Page 14 of Her Protector Daddies

I stared at them and shrugged, not trusting myself to say anything.

“You’re not in trouble,” Officer Lamb reassured me and that sweet smile slipped across his face again. “We’re just trying to help.”

“Have you ever heard of the Dorame Cartel?” Detective Grant asked.

That name punched through my chest with the force of a physical blow. I knew them; of course, I did. My father had been undercover with them for years. They were responsible not only for his long absences in my childhood but also for the drugs my father had gotten hooked on.

They had destroyed my father and destroyed my childhood, so yes, I definitely knew them. I considered lying, but keeping my distaste for them from my face was hard.

“Selena.” Detective Grant smiled slightly. “We know your father worked with the Dorame Cartel. He was a good man, a respected Detective and it’s heartbreaking what happened to him. He spent so long undercover that the lines blurred. But if he’s in trouble now? If he needs help? We want to help him.”

I’d heard that spiel before. Help was either sending him back undercover or questioning him until they let him go and everyone would know he was a traitor. It would be a crosshair on his back – as if one didn’t already exist.

“Bullshit,” I muttered. “My dad’s career – his life was ruined by those drugs and that fucking Cartel, so neither of us would have anything to do with them. He’s… he’s trying to get clean, turn his life around so no, I don’t know anything.”

The same lie I had uttered at the hands of those men was the only thing to save me now. I couldn’t turn on my father, not until I knew exactly what was going on. And yet, as the two men exchanged a slightly defeated look, I was struck by a feeling deep down in my gut that I was protecting the wrong person. My father had abandoned me, so why was I still trying to protect him?

“Thank you for your time,” Office Lamb smiled. “We’ll be back a bit later when you’re feeling better but if you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact us.”

“Sure.” I turned away and curled up on myself, facing the wall until I heard the door close behind me.

Fuck.

This was all so much bigger than what I’d first thought. What I had first reasoned was a small robbery was so wrong. Was my dad really stupid enough to try and steal from Andrés Dorame, the leader of the Dorame Cartel? He was supposed to be smarter than that.

There was no telling what Andrés would do to get his shit back. I didn’t know all the details but I knew enough horror stories to understand that the men sent to the apartment were just the start. There was no way both me and my father walked away from this alive. For a small moment, I considered calling those cops back and telling them everything. Would they be able to help?

No, probably not. My father always talked about how Andrés owned cops. They weren’t safe.

I spent the next hour calling my father, trying to get any kind of response out of him but like always, I was just sent to voicemail until the calls stopped going through completely. After the last rejected call, I closed my eyes and finally let the tears come.

I was scared, tired, and in pain, and my dad clearly didn’t care. There were no friends for me to call. It was difficult to maintain a social circle when your dad was an ex-cop and even harder when you spent all your time holding down two jobs and fighting to keep your Dad from ODing. With no one to call and no comfort to be found, I curled around my pillows and sobbed my heart out until exhaustion and painkillers dragged me down into an unsettled sleep.

A few hours later, I was woken by movement. Light trickled in from the door of my room which sat ajar. As I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I noticed my bed had been shunted away from the wall.

“What..?” I asked groggily, blearily wondering if I was being moved rooms.

Suddenly, a hand sealed around my throat and shoved me violently back down onto the bed, cutting off my cry of surprise. The light from the monitors in the room highlighted a bald man with missing teeth and tattoos down one arm. He leaned over me with a gun in his other hand held an inch from my face.

“If you move, if you cry out, if you even scream,” he hissed out, spitting over my face. “I’ll kill you, understand?”

My heart raced violently, and tears pricked at the corner of my eyes as I nodded quickly.

“Pretend to be asleep,” he ordered.

Only when I closed my eyes and nodded again did he release my throat, but I had no plans of being quiet. The second the pressure was gone, I launched myself out of the bed with a scream and clattered to the floor in a tangle of wires and cables. Flailing out one leg, my foot connected with the soft abdomen of my attacker and he grunted on impact. I shoved both hands down and pushed myself up, scrambling toward the door. A hand sealed around my ankle, dragging me backward, and I yelled out in fright.

“Help!”

Together we wrestled but he was much stronger and before I could catch a breath, he was on top of me. His weight on my hips pinned me down, and when I opened my mouth to scream, he slapped me hard and then covered my mouth with his fist.

“Shut the fuck up!” he hissed, his face dangerously close to me. “Now I’ve got to fucking kill you here and you pissed me off, so maybe I’ll take it slow and enjoy it.”

6

BAILEY

“Selena!”

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