A Family Stolen

Disclaimer: I own nothing

A/N:

Chapter 6 (The Silent Witness)

Through the eyes of the camera lens, starting from the moment Tori rushed her friends out the door. She slammed the door shut and leaned her back against it, burying her face in her hands.

The girl sank to the floor, weeping bitterly while her elder sister made her way down the stairs. "What's going on, Tori?" Tori wiped her eyes with her shirt sleeve and started sniffling. Trina knelt beside the girl and put an arm around her shoulders. "What happened with your friends? Why were you yelling?"

"You, mom and dad want them out of my life." Tori breathed in shakily and wiped the bottom of her nose with the palm of her head. "Well now they will be." Trina scrunched her nose and looked over her shoulder, staring at her father's study. "I threw them out."

"Look, what was said in our family meeting yesterday…I know what Dad told you…" Trina faced her sister, placing both her hands on the girl's shoulders. "But the decision is supposed to be yours and yours alone. You don't have to get rid of your friends if you don't want to. We'll make do."

"I had to." Trina hugged her sister and rocked with her back and forth. Suddenly Tori gasped out, her eyes opening wide. "I had to get them out of the house." Trina leaned back slowly, her eyebrows falling flat and sliding in towards the center. "I got this note from Stephen, you remember him?"

"The asshole that cheated on you with that Carly chick?" Trina frowned as Tori removed a small folded letter from her pocket. The girl pushed it forward, her trembling fingers causing the paper to crinkle noisily.

"Read it." Trina unfolded the letter and her eyes traveled over the words as Tori paraphrased. "He says at eleven, some people are coming to hurt us. I didn't want my friends to get hurt." Trina started shaking her head and stood slowly. "He said not to call the police, that they wouldn't help anyway." Tori pulled her hair back, biting her lip firmly. "What do we do? I mean, do we take this seriously?"

"I would." Trina's eyes darted to the clock on the wall and her nostrils flared. "Call Gary, tell him to get over here, that it's an emergency." Trina hurried to the couch, dropping the note on the coffee table.

The breeze from her passing blew the note off and let it float to the ground, where it slid beneath the couch.

"Dad! Dad, we have five minutes to get mom and Tori out of the house."

Just then, the front windows shattered and canisters flew into the room. Tori gasped as a peculiar fog drifted into the air. She grabbed her throat and covered her hand with her mouth, trembling as she stepped forward and cried out for Trina.

Trina cursed violently and kicked out the glass sliding door, then backed up as two men dressed in dark clothing entered the room. A shattering noise came from the skylight in David's study and Trina poked her head in to see glass surrounding David and his head on the desk. Behind him stood a woman with a club in her hand. Blood was seeping from the back his head and onto the desk.

The woman swung her bat and Trina tried to deflect it with her wrist. "Shit." The front door swung open and Tori began screaming. Trina leapt away from the study and froze when she saw someone holding Tori from behind. "Get off my sister." Trina ran for them, shouting at the top of her lungs.

Screaming was heard from the master bedroom, which caused Trina to reel back and twist around. "Mom! Should have stayed with Gary tonight…" Trina grit her teeth as four people surrounded her.

"We know how to deal with you," one person stated, "You're too tough one on one; so we thought we'd even the scale a bit." Trina growled and threw her fists up, holding them at shoulder level.

"Fuck you." She kicked forward, striking at the person that spoke, then swung for the person to her right. The one behind her threw a fist, striking her in the middle of her shoulder blades. She arched forward, shouting in pain just as a second blow struck her abdomen.

"Overwhelm her, tire her out!" The blows continued, with Trina doing her best to deal as many as she could in between the blows she could block and the ones she couldn't.

Meanwhile, David awoke and shook his head, then sat still for several seconds before pulling his top right desk draw open. He shuffled through the contents, cursing under his breath. "Where is it, where is it?" He pulled open the remaining drawers before realizing the initial draw had been partially open. "Fuck!"

