Beautiful Escape

Death Sentence

    I had just gotten of the phone with the nanny I personally hired to take care of the twins in the safe house in Ohio, she tells me that they're doing well considering all that's happened. They are a bit confused on why they haven't seen their mother in a while, and I'm hoping it won't be for much longer. After I hang up I drop the phone onto the ground and smash it with my boot. It was a burner phone, which are impossible to trace, but you can never be to careful when working with such a dangerous group of people. I get a new one ever few days to make sure no one can get access to whatever number I'm using. 

    It's been a few weeks since Benny sent Marcus to 'take care of me' and It's been making me a little paranoid. Which I'm sure is his plan to wear me down before making a move, he and I both know that even with a dozen men at his side, Marcus could never beat me when I was at my full strength. I have also been trying to talk to Abby again to see if she"ll help me in my time of need, after all she did abandon me with our lunatic father when I was only eleven. But, she had recently started dating this Travis character she's been spending all that time with and as I would love a good fight, I can't be drawing that kind of attention to myself. 

    I do still drop by the Campus grounds to do a bit of recon, I'm out on the lawn smoking a cigarette when I see Abby with her usual group of friends. America, Travis, and from what I've learned his cousin and Americas boyfriend Shepley. They were leaving the cafeteria and heading in my direction towards the women's dorm, luckily they hadn't noticed me and I was able to duck behind a tree. It's like this for another two days, me watching from afar trying to find an opening to talk to her. Then one night Abby and Travis leave his apartment, I've decided that this was my best chance to speak to her again. So I follow them.

    We drive for about fifteen- twenty minutes and we come upon an old run-down house. Once they park I keep driving for another two to three blocks, when I park my car and get out. Out of nowhere I was jumped by three men, from what I can only assume were a few of the men Marcus had brought with him. One of them grabs me from behind and covers my mouth, I slam on his foot and elbow him in the nose, breaking it. "Ow, you b***h that f*****g hurt," he says doubling over. That gave his friends an opportunity to make their move. I smile, "well who's next boys, don't tell me that's all you've got?" 

    They start to move in, one guy coming from the left, the other from the right. The guy on the left had short brown hair and a lot of tattoos, while the one on the right was an average looking blonde. Tattoos was the first to speak, "far from it, Marcus trained us." He smiles and pulls out a combat knife. That's when the blonde starts coming towards me, I duck away from his first few punches when he finally gets me with a right hook. I spit the blood out of my mouth and look over at him, "that's your one." 

    I hit him with a left uppercut, then make some combo punches to his torso. He's winded now, so i finish it with a left hook breaking his nose and finally knocking him out. I look down at him, temporarily forgetting about the man with the tattoos before he brings the knife down across the left side of my face going from my eyebrow to the lower half of my cheek. I'm half blind now from the blood, but that doesn't stop me from trying to disarm him. I kick his legs out from under him, once he hits the ground I instantly straddle him punching him in the face over and over. 

    He drops the knife, I pick it up and stab him in the throat, killing him. After they were all dead or knocked out, I drag their bodies to a nearby dumpster so that no one will notice them. I grab my bag out of the car and make my way to where I had last seen Abby and Travis, I walk up to the porch and knock on the door. I waited there a few minutes with no answer, so I got my phone out of my pocket and called Abby's number. I rang a few times before she answers, "hello?" She says on the other line, and I can hear men's voices in the background. "I need you to open the door Abby," I knock even louder hearing it slightly on the other end.

    "Who is this?" She sounded a little startled, I knock again. "It's me Abby, I need you to open the door right now. Please Abby I need to talk to you about something." I start to wipe some blood out of my eyes when I see a curtain move in the window next to the door. "What are you doing here Talia, and why does it look like you're covered in blood? Don't tell me you've been getting into fights again?" She asks, not really knowing what I've been doing back home. I hear the voices on the other end, sounding confused about who Abby is talking to. "Just open the door and I'll explain everything, I promise." I knock one more time before the door finally opens, she doesn't open it all the way and she's staring at me with extreme confusion.

    I put my phone away and wipe more blood from my eye, pushing the door open more so I could step into the house. I close the door and lock it behind me, looking through the blinds to see if anyone saw me come in here. Finding no one, I close the blinds and turn around looking at Abby. "It's good to see you again sister, it's been awhile." I move past her looking around at the other faces in the room. There were five more men besides Travis, which by the sheer resemblance I could only assume were his family, four brothers and his father. I smile and look to Travis, "it must have been a real handful to grow up in a house full of boys, I mean I wouldn't know seeing as how I was basically an only child when I turned eleven." 

