Page 26 of Queen of Hell

“Okay,” he sighs. “It’s late and I’ve got a lot of work to do. Get some sleep and I’ll call you tomorrow with anything I find out about Clay and his friends.”

“Alright, I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Night, Xave.”

“Night, Kenz. Poppy.”

“Goodnight, Xave,” Poppy replies, before the call ends and it’s just the two of us once again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

XAVE

After ending the call with Kenzi I push my chair away from the desk and stand, adjusting myself in my jeans.Fuuuuck! Hearing her call me daddy has my cock so fucking hard and now all I can think about is bending her over my desk and punishing her for being such a brat, before fucking her the way I’ve wanted to for so long.

She is my best friend and we’ve known each other for eleven years, but as close as we are and even after everything we’ve been through, I’ve never once taken that next step with her. Instead I imagine her face in every nameless person I’m fucking. I don’t know exactly when my feelings for her turned into so much more than just friendship, but she’s all I fucking think about and it’s driving me insane.

I turn and look at the mess of whisky dripping down the wall and the smashed glass on the floor. I don’t know what I’m angrier over right now. The fact that Clay’s changed so much he would put his hands on a woman that way, especially after what we went through with Kenzi? That it was Kenzi he and his friends put their filthy fucking hands on? That I’m not there to protect her from him?

ClaytonFuckingMaguire. Just the fact he is back in our lives after being gone for six fucking years has me wanting to kill him for what he did to us back then. Because it wasn’t just Kenzi who was hurt by him that night.

No. Clay hurt me too when he disappeared. We were best fucking friends.

We’d been friends before we met Kenzi, lived next door to each other for as long as I could remember. The day I took her to his treehouse after I’d found her hiding in the bushes, black and blue from the beating I later found out her dad had given her, had brought us closer in our need to protect her from him.

I go to grab some cleaning supplies and another glass of whisky out of the kitchen, thinking about the day we first met Kenzi, she’d been such a tiny thing back then.

I had just gone out into the garden when I heard crying coming from the bushes at the back of the garden that separated my house from the one next door. I had no idea who lived there, I had never seen anyone in the garden before. So, curious as to who it could have been, I made my way to the bushes and sat down so I could see who was hiding there.

When I saw a small girl crying something tugged at my chest, and I just sat with her trying to get her to stop. I spoke just loud enough for her to hear me, telling her that everything would be okay, and that she didn’t need to cry anymore. After a while she finally stopped crying and made her way towards me and out of the bushes. I couldn’t help the gasp that left my mouth when I saw all of the bruises and cuts on the parts of her body that I could see. When she looked up at me and I saw her face, my heart broke. I couldn’t believe someone would hurt such a tiny girl in that way.

She turned to run back through the bushes but I grabbed her from behind before she could take more than two steps. She totally fucking freaked, kicking out and scratching and biting wherever she could reach, but I wouldn’t let her go. She needed help and I wanted to be the one to help her. I started talking to her again quietly, asking her to calm down and telling her I wasn’t going to hurt her. When she finally gave up thrashing about, due to sheer exhaustion, I picked her up and cradled her to my chest. I started walking back towards my house so that I could help her clean her wounds, but she started panicking and struggling in my arms once again, telling me she didn’t want anyone else to know, so I spun around to take her to the only other place I could think of, Clay’s treehouse.

I took her through the hole in the fence that separated mine and Clay’s gardens and carried her up the steps of the treehouse, placing her on the big pile of cushions we had put in there and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She needed to be cleaned up, so I told her I’d be right back before running back to mine as fast as I could and throwing some first aid supplies and snacks into a bag. She looked so scared and I wasn’t sure she would stay there if I took too long. After I got back to the treehouse I helped her clean and bandage the cuts on her arms and legs then grabbed the large bag of chocolate out of the bag and handed it to her. She smiled at me then and, even with the bruising on her face, it was the prettiest smile I’d ever seen and made her light blue eyes sparkle like the gems I had seen in the jewellery my mum wore.

We sat for a while munching on the snacks I had brought. I didn’t ask her any questions about what had happened to her, even though I really wanted to. She still looked scared and I didn’t want her to run away, I liked sitting there with her. When we heard footsteps outside her eyes widened in fear so I jumped up to block her from whoever was coming. I decided then that I would always protect her from anyone who wanted to hurt her, but it was just Clay.

When Clay had come into the treehouse that day and had seen what she looked like he was scared. Clay hated violence and was worried that if whoever did that to her found her with us then we would get hurt too. But I told him how I had found her and that we had to protect her, that she needed us because she was too small to protect herself. So he turned to her and told her his name and that she could come to the treehouse any time she wanted.

She didn’t speak that day and we didn’t push her either, even though I really wanted to know her name. I wanted her to feel safe with us, so I pulled my phone out and turned on some music allowing her to sit in silence and eat the chocolate I had given her, and it worked. After that day, the three of us spent all our free time together in the treehouse and slowly she started to trust us and tell us about the way her arsehole of a father treated her. How she planned to get out of the city and away from him.

We told her we would protect her and tried to make sure she was always with one of us, but we were young and weren’t always successful in keeping her with us until he had passed out for the night. The days that happened, she would come to me covered in bruises and all I wanted was to go over to her house and kill the fucking cunt that thought he could hurt such a sweet and innocent soul. But there was nothing I could do back then. I was only a boy, not yet strong enough to take on a grown man and win. Instead I would sit with her while she recovered and quietly rage inside at the fact that I couldn’t save her from him once again. Thinking of ways I could help towards our plan of escaping him and the city.

I was always good with computers and decided to use that to my advantage. I knew we would need money to finally get out of there so I spent all my free time learning what I could, and by the time I was eighteen, I was one of the best hackers in the country and selling my services on the dark web.

But that was also when everything changed.

I grab the whisky and pour a glass, downing it and pouring another as I remember the night that changed all our lives.

Clay couldn’t walk her home from the library that day, so she was supposed to wait at my house for me if her father was still awake when she got home. I tried calling her on my way home to see if she was there, but there was no answer. I tried twice more and still got no answer.

I was starting to freak out. Kenzi always answered her phone to me, no matter what she was doing, so for her not to pick up after three tries had me praying to any gods that would listen that she was safe and had just fallen asleep in my room like she had a million times before. I phoned Clay, freaking out that she wasn’t answering while I tried to get home as fast as I could, but when I got home she wasn’t there.

I rushed next door to her house, and the first thing that hit me as I went through the door was the smell. There was an overwhelming metallic scent mixed with the smell of shit that hit the back of my throat and caused my stomach to clench with a gag as soon as I walked into the hallway. It took all my strength not to vomit as I made my way through to the living room. I took in the carnage when I got there and dropped to my knees, losing the battle with my stomach and puking as I took in the sight of the blood and bodies. The smell was so overwhelming I could practically taste it.

When my stomach was finally empty and I could once again stand, I searched the room for Kenzi. Not finding her among the bodies, I ran out of the living room and noticed a trail of blood going deeper into the house. I followed it to the bathroom and swung the door open expecting the worst. But what I saw instead had me unable to move from the doorway. Kenzi was sitting in the shower completely covered in blood and was looking up at me with a vacant look in her eyes.

That was when Clay came running through the house and I shouted out to him that I had found her. When he came to a stop and saw the state of her, he told her they were done and he never wanted to see her again before running back out of the house. I saw the life come back into her eyes for a second, only to watch as her heart shattered at his words and she shut down once again.

I wanted to run after him and smash his fucking head in. I couldn’t believe that he had broken her so completely. But she was my priority at that moment. I had to protect her, and I was never more grateful for all the work I had put in over the years and the shady connections I had made.

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