He raced away from his desk and exited the study, coming face to face with someone holding his gun in hand. "What's going on here?" Gary's voice echoed in the room and both David and the person with his gun turned to the doorway.

Thinking fast, Gary removed his gun from his holster and started to aim, but the gunshot that rang out came from behind. Gary's body jerked forward, his eyes growing wide with shock. "Gary!" David balled his hands up and grabbed for the wrist of the person standing in front of him, attempting to wrench out the gun. "Give me the gun, you piece of shit."

The person with the bat stepped out from where they were hiding behind the door and swung at David, striking him hard in the arm. He flinched and dropped down to his knee, gripping his arm and shouting out with pain. A second strike came crashing down into his shoulder, crushing the bone within.

The person stared at him for several moments, as though waiting to see what he would do. David pushed himself up, gritting his teeth. "You can't take me that easily." Trina emerged from the group of four that had surrounded her, bloody but victorious.

She grabbed the bat away from the attacker and pushed her to the wall. "Nice try." The attacker's eyes grew large as Trina started to swing. Instead, David grabbed the bat from her, narrowing his eyes as he approached.

"Let me." Trina stuttered and stepped back, clearly nervous as her father clenched the bat in his hand and sneered at the attacker. "Teach you to attack my family." He struck the attacker in the head, then pushed the tip of the bat into the person's throat until their face turned purple.

"Dad, that's enough. We need to get mom and Tori out of here." Someone was approaching from behind. Trina glanced over her shoulder and performed a swift roundhouse kick, striking the person in the head. "Dad! Focus! The house is full of these-" She looked up just as Holly was being dragged away by two people, she was unconscious and limp in their arms. "Mom!"

David let the bat fall from his hands and shouted. "Holly, no! Trina, help your sister." He ran for Holly, but a third person emerging from the hallway struck him in the face with the butt of his gun.

"Boss man want you alive," the husky thug remarked. David cupped his eye with his hand, stumbling back and groaning loudly. "Don't make this harder than it is." David turned sideways, then kicked to the right, digging the heel of his steel-toed boot into the man's chest. "Ugh!"

The man staggered back and groaned. David kicked a second time, but the man grabbed his ankle first. "Lightning never strikes the same place twice." He yanked back and David yelped as he went crashing to the ground.

"Who are you people? What do you want with my family?"

"Don't know, don't care." David tried to pull his leg back, but couldn't manage to break free. The man leaned over, bringing his fist down like a hammer into David's chest. David threw back his head, gasping as the air shot out from his lungs. "Time for you to sleep, Papa Vega." David managed to jerk his leg back and groaned as he tried to get up, his entire body trembled as blood oozed down the side of his face.

"You pathetic little…" He put his hand over his stomach and sat upright, glaring up at the man. "I'll kill you."

"You no recognize me?" The man pointed to his face and leaned forward. "Maybe your vision's too broken. I'm the one you hired to try and kill the one man and you'd let me out." David raised his eyebrows slowly and his lips parted. "I no kill the man, so you no help, now I kick your ass."

"You…" The man grabbed David by the throat. He gagged and threw his hands up to his attacker's wrists. His tears mixed with his blood as the man proceeded to bash his head into the wall beside him. "Stop."

A girl approached David from behind, her eyes sharp and fists clenched. She was bleeding profusely, and grabbing her bat with her bloodied arm. "What about the boy you beat in the alley? Did you stop when he asked you to stop beating him?" David coughed, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

"Daniel deserved it."

"Then you deserve this." The girl raised her bat and David cried out in alarm as she brought it down. "I know some people that are going to enjoy making your next few days a living hell."

As David's body slumped to the ground Trina twisted away from one of the attackers now on the ground before her. "Dad, no!" Another attacker came after her and she performed a quick side block to deflect his punch.

The sheer number of people entering the house was exhausting. Tori had already been dragged out, and Trina couldn't get through the number of attackers crowding the front door.

