Too bad for her, I’m not a pussy like Wyatt and the others. No, my girl will wear the ring I give her without me having to see Ma’s stamp of ownership winking at me at every turn.
I know just the ring I’ll present her with, and I can barely contain my excitement at the thought when my monitor starts beeping and I shoot forward to check it out.
“Sonofabitch!”
I’m on the phone and calling Miah less than a minute later and he answers with a growl that sets my teeth on edge.
“This better be life or Goddamned death, bro.”
“I got a video and I may need you in here before I take a closer look,” I say, feeling myself go ice cold inside at what I’m seeing on the screen.
This cold, stony place I feel myself falling into is not one I ever want around to pull my girl into, and though I know I would never hurt Paulie, I refuse to have her alone with me in the next room while I’m in this frame of mind.
This is the place I go when I’m on a mission, and I see something that turns my stomach. This is the place I go when I’m ready to kill someone for committing terrible crimes against humanity.
The last time this happened and I wasn’t on a mission and able to focus on a target, Pop ended up rebuilding half the cottage and replacing two cars I trashed with my bare hands.
“Yo, you sound—oh fuck!”
Miah’s face is almost comical as it morphs from joking to deadly in under a second.
I look into the terrified face of my girl on the video I happened to find while trawling the Net with facial recognition software that the military wishes I would sell to them.
“Jared, dude, just calm down now, bro,” Miah says quietly, coming closer slowly when he recognises the look in my eyes.
I feel like I could rip someone apart with my hands right now, and the truth is I could, but I make a real effort to tamp it down when Miah bolts from the room.
If this is the one, if those bastards have dared to put up a video on this piece of shit site that I will shut down before crashing and frying their servers, I will not be responsible for what I do to them when I find them.
The door bursts open and Jace comes crashing in, his face going snow white when he sees me sitting so still, my cold face focused on the monitor.
“Bro…”
“They put her on some piece of shit site for perverts to look at,” I say, cracking my neck when the strain starts eating at my shoulders.
I’m strung so tight, I swear I’ll break apart if anyone so much as touches me right now. I don’t want to see this. God, I know it’s a bad idea to even still be staring at her beautiful face so wreathed with terror and pain.
But I need to know. I have to see what they did, because I know that I will never sleep again without knowing. And I probably won’t sleep again when I do.
“Don’t look, bro. Let Miah and I give it a gander and we’ll tell you. Just don’t…you don’t need to see it,” Jace says somberly, making me smile because I know he’s terrified of what I’ll do if I watch.
“She’s mine.”
“We know, bro, we know. And I swear I won’t look anywhere we shouldn’t. I swear,” Jace pleads, urging me with his eyes to leave and keep those images from my head.
I shake myself back to life when all I hear for several minutes is my brothers’ harsh breaths and hit the play button before I can rethink it.
I should have listened to them and left. I should have. My body stiffens and I watch as Paulie is punched repeatedly before being shoved over a bench, her face twisted and bleeding as some faceless asshole comes up behind her bearing a police baton.
My eyes close and I can guarantee my brothers are doing the same when I hear her screams and pleas for them to stop. She sounds agonized, terrified, and then so hopeless after minutes pass that I feel tears leak from my eyes and start pouring down my cheeks.
“Jesus Christ, put it off, Jared,” Miah pleads and I finally open my eyes to see Paulie hanging limp and breathing in choppy puffs that signal a fit I already know is coming.
When her body stiffens and I see her jerk before her eyes roll back, I let out an agonized yell and punch my screen so hard, it sparks and shatters before flying to the floor.
My heart hurts inside my chest as the pain and anger I feel for her starts ripping into me. That’s so much worse than I could ever have imagined, and I make up my mind right then and there that no matter what she did or didn’t do to me, I will never give my baby another angry or unkind word ever again.
Christ, just the knowledge that she let me touch her, that she trusted me enough to touch her after what they did humbles me so much that I let out another cry and feel myself falling to the floor.