrived at the market and the surrounding people gathered around it, banging their fists on the hood.
The lady who had spoken to us led us away. We slid into a thin alleyway, practically running to a compact car. She ushered us inside and sped out of her parking spot.
“What about our things?” I asked Nana. “Are we just going to leave everything behind?”
“We have to,” she replied in a clipped tone before addressing the woman driving. “Do you know where to take us?”
“No, tell me.”
Nana rattled off instructions to the woman. For the rest of the ride, I sat on my grandmother’s lap in the backseat. Every once in a while, when we passed a busy street, she told me to hide, and I sank onto the floor of the car. I’d never been so afraid before.
“I knew they’d come for you,” Nana whispered in the shell of my ear. “From now on, I’ll be more careful.”
It took hours to get to our destination, and by the time we pulled up to it, I was cramping from sitting in the car so long and desperate for the bathroom.
The market woman, Nana and I got out and silently watched the stone cottage standing abandoned in the middle of a bright wheat field.
“You’ll be safe here?” the woman asked thoughtfully. “The nearest village is an hour’s walk away.”
Nana nodded with a solemn expression.
“Thank you for helping us.”
“Of course,” the woman nodded eagerly. “You know it is our duty to help the Castellamare girls.”
Nana nodded, her fingers trembling as she leaned down to speak to me.
“Go inside the cottage, Rain. Check if there’s any food.”
I nodded, heading inside. But my curiosity got the better of me, and instead of searching the dusty cottage, I watched Nana speaking to the woman through the window.
I could only hear snippets of the conversation, but I saw Nana pull out a gun from behind her back.
I never knew my grandmother had a gun, and the sight of it sent chills down my spine.
She raised it to the other woman’s head. The woman paled, begging for her life. But Nana didn’t even let her finish. She simply fired a bullet into her forehead, and the woman’s now lifeless body tumbled to the ground while I shrieked.
Quickly, Nana turned around and rushed toward me, enveloping me in her once comforting gaze as I sobbed from what I’d just seen. My first dead body... but it certainly wouldn’t be my last.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Nana whispered in my ear. “She’s the only person who knew where we were... They could’ve tortured her, and she’d given up our location. She was innocent, but she had to die.”
I cried not understanding why this had to happen. The whole time, I just kept repeating one paltry word, trying to make sense of everything that had just happened.
Why?
The cottage was cool and Nana put me to work cleaning it until we had a place to sleep in the same bed. As I huddled against her, she stroked my hair. I didn’t know whether I could trust her anymore, but I didn’t have a choice.
“Tell me a bedtime story,” I whispered, eager to hold on to the remains of my childhood.
“Once upon a time,” Nana started thoughtfully. “There was a village filled with the most beautiful girls in the world. Every few years, the villagers were forced to send the most beautiful of them all to a cruel fate.”
I cuddled closer to her, engrossed in her story and for a moment, forgetting about the day’s cruel events and the dead body Nana had burned along with the car while I cleaned the cottage.
“There was an organization that kept the village safe,” she went on. “But in exchange for that, an old debt had to be paid. And so, for centuries, the prettiest girls had to leave their home to fulfill their cruel fate. One of them was your mother.”