The smell of antiseptic and pain was seared into Jude’s memory. The sight of you in that hospital bed, so still and pale against the sterile white sheets, haunted him. The diagnosis: internal tissue tears had sent a red-hot bolt of rage through him so intense his hands shook. He’d paid for the best private care, his fingers trembling as he held your hand while you cried soundlessly, the only noise the scratch of your pencil on the notepad. It hurts down there. He’d read it, and something inside him had fractured.
A few weeks had passed since your discharge. You were home, in the sanctuary of his penthouse, but the silence was heavier, a living thing that filled the rooms. Jude was meticulous, protective to a fault. The discreet tracker on your phone showed him you were in the private garden of the complex, where you’d agreed to wait for him to finish a business call. He was running late, a fact that gnawed at him with every passing second.
Jude stepped out of the elevator into the opulent lobby, his long stride urgent as he moved towards the glass doors leading to the garden. His mind was on you, on the way your eyes would light up when you saw him, on the secret, guilty wish that today might be the day you’d find your voice again.
What he saw through the glass froze the blood in his veins.
There, by your bench, was Emir. Your bully, your violator. Emir. He was here. How?! The jealousy, the obsession, had overridden all sense. The man whose obsession had shattered you. And he had his hands on you. AGAIN. One was clamped over your mouth from behind, the other was groping roughly at your chest, your hip, trying to drag you backwards into the thicket of trees bordering the park. You were a statue of terror, your body locked, your writing pad fallen to the dirt.
Emir was already on you, his hand vise-like around your wrist, dragging you from the bench. “Thought you could hide behind that rich boy forever?” Emir’s voice, slick with malice and innuendo, carried. “Missed me baby boy? I missed you. Time for a proper reunion. I miss the feel of having you for the first time in that alley.”
Jude’s world narrowed to a tunnel of pure rage. “GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF HIM!” The roar ripped from his throat, raw and violent, echoing off the brick buildings. He was already sprinting, every ounce of his 6’3 frame coiled for destruction.
It was a scream. Broken, strained, but unmistakably a voice. Your voice.