Page 47 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

“I expected you to dedicate yourself to being my wife,” he tells me, voice dropping dangerously low. “And if I had to guide you to make that happen?—”

“Guide me?” I exclaim. “James, you—you fucking hurt me! You hit me! How is that?—”

“You don’t understand how family works,” he sneers at me. “You never did. Probably because your parents didn’t give enough of a fuck to stick around for you.”

That hits me like a punch in the gut. I know he’s got no business talking about my parents that way, that they would never have chosen to leave me if they’d had a choice, but it doesn’t matter. He knows how much it hurts. Because I loved him once—or at least, thought I loved him. I shared things with him that weredeep, intimate. And now he can use them all against me to make me pay for daring to turn against him.

“And what you’ve got with your father is better than that, is it?” I counter. “His corrupt ass covering for you whenever you get caught with coke or?—”

Before I can get out another word, he draws his hand back and lands a brutal slap over the side of my face. My head snaps to the side, my ears ringing as burning pain courses through my cheek.

“Shut the fuck up about my family,” he snarls at me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He’s breathing hard as he takes a step back from me. The pain in my face is sharp and shocking, and I wait for the familiar rush of panic to move through me, the same panic I used to feel whenever he touched me like that. My mind would just shut down, leaving no space for me to take in what was happening to me—the only way I could survive, in the face of all the shit he put me through.

But it doesn’t happen. I don’t slip into myself, vanishing into the depths of my subconscious. No—I’m still here. Still in this room with him. And as scared as I am, as much as I hate being alone with him right now, something in me refuses to back away and let this happen.

Something in me has shifted.

I manage to lift my head again and look back at him—and when I meet his gaze, I see a flash of discomfort in his eyes. He doesn’t like me like this, staring back at him, seeing him for the man he truly is. He wants to convince himself that I’m nothing more than a problem, but I’m not going to let him brush me off that easily.

I’m more than a problem. I’m going to be his downfall. And when this is all over, I’m going to make sure there isn’t a person alive who doesn’t know what kind of man he truly is.

23

DAX

“Fuck!”

I get to my feet. I can’t stand just sitting here and listening to it any longer. I need to get out there. I need to pull her out of this mess. And I need to do it now.

“Dax!” Callum yells, but I can barely hear him through the ringing in my ears. I round on him, my heart slamming against my ribs, and shake my head.

“No, don’t tell me not to do anything,” I warn him. “I need to get out there. I need to pull her out of that mess. The shit he’s saying to her, it’s?—”

“It’s not enough,” Chuck intones from the other side of the room. The three of us are at one of our hideouts in the forest, which we usually use for hunting—but right now we’re listening in to the feed coming from Charli’s microphone, and it’s fucking destroying me to hear the way that man is talking to her.

“I don’t care,” I snap back as I reach for my knife. “I’m not going to let him stand there and hit her and talk to her like she’s some kind of?—”

“Dax, sit your ass down!” Chuck barks at me. “We’re not done yet. Not until we have everything we need.”

My entire body is wracked with tension, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. Sitting here, unable to step in, unable to help, unable to do a goddamn thing but listen to the abuse he’s pouring down on her head…it’s pushing me to that point of no return, the point where all sensible thought vanishes from my mind and I’m left with nothing but anger and desperation and the need to do something, anything to make it right.

My eyes are pinned to the door. I know we’re just a few hundred yards from where she’s being held—at least, if the tracker is anything to go by. It doesn’t seem like these fuckers thought to check for anything that might guide us to right where they’re keeping her, but then, that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to notice when the time comes.

And if they clock that we’re onto them, we’re in serious fucking trouble. I hate this feeling, being so out of control, and knowing that the best thing I can do is keep my distance. I need to get to her. I need to get her out of there. I need to?—

I sink down to a crouch, lifting my hands up to my head and trying to control my breathing. It’s stuttering out of me in gasps, and the panic is rising so fast I can’t control it. I can almost smell the blood and smoke in the air from the day my unit was attacked—like I’m back there, in the moment, though I know that’s impossible.

“Dax—”

I feel a hand on my shoulder and spring to my feet to shrug it off. I can’t fucking stand it when people touch me when I’m in thisstate—like blades against my skin, the tearing heat of the bullet that entered my hip.

“Don’t fucking touch me!”

Callum holds his hands up, letting me know that he didn’t mean to freak me out.

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry,” he tells me. “But you need to calm down. We need to wait until we’ve got something solid, and then we can move in. Okay?”

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