Page 103 of Lock Up the Darkness

It had been so long.

The room fell eerily silent, the recordings the only thing sounding out, echoing hauntingly through the room as the tension from the guys encompassed me.

It made every little noise, every enunciation and inflection in my dad and Carson’s voices heightened to intense detail.

I winced when a thud rang out.

The clank of metal against a rough surface—brick, or concrete, maybe.

And then it started… what they’d warned me about.

When the second recording began, there wasn’t just discussion and heated arguing, there was… brutality.

The savagery rolled over me.

The absolute sick, twisted acts being committed against my dad.

His struggles.

His roars of agony.

It became a living, breathing thing.

I slapped my hand over my mouth, trying to check myself, especially in front of the guys.

But it just got worse.

So much worse.

Tears sprung to my eyes.

And then I was sobbing.

Killian took my hand and gave it a comforting squeeze and pressed against my arm.

Jonah was there in the next moment, wrapping his arms around me from behind.

“It’s all right,” I heard Asher say, as he held my other side and sank his fingers into my hair, stroking softly. Tenderly.

The unexpected care from each of them did me in, and then I was breaking down and sinking into them all.

They didn’t say another word.

They just held me through it.

23

~Jonah~

I watched him moving like a ghost, sticking to the shadows, as he made his way silently down the corridor right past the other spare rooms and heading for Aurora’s.

Fuck.

He’d already put himself on Asher’s shitlist and this was a real bad way to make that a whole lot worse. If he pushed again, Asher wouldn’t just push back a little with restraint as he had been so far, he’d run right over him.

The three of us had an agreement. After two days ago when Aurora had broken down from listening to those fucked-up recordings of her father being tortured, we’d all agreed to let her be for two whole uninterrupted days, let her absorb it all. Unless she came to us, or needed something.

It had been surprising as fuck that Asher had been the one to suggest it. He didn’t usually react to people’s pain and suffering in any sort of human way. Except when it came to Killian and me, he just didn’t show his humanity. But he’d been displaying a whole lot of that around her.

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