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JULIANA
Emmaline and I jerked out of our sleep at the same time. Her phone was blaring beside her, and someone was knocking loudly on the door.
“Little one, get up,” James called.
Emmaline scrambled out of bed and rushed to the door, swinging it open. It was obvious something was wrong. Something told me James didn’t wake his woman up in the middle of the night like this often.
She ran her eyes over James’s face. My heart dropped to my stomach. James was tense, his eyes cold and hard, even as he looked down at his wife.
Something was definitely wrong.
“James?” she asked quietly.
“Darren was supposed to be back last night,” he told her, but his eyes were now on me. I fisted my hands in the blanket, my heart thumping wildly in my chest. “His phone is going straight to voicemail. Tracker on his car is still showing the same place it was last night.”
My breathing quickened. This couldn’t be happening. Not Darren. Please, not him – never him.
My chest tightened. James stepped into the room and squatted next to the bed, his eyes locked on mine. “Juliana, breathe,” he commanded, his voice deepening with the order. “I’m going to find my brother, and when I do, he’s going to be alive. Every bit of my soul is telling me he’s still breathing somewhere. I just have to find him. But I need you to breathe and get yourself together so I can focus on doing that, you hear me?”
I jerkily nodded my head, tears streaming down my cheeks. He stood up. “Get dressed.” He turned to Emmaline, reaching up to cup her face in his hands. The tender move made me miss Darren even more, and I wanted to scream for the first time in years. He didn’t deserve this. “Make sure she gets a shower and gets dressed, and then both of you come downstairs for breakfast. Jaxon is taking care of Carter until I can get Darren home.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head before slipping from the room, pulling his phone from his pocket. Emmaline gently grabbed my hands in hers. But I couldn’t calm down.
“Darren,” I cried, my chest tightening again. Vomit rose in my throat. If my father got his hands on Darren, Darren wouldn’t be alive long.
I rushed from the bed and dashed into the bathroom, dropping to my knees in front of the toilet. I threw up, clutching the toilet bowl. Emmaline tried to rub my back, but I smacked her hands away, freaking out.
I didn’t want her to touch me.
A flashback swirled in my mind, dragging me out of the present. The last thing I heard was Emmaline’s panicked voice yelling my name.
I fought hard as Dad put that chain around my neck, and I wasn’t making it easy for him.
I wasn’t going down without a fight.
Mom had died three days ago, and on the day of her funeral, he had shown up, dragging me with him. I kicked and screamed, shouting at him to let me go. I was supposed to go home with my aunt and uncle.
No one stopped him. Everyone had instead looked on in fear. No one made a single move to help me.
Two of his men had thrown me into the backseat of Dad’s SUV, getting in on either side of me afterward. Dad drove out to his house in the country somewhere in Texas. I yelled the entire time, but no one ever said a word.
And now, I was here.
“Shut up!” he finally yelled at me. “Your mother kept you protected long enough, but you belong to me now, Juliana,” he snarled into my face. Hot tears rushed down my cheeks. “Your time has come, sweetheart.”
“No,” I sobbed. I knew what happened in this room. When Dad couldn’t get anyone to watch me, he dragged me down here with him while he raped some random woman he had chained up. “Dad, no,” I cried.
“Women are good for nothing else,” he sneered. “Maybe if you’d been born a boy, shit would be different. But you belong with this family, and you will do your part.”
He latched the chain around my neck and then bound my wrists and ankles. I kept fighting, though I knew the attempt to get free was futile.
I was now a captive – a prisoner.
I was now stuck in this dark, cruel world that my mother had done her damnest to protect me from until the cancer took her last breath.
~*~*~
When I came to, I was on a white hospital bed. The room was done in dark, rich colors, though it smelled sterile. Emmaline was sitting beside my bed, her eyes on her phone. An older, white-haired man was taking a look at my vitals.
He smiled at me when he noticed my eyes were open. Fear clouded my thoughts. Where in the hell was I? “Good to see you awake, Miss Garcia. How are you feeling?”
“She’s mute,” Emmaline spoke from beside me.
I looked over at her. She gave me a small smile. “You feel okay?” she asked me.
I touched my head, hoping she would understand that I was trying to convey I had a headache. She frowned. “Your head hurts?” I nodded. She looked at the doctor. “Can you get her some pain medication to help with the headache?” she asked him.
He nodded. “Of course; I’ll be right back.”
He left the room shortly after. Emmaline gave me a small smile. “James and a few of his men left a few hours ago to go get Darren. They found him, hun.” Hot tears of relief slid down my cheeks. They found him. “James will come get you as soon as he can,” she promised me.
The doctor came back into the room a few minutes later holding a bottle of water and a small cup of medicine. Emmaline quickly stood and took both items from him, handing them to me herself. “She doesn’t like to be unexpectedly touched, “Emmaline explained to the doctor when he looked at her in confusion.
I sat up and took the pills, swallowing them down. I finished the bottle of water as well, a lot thirstier than I thought I had been. Once I was finished, Emmaline threw the bottle away for me.
“It looks like you passed out from an anxiety attack,” the doctor told me. I didn’t bother correcting him. I knew what I had passed out from.
Flashbacks tended to fuck me up.
“I can try you on an anxiety medication—” I quickly shook my head. I didn’t want anxiety pills. My father used to use them to knock me out all the time when I was uncooperative. Just the thought of them made my skin crawl.
“Okay,” he said, not pushing the subject. I relaxed a tiny bit. “I’m going to go ahead and let you go back to your room. You should be okay. Just try to do what you can to keep your anxiety levels down, okay?”
I nodded. He smiled at me and left the room. Emmaline handed me a set of clothes. “I’ll step out so you can get dressed,” she quietly told me. “James will be here in a few minutes to pick you up. He just texted me. They’ve got Darren. He’s alive.”
My body sagged with relief, more tears sliding down my already raw cheeks.
He was alive.
~*~*~
