Page 53 of Fighting Shadows

“That actually sounds like a decent plan, but how do we know he’ll fall for it?” Dominic asks.

“Because he’s too obsessed with her not to. You didn’t see how he looked at her. There’s no love in his eyes. He stares at her like a possession, like a doll that he wants to keep on a pedestal onlyfor him to play with when it suits him,” Noah chimes in; for a moment, I forgot he was in that cabin with them. He saw how depraved his father could get after believing he was a decent guy.

“And you are ok with us killing him? Because I’m not going to tell you that we’re going to hand him over to the police for justice; that’s what angel of death over there is for,” I incline my head towards Dominic, making sure Noah understands what's going to happen. If he can’t handle it, then he needs to leave.

“If you weren’t going to, I would. I might be a doctor, but I’ve grown up surrounded by death and violence. Watching himviolateher,” he spits the word out like a curse, “I want him dead, and if that’s by my hands or yours, I don’t give a fuck.”

“What about Autumn? I don’t want her left alone,” I say.

“I can stay with her. I’ll loan you some of my men and have the rest guard her at the house. I’ll be her personal guard dog the entire time,” Aidan offers. His face is serious as he stares down at the warehouse's layout.

“Are you all okay with that? There’s no one I would trust more,” Noah asks. His eyes skim over us all, and I do not doubt that he can see the tension in our bodies at the idea of leaving her alone. But I also know that none of us will want to stay at home. We want to catch this bastard, and knowing that all of us will be there to do it is even sweeter.

We all nod our agreement.

This could work; now we need to tell Kelvin and Brenn about the plans we’ve made.

Chapter 27

Autumn

‘Would Anyone Care – Citizen Soldier’

Ihate waking up disorientated.

I love the room Zander decorated for me; the small decorations he placed around it are meaningful and show me how thoughtful he is, but waking up in a new roomagainhas thrown me off.

Sweat clings to my skin, and small tremors shake my hands from the nightmare that is still lingering in my mind.

Stumbling into the en-suite, I turn the shower as hot as I can and climb in before it has a chance to heat up.

I can’t shake the nightmare from my head, my brain trying to piece together the last two weeks for me.

I may not have any memory of those two weeks, but I have enough memories of my time with Charlie before that theyreplay them in my head in a desperate attempt to make sense of those missing days.

I know I wasn’t raped, the rape kit from the hospital reassuring me enough to know I wasn’t violated inthatway, but Charlie never liked to jump into that straight away.

He loved the torture, the build-up as he played mind games to make me think I wanted him to touch me like that, even when it made my skin crawl.

He made me believe I only had him, that no one else in the world loved me enough to want me around. Jane made sure I thought it when she beat me and blamed me for us having to run because my Dad didn’t want us anymore.

I know it’s not true now, but for years, it’s all I was made to believe. Knowing now that he had found me and didn’t come for me hurts, and the little girl in me feels abandoned all over again by him.

The razor on the side of the bathtub tempts me, and the desperate feeling of having it run across my skin becomes too strong to resist.

My shaking hand reaches for the blade even though I know I shouldn’t, and I’m too lost in my head that I don’t hear the bathroom door open.

A distraught-looking Dominic appears, his tattooed hand clasping around mine and holding it there until I drop the razor into the bathtub with a clatter.

The shower is still running over me, the water hot enough to scald my skin, but I can’t bring myself to care.

I want to feel numb again, like I was in the hospital; the nightmare that I can’t seem to shake is tearing my mind apart.

I know Noah told me what his dad did, but he was only there for four days; what about the other ten?

“Cupcake,” Dominic's broken whisper echoes in the tiled bathroom, “why?”

“I-” I don’t know what to say or how to explain to him how I got hereagain, “it’s dark again.”

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