She was breathing heavily, reflecting the exhaustion in her eyes. "I won't let you people win. You won't have my family." Someone grabbed her from behind and flung her overhead. She screamed out as she went crashing into the piano and sprawling into the wall.

Trina pushed herself upwards and coughed, spitting blood out on the ground. She tried crawling up the steps, every muscle in her body trembling with each attempt to pull herself back. "I won't give up." She flung herself onto her back, holding herself upright by firmly gripping the edge of one of the steps.

As people started coming up after her, she kicked her feet forward, striking them in the head one after another. Her teeth were clenched tight as the attackers continued to come. "I don't care what my parents have done, I'm not letting you take us."

"You can't stop all of us. We will have you."

"Over my dead body." She managed to pull herself to the top and pushed herself to her feet. Several of the attackers were still on the ground, picking themselves up. Using the wall for leverage, Trina stumbled and limped towards her bedroom. "Just a little bit more."

She reached for the end table beside her bed, looking over her shoulder while fumbling through the items until she removed a small 9-mm Beretta pistol. "Alright." She took a deep breath and looked at the door. "Big mama's here." She aimed at the door, and the first time she saw movement, fired off a round.

One attacker screamed out, barely managing to avoid a bullet. "That's right." Trina limped forward. "Didn't think I knew how to use a gun, did you?"

"She's got a gun. Get her!"

Trina leaned around the door frame, pointing her gun for the steps, watching for the heads of the attackers to poke into view. "Come on assholes." She bit her lip, narrowing her eyes dangerously. "Come on. You want mama, come get me."

"Flank her!"

"How the fuck do we do that? There's literally no way to go around her."

"I don't care, do something."

Someone poked their head into view and fired off a gunshot. Trina jerked back, and the bullet shattered the hallway glass.

Trina exhaled and started to drop towards her knees, sighing heavily. "I'll fight to the last breath in my body."

"Really? We've done our research on you. Whatever happened to those guys you dated? Sammy and Marcus?" Trina froze up, her eyes drifting sideways. "How much did you fight against them? Where was your vigor then."

"I know what you're trying to do. Provoke me all you want. I'm not my parents, I won't lose myself to anger."

"Oh poor baby." The woman now using the gun started making her way towards the bedroom, holding her gun steady. "Just take a break, everything will be okay." Trina threw her head upright and aimed her gun up just as the woman stepped within inches from her. The woman aimed at Trina, smirking coldly. "Go ahead and pull the trigger. You're not your parents, right? Does that mean you won't?"

Trina's hands trembled and the girl rolled her head to the right. "You've never taken a life before, have you?" Trina scowled, her bloody nostrils flaring as she sucked in a large breath of air. "Even if you shoot me, sweetie-pie, you've still got a bunch of people waiting for you downstairs. Your bullets are limited, and you look like you're about to pass out."

The woman reached forward, taking Trina's wrist in her hand. Trina gasped as the woman's grip tightened firmly. "You can't even save yourself, what makes you think you can save your family? You're fucked, and you know it."

Just then, the woman swept her gun through the air, striking Trina in the head with the butt of her gun. With a cruel grin, she watched Trina slump to the ground. "Good." The woman stood upright and turned around. "She's out, grab her and get her in the van as soon as you can."

The front patio cameras didn't pick up much, since it was dark and rainy outside. There was a car parked just out of view of the camera, off to the left where the family members, tied and unconscious, were being dragged off to.

It took a bit of time, but eventually a van passed through the view of the camera. It looked like a commercial transport truck, grey in color with no identifiable designs or labels. There was a dent in the front right corner, just behind the headlight.

Once it was out of sight, the camera continued to play. Gary's car sat across the street. The rain started to come to an end, all lights in the neighborhood went off and the street remained empty and desolate, as though all life on that street ceased to exist.

Did you notice any clues, red flags or anything? You're the camera here. Tell me your thoughts and all