Family Secrets

The first thing that Dani Stuartr realized was the pain. Hot, blinding pain that started at the ends of her toes and continued up her long body, ending behind her grief stricken blue eyes. They had killed him. She remembered the horror. Alex was gone and she was complaining of the pain. Why did they need to kill him? They had whom they wanted. She wasn’t allowed to love though. To care for someone, have a family, was against her father’s plan.
“So, you finally up. ‘Bout time. He asks for you presence.”
“I can’t get up. Can’t you just kill me? You know you want to. I’m no good anymore.”
A quick gleam in his eyes showed Dani that he had thought about. “I may want to but Jack would kill me.” With emphasis on the me, he stabbed himself in the chest. “Besides, Jack seems to think you more use alive. So get up.”
No longer waiting for Dani to stand up on her own, not realizing she couldn’t, he puller up in one quick yank by the wrist.
All the strength she had left went into controlling the instinctive cry that was moments away from coming out of her bloodied lips. He wouldn’t have noticed anyway; all of his concentration was focused on dragging her body. He may have been a little taller than her five foot six height but she was dead weight. Trying to walk with her, he realized how beat up she had become. Jack would not be happy. He hoped that possibly, he would be able to escape the brunt of Jack’s vicious temper and let it fall on one of the newbies. For many years, Jack and him had been the only two running the business that was Jack’s baby.
Now, though there were three more people involved. Jack was still the only public figure, due partly to the fact that Jack was the only one without a prison record. Jerry and the other muscle weren’t smart enough to realize there was one reason he kept the four of them hidden. Nobody else knew that Jack was a con man and thief. Appearances were everything and Jack did everything to keep his up. He might not have made a movie in years but he’d made his money and people assumed that he was to busy doing volunteer work and spending time with his daughter. Jack knew that one reason he was still kept in the public’s eye was how he had saved Dani when her mother had committed suicide. Or rather, how he had abused and controlled Dani after he had murdered Hanna, the great film actress of the ‘70s. Just thinking about Hanna had the power to both excite and anger him. Dani looked just like her, before the booze and drugs had taken a toll on her heart-shaped face, and experience had damaged her once deep blue eyes. Ever her silky, raven-colored hair and changed in those last few shattering years.