Page 41 of Protect

Fucking asleep.

As if everything is fine.

Every single horrible memory. Every time I said no and he didn’t listen. Every threat, every promise of more, the video camera, killing my mother, screaming at her. It builds in me until there’s no room for crying. There’s only fury like I’ve never known. It feels good. It feels like power. It feels like being alive.

And curling my fist and driving it right into his nose with a crunch feels even better.

So I do it again.

Then I slap him when he tries to say my name.

When he tries to speak, I aim for his jaw.

He never gets to speak again. He never gets to defend himself. No more excuses. No more easy living. No more lying down and taking it. He gets to feel my fury and nothing else.

JAXON

“Take it. Take it,” Hope chants with every blow she gives Coach.

“Hope, you have to stop!” Knox says but she doesn’t.

She punches his stomach, his chest, his face. His face is going to require a whole lot more than ice at this rate and I love it. Dimitri skids to a halt behind me, but I’m already crouched, my fingers closing around the cold steel of the knuckle buster I slipped into my pocket earlier.

“Hope! You don’t want to do this!” Knox insists. “We can talk about it, make a plan and—”

“You can take more!” she screams at her dad when he gurgles something from his mangled face.

I shush Knox when he tries to speak again and put my hand on Hope’s shoulder. She pauses, somewhere between sobbing and panting. I show her the knuckle buster. “Try this, baby. It’ll feel better.”

She freezes, chest heaving, tears mingling with sweat. I press the knuckle buster into her palm. “Make it hurt,” I whisper.

Her expression tightens. The tears vanish, replaced by a hard-set glare. She lifts her arm and slams the metal into Coach’s jaw.

“Jaxon?” Knox asks and I shake my head.

“She needs this,” I note and step back.

I don’t let my gaze drift, not when she’s staring down at the monster. Her chest expands, her shoulder drops, and with a single swing, she slams her fist against his jaw.

He groans as his head whips to the side. The metal on Hope’s knuckles is painted in his blood and she hits him again.

“She’s going to kill him,” Knox grits as he stands beside me.

I let a slow smile curve my lips. “Good.”

Knox’s eyes flick to me. “She shouldn’t carry his death, Jax. Not with everything, she shouldn’t be the one—”

I cut him off. “Or maybe she should,” I sneer back at him. He doesn’t get it, he can never get it. He might have read her diaries, got burned by his own blood, but he can never get it.

She’ll never know peace or safety when he’s alive.

Hope’s knees buckle and a cry of pain rips free from her, just before Dimitri catches her.

She’s spent, exhausted, but this moment—it had to be done. She needed to regain her strength, to feel how it is to hurt the one who hurt her the most.

Power, control.

“Take her inside,” Knox barks and I smile at the bloody pulp of a man in front of me.

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