    Abby rolls her eyes after Travis gives her an even more confused look, "that's not how it happened and you know it. Stop blowing things out of proportion like you always do. Now will you please tell us why you're here and why you're bleeding?" She asks with little concern. I glance at her laughing, "wow, you're not even gonna ask if I'm ok? I mean my face really f*****g hurts and that's all you have to say to me? I'm trying to save not only your life, but also mine and my children, so don't you dare come at me with your false concern. I mean hell, looks to me like you finally got that new family you always wanted." I motion to the other men in the room.

    She starts to look uncomfortable, "I didn't say that, they don't even know who you were and to be honest I had wanted to keep it that way." I shake my head and walk around the house some more, and I see a room down a hallway. It looks like there was a poker table in it, I turn towards Abby."Well look at that, I guess you can the girl out of Vegas but not the Vegas out of the girl. Did you seriously just hustle these poor men?" I look towards them laughing, "I bet the only one who had any idea of what you were doing is the one in the back who looks like a fed." I point towards a man wearing a suit, and by the looks of him it doesn't seem like he had any tattoos like the others, whereas the rest were covered with them.

    He stands up and walks towards me, He stops just a few inches from me examining the cut on my face. "This looks deep, I can help stitch this up." He looks over at Abby as if seeking permission, to which she simply nods. I grab my bag and give it to him, "everything you'll need is in here, and just fyi I do have a gun and a few knives in here." He nods and motions for me to sit down on the couch, that's when I see a photo on the wall to my left. "Who's that?" I ask pointing to the woman in the photo, their father was the one to speak up now. "That's my wife Diana Maddox, she passed away many years ago, cancer." I ask him if I could take a closer look when he nods, taking it off the wall and handing it to me. 

    I thank him and I ask, "So if this is Diana, then who are all of you? I only know Travis and Shepley from doing recon on Abby the past couple of months." The old man simply chuckles and says, "Well the one working on your eye is the eldest Thomas, and these are the twins Taylor and Tyler, and sitting next to you is Trenton and my name is Jim." I smile looking at the men in the room, and I look over at Thomas thanking him for his help. I didn't say anything, but I have seen him before while I was recruiting in California a few years back. He is in fact a federal agent in the FBI San Diego division. 

    "I'm Abby's sister in case you haven't already figured that out, my name is Talia Abernathy. Our father is Mick Abernathy." That's when the room exploded, "I KNEW IT!" Trenton yells jumping up from the couch. Taylor was whining of how he got hustled and Tyler was pronouncing his love for Abby putting Travis on edge. Jim was laughing at his sons while Travis looks over to Abby and says "you're lucky thirteen?" Abby looks around the room angry and embarrassed about what I had just told everyone. "I don't like to be called that, the whole thing was blown out of proportion." She looks over at me, "why did you do that? I didn't want anyone here to know about that." 

    "Why, because you're ashamed of us? You weren't the only one dad blamed for his luck going out the window, except you were the only one who was able to get out when mom decided to take you with her when she left, leaving me alone." I wince again as Thomas was stitching up my face, I tried jerking away from him which only made it hurt more. "Relax Talia, I'm almost done. You're lucky it missed your eye, you could've gone blind from this." I nod moving back towards him, letting him finish. "How exactly did this happen to you? It looks fresh." One of the twins asks me, I couldn't really tell them apart.

    I was jumped after I followed Abby here, I had parked a few blocks away and they got me when I got out of my car. One of them had a knife, one got his one hit in and the last I knocked out quickly so he wasn't much of a problem. They all look at me shocked, when Jim says to me, "You took on three men all by yourself and all you got was a cut on your face, I can only imagine what the others guys look like." I smile and nod, "well I did stab the one in the throat with his own knife so he might be worse than the others, I dumped them in a dumpster about a mile or two away so the cops shouldn't be around here asking you many questions. I dumped them next to a bar to make it look like some lowlifes got into a bar fight." 

    "Why would you try to cover up the fact that you were jumped?" Thomas asks me. "Well I may be in some stuff that just might be a little illegal." Abby walks over to me with a fury in her eyes. "Who were you hanging out with, and who did you piss of for someone to have you jumped by three men?" I look over at her, knowing she's not going to like my answer. "Well, a few years after you and mom left I was r***d. After that I wanted to start making money and forge a better life for myself, so I gave Benny a call." She gasped, and even Thomas looked shocked by this news. "You called Benny!? After a supposed r**e that I knew nothing about, that's not a good enough reason to ask him for money." 

   I laughed, "I didn't ask him for money Abby, I asked him for a job. I recruit and train his bodyguards and I even trained all his best fighters." I stand up walking towards her. "Plus, not only was I r***d at the age of fourteen. I got pregnant as a result, twin boys, Thomas -ironically- and Tove. I sent them to a safe house in Ohio with their nanny because as far as I know Benny doesn't know about them. I didn't want Benny to use them against me, god only knows what he would do to them."