Page 12 of Protect

He can’t see me as a person and treat me this way.

My eyes flick to the door. The door is the only way in and out. The door is the only option. I have to go through there… no matter what I give up in the process.

Five

DIMITRI

As Jaxon checks in with Knox, I continue to go through the videos. My skin itches with every new clip I see. I can’t turnon the sounds as nausea then threatens to take over. But I have to keep myself busy, keep myself in check.

If I let myself slip, like I did at the hospital, Jaxon will break everything and we’ll lose our ability to find her. I don’t know what Knox has found or is going to find. We need options, which means I have to keep a level head even though I’d rather charge in guns blazing, set everything on fire until we can corner our old coach and destroy him.

We still have to find him to do something.

Which means finding him is the important part and I’m sure that there is some clue he overlooked in the videos. So I start comparing the backgrounds. The new backgrounds don’t match anything going back. A lot of the old ones are just her room with the windows covered and nothing personal in the background.

It makes going through the videos easy since I’m looking for any variation.

I glance towards the door, half expecting Jaxon to come back in and park himself behind me, growling and planning out violence over my shoulder until I’m tempted to dive in with him.

He’s not here. It’s just me and this screen.

Yet I still feel dirty.

I rub the back of my neck. “What the fuck has he put you through, baby?”

Hope can’t answer. I know that. And the answers are laid out in front of me. He’s never hidden what he’s done to her. He just changed the angle to make us believe that she wanted it, that it was normal.

But she doesn’t know she’s online. She doesn’t know that she’s here for everyone to see. I’m sure of that. It pisses me off and even that’s not enough to actually capture what I’m feeling.

Then I catch something. It’s not Hope.

I narrow my eyes and enlarge the screen. That’s not Hope. The hair is similar, her face is similar, but she’s too old… Wait… is that her mother?

Her mother and Coach. I turn on the volume as Coach’s hand wraps around her throat and he spits at her, telling her she’s only good for one thing: sex. That she should be thanking him for using her. Saying she’ll never be able to leave him. And then, she says that she loves the pain and loves him being in control.

I pause the video and look to the side. I get out of the chair and pace. Breathing isn’t enough. I have nervous energy, frustrated energy I need to burn off because seeing her mother in that video makes everything worse somehow.

Like she knew what would happen when she left and did it anyway.

How many people have failed Hope? How many people could have put a stop to it before we were even introduced to Coach? I grit my teeth until my jaw aches and consider texting Jaxon, but this information doesn’t give us anything more to go off.

So I sit back down and finish the video. I listen to what Coach is saying and try to block out anything else. There’s nothing of use there. Nothing that makes sense. Just the added horror of him telling his wife he wants to fuck their daughter over and over, how tight she’d be, how submissive she’d be. How easy to handle she’d be.

Disgust and fury raise in my stomach until I head to the bathroom and throw up. I feel too much and none of what I feel is currently helping Hope.

I think of her smile, her confidence with the team, the side of her I’ve gotten to see since we moved out here and I watch it shattering in front of me, breaking her down until she’s the easily forgettable girl that says nothing to defend herself. She’s just a puppet. She’s whatever others say she is and nothing at all.

The thought of her being forced into that kind of position again, broken down until she believes she’s nothing gives me a taste of the anger that I know Jaxon’s been fighting all day.

“We’re not going to fail her. We’re not going to let her disappear,” I mumble.

So many other people failed her, but we won’t. We have the anger, we have the drive, and we have the capability to bring her back where she belongs.

She belongs with us and that’s where Hope is going to stay.

All we have to do is prove we mean it. Prove that we won’t cage her, we’re going to let her keep growing and show us all she can be. We’ll protect her without limiting her… at least I will. I can’t speak for Jaxon, who I’m convinced isn’t going to let her out of his sight again.

I splash some water on my face and take a deep breath before heading back. The nausea hasn’t faded as I scroll up on the webpage and click back to the newest video, but it’s over. It showed her changing and washing herself even though only glimpses were visible. Even when she’s alone, she’s trying to hide, but I saw that determined flair to her eyes. She’s not breaking this time.

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