45. Terror In Rina

45. Terror In Rina
Garber's POV

The cloud darkened as she returned back to what she was doing while Mia remained frozen, unable to move.

“What happened?” I asked the security guard to my right.

He straightened up and adjusted his facial expression to speak, when two maids approached us instead.

“Welcome back, young master,” they greeted eagerly like they couldn’t wait to be the ones to spill the beans.

“Rina,” I whispered, and nudged my jaw in her direction without as much as looking her way again. I didn’t dare.

“Oh,” they gasped and exchanged looks I couldn’t quite interpret, until I looked closely.

“You do it.”

“No, you.”

“You say it, it was you who asked us to receive the master.”

“But it was your idea…”

They kept going back and forth in hushed tones.

“Will one of you speak up already?” I asked in a cold tone, feeling Mia shiver beside me as she held my arm even tighter like it would save her.

She kept biting her teeth and I would have thought it was because of some cold if I wasn’t feeling hot myself.

“We are sorry. It’s just that Miss Rina killed Gardener Alfred’s cat and then he tried confronting her because that cat had been with him way before he started working here—seven years ago. Then she got angry, but he didn’t let her hit him, and now she looks like she might really throw him off the balcony,” she explained and I nodded, getting the gist and accepting that I wouldn’t know or ever be able to imagine the magnitude of what really happened.

Someone choked behind me, like they were dying for an epipen.

“She really wouldn’t do that, right? A cat, those cute innocent creatures?” I turned around to see that it was Mia, whose eyes were streaming with silent tears as she held onto me for dear life.

“That’s barely the whole truth of what happened, she actually—” the other maid piped up, wanting to give the full gist with more vigour, but another glance at Mia and I considered sparing her the horror.

Or else I would be the one horrid in the end when she throws up all over my trousers.

“It’s okay, we’ll just go in now,” I said, shutting her up immediately.

“Yes, boss,” she nodded and looked at her colleague in contempt.

Like she was disappointed with her narration skills.

“Please, let’s go home. I feel sick, my tummy and my head hurt a lot. I think I need the hospital,” Mia sniffled, trying hard to hold her sniffle.

One would think, given how she was family with a gang member, she would have seen and heard about all types of horrors.

In her defense, no one goes around killing ‘cute, innocent creatures’ unprovoked.

“Look, Mia, you…” I turned around in a bid to calm her down, but her eyes kept darting around anxiously.

Her iris didn’t look in one spot for up to one second. The fear was palpable and radiating off her. It reminded me of the version of myself that kept dying in my nightmares growing up.

So weak, so vulnerable, so easy to pick on, so much that the only emotion I felt after waking up was hatred.

I hated being poked on by my sister, my family, and the damn press, so much that perfection became my only escape.

Pursuing unchallengeable perfection.

“Argh!!!!” Mia suddenly let out a startled scream as she threw herself off me and started to scramble away.

As if crawling backwards wasn’t creepy enough, she kept screaming and whimpering, this time her eyes were so wide they could pop out and fixated on something.

I turned around as I traced the direction of her gaze just in time for an ambulance to breeze through the gate, the tires bouncing like they were in a race.

They had barely stopped the vehicle when boots hurried down the pavement with a stretcher in hand. Not only that, the loud screaming wasn’t coming from Mia alone—there were maids and even other male staff screaming their lungs out as they covered their ears and eyes as if it would save them from what they had just seen.

Which was…

The paramedics raced towards the balcony, but when I expected them to go inside and take the stairs—maybe for the cat or the poor gardener—they crouched on the floor and I found the reason for the aggravated panic the moment my eyes landed on the blood-red liquid on the floor.

Blood first, then broken limbs, then the body.

I doubted strongly if he was still alive with the way he was hoisted up.

“Prepare an emergency immediately and call in Dr. Adams. We will be there in five minutes,” the doctor in their midst shouted into the phone as she rushed after them back into the ambulance.

“Wait, do you think you can save this too?” Rina was downstairs, her taunting gaze watching every reaction of theirs.

“I… I don’t,” one of the paramedics started to say as the others filed into the back.

Rina rolled her eyes, clearly irritated, as she raised the drenched, clearly dead cat in her arms and dangled it in front of him, her other hand resting on her hip like a madam.

“Hurry up!” someone shouted from inside the car.

“Looks like this wouldn’t work,” she said underneath her breath before sidestepping the paramedic and standing right in front of the ambulance. The driver had to hit the brakes urgently, his eyes wide with surprise as he peered his head out through the window.

“Could you please, please save the cat? Please, I beg you. He…” she croaked with fake tears gliding down her cheeks as she cradled the cat in hand like a baby.

Or rather, like a toy.

“What is going on here?” the doctor came out and saw this scene.

“The cat, please save Tabby, please. I beg of you. You need to save him. Please,” she was bawling her eyes out as she crawled up to him and held onto his trouser.

Everyone who had clearly seen her let go of Gardener Alfred and was screaming paused.

The old staff who were familiar with her crazy antics had looks of contempt in their eyes while the new ones, seeing something like this—acting skills so criminally fresh out of the award-winning psych ward—were in shock.

Absolute shock with their mouths hanging loose.

Was she an angel, or a devil, or a god?

Taking lives, then saving them.

“Who called the ambulance?” I asked the shivering maids cuddled up by my side.

“Miss Rina did,” they said and I nodded.

“Of course she did.”

“Okay, okay, don’t cry. We will try our best,” the doctor said as he held the lifeless cat in his hand, clearly feeling too sad to tell the little girl in front of him that her ‘lovely’ cat was dead.

If only he knew.