Page 133 of Equilibrium
I pushed him off me and walked the rest of the way toward the billiard room. I could hear my father’s voice now as clear as day.
“So, you’re trying to tell me that you don’t know where my daughter went?” Not a second later, another gunshot echoed around us and I stiffened, actually afraid for the people there. He wasn’t going to stop.
He wasn’t going to stop until he saw me. Nikolai Aster either wanted to kill me, or he wanted me to come back with him. I wasn’t okay with either one of those options. I wasn’t going to go back to the world that destroyed my sanity. I wasn’t going to help the family that abandoned me, not anymore.
But I also wasn’t going to let innocent people die. Too many of them already did, by my hand no less, and these ones... These people were Storm’s family. If what Kieran had told me was true, Storm suffered at the hands of my father more than any other person.
I looked at him, and whatever he saw on my face put panic onto his. Before he could reach me, I rounded the corner, coming face-to-face with the man I never wanted to see.
My father.
My nightmare.
The dragon that shaped me.
“Papa,” I called out as the two guards standing near the door advanced toward me. Each of them took a hold of one of my arms, and the gun I held in my other hand clattered to the ground as they knocked it from me.
I would like to say that time wasn’t too kind on my father, but I would be lying. Those same eyes I kept seeing in the mirror, day after day, year after year, they connected with mine and a smile spread across his face.
His hair wasn’t dark anymore, but rather silver, with dark strands peeking through. He got old.
“Doch?” he asked. “Is that really you?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Papa.” I almost choked on those words. “I am here.”
He slowly approached me, and that sweet smile got replaced by a sinister one. “But you aren’t alone, are you?”
No.
“Let go of me!” Storm yelled behind me, and I turned around to see three guys leading him to the room. Fuck.
“Did you know,doch,” my father started. “That I knew Storm for most of his life?”
Shit. Not this.
“No?” He looked at me than at him. Storm looked furious, exactly how I felt. “Moya malen’kaya igrushkawas such a good boy until he escaped of course. He could’ve been amazing.” He approached Storm, taking his face into his hand. “But he ran away.”
“Let go of him, Papa.”
“Oh, you’re defending him?” This seemed to amuse him, and I didn’t like it. I would rather have him furious than amused, because an amused Nikolai Aster equaled terror, and I didn’t want that on any of these people. “Put him to his knees,” he instructed his men.
Storm tried fighting, but it wasn’t enough to shake off the three men surrounding him, pushing him down. Creed was on the floor, his hands tied to the front and a barrel of a gun pressed to his temple. I recognized the man standing behind him, but I didn’t know his name. I couldn’t see Atlas nor his brother, Felix, and I just hoped that they had managed to escape when this madness took place.
I was frantically looking for the one person I wanted to see standing up, but when her hair sprawled on the floor caught my attention, I almost fell to the ground.
Zoe, my sunshine, ZoZo, laid on the floor right next to the bar with her eyes closed and bruises over her face.
“No!” I wailed, trying to break free from the guards holding my hands.
I didn’t know if she was dead or alive and I couldn’t let her lie there, unconscious. What if she was seriously hurt? What if I couldn’t see the other injuries and she could be dying right in front of my eyes? Her chest rose and fell with every new breath, but for how long?
We didn’t have enough time. I was a bitch toward her, and she didn’t deserve it. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. And Indigo. How would Indigo react when he saw this?
“A friend of yours?” my father asked, snickering at me. “She was pretty.”She still is pretty, you sick fuck.
“I am going to kill you!” I screamed at him.
“Tsk tsk.” He approached me, leaving Storm behind. “Is that any way to talk to your father?”
