In The Bleak Midwinter | T Shelby

THIRTY FIVE - SILENT NIGHT

The fire was still burning when the clock struck 5am. Ada had taken Finn upstairs and put him to bed while Aberama and Kaia stayed sat in silence in the front room, their minds running away with them the longer the seconds ticked by.

Nobody wanted to say out loud what they thought had happened to Tommy, Arthur, John and Bonnie, but like when Finn was missing, everyone was thinking the same thing. It wasn't that they didn't believe the boys could defeat the Italians, because all three of them knew that the brothers were more than capable of doing so, it was the fact that almost two hours had passed since Kaia and Finn returned home safely that was worrying them.

Kaia's mind was with her brother and him only. She was sat on the floor with her back resting against the sofa, still holding her father's hand as he sipped alcohol to help numb the pain. In the back of her mind she know Tommy and his brothers would be fine, but the uncertainty over Bonnie was eating her alive and she knew it was doing the same to Aberama.

From the hazy memory she had of that night, Kaia remembered seeing most of the Italians on the floor, either dead or barely hanging on. She didn't see who shot Tommy, but she had faith that whoever did would've succumbed to the fate of Arthur's gun.

The door burst open, startling Aberama to the point where he spilled the glass of whiskey over his freshly bandaged chest. Kaia let go of her father's hand and jumped to her feet, following Ada out into the hallway to see what was going on.

"Ada! Ada help!"

Kaia's eyes widened in horror as she saw Arthur and John carrying Bonnie into the house, his body limp and his face covered in blood to the point where he was almost unrecognisable.

"What's going on?" A small voice came from the top of the stairs.

"Finn stay in the bedroom, son." John shouted back, the younger brother doing as he was told and running back into the bedroom, slamming the door shut.

The brothers carried Bonnie into the kitchen, Aberama almost choking when he saw the state of his son.

"Bonnie, oh my God, Bonnie..." he tried to stand up but Kaia was quick to rush to his side, restraining him to the settee where he needed to stay if his stitches were to hold until they could get treated properly.

She calmed her father down by stroking his head, knowing that he was going into a state of shock after seeing his son being dragged into the house looking far worse than he had done after any boxing match.

"It's going to be alright, Dad. Ada will take care of him just like she did with you." Kaia smiled weakly at her father, knowing her words were most likely empty lies.

She hadn't expected to see Bonnie again, at least not alive, slowly accepting over the past two hours that her big brother was gone. Though perhaps the pain of not knowing whether he would survive as he lay on the kitchen table was worse than knowing for sure that his heart had stopped for good.

"You alright Aberama? Told you I'd get you out of them woods didn't I?"

John came over and sat beside Aberama, talking to him to distract him from what his son was going through on the table behind him. He gave Kaia a nod and small smile as she went over to the kitchen to see Bonnie.

Seeing her father in such a state was bad enough, but Kaia couldn't imagine anybody being any worse than him without being dead. That was, until she saw Bonnie. The wound in the side of his head was seeping with blood still and he was unconscious but somehow still breathing.

Kaia stood speechless at his side, his eyes closed and his face so beaten and bruised that he didn't even look her brother. It had broken her heart in a way she didn't know was possible, seeing the only two people she had n her life that she could rely on have their lives almost ripped from them in the cruelest way.