Chapter 11 - "I'll help you get the money, I promise."

"Wakey, wakey."

When Natalia's eyes flung open, she instantly panicked, trying to lunge onto her feet but her body still feeling sore and much heavier than she remembered.

"Relax," she heard, but that familiar voice was not at all comforting, and she squirmed away from it. That was when she realized that she was still on the stage, and he was seated beside her. "I won't hurt you."

Kane had a cigarette at the edge of his lip, his hands in his pockets and the stage was high that his feet dangled from the ground. He didn't seem phased at all by the fact that his men's bodies were being wrapped in white plastic bags, and Natalia saw one of them being transported to the back exit of the club.

It was completely empty now, with a few workers here and there cleaning the place, but all the customers had left. The one left was the bartender that had laced her drinks, wiping down his glass and cups as though it was another regular nightly occurrence of the club. As though what had happened was a special event, when that night was the factor that traumatized the rest of her unknowingly short life.

She realized they had placed a blanket over her body, and in front of her was her car keys, but none else of her belongings. Even the thought of going home right now made her want to vomit; how was she to explain to her father that she had gone to a night club owned by another troop leader, and he had let his men not only violate her to the point that her insides felt as though they were continuously being stabbed, but that she killed all three of them without batting an eye?

Did that make her a monster?

That man had asked for mercy, and she didn't show him any. She even pointed it at his skull and remembered how horrified and scared he looked, and she shot him anyway. Suddenly, she leaned forward over the edge of the stage and vomited, seeing clumps of food and traces of blood on the floor.

Kane wasn't phased by it at all; instead, he chuckled and snapped his fingers for one of his men to come clean it up. "They usually have that reaction like this, it's no big deal."

Natalia didn't know what was going on, but she forced herself upwards, grabbing her car keys. She wasn't sure if she had to fight, but if she did, they would have to try and stop her from fleeing this place, no matter how injured she felt.

It took a while for her to even sit upwards, but when she did, she noticed the eyes of Kane widen. "After what happened to you, I'm impressed you still have any strength left. But don't worry, I'll let you leave, I'll even bring you to your car."

"Where are my clothes?" Her voice was raspy, but it was the only thing she was able to say. There was no emotions going through her mind or body, only that she had to get home.

Kane raised an eyebrow. "Why would you need clothes?" he winked, chuckling as he returned his eyes to his working men. "Anyway, here's the thing, Natalia." The seriousness in his features returned as his jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. "You killed three of my men, and I believe in an eye for an eye. So," he tilted his head to the side as he admitted, "I took the life of your useless friend, so that counts as one."

Natalia's eyes widened. "What?"

"She didn't wake up from the drinks anyway. Apparently she overdosed. You should have been out for much longer by the way," Kane recalled, turning to her with excited eyes as he asked, "how did you do it? Why didn't the drugs affect you as much?"

"There's only one way to defeat poisoning and being drugged, Natalia, and it's by forcing our bodies to adapt." Lucius shoved a glass towards her, pouring himself his own. "I will take it with you. This is only a small dose, but you might feel it hard because it's the first time. Then, in a few days, we will increase the dosage, and I'll teach you how to try to fend it off with your mind. After a while, you might not even feel the effects of it, unless the dosage is super high. Even then, you'll be able to snap out of it much easier."

All her father's techniques and teachings, she wouldn't have survived if it hadn't been for them. The only reason she had been able to fight them off was because he had helped her body adapt to it through her training.

"That's not really important," Kane dismissed, waving his hand. "These men that you killed, they bring business in. Those performances are profitable, they give me millions in one night. You killing two of them will make me lose some money, and I don't like losing money."

His voice had deepened menacingly.

"Tell you what," he continued, "since you're only seventeen years old, there's no way that you'll get millions in a few months. But," he genuinely smiled, "if you can get me a hundred thousand, I'll call it even. Fifty thousand each for the two bodies you took, I think that's pretty fair."

"What if I say no?"

Kane smirked, placing a finger on his chin. "You have a bit of spunk to you, I like it. Well, if you say no, I will release all these clips of you with those men all over the internet, which will stay there for the rest of your life and be such a bad look on your family. Then afterwards, if I find you, I'll kill you on the spot." He shrugged his shoulders as he sighed, "It's you decision, but imagine your younger brother, your father, or even your cousin and uncles, seeing all those videos of you naked with those men. There's no way they'll look at you the same."

