I needed to fight. I couldn’t let him do this to me. Not again. Not ever again. I refused to be a victim.
“I’ll always find you.”
I screamed,my body paralyzed as the blankets suffocate me. Thank God no one busted into my room, because I didn't know how I would react if Annika or any of her men came in here. Why was he still controlling me? I was safe and away from Dom. From everyone who hurt me. My breathing was erratic, but it slowly started to calm down.
The clock on the nightstand read 7:30, and I hated being up this early because of a nightmare. Thankfully, I didn’t have to work tonight, or I would be miserable.
I needed to stop letting Dom and Liam control my life. Liam was dead. He couldn’t hurt me ever again, but I was terrorized by the idea that Dom would find me. My dad knew I was alive, but to the rest of the world, Caden was dead. There were semantics and other things involved in the whole witness protection thing not working out, but my father and his FBI agents didn’t know where I was, which meant Dominic and the Born Killerz didn’t either. I was a dead girl walking.
The only person who knew I ran from witness protection was my psychiatrist, and she didn’t even know my real name. She was sweet, but I couldn’t be sure if she would find someone and tell them I was here. I guess HIPAA prevented her from doing it, but at the same time, I ran away from my police detail.
There was a desire in me to take control of my life again, but I was also scared. Annika and the guys were amazing, but I also never told them about what happened to me. I didn’t want to share that part of myself because then it became real. Yes, it happened, but here, no one knew. I could forget about what Dom and Liam did to me and move on with my life. I was already in therapy. I would be fine.
My life was never sunshine and daisies, but maybe I could make Kadence’s life better. Even if my father found me, I was not his child anymore. Hell, I was never his child. I was myown person, creating my own life, even if I had to start from the bottom to do it.
Blaize was the ache in my chest currently, but once I could move past whatever these feelings were, I could get a hold of my life and change it. Why did I have a thing for people who treated me like shit? Was it a kink? Was I just stupid or desperate for love and attention, my heart choosing the first person I saw?
I stepped into the bathroom and showered. Today would be a good day. I wouldn’t let my constant thoughts prevent me from enjoying myself. I didn’t work tonight, but I had a meeting with Dr. Williams later. That woman was a godsend, because what the hell? I didn’t understand how someone could listen to other people’s problems and be amazing at advice. When I was in nursing school, I had a desire to help people; my mental health wasn’t my specialty. In all honesty, I wanted to work with kids. I had a shitty life growing up, and all I wanted was one person to help me. Talking to someone myself mortified me, but if an adult would have pulled me to the side and asked me if I was okay, maybe things would’ve been different. Maybe my father could’ve got the help he needed, too.
Grief was a vicious beast that took more than just a person. I lost my brother, my family, and myself. If I was being honest, Caden died when I watched Nathan’s casket get lowered into the ground. His death changed everything, and at six-years-old, I shouldn’t have had to learn how to survive alone.
When my shower was done, I dressed in leggings and a red t-shirt, dried my hair, and put on a subtle amount of makeup. I wanted to go to the pier and see Nathan. It was odd how something so terrifying was my only form of peace. It felt odd because while the ocean took Nathan, I felt him there when I would sit by any body of water.
I made it to the pier, watching the sun dance on the water. The surface of the ocean looked like a sapphire dream, a promiseof beauty and life, but, underneath her sapphire shell, the ocean had a list of names she’d taken. I wonder if Nathan was a ghost under the waves. As depressing as it sounded, I wanted to know if I drowned in the ocean, would I see him again?
It would be a painful way to go. Drowning while you were awake, waiting for the moment the water seized every part of your body and there was nothing left to do but accept fate and become one with the ocean. I always wondered if Nathan ever woke up under the waves or if he died after he collided with the rocks. It was morbid to think about, but he never deserved to suffer.
“Hey, bubba,” I whispered. “I miss you., you know, and I wish you were here.”
I stayed there for two hours, crying into the ocean, but it made me feel better. There were a lot of things I needed to do, and right now, I had a therapy session to get to. I think it would be easier to tell someone else my story soon, but not yet. Caden was gone, but she deserved justice. First, I needed Kadence to get her life together.
CHAPTER 42
KADENCE
“Tell me, what are your coping mechanisms now?” Dr. Williams asked at our weekly session.
I wasn’t in the mood to talk about my feelings after the disaster at the club on Friday. Blaize rejected me. I offered myself to her, and she said no. I was angry, but it was more at myself than anything. Desperation was not pretty, nor was it how I wanted people to perceive me.
“Uhm, I don’t have any.”
Her brow arched. “Let’s try this. What did you enjoy before other than sex?”
“Dancing and track. I was on the track team in middle school, but stopped when I got to high school. I took up dancing because it was fun, and a lot of the people I was with enjoyed the entertainment.”
She scribbled more notes in her journal. I wanted to be a fly on the wall and see what she wrote within those pages, because my life was a fucking disaster. The trauma dump our first day was enough to fill an entire journal. I’d always been anti-therapy, but damn, was it nice to spill my guts to someone without being judged.
“Do you dance at the club? Don’t you work at the local strip club?”
“Hades, yeah. I’m bartending. I tried waitressing, but I was triggered by a man who touched me and called me a whore.”
“Have you thought about dancing?”
My brows furrowed. “I don’t know. I parade around in lingerie, but I don’t know if I am confident enough to strip in front of a crowd.”
“Not stripping. Erotic dancing. I’ve heard rumors and stories from other patients about Hades. It’s not just stripping. It’s in my professional opinion that dancing might help. You enjoyed it when you were younger, and adding it into your daily life may help heal a part of yourself.”
I thought about it for a moment. Whenever I danced, electric energy surged through me, igniting every nerve. I wasn’t just a person; I became a vessel of expression, telling a story that words couldn’t capture. In high school, I used it to escape. Dancing was freeing. When I told a guy I was talking to that I like dancing, he wanted me to dance for him and strip, of course. At some point, I stopped doing it as much because meeting Dom derailed everything—my mental stability and my life.
