Page 1 of Black Hearts
Chapter One – Juliet
Loving someone was no different than inviting them to hurt you. This was something I’d been shown my whole life, and yet it really only dawned on me when I’d been kidnapped and taken to the Scott house. In that house, I’d learned so much—about life, love, and, of course, death.
That last one was the biggest one, I think.
So much death. So much pain. Caring for someone other than yourself was just like sitting in a room with a hungry wolf. Sooner or later, no matter what you did, that wolf would come for you, and when it did, it would devour you whole.
That’s what the Scotts did to me. Markus especially. He’d taken me, claimed me, made me love him even though I should hate him above all else. I loved him, and he hurt me, and because of that love, because the man himself had a heart as black as the night sky itself, I’d asked for it, in a way.
Love and hate were two very similar things, weren’t they?
Everything I’d gone through in that house, everything Markus did to me, the things he made me see—the torture film, killing someone in front of me and locking me in the room with the corpse, telling Lincoln to rape me and then stopping him seconds before he did—made me see just how dark and twisted the world really was.
Daddy hadn’t lied when he said the world was out to get me, that the people out there would only hurt me at every chance they got. But, at the same time, he’d hidden how wonderful freedom could be. He’d played down the other feelings I could have.
And so it really all came down to love.
How else could I explain how much it hurt to leave that house with Daddy? How else could I try to put into words just how distraught I was, seeing Markus with his father, knowing he didn’t fight for me? Love was like a knife; it could protect you, but it could also be used to cut your heart out and leave it broken and bleeding, in pieces.
I had grown to love Markus in spite of everything he’d done. I loved Jaxon, my kidnapper, and Will, my silent creeper in the night. I loved Theo, who showed me kindness and understanding I’d never gotten elsewhere. I’d even come to care for Bennet, the loner who spent all his time brooding and putting on a show full of rage, who acted as if he didn’t care when in reality, he might just care the most.
My heart was torn into multiple pieces the moment I left that house without saying goodbye. They were everything to me, so much so that I could overlook the pain they’d caused me. I just wanted everything to be okay, to have my own sense of normalcy.
But I couldn’t. I knew that now.
Here’s the thing Daddy had never told me, the thing he’d kept hidden from me for so long: it wasn’t just strangers who could hurt me. For my whole life, Daddy had pretended to be my savior, my protector, someone who sheltered me and punished me to keep me safe and secure in that house, but that’s all it was: pretending.
Daddy was a liar, and it was only because of the Scotts, because of Markus and the others, that I now knew what a liar he was. The biggest of them all, and I felt like a fool because of it. Markus never once tried to hide his flaws, but Daddy? Daddy purposefully kept me in the dark, telling me bits and parts of the story but never the whole thing.
The world might be out to get me, but he was no angel. Daddy was just like the Scotts, only worse in that he’d lied to me about it my entire life.
He’d killed my mom. He’d killed countless other young, pretty girls, though why he felt the need to do that, I still didn’t know. He’d kept me in the dark, playing the protector, when he went out and killed on the regular. What kind of sick, twisted soul could play a game like that?
I already had my answer: Daddy.
Daddy was the worst, and maybe that was why I felt so uncomfortable sitting in the car beside him. The silence stretched on for miles, for hours, and he hardly looked at me. Which was fine, because I could barely stomach looking at him.
Don’t get me wrong; I still loved him. He was my father. He was the only family I had left, but what was family if all they did to you was hurt you and lie to you? Whatever warmth, whatever love I thought I had from Daddy, it meant nothing. It had been washed away the moment I’d learned of his true nature.
How long had I willingly believed every single lie? How long had I been nothing but a stupid girl, a dumb daughter, swallowing up the bullshit? Forgive my swearing, but if any situation called for it, it was this.
It was all bullshit, and I wished I was brave enough to tell him that.
I wasn’t the daughter he had. I was a new person, someone who’d grown into themselves, into a woman Daddy had tried his best to stifle. I had thoughts of my own, wants and desires that Daddy would be horrified of, not to mention disappointed in. I wanted to go back to the Scott house and surround myself with the men I’d come to love and let their hands and other parts of their bodies wash over me. I wanted to forget all of this.
I couldn’t go back to that house.
But that’s what we were doing: heading back home, back to the place where Jaxon had broken into, where he’d silently crept into my room and I’d tried to defend myself with a book. Back to the place where I’d lost my mom, the one person I should’ve cared enough about to protect. Back to the one place where I didn’t want to be.
I didn’t want to go home, maybe because it wasn’t home for me anymore. I wanted to grab the steering wheel and turn the car around, but as the scenery passed, as the minutes ticked by, turning into hours, I knew my odds of getting back to the Scott house grew slimmer and slimmer. I didn’t know how to drive, so I’d only end up stranding myself.
My stomach was in knots. I could feel the anger, the rage, seeping off Daddy, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me uncomfortable. I was. I was very, very uncomfortable, sitting beside him in the car, listening to nothing but the sound of the road beneath us.
What was going to happen to me? Were we going home to pretend nothing had happened? To pretend I didn’t know the truth about him, pretend I’d never let those men take me and make me theirs? That’s all it would be: fictitious.
I didn’t think I could ever go back to the way things were. I couldn’t. Who wanted to live in ignorance? Who would want to close their eyes and accept whatever lies were spoon-fed to them? I knew better now. I knew better, and I knew Daddy was no saint.
“Daddy—” I broke my silence, trying to talk to him. My thought was, maybe I could calm him down, tell him I would not accept being locked in my bedroom any more—that I wanted to go back to the Scotts, to Markus, and that I’d never be happy with him again.
