Page 2 of Protect (Their Shattered Hope #2)

Two

HOPE

P anting breaths and moans ring in my ears as hands wander over my heated skin. My fight is gone. I could never win against these three.

Every thrust is sharp, deeper than the one before. My legs have given out, but this hasn’t stopped them.

“She feels so good,” one of them says from behind me as his fingers dig into my hips. Tension and hidden pleasure tingle up my spine and my core tightens.

I shake my head as I realize what is happening. My own body betrays me until I can’t stop the soft moan that spills from me.

“Knox.”

My eyes slowly flutter open to reveal the darkness I’m in. The dreams have never left me. Knox, Dimitri and Jaxon. The night they marked me as theirs plays on and on in my mind. Taunting, but soothing.

They are my anchor to sanity while I’m stuck in this nightmare. They are the ones that keep me from a fall I can never get up from.

My dad has kept me in the same room for days; not a ray of sunshine filters inside. There’s not even a familiar scent. Nothing but shadows.

They move the longer I stare at them, but I’d rather see shadows crawling across walls and trying to grab me if it keeps my father away. It’s a good trade in my opinion. My eyes flit to the door as if he’s going to walk in just because I’m thinking about him.

He hasn’t touched me; it almost seems like he’s waiting for something. I’m just not sure what. Perhaps he doesn’t like me enough anymore, now that I’m older. But then again, that didn’t stop him from trying to get his dick in me when he was at the apartment.

I shiver at the thought; disgust and fear swirl in my stomach. Or maybe, it’s just the hunger I’m feeling. Not that I can fix either thing. I can’t carve out my memories any more than I can make food appear in front of me.

I slowly crawl up from the wooden flooring. My body aches with every move. My hands are coated in dried blood from when I tried to beat my way out of this room. But the door is tougher than it looks.

My lips have dried out, and my throat feels like sandpaper.

My legs wobble as I step closer to the door.

With my hand stretched before me, I hold myself up until I lean against the harsh wood.

I press my ear to it but can’t hear anything.

It’s thick. Sighing, I press my cheek, then forehead, against the cool surface.

I rap my knuckles and keep my ear pressed to the door as I call out. “Dad? Are you there?” My voice is hoarse and broken. I hold my breath for any sound, but I’m met with silence. “Dad?”

There’s no doorknob on this side, nothing to wiggle or pry. There’s not a window for me to escape through. Nothing but dark wood surrounds me.

My hand drops to my chest, my finger grazing over the scars from the men who I hate and… don’t hate…

I sigh and glide to the floor, my back resting against the door.

How long before my wait is over, and my father gets what he wants? Or perhaps he figures out his mistake and lets me go…

A shattered laugh rips from me, my shoulders moving with the sound.

Let me go… what a joke, he won’t do that. He would never.

The sounds of a door creaking open and footsteps make me hold my breath. I perk up, my body unmoving as I listen in. Some rustling, perhaps from bags. A sharp cough followed by some mumbling. The footsteps come closer and I force my body to move, to scamper away from the door.

The lock turns and the door opens with a grumble. Light shines in and my vision blurs. I squint my eyes, trying to see anything. But the door slowly closes.

I’m not alone anymore.

He’s here with me.

The monster.

“Dad, just let me go…” My voice sounds so soft, so weak, almost the same as when I was younger.

“You hid from me,” he snarls, and my sight slowly adjusts back to the dark. His figure stands a few feet away from me and I shuffle further away until I hit a wall.

“I had to—you hurt me, over and over again. Dad, please…”

I don’t see it coming. My head whips to the side, my cheek throbs. His slaps might as well be punches with the thickness of his hands.

“Silence!” he bellows. “I’m done with your whining; you belong to me. Not those three!”

I keep my head down, fear spreading under my skin. “I don’t belong to you, not in that way. You’re my dad, you’re supposed to keep me safe from the monsters. You’re not supposed to become one,” I whisper, afraid to speak any louder, even if I want to scream it at him.

I can never win against him. I can never beat him.

He scoffs at my words. His weight shifts as he bends closer. His fingers wrap around my throat and I try to move away but I’m too weak as he lifts me up. The sharp wood cuts into my back and rips my shirt as he keeps me pressed against it.

“I’ll help you remember who you belong to, don’t worry.”

I try to squirm, but I know escape isn’t possible. Not if he’s here. There’s only the two of us.

