Page 9 of Beautifully Wounded

Not like a lot. Just a bit.

And shit. What does that say about me?

Am I just as evil as she is?

“You will not be choosing who she marries. I will,” Sarg hisses in my mum’s face. “And if I find out either of you so much as try anything similar with your other two daughters, I’ll make sure the both of you go missing. No one will ever find your bodies, or what’s left of them, anyway.”

My dad’s sobbing should upset me, but a part of me just doesn’t care if he’s scared right now. After the things he’s let my mum get away with, standing back and watching her dole out her punishments. I suddenly feel safer with these brutes trying to kidnap me.

They’re still men, Abbey. They can still do all that stuff Daniel did to you.

Even as I tremble knowing that’s true, in a strange way, I’d rather they do those vile things knowing they are people my mum doesn’t want me to go with. No, she’d rather send me to Daniel, knowing how he treats me. Knowing what he does.

“You brought all of this on yourself, Abigail. If you spread your legs like a whore, of course he’s going to treat you like one. You reap what you sow.”

I’ll show her reaping what I sow.

Okay, so maybe Iwon’t, but going with these men, even if it is unwillingly, feels like a big fuck you to my parents. And an even bigger one to Daniel.

“Time to go,” Sarg calls, shoving my mum sideways to the floor, and for the first time, I notice her hands and feet are bound behind her.

A gasp flies from my lips when the other guy is the one to hoist me in his arms this time, and my parents disappear from view as I’m carried down the hall, past my open bedroom door, towards the front of the house.

As we pass by Tahli’s room, her door opens, and I see the flash of her blonde hair, panic slamming into me as I fear for her safety.

These men might hurt her.

I start to struggle in the man’s hold, desperate to get free and protect her.

“Abbey!”

Her voice, so scared yet somehow strong, shows me she’d do just about anything to help me if she could. She’s so little, though. I couldn’t bear it if she got hurt because of me.

“Tahli!” I call back, wanting to reach for her, but with my hands bound behind me, I’m absolutely useless.

The man carrying me stops and turns, though, and I see Tahli take a step back just inside her doorway as Sarg looms over her.

“Stay away from her!” I protest, trying to wriggle free, but the man holding me is too strong. I can’t get to my little sister.

To my surprise, Sarg lowers down onto one knee, and pulls up his mask, revealing his face to her. A sob escapes me when I think maybe he’s about to kill her, but then I see her nodding, and she speaks quietly to him as he does to her.

Theyboth glance at me then, and for the first time, I get a glimpse of the man’s face.

I’m not sure what I expected, but a beard definitely didn’t even register as a possibility. Nor is how soft the flushed skin on his cheeks appears.

“Love you, Abs,” Tahli says softly, and hell, my lower lip starts trembling.

“L-love you too, Chook.” I use the nickname I gave her when she was first born. “Stay out of t-trouble, okay?”

She nods, not shaken by the way I sob through my words, and then as if I haven’t been shocked a thousand times already in the last twenty-four hours, my twelve-year-old sister shifts closer to the man and gives him a hug.

What the hell is going on?

“Go back to bed, okay?” Sarg says, ruffling Tahli’s hair. “Your parents are okay. They’ve just been put in the naughty corner for a while.”

She nods, like that’s totally acceptable, before stepping back into her room and closing the door.

All of a sudden, with my little sister now out of sight, I’m scared shitless again. I just want to be left alone to live my life, yet I can’t escape people that feel like they have a right to control everything I do.

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