She wanted to say no, but the thought of what happened tonight being shared to the world was much more frightening than dying itself. She couldn't even think of what she would do if Charles saw those videos; it would be way too humiliating that she wouldn't want to exist.

That was why she slowly nodded her head and whispered, "I'll get you the money."

After that, Kane waited until she had enough strength, and as promised, he carried her body to her car, settled her in the driver's seat and even clamped her seatbelt for her. He patted the top of her car with a beaming smile as he said, "Drive safe, I'll see you soon."

The moment she started driving, she bursted into tears, unable to believe that she had really lived through that, partially wishing that she hadn't so she didn't need to feel those hands all over her. They felt as though it was imprinted on her skin, and there were multiple times throughout the drive that she scratched herself, digging her nails into her skin as she tried to get rid of the feeling of their fingers gripping her so tightly.

She sobbed the whole ride to Charles home, and as expected, Charles had left the window open with the robe hanging down.

Charles had been waiting for her, and when she finally climbed into his room at exactly four a.m., he removed the headphones connected to his electric guitar, and couldn't peel his eyes off from her. The first thing he did, after seeing the amount of blood all over her body, was lunge for his blanket and wrap it around her quivering physique.

"You...Y-You c-can't say...any...an-anything...al-al-r-right? Pl-pl-pleas-se..." she hiccuped. "Ch-Charles," she begged through tears, wiping her nose and only causing more blood to be left on her face. "Our-our...pa-parents w-will go n-n-nu-nuts if th-they..." She couldn't even finish her sentence from how much she trembled.

That night, she couldn't even talk about what happened.

She fainted in his arms shortly after she got there, and Charles, who felt his heart pounding in his chest, couldn't let her stay like that. He checked the corridor to make sure there was no sign of his parents, and carried her to the bathroom. He placed her in the bath, carefully washed her body, wondering where all that blood had come from, trying his hardest not to cry because he didn't want to be weak in times she needed him.

He washed her face, shampooed her hair, made certain there was no traces of that horrible night left, before hiding the sheets he had used to wrap around her and grabbing a new one for her to lay in clean covers. He didn't even sleep next to her on the bed; the whole night, he sat on his desk chair, observing the way her chest shook as she struggled to breathe in her sleep, or how she flinched every so often.

The next morning, that was when she decided to reveal all that happened, and that story haunted Charles ever since he heard it.

"We need to tell our parents, Nat."

"Charles, those videos will be out there for life."

"But what if you give him the money and he shares them anyway?" Charles speculated, shrugging his shoulders. This entire thing was tough to listen to and talk about, but he was trying to find a way to solve this without it her getting hurt again.

But Natalia was completely against that option. "I'm not taking that chance. I'm getting the money and I'll give it to him."

"Nat, you killed three people. You're not thinking straight—"

"They were on top of me, Charles," Natalia shrieked, her eyes filling with tears as her body felt again their hands all over her. She remembered how helpless she felt when she was pulled in and out of consciousness and she couldn't move because they had drugged her with those drinks. "I had to kill them, or else they'd kill me."

"I'm not saying you were wrong for doing that," Charles exhaled, still having a difficult time swallowing all this information, "but that must have been...a hard pill for you to swallow, that's all I'm saying."

"It's not hard because they fucking deserved it, and if I was in that situation, I'd do it again, and I'm not staying here any longer if you're just going to fucking judge me for it," she screamed through a shaky voice, storming to her feet and heading for the door.

"No, no, Nat, I didn't mean it like that, I'm sorry, please stay," he begged, reaching for her wrist. At first, she flinched away from him, but when her body recognized that touch, she burst into tears and melted into Charles' arms for an embrace.

She felt him caress her back tightly, and against his chest, she sobbed, "I fucked up, Char...I fucked up..."

"We'll fix it," he cooed, keeping her tightly against him. "We'll get him the money, and this will all go away, okay? I'll help you get the money, I promise."

After Charles finished sharing the entire story, both Nate and Bronsted were in such disbelief that they couldn't even look at one another.