And Dad always gets what he wants.

JAXON

I still see red. I can hardly breathe. Thinking of Hope with her father after everything we’ve learned and what I’ve seen… It shouldn’t happen. How did it happen?

Dimitri won’t answer a single question. He doesn’t know. That’s the common theme which makes him useless. I bite my tongue hard, trying to ground myself.

If he knew how it happened, if he knew it was going to happen, that it could happen, he would have stopped it. I would have stopped it. Knox would have beaten the shit out of Coach and left him alive for me to finish him off.

Hope doesn’t belong to him like that. He doesn’t get to take her. She has a life here. She has us. There’s no room for him anymore. I don’t know why he doesn’t get it. I don’t know why he thinks he has any right to touch her at all.

Because we didn’t stop him before. Because she had to run and hide to escape him. Because we brought him back to her .

My anger, shame, and guilt mix into a cocktail that’s nearly too strong for me to swallow. It clears the red from my eyes all the same.

I don’t know where Dimitri is heading, I just remember insisting on getting in the car. I couldn’t stand not doing something. Even the illusion of making progress is better than standing still. I glance around and clear my throat. “We need to go to Jared’s.”

“Where do you think I’m going?” Dimitri growls.

At least he’s as pissed as I am. Makes me feel a little saner. I force a slow exhale. “Jared clearly knows something more. He has to, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten that video.”

“I know that,” Dimitri mumbles.

We head over to the apartment and I glower at my phone as if that’ll make Knox call me any quicker with an update. I keep thinking of Jared resting too comfortably in the hospital while our girl is dealing with her father. She’d be safer with the damn devil at this point. But she’s safest with me.

With me is where she belongs!

“Hold on—” Dimitri starts as he rummages through his pocket for the key but my patience is too thin for this.

I step back, then kick open the door. The frame cracks and gives way easily. Dimitri sighs. “Can you tone it down and avoid breaking everything today?”

“I knocked,” I replied. “The door folded as easily as Jared did.”

“Yeah, we still live in this building. Take it down a notch. We’ll need a safe place for her when we get her back.”

I swallow Dimitri’s words as he heads in first.

We’re going to get her back. We will. And I will kiss every injury she has. I’ll make sure her father wears the same marks. I’ll give him scars inside and out. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll let him live. As a man who can’t do anything but blink. It wouldn’t be a mercy.

I’d make sure of that. He’ll hurt every day until his pain is all he knows and he’ll know it’s because of what he’s done to her and the way he used us. Long after Hope’s recovered, he’ll still be in agony.

The thought makes me smile while I start working through the apartment as we have done before, but now we’re looking for any connection to Coach.

Dimitri takes his time, going over everything, but the lack of evidence, the lack of everything is getting on my nerves.

We need answers and I might just have to break things to make sure we get it.

“Did you check his computer?” I ask and Dimitri shakes his head as he stalks closer to the coffee table to open it.

“I’m still working on whoever sent that video to Jared,” he sighs. The laptop screen lights up and I peek over Dimitri’s shoulder as he does a quick search.

“I have some programs running on it, but nothing yet,” he says.

It doesn’t seem like there’s anything we didn’t find before until Dimitri logs into Jared’s email account with ease. We both go still as we see the new message pop up.

“Same sender as last time,” Dimitri mumbles and opens the attachment.

A video pops up, one that immediately threatens to ruin me. My anger is going to consume me entirely. I can’t see anything through the red haze pulsing across my gaze other than Hope, afraid, holding herself.

I dig my short nails into my palms until it hurts enough that I can think.

“Shit,” Dimitri whispers.

Hope is there surrounded by darkness. Her knees are pulled to her chest with her arms wrapped around her. She rocks herself back and forth with something dark in her eyes. She takes a slow breath and looks around before holding herself tighter.

I can hear her heavy breathing, can see the tears on her face, the bruises across her exposed skin. They’re new. Some are so new they’re obviously red and still welting up.

“I’m going to break each of his fingers,” I hiss.

“Her dad or…”

“Her father—I’m going to break every bone in his body, but Jared… if he has this, you’re right. He knows more. He has information he’s been keeping from us. We can’t have that. He owes us,” I say.

“Seems like he’s the next stop then. Jared’s going to answer every question,” Dimitri agrees darkly.

“And the hospital won’t discharge him anytime soon,” I agree.