My Masters' Nightmare Season 1, Episode 7 Connections by Marita A. Hansen

1
    HONEY
    I didn’t know what to do or how to calm
Jagger down. He was gripping onto a chair while yelling at Rita to
get off the Don. The FBI agent was lying on top of the injured Don,
trying to shield him from Jagger. I couldn’t tell whether he was
unconscious or dead, the blood coming from his head flowing too
freely.
    “ Get off him!” Jagger yelled
again. With his messy black hair and drug-addled eyes, along with
his enraged face, he looked like a wild man. Earlier, when I went
to get his meal, he had ingested a cocktail of drugs, leaving the
evidence on the bathroom sink. I’d found him lying on the floor,
screaming at an imaginary Alberto to get off him. I had tried to
assure him that Alberto was dead, but he’d pushed me aside and
rushed for the door, babbling about Sophia’s sister. I didn’t have
a clue what he was talking about, but I knew I had to stop him
before he hurt himself. Unfortunately, he’d been far too quick for
me, barreling down the staircase like a man possessed.
    “ Why are you protecting
him?” Jagger
shouted at Rita.
    “ Because I care about him,” she
replied.
    “ You can’t possibly give two
shits about him.”
    “ Well, I do. So back the fuck
off!”
    Rita looked even wilder than Jagger, with
her tangled brown hair, her crazy eyes, and blood splattered hands.
I was worried she would attack Jagger if he didn’t do as she said,
because every muscle in her body was tensing for a
fight.
    The fear of Jagger getting hurt pushed
me forward. I ran in front of him, extending my hands. “Give me the
chair, Jagger,” I said.
    His eyes shifted to me, or tried to,
because they were moving all over the place. He shook his head,
looking like he was attempting to regain focus. “I don’t
understand,” he said, appearing confused. “Why would she protect
him? He was raping her.”
    “ Frano wasn’t raping me,” Rita
said.
    Jagger’s gaze moved back to her. Despite
the fact he’d slept almost continuously since his attack, he
appeared exhausted. The dark rings under his eyes also made him
look haunted, undoubtedly caused by the ghost of Alberto, who
continued to torment my lover even in death. I knew how it felt to
be raped, but what Jagger had been through was beyond anything even
I had experienced, and it tore me apart watching him fall to
pieces.
    “ You were pleading for Frano to
get off you,” Jagger said to Rita.
    “ We were just arguing,
nothing more.”
    Jagger looked at me as though seeking
support. He was right; it did appear as though the Don had been
raping Rita. However, being around the D’Angelos had taught me not
to take things at face value, even more so when it came to Jagger.
At our first meeting, he had given me the impression he was a
refined, confident man, but as our relationship progressed his
facade slowly fell away, leaving behind a broken boy.
    “ If Rita says the Don wasn’t
attacking her,” I replied, “we must’ve misjudged what we
saw.”
    Rita scr eamed out: “Stop wasting time
talking, Frano needs help! The bleeding won’t stop.” She held out
her bloodied hand.
    Thuds came from behind me. I glanced over
my shoulder as two large men entered the room. Although the Don
called the men soldiers, they weren’t wearing fatigues. Instead,
they were dressed in black pants and white shirts, as well as
holsters containing guns. We’d passed them on our way to the cell.
They had been carrying a dead man, while another soldier had been
receiving an earful from a naked woman with black hair. I had done
a double-take, because it had looked surreal: a warped dream with a
mishmash of strange characters.
    The two soldiers stalked
towards us ,
the men terrifying. One of them had a large facial scar, as though
someone had slashed a knife diagonally across his face, while the
other looked as though he was on steroids. I backed up into Jagger,
knocking into the chair he was still clutching. He moved away from
me, lifting the chair higher, probably just as