Chapter Twenty-eight
Em
The voices penetrating the hazy fog of sleep were indistinct but loud. Ashlyn was shouting and that was enough to drag Em fully into consciousness. Scrambling out of bed, she threw open the bedroom door before coming to a dead stop in the hallway.
He was shrouded in shadows, but she knew immediately who stood on the doorstep arguing with Ash. The devil himself. And he was there for her. She couldn’t let her friend get caught in the middle of it. God only knew what he was capable of.
“Ash! Shut the—” She hadn’t even gotten the words out of her mouth before he shoved his way inside.
Ice cold eyes, dark as coal, latched onto her as he strode purposefully across the small house. Em backed away, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. He blocked the mouth of the hallway and continued to close the space between them.
“Em!” Ashlyn was too late. He was on her, dragging Em back inside her bedroom and slamming the door shut behind them.
The sound of the lock snapping into place echoed through Em’s panicked mind. Why was he there? What was he going to do? This couldn’t be happening.
“Em! Em!” The bedroom door reverberated under the pounding Ash was giving it, but refused to budge.
He stalked closer as Em scurried up the mattress until her back collided with the headboard and there was nowhere left to retreat.
“Em! I’m calling the police!”
“No!” Em panicked. The police were the last people Jay would want involved. They weren’t the bad guys, but with everything they’d been through, it was difficult to see them as the good guys, either. Difficult to trust them. To trust anyone. There was only one person Em trusted to keep her safe. Only one person who could—or would—ever be able to protect her. “Call Jay!”
She watched as a sick grin turned his father’s lips. “That’s right, call Jay.”
He undid his belt and slowly pulled it from the pant loops. Tears welled up as that old familiar terror pounded through Em’s body with every beat of her erratic pulse. “Don’t. Please. Please don’t do this.”
Em thought she might break through the wall and straight out of the house with how hard her spine was pressing up against it, desperate to put more space between them. He took another step closer as the belt came free and she attempted to scramble off the bed, but her feet twisted in the sheets, trapping her.
She was trapped. In a bed. With a man she hated. The tears overflowed, streaming down her cheeks as her entire body trembled. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Not again. It would surely destroy her this time.
“Please.” She would have been ashamed of the pathetic whimper that escaped her if she hadn’t been so incredibly terrified.
He stood at the foot of the bed with the belt dangling from his hand. He made no move to get any closer, or to remove any more articles of clothing, and that was when she realized . . . he wasn’t the same brand of sick bastard as her uncle. Stark relief and a whole new kind of fear hit her at once. Jay’s father was in a whole different class of fucked up. Folding the belt in half, he slapped it across his palm. The sound filled the room and sent a tremor through Em.
“Wh-what are you going to do to me?”
He tipped his head and continued to stare at her, reminding Em strangely of a bird. How dare he? How dare he try and look so innocent when she knew exactly what lay inside?
“You’re a monster!” Em had no clue where the power behind her voice was coming from, but she welcomed it. “Stay away from Jay. Stay away from me. Leave us alone! What do you want?”
“My money.” He said it as though it should be the most obvious thing in the world.
“We don’t have it. We don’t have anything.”
“Oh, Jay will get it. Or the next time I visit you, it will be as more than just a warning.” The belt lashed out before she even saw it coming and struck the bed beside her with a vicious blow. Em jumped as a small squeak escaped her lips and the bastard laughed. “Now you call Jay. You tell him what I said. He either gets me my money, or next time . . . it comes outta your hide.”
He threaded his belt casually back through his pants and strode from the room as though nothing had happened. As though he hadn’t just terrorized and threatened her. She didn’t know how she managed to do it, but the moment the bedroom door shut behind him, Em climb out of bed on shaky legs and locked it before collapsing to her knees in the corner.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Jay
Jay rolled out of bed on a groan. It had been a long ass day and now some ass-hat was calling him in the middle of the night. If this was a wrong number, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.