Hurting You (Blackthorn Elite 3)

“Where the hell is she?” Cam asks, breaking the silence in the car. I shrug, taking in our surroundings, which is nothing, but trees and a few houses scattered along the road here and there. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

Even though I’m already going over the speed limit, I push down the gas pedal a little further. My chest aches now, all these emotions I don’t understand swirling around me. I try to concentrate on the most prominent one… anger, but it’s hard when there are a plethora of others looming right beneath the surface. Feelings I definitely don’t want to deal with.

“This is it,” Cam points at a driveway coming up, and I start to slow down. An old farmhouse comes into view, and immediately, a bad feeling settles in my stomach. It’s a rundown place that looks like a place someone either sells drugs out of or runs a brothel, or both.

“Looks like shit,” I point out the obvious as I drive down the bumpy driveway up to the piece of shit house. There is a car parked in front of the house. When we get closer, I can read the pink glittery bumper sticker clinging to the window, Night Shift.

“That’s an understatement. Who the fuck lives here, and why the hell is Stella here?”

“We’re about to find out, but according to that bumper sticker someone working at the strip club,” I tell him as I put the car in park and cut the engine.

We get out and speed walk across the front yard, and when we walk up to the porch, I catch movement inside the house. When I get closer to the window, I realize it is Katie who is pacing the room.

“Fucking Katie,” Cam hisses beside me.

Gritting my teeth, I waltz up to the front door, grab the brass knob and turn it. Of course, it’s fucking locked.

“Open the fucking door, Katie, or we’ll burn this house to the ground!” I bang my fist against the cracked wood so hard the whole door vibrates. A moment later, the door flies open, and Katie appears looking distraught and scared. Good, she should be afraid.

“I didn’t know!” She cries out before I can say a word. “I didn’t know he was going to hurt her…”

In a blink of an eye, my rage is flipped upside down and morphs into something entirely different… fear. It’s been a long time since I was scared, so long I don’t even remember when it was. All I know is that right now, this fear is so strong I feel like it’s about to swallow me whole. I don’t fear for myself, I’m scared for Stella, scared she is hurt, scared something happened to her, and we couldn’t protect her.

The thought of losing her has been swirling around in my head, leaving me on edge for days, but this is different. Losing her because she left us hurts, but losing her because someone took her from us is an almost unbearable thought.

“Who,” I growl, “who hurt her?” Katie starts shaking her head, tears falling down the side of her face, but I don’t feel the slightest amount of compassion for her. I want to wrap my hands around her neck and force her to tell me who the fuck put their hands on my girl.

“Where is she?” Cam cuts in, his voice frantic.

“Upstairs,” Katie whimpers as I push her out of the way and head for the stairs with Cam following close behind. As soon as we make it to the second floor, I hear it, a muffled scream coming from one of the bedrooms.

I’ve never moved so fast in my life. Not wanting to waste time to see if the door is unlocked, I decide to break it open. Using my body weight, I ram into the door shoulder first. The old wood giving away easily. A loud crack fills the air as the whole lock breaks out of the door frame.

Cam and I burst into the room, and we take in the scene before us. Time seems to slow down as I realize what we are seeing. A fucking horror movie.

I thought I was angry before, but nothing could have prepared me for the all-consuming fury inside of me now. I can feel every muscle in my body vibrating with pure rage.

Stella is on the bed, her hands and feet tied together, and her mouth taped shut. Half of her clothes are ripped off, and her chest is exposed. She is crying, frantically trying to get away from Paul, who is on top of her, straddling her slender body.

I’ve considered myself a violent person before, but the sick and twisted things running through my mind right now are a new level of fucked up. I want to hurt him, cut him, watch him bleed, and suffer. I want to skin him alive, hear him scream and beg for me to stop. I want to make him suffer beyond measure for putting his filthy hands on Stella.