Page 10 of Protect

Every heinous kink, every bit of violence that could be turned into sex appeal is here and it’s in the titles as if it has to be made easy.

“Kidnapping and torture with top buyer picks,” I hiss.

“That’s not Hope.”

“But she’s on this fucking website! Torturing her isn’t enough. He has to put her online and make money off her pain!” I yell.

Dimitri takes a slow breath and looks at me. “Justice later. Hope now. That’s how I’m operating. Can you handle this or do you need to go somewhere else?”

If we’d called Coach on how twisted he was, he wouldn’t think he could get away with this. If we would have recognized how shitty everything was, we wouldn’t have invited him here orexposed her to him. This is our fault. It’s our job to fix it. But we won’t be able to fix it all.

That thought haunts me, ripples across my body until I can either break or break something else. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood, then nod to Dimitri. I’m not missing out on anything else.

Hope belongs in my arms and nothing will stop me.

Dimitri takes a slow breath. He scrolls through things, eliminates the worst of things—namely kids, torture, animal, and snuff things. It limits the videos. We’re looking at thousands instead of millions. I can’t focus on my feelings about that.

I just keep looking for Hope. “Try her name.”

Dimitri looks at me for a long moment. “You think he’d be that stupid?”

“I do,” I agree. “Jared connected the dots.”

With that in mind, Dimitri eliminates all the filters he’s put on and puts in ‘hope.’ Plenty of videos come up with the title of ‘no hope,’ but he pauses his scrolling and hesitates. We both stare at where the curser is. It’s Hope, much younger, definitely in high school.

My throat tightens until I’m sure I’m going to choke or pass out. He clicks on it and there she is. She moves like a zombie towards her dad. He keeps patting his lap. When she hesitates, he jerks her down and slaps her, calling her an ungrateful bitch, saying no one else will love her or want her, that she’s useless except for one thing.

“Turn it off,” I hiss.

“It might have an answer.”

“I can’t watch this. I can’t watch him touch what’s ours. She’s ours! I’d never talk to her like that. You wouldn’t say that to her,” I growl.

Now.

Another unwelcome reminder. We wouldn’t talk to her like thatnow.

“We were kids too, Jax,” Dimitri says.

I don’t like that he seems to know where my mind goes. But he mutes the video. He pulls up another, and once we click on the person who uploads it, we see they’re all about Hope.

Then a new one comes through. My throat dries and I look at Dimitri. This is difficult for us. Knowing that it’s worse for her, that I can’t rip through the screen and get her, can’t wrap myself around her and make a snuff video of her father… Knowingthatthreatens to shred what’s left of my restraint

“I need to see her,” I say when Dimitri hesitates.

He clicks on it. She’s there, with her eye swollen shut, new bruises, and staring at a sponge and a basin of soapy water. There’s a bottle of water that she just keeps staring at but she flips it upside down and water drips through the lid.

“Don’t drink it,” I whisper.

She empties it to the side and stares at the bottle before slowly looking at the soapy water.

“Living isn’t an option for him,” Dimitri says darkly. “If she wasn’t so smart…”

“No worst-case thinking. Our girl knows what she’s doing,” I say, rubbing his shoulder. “She belongs with us and she knows that. She’s going to keep herself safe.”

As long as she can. The unspoken words hang between us.

At the end of the day, she has to do the surviving. She has to keep herself safe. She has to trust that we’re going to come for her. And I’m worried that’s too much to ask.

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