Gangster's Girl (Complete)

Chapter 12 - Part 2

The annoying sound brought me out of my deep slumber. My alarm was going off. Still half asleep, I shifted in the bed and sat up. I rubbed my eyes and found my phone beside the bed and switched the alarm off. Luckily I had remembered to get it from my room otherwise I would have been late for James again. Yawning, I took in the strange surrounding.

"Why have you got an alarm set for such a ridiculous time?" Angel's voice beside me reminded me what had happened yesterday and that I was still in his room. And his bed. I experienced a moment of vulnerability I had to face now. My abandonment to him in the throes of passion were hard to face in the light of day. What had felt so right, didn't feel so right now. Not when logical reasoning was making the decisions and not my hormones.

He caught me off guard. "I like to gym early in the morning," I lied, quickly not ready to tell him about my secret sessions with James when it was obvious James hadn't mentioned it to him.

There was no way he would have believed it if he hadn't seen me running in the gym before.

"Switch it off and go back to sleep," he mumbled, still lying on his stomach next to me. His eyes closed.

"I got to go." I slid from his bed and maneuvered my way to the door in the darkness without bumping into anything.

I hurried to my bedroom. There was no way I was going to be late again, I remembered James' warning. I had the quickest shower and pulled on some sweats and a shirt. Five minutes later I was downstairs patiently watching the time in my phone and waiting for James.

As always he was on time and at exactly four am he was walking toward me. He was the most punctual person I had ever known.

"Today is going to be a little different," he offered cryptically as he headed past the place we usually trained.

I continued to follow him, my curiosity peaked even though I was feeling more nervous as I hurried to catch up to him. I had to take two strides for every one of his. I wasn't sure I was up for something different than our usual sessions. Surely he couldn't make me do anything worse than what I had done the day before.

He led me to another building that was on the far side of the property. It was another I had never been allowed inside. The door to this building had a keypad and a guard. It was strange I thought but I followed James inside. There was a small corridor and he led me into a small room. It had a window into the room beside it.

It was what was inside the other room that made me stop in my tracks. A man was tied to a chair. His head hung forward, sweat intermingled with blood dripped from his face. His arms were behind his back and each of his ankles were tied to the legs of the chair with rope.

I didn't understand how this was part of helping me. My eyes shot to James who was watching me. There was no hiding my alarm. Maybe he was used to this but I wasn't.

"How is this part..." I couldn't even finish my sentence. The sight of the man and his injuries turned my stomach. Flashbacks of the Bruno bleeding from the kitchen table made me tremble. It felt like it was happening again, my inability to pull myself together in violent situations.

"Remember, you were the one who came to me." His eyes went to the window and that's when I realized it was a two way mirror. "You wanted me to toughen you up." His eyes met mine. "That's what I'm doing."

This was not what I had in mind when I had begged him for help. This was crazy, wasn't it? It was not what I had imagined.

The man in the other room groaned. I couldn't help but think what had he done to deserve this? It must have been something severe to require this.

"How is this going to toughen me up?" I asked, not sure I was going to stay no matter what his explanation. There was a lot of things I could cope with but this was a step too far for me.

"The night Bruno got shot you said the sight of blood made you want to faint. The only remedy is to be exposed to it to build up a tolerance to it. The more you see the less it will affect you."

His explanation was cold and clinical. He could have been talking about the weather and not a living breathing person.

"This is our life Kira, it always has been. When you were younger you were protected from it."

My eyes moved from the stranger to James.

"You want me to help you survive, trust me. This is the only way. If you want to be able to deal with all of it this you have to be strong. Can you be strong Kira?"

I didn't think I was strong enough for this. Learning how to shoot a gun, learning self defense moves and even learning how to protect myself with a knife was very different to what he was proposing now.

"How James?" I managed to ask in a whisper.

"Violence. It plays a big part of our day to day lives. Like the violence of watching Bruno bleed out of a table after being shot twice. You think that's the first time something like that happened and it definitely wont be the last."

He folded his arms as he studied me.

"I think you need to have a good hard look at what you're getting yourself into and decide if this is truly something you can deal with because if you can't, it will destroy you."

It was the most insightful thing I had ever heard him say and it scared me. What if I wasn't strong enough? Would this lead me to the same fate as my mom? Would I look to numb the pain until I took my last breath?

"This is your choice. Stay or leave, it's immaterial to me but know that you can't lie to yourself."

He left the room and I watched with mixed feelings as he entered the room with the prisoner.

James removed his jacket and hung it off the back of another chair in the room before he began to roll up his shirt sleeves. I knew what was to come but couldn't look away or leave.

I was torn between trying to face the hard reality of the life I was committing to and the need to preserve what little innocence I still had.

I knew what was going to happen but when James hit the guy I jumped at the action. A cut just below his eye began to bleed. I tried to breathe through the panic. It was the same panic that had frozen me when Bruno had been bleeding from two gun shot wounds.

I fisted my hands trying to do everything I could not to turn and run. If I did I would be just as useless as I had been before. I needed to be strong, I had to be able to weather what I was seeing otherwise this life would break me. It was then I thought about my mother. I didn't want to end up the same way.

There was no sound, so I couldn't hear what James was saying to the guy but I could see the blood drip from his exhausted and pained face. He had brown curly hair. He looked like he was in his early thirties. What on Earth had he done to get on the bad side of James? As brutal as James was, he would never do something like this to someone who hadn't crossed them.

James hit the guy again. And again. I put my hand to my mouth to smother the hitch in my breathing every time he struck. Blood splattered from his face onto every nearby surface. The wall, the floor. More blood dripped from his chin.

I closed my eyes giving myself just a few moments of reprieve before I forced myself from open them again.

At any time I could have left but I didn't move. I don't know why I stayed or why I watched.

Maybe there was no way to make myself strong. Either I was fit for this world or I wasn't and there was nothing I could do to change that and I was kidding myself that I could change any of it.

When James finished with the guy his head hung and there was so much blood. On the floor and there was blood smeared on the front of James' shirt. When James looked to the mirror to stare at me all I could concentrate on was the blood dripping from his fists.

This time the sight of blood hadn't made me want to faint but there was only horror in what I had just witnessed.