Page 1 of Bane's Beginning

Prologue

Three Years Ago: Thea

Blood. The light metallic smell filled the air as my eyes shot open. I lay on the floor in my own pool of it, clutching my stomach. Tears started to prick at my eyes, but I couldn’t let this break me. I couldn’t let him win.

Most people would scream. They would cry. Call for help. Something. But for me, I had gotten used to the dull twinge of knowing no one would be coming to rescue me.

I heard a small creaking noise at the door. Willing myself to lean up, I looked around the Tuscan-style home doubling as my prison. The dry Italian air blew through an open window in the bedroom, leaving small traces of citric fruit behind, a smell I once adored but now haunted my dreams.

The home was beautiful, just like everything else in his life. Expensive murals covered the walls as candles gave only some of their secrets away. The paintings had become friends with me for many days when I had been locked away in my hell.

Who knew such a decorous home could be a prison?

Another creak broke the stillness inside of the room as fear rippled through me. Was he already back? I couldn’t take looking at his face again, not after what happened that night.

“Shh,” the voice of a man whispered as a shadow walked through the door. “I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to help.”

This must have been a dream. Nearly every night these past three months I had begged to hear those words from someone, anyone.

“Help me,” I said with a shaky voice.

“Please.”

The shadow stepped closer, and the candlelight revealed a man in his mid-thirties. His unshaven beard and military-style clothing should have made him look intimidating, but it was the darkness in his eyes that truly unsettled me. Without it, I might have mistaken him for an ordinary businessman.

“My name is Flynn Carter, and I’m here to take you home,” the man said, crouching down beside me.

What was that noise?A thumping noise filled my ears. It was something I hadn’t heard in a long time. It wasn’t just the feeling of my heart beating again that seemed foreign.

It was the sense of something that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Hope.

Chapter One: Thea

Present Day

I hated clubs. I hated drinking, but there were very few moments in my life when I felt free.

Tonight was one of those moments.

I’d never been to New Mexico before, but a quick Google search told me Haven Hills was too small to have a decent bar. So I drove to Collings instead, a town about a hundred miles away.

It was a smart move, though, because I couldn’t risk my brother finding out I was here before I was ready. He would kill me and then drag my body back to California.

Though my brother and I didn’t talk or see each other more than once or twice a year, he still controlled every aspect of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I loved not having to work while I was in school, but money can only go so far.

I was twelve when my parents died. We were headed home from cheer practice, gymnastics, or some stupid irrelevant shit I had begged my parents into letting me do. I sat in the back of my dad’s Buick, upset at them both because they said I couldn’t go to my friend Margo’s 13th birthday party since her parents wouldn’t be there.

I wish I could say I didn’t remember anything about the accident, but I remember almost every detail down to the way that my dad hummed along to Foreigner'sI Want to Know What Love Isas he held my mother's hand while occasionallylooking over to make her smile. I saw my parents’ faces as they realized that they might not make it, the sounds my father made as he took his last breath and the words my mother said, pleading for God to spare me and take her instead.

I remember it all.

What I remember the most was what she said right before she took her last breath.

"Everything will be okay, Sweetheart. Just close your eyes, Davien will protect you."

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t close my eyes. I pleaded for her not to leave me. I screamed for her and dad to come back to me until it finally all went dark. Police had told my brother that the truck driver fell asleep. I woke up in the hospital a few days after.