Page 17 of Raptor

"No, I'm fine. We're fine. I'm just shaken," she continues as she cries. "I just needed to hear your voice."

"Fuck," I snap, pissed that there's over three thousand miles between us. "You sure you're not hurt?" That's what I need to make sure of. If she is, I'll have Pyro at her house within minutes.

"I promise," she sobs, her voice breaking.

"Darlin', I need you to take a deep breath. Can you do that for me?" I say, needing to calm her down before she passes out.

Thankfully, she does as I instruct and I walk her through calming the fuck down. "I'm so sorry," she says once she's got her breathing under control.

"No need to apologize. Tell me what happened." I know if I ask her why she's been ignoring me, she'll either evade the question or end the call.

"I went out with Jess tonight to celebrate her eighteenth," she says softly, hiccupping a little. "We didn’t celebrate it when she turned eighteen last week, so I took her out tonight."

"Why didn't you celebrate last week?" I know how tight she is with both Jess and Chloe. She adores both women, so her not celebrating her girl's birthday doesn't sound right.

"Jess' dad is a bastard; a fucking dickhead. The world would be a better place if that man was six-feet under."

I blink at the venom in her voice. Never, not once, have I heard her hate someone, so hearing her talk about her friend's father like that is shocking. "What's the cunt done?" I snarl.

"So much," she breathes. "I wish I could do something to help her, but she won't let me. She's scared her dad will die. I say let him. As for her birthday, he wouldn't let her out, and he sold her car, which she got for her birthday. He's just a bastard."

Sounds like it. "He ever hurt her?"

Silence spreads between us. "Yes," she admits quietly. "Horrifically," she confesses. "I hate that I haven’t been able to tell anyone."

"Why haven't you?" I ask without judgment.

"Her father works for her uncle and cousin. If they find out what that bastard has done to her, they'll kill him, and Jess loves him. He's the only parent she has left and she can't bear the thought of him dying, even if he does deserve it. Jess is the sweetest person you could ever meet. She'd feel as though his death was her fault."

Christ, that's fucked up. "He ever hurt you?"

"No," she says vehemently.

"What happened tonight, darlin'?"

"We left the bar and she got into an argument with Stephen. We started walking away from the bar, intending to go home," she says, and my stomach drops. What the fuck happened and who the hell is Stephen? "We were both so wrapped in our own thoughts we hadn't realized we'd got to an area where some of the streetlights were out. A guy stepped out from the shadows. We had no idea he was there."

"Keep goin', baby. What happened next?" If that cunt touched her, I'm going to kill him. I'll break every fucking bone in his body.

“I don't know. It happened so quickly. One minute the guy was catcalling, the next, Stephen was there and they werearguing. The guy reached out to touch Jess and Stephen lost his mind. God, Shane, he beat him until he wasn’t moving. He killed him."

She begins to sob again and I close my eyes. Fuck, it could have been so fucking much worse had Stephen not been there. God knows what that fucker would have done with two eighteen year olds. Fuck.

"He was just so still. He didn't move," she says, repeating it over and over again. It's as though she's in a trance.

"Baby, listen to me," I say firmly. "Had Stephen not done what he did, that fucker could have hurt you and Jess."

I hear her pull in deep breaths. "I know, but I've never seen anything like that before. I close my eyes and that's all I see. His bloody, lifeless body."

Christ, she's fucking killing me. I hate that I'm here and she's in Ireland. "Those memories will fade, baby," I promise her.

"I'm scared, Rap," she confesses. "I'm so fucking scared that his family will come for me."

My brows knit together. "Talk to me, darlin'. What makes you think that?"

"He killed Jarlath O'Leary, Rap, the son of the gangster Fintan O'Leary. They're animals, so bad that they fled Dublin and relocated to Belfast. His dad's not going to let this slide. I was there, Rap. I watched his son die. Why would he let me live?"

The sobs start once again, and I can't deny that her words make sense. Fuck, my stomach is twisted and acid burns deep. "It's going to be okay," I tell her, though that's not something I can promise her. "I'll have Pyro check in on you."

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