Page 36 of Hawk
My heart broke for her as I laid the gun on the top of her dresser and sprinted to the bed. She was moaning and pleading as she fought under the covers, and with as much delicacy as I could muster, I brushed my hand over her cheek, hoping to wake her without scaring her even more.
“No,” she mumbled and tried to smack my hand away,
I began to shake her, saying her name, her real name, hoping to snap her out of the nightmare that had her in its grip. “Stella, darlin’, you have to wake up.” I shook the bed as I gently touched her face, not knowing what she was witnessing in her sleep. “Stella, it’s Colton. Please wake up,” I practically pleaded, hoping the sound of my voice and my name would draw her back to the light.
She was trapped inside her mind, fighting and struggling against what I could only assume were the memories of that prick, Adrik, and I knew I had to wake her. As loud as I could, I clapped my hands over her face, yelling her name. “Stella!”
Her eyes suddenly popped open, and she withdrew from me, swinging her head to look around the room as tears fell down her cheeks, Her brown hair was plastered to her face, and the sheets were twisted around her body as she became more aware of her surroundings.
“Colton?” she asked, wiping her hand across her forehead and moving her damp hair off her face. Her gaze was pinging around the room as she looked up at me, her blue eyes filled with fear. “What’s going on?”
Her voice was filled with confusion and uncertainty as Zeus jumped onto the bed next to her and rested his head across her lap. She reached down and stroked his head, and I saw her hands trembling as she embraced the dog. The more she blinked, the more alert she seemed to become.
Carefully, I sat on the edge of the bed and spoke softly, hoping to instill calm in her. “You had a bad dream, darlin’. I heard you struggling, but I couldn’t wake you up.”
She cast her eyes down to the bed and I saw fresh tears fall onto the covers wrapped around her. Her voice vibrated as she said, “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
“No sweetheart, you never apologize for having a bad dream,” I told her, and she lifted her gaze to me. Gently, I asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
This wasn’t the first bad dream I’d seen her have, but this one seemed to have its claws sunk into her deeper than the dreams she had years ago. I had to wonder if it was my appearance, the discussions of the past, or some fresh hell she was running from.
Whatever it was, I wasn’t leaving her until I knew she was going to be okay.
Stella
Even through the exhaustion, it took me a few minutes to fall back asleep, knowing Colton was sleeping just down the hall. Initially, I was shocked when I received the call that morning that he was looking for me, and when I laid eyes on him, more than good feeling flooded me. I was happy to see him, but there were some memories associated with him that I still struggled with. Zeus jumped into the bed with me, and I curled around him, happy that my companion was with me to help me sort through all the warring emotions I was experiencing.
No matter what I was feeling, I was going back to Portstill to meet my daughter, but I feared the questions she would have for me and the amount of information I was actually going to share. I also had trepidations about my brother, Devlin, and his proclivities. It seemed he wasn’t much like our father, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t all a ruse to gain control of more territory and power.
Our father, after getting caught by the feds with an underage girl, used all the information he had to keep his sorry ass out of jail. He turned on all the families he did business with, giving the prosecutors a witness to countless horrible crimes. They gave him protection, and he sang like a canary in court. The day he died, I slept like a baby, knowing at least one more monster was dead and couldn’t hurt Hailey.
Part of me feared he’d already told them about her, but there was no way to know exactly what he’d shared with them. With any luck, he believed his own lies and never mentioned her, figuring she was the child of a nobody instead of the sole heir to the largest crime family in the country.
With some breathing exercises, I found myself slipping into slumber, and I prayed the monsters that chased me in my sleep stayed away tonight. The darkness began to swallow me up as I found myself back in a familiar hell, trapped with no way out.
The new guard Adrik hired kept following me around the grounds, and when I gave him a subtle glance, I felt like he could see more than I wanted anyone to observe. The others called him Hawkins, and through their whispers, they assumed he was gay since he wasn’t interested in any of the women who ‘worked’ here. I could’ve cared less, as long as he left me alone.
My ‘husband’ brought me back to his private hell almost six years ago, and not a day went by that I didn’t worry about my daughter. He wouldn’t tell me anything about where she was, who she was with, or if she was doing okay. All he would say was she was being taught the ways of the world, and I feared the worst. No matter how hard I begged and pleaded after my father assisted in my kidnapping, I wasn’t allowed to see her. Adrik believed my father’s lies about her not being his, so he left her with his bitch of a sister and drug me into the darkness.
I tried to find a quiet place to sit and think, but everywhere I went, Hawkins was there. Adrik told me he was the only one he trusted to not believe my ‘sob stories’, so he became my shadow. I didn’t speak with him, or anyone for that matter. It was easier to be silent and mostly invisible.
There were other women here, but I knew they were being forced to sell themselves to the countless men who came and went through the doors. Once, I made the mistake of asking one of the men to help me, and he immediately told Adrik. It took eight days before I could see out of my right eye and my shoulder hadn’t been the same since. He beat me for close to an hour with my hands tied above my head and secured to a hook protruding from the ceiling.
Afterward, Adrik raped me, reminding me I was his to do with what he wanted. And all he wanted was an heir to take over the family business, and he took every chance he could to try and get me pregnant. I learned that fighting was futile, so I gave in, knowing there was less pain involved with compliance.
There was a party happening inside, and I wanted no part of it, so as I made my way through the yard toward the greenhouse, I knew my personal watchdog was close at my heels. For the last two weeks, he was around every corner watching me, so I knew, without looking behind me, that he wasn’t too far away.
As the music faded into the background of the late afternoon, I tried to find solace in my latest read. It was a book on the Roman Empire I’d found in the library, and even though it was boring subject matter, it was something to do. Finding a bench near the greenhouse, I sat down and opened the book to where I’d left off the day before, hoping to get lost in the words.
I was expected to be back at the house for dinner in just under an hour, so I took every minute I could to enjoy the false sense of freedom. I didn’t even know what that word meant anymore. From what I wore, to what and when I ate, to who I was allowed to speak to, every decision was made for me, and if I slipped even the slightest, I paid dearly for it.
“How did my life get so fucked up?” I whispered to myself from behind the book’s pages, knowing I wouldn’t receive an answer.
“Did you say something?” he asked, and slowly, I lowered the book to find Hawkins sitting directly across from me on the adjacent bench.
“No, sir,” I responded and lifted the book back up, pretending he wasn’t there.
I heard him grumble, but that was all he said to me as I got lost in the history book. Page after page, I read, learning more about the fall of a great society than I’d ever wanted to know. I dreamed that one day I would be free of this prison I was trapped in and maybe I could reconnect with Hailey.
