The tyrant mafia's weakness

Untitled: His saviour

Chapter 4 His saviour

"Sienna! What are you doing? Come away from there," her mother called out in a panicked whisper, quickly rushing into the edge of the alley. She grabbed Sienna's shoulder, pulling her back a step, before her eyes traveled down to the filthy, silent boy sitting in the dirt. Deep worry lines creased her forehead.

As she dragged Sienna toward the mouth of the alley, she looked down at her daugyouhter, her voice low and urgent. "Sienna, do know this boy? Who is he?"

"No, Mama," Sienna pleaded, her young eyes filling with tears as she looked back at the shadow against the wall. "But he’s freezing, and he's so hungry. Please, Mama, we have to help him. We can't leave him here."

Her mother tensed, looking back and three-quarters into the dark alley. She was weary, her maternal instincts fighting against the natural fear of a strange, street-hardened child. Slowly, she stepped closer to Marcus, keeping Sienna slightly behind her.

"Son," her mother called out softly, her voice trembling slightly against the sound of the pouring rain. "What is your name? Where do you live?"

Marcus struggled to keep his heavy eyelids open. The warmth of the bread was a distant memory, replaced by the throbbing fever in his skull. "Marcus," he rasped, his voice raw and dry.

"Where are your parents, Marcus? Who can we call for you?"

Marcus gripped the wet cloth in his lap, his knuckles turning white. His gray eyes looked completely vacant as he stared at the wet ground. "Dead," he whispered. "They're all dead."

Looking at his pitiful, shivering state—his clothes reduced to rags, his toes wrapped in plastic, and the utter hopelessness in his voice—Sienna's mother felt her heart completely break. She couldn't find it in her soul to walk away and leave a twelve-year-old boy to die in the mud.

"Alright. Alright, Marcus, let's get you up," she said, her weariness vanishing as she reached down to hook her hands under his arms. "Let's get you out of the rain."

Marcus tried to push himself up against the brick wall to help her, but the moment his feet touched the damp ground, his knees buckled. The world spun in a violent wheel of gray and black. Before she could steady him, his eyes rolled back, and his limp body fainted completely into her arms.

"Oh my god!" she gasped, catching his small frame. She immediately pressed her palm against his forehead, gasping at the radiant heat coming off his skin. "He's burning up. Sienna, open the car doors right now!"

Sienna ran ahead, opening the back door of their small sedan parked by the curb. Her mother lifted Marcus's surprisingly light, starved body, laying him across the back seat. Slamming the door shut, she scrambled into the driver's seat, started the engine, and drove off as fast as the slick roads would allow, heading straight for the city hospital.

By the time Marcus was admitted into the emergency room and hooked up to an IV drip, the sky had turned pitch black. Sienna and her mother sat anxiously in the waiting room chairs, the heavy silence broken only by the sharp ringing of a cell phone. It was Sienna's father. They had stayed out far too long, and he was calling from their dark house, wondering where his family was.

Sienna's mother answered, keeping her voice low as she briefly explained the situation over the roaring static of the hospital lobby. On the click of the line, her husband told her he was coming immediately.

Thirty minutes later, the sliding glass doors of the ER burst open, and Sienna’s father rushed in, his jacket soaked with rain. He spotted them and marched over, his face a mix of intense worry and confusion.

"What on earth is going on?" he demanded, looking between his wife and Sienna. "Who is the boy in the room? The doctors said you brought in a stray."

"We found him shivering under the rain behind the bakery," his wife explained, her hands gripping her purse tightly. "He was starving, Thomas. He collapsed right in front of us."

Thomas rubbed his face in frustration, his tone getting sharp and upset. "So you brought him to the hospital? Under our name? Maya, we can't just bring a strange, random boy into our home! We don't know anything about him, where he comes from, or what kind of trouble he's running from. We barely have enough to take care of ourselves!"

"His parents are dead!" Maya shouted back, her voice cracking as she finally snapped under the weight of the day’s trauma. The tears she had been holding back since the alleyway came rushing down her cheeks. "He has no one, Thomas! No one! I didn't have the mind to leave a twelve-year-old child to freeze to death in the rain! If we left him there tonight, he would be dead by morning! Do you understand me? Dead!"

The entire waiting room went completely silent. Thomas stared at his wife, shocked by the raw pain and anger in her voice. Looking at her tears, the frustration drained completely out of him, replaced by a deep wave of guilt.

"Maya... I'm sorry," he murmured softly, stepping forward.

He wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her trembling body into his chest. Maya buried her face in his shoulder, her quiet sobs filling the space between them as Sienna watched from the chairs, holding her own hands. Thomas rubbed his wife's back, looking over her shoulder toward the glass window of the room where Marcus lay unconscious under the white hospital blankets.

"I'm sorry," Thomas repeated quietly, his heart softening as he looked at the fragile boy. "Shh, it's okay. Don't cry. We’ll figure it out. When he wakes up, we'll both take care of him. Together."