Page 25 of Vengeful Lies

Chapter

Seven

September 4th

12:33 P.M.

A growl rumbled through his chest as he looked at the phone.

Cade had never heard himself make a sound like this.

It was a cross between a howl of pain and the rumbling roar of a grizzly bear.

Definitely more animal than human.

And it didn't even come close to letting out any of the swirling mix of emotions raging inside him.

“What's wrong?” Cole asked, immediately concerned.

Concern had been the dominant emotion rolling off all three of his brothers and both his stepbrothers ever since they got the video yesterday. He couldn’t say he blamed them. It was evident to anyone with eyes that he was dangerously close to losing it.

It was why all his brothers were watching him like a hawk, prepared for him to get pushed over the edge and do something stupid.

They weren't wrong.

And this photo had shoved him a whole lot closer to that edge.

“He got another email,” Jax replied from the kitchen table where he hammered away at a laptop’s keyboard.

“From them?” Jake asked what had to be a rhetorical question because what else would have him growling like he’d lost his mind?

“Photo,” he snapped, grabbing the nearest chair and sinking into it because he absolutely did not want to embarrass himself by passing out in front of his brothers. As if them seeing him throwing up wasn't bad enough, if he fainted, he’d never have their respect again.

“Not a video this time?” Connor asked, moving to stand behind Jax, who if the changing expression on Connor’s face was anything to go by had the email open on the screen.

“Does it matter?” he snapped. Video or photo, both were hell when the two most important girls in his life were in danger. Well two of the three. Cade thanked God they’d moved Cassandra out to live with Delta Team until this was over, although he cursed himself for not sending Essie and Gabriella as well. He’d wanted to but he’d stupidly thought that he could keep them safe himself.

Fail.

“It’s Gabriella,” Jax said tightly, anger etched into his features.

Whatever the others were feeling was nothing compared to the pure fury inside him. He’d never felt anything like it before. Of course, he hated to see innocent people hurt and abused, and of course there was anger when the people he loved had been in danger. When Cooper and Willow had been caught in Egypt, when Cole and Susanna were lost in the mountains, when Connor and Becca were captured in Cambodia, all those times he’d been angry his family was being hurt.

But not like this.

This felt like a volcano was getting ready to erupt, he just didn't know when exactly he was going to start spewing boiling lava and molten rock.

“What the hell?” Cooper said, taking the phone from his hand and glancing at the picture. “Look at what they did to her.”

Cade didn't fight his brother taking the phone, honestly, he wasn't sure how much longer he could have sat there and looked at the photo of a bruised and battered Gabriella slumped on the floor of an empty room like the one the video had been filmed in. He didn't know if it was the same room or a different one and it didn't matter. That room wasn't a hospital, and he wasn't sitting by her side, holding her hand, and telling her everything was going to be okay.

And where was Essie?

Had they put their filthy hands on his daughter?

Was she also beaten and barely conscious?

“If they’d hit Essie too there’d be a photo,” Connor said as though reading his mind.

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