By the time I pull up to Sierra’s house and fly out of my truck, all I hear are screams. People yelling. Male and female.
The slam of a door rattles the windows on the front of the crooked house. Clanking and shattering and stomping sounds grow louder as I approach. Rick’s truck is parked outside, the driver’s side door partially ajar like he was going to go somewhere and changed his mind.
Or like he was grabbing a shotgun from behind the truck bench.
Fuck.
“Misty!” I bang on the rickety screen door and then walk in. I don’t have time to be fucking proper. “Misty, where are you?”
The house smells like chemicals, and my eyes burn the second I step in. After a few breaths, my lungs burn too.
“Royal!” The stomp of Misty’s feet down the stairs pulls my attention in that direction. She flies into my arms, her cheeks damp with tears, her bleach blonde hair pulled in every direction, and her clothes ripped and torn. The swelling on the side of her face tells me that fucking bastard hit her.
“Shit, Misty. What’d he do to you?” I brush the hair from her face, and her dark eyes fill with tears. “I’m gonna kill him. I’ll fucking murder him for hurting you.”
“Who the hell is in my house?” Rick’s voice booms from the top of the stairs. The tinny clinking of his belt as he fastens his torn jeans is all I see from my angle.
Rick’s a big man, and each step he takes makes the stairs creak and crack and the handrail lean.
“You just come in my house?” Rick spits when he talks.
“What’d you do to Misty?” I fire back.
She stands behind me, taking fistfuls of my shirt and holding onto me for dear life.
“You fucking hit my sister? My fifteen year old sister?” I ask. “Answer me, asshole.”
“Ain’t none of your damn business, son.” Rick pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and flicks the top of his lighter open, flashing a smug, yellow-toothed grin as he lights up. “What, you think you’re the fucking po-lice? Busting in my house, demanding to know what the hell me and my girl are doing in the privacy of our own home?”
My stomach deadweights. I’m going to be sick.
“You . . . are you touching my sister?” I turn to Misty and she stares down at the dingy, matted carpet beneath her feet. “Fuck, Mis. Tell me you’re not screwing Rick. You’re fifteen.”
Misty may have seen and done more things than most adults in this life, but she’s still a goddamn child.
Rick takes heavy steps toward us, brushing his shoulder against mine and grabbing my sister by the arm. I reach for him, pushing him off her, and he shoves me hard enough that I land on top of a nearby coffee table. The thing collapses beneath me, shards of broken glass embedding into the palms of my hands.
I’m cut, bleeding, but I don’t feel it.
All I see is red, and I want to fucking murder that motherfucker.
Rising up, I brush the beads of glass off my clothes and move by the front door where Rick is messing with Misty. He grabs her ass, giving it a squeeze, and she adjusts her torn shirt, trying—and failing—to cover up a little more.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” I say.
Rick spins to face me, peering down his bumpy nose and sneering. He takes a drag off his ashy cigarette and blows the smoke in my face.
“Yeah? What are you gonna do about it?” Rick laughs. He hooks his arm around her shoulders, and she hunches down, pleading for help with her dark-as-midnight eyes. Rick kisses her forehead and laughs. “We’re in love. Your sister loves me. And she needs me. Ain’t that right, babe?”
He lifts her lanky arm, the one she’d kept hidden and pressed against her body since the moment I walked in.
It’s covered in track marks.
And now it makes sense. Rick is her supplier. He got her addicted, he’s feeding her addiction, and he has complete control over her.
I have to get her out of here. I have to get her out of Saint Charmaine. She’s coming back to Rixton Falls with me. I’ll beg and plead with Robert and Bliss to take her in if I have to, but she can’t stay here.
She’s going to die here.
I have to save her.
I’m the only one who truly gives a shit about this lost little fifteen-year-old.
“I said,” Rick nudges Misty. “Ain’t that right, babe? Tell your brother you love me.”
Misty’s bottom lip trembles, and for a second I think she’s upset because he’s coercing her.
“I . . . I’m sorry, Royal.” My heart stops in my chest with her words. “I . . . I do love Rick. I love him so much.”
That forty-year-old asshole wears his smug smile loud and proud. “See. Told you.”