Page 71 of Hear Me Roar

Thud!

My face slammed into the table, radiating a sharp pain through the left side of my head, white stars shooting like fireworks behind my eyes. This wasn’t Dimitri’s doing, though. The men he’d entrusted with the ends of the ropes had tugged them at the same time, giving out all of my support. They simply hummed appreciatively while the others snickered, both of them pleased with their handiwork. I heard Hazel protest mildly but she stopped short, the dead air that followed her silence racking a shiver down myspine.

Something was coming, I could feel it, but I didn’t know what that something was. Aside from the slaps to my ass, Dimitri had yet to hit me, throwing all predictability out the window. Usually he would’ve roughed me up a few times by now, and I wondered if our audience had anything to do with it. I didn’t dare ask, though, and I certainly didn’t move, not even an inch. What I did do was wait...and wait, squinting through the dull throb in my head at the men before me for a clue, but their expressions gave nothing away, other than they weredelighted.

That's when hestruck…

In one swift move, he yanked me back down to the end of the table by my ankles, spread my ass cheeks apart, and pushed himself inside. Every. Last. Inch. I screamed violently, uncontrollable tears springing from my eyes as the burn spread further and further. I had nothing to grab onto for support either, siphoning scream after excruciating scream from the deepest depths of my soul. And it only gotworse.

With one hand digging into my hip, he leaned forward and pressed my face into the table with such force, I was positive my skull would crush under thepressure.

“See what happens when you don't listen,Mishka,” he growled, plowing me senseless. “Not only is this for your inability to follow directions, but also for your attempt to flee. And for those ridiculous divorce papers too. You don't get to leave me. I own you,forever.”

Just kill me, please. Just fucking kill me,I thought to myself, because even death would be better than this. I couldn't dothisforever, and I was foolish to think I could escape him in the firstplace.

“No, stop it! You're hurting her,” Hazel wailed behind me as the scene playing out before her escalated with every passing minute. “Stop!STOP!”

“Silence her,” Dimitri gritted out straightaway, ramming into me harder and faster, with no intention tostop.

“Stop it! No! Don't touch me, don't fucking touchme!”

Hazel’s screams, Dimitri’s grunts, the men snickering, the lights above, the sheer amount of pain; it was toomuch.

Too fuckingmuch.

But my body saved me from despair, shutting down little by little. First the sounds went, then my visionblurred.

Black.

The second Hazelhung up on me was the second I ripped open my laptop and bought the earliest possible ticket to Miami. Why hadn't I seen this coming? How did I not know she was hurting? Unfortunately for me, it wasn't early enough. I was going to miss her fight by two hours, but I hoped like hell the fact I showed up at all would restore even a smidge of her trust in me. If I'd known the overtime and Brie’s persistent ways were going to drive her to believe I was cheating, I never would've done it. Not even for Luis, who was the one and only reason I'd done it in the first place. Why? Because he'd done it for me when I up and left L.A. last year to finishing touring the nation with Hazel. This was me returning him the favor. But with Brie precariously stuck in the picture, said favor had been a screw up of royal proportions. A screw up that had the power to rip away the most precious thing in mylife.

Not on my fucking watch,I thought for the upteenth time, after we’d landed and I raced through the airport like the entire building was seconds away from exploding. I hightailed it right past baggage claim – perks of only carrying a duffle – and shot out the doors to pick up. Despite the fact the sun had long since disappeared before my arrival, the humid Miami heat clung to my skin the second I stepped foot outside. Small beads of sweat formed on my brow as I pulled my phone out from my pocket and powered it on to give Manny a call. But apparently, he'd beat me to it...fifty times over. Fifty missed calls from Manny, all continuously displayed in red over the last two hours. I almost threw up. Alarm bells blared in my mind, my hands shaky as I clicked on his name and waited for him toanswer.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Carr, there you are. I've called you a million times. Where the hell have you been?” he asked, panting as though he'd been running formiles.

“On a plane,” I said simply, waving my arm in the air to hail a cab, all of them practically ignoring me. “What the fuckhappened?”

“On a plane?Where?”

“Here.”

“Where is here,bro?”

“Miami.”

“You're in Miami rightnow?”

“Yes, I just got here, trying to fucking hail a cab,” Iexplained.

“Well, hail your ass one faster and have the driver drop you off at the marinaASAP.”

“Why would I have the driver drop me off at themarina?”

“Because Dimitri snatched the girls after the fight and I tracked Hazel’s phone. They're on aship.”

The world around me instantly fell away. My arm dropped to my side and my legs felt weak, but I forced myself to stand tall. Regardless of the fifty calls I'd seen on my screen just seconds ago, I hadn't thought this was the reason for them; not when the Russian bastard hadn't been an issue in almost two months. Don't ask me what I thought he'd been calling for either, because now that I knew it was Dimitri, nothing else made sense. We’d slipped. This was our fuck up for dismembering the security we’d set in place and it's the shot Dimitri had been waiting for. And the worst part of it all was that he'd succeeded.He had mygirl.

“Which marina?” I asked Manny, pulling out a fifty from my wallet and waving it in theair.

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