The way she was shaking, I wasn’t sure she’d even woken up from her nightmare just yet.

Her body was small and frail in my arms, but the tremors that wrecked it were more powerful than my hands could ever be. I held her close to me, practically holding her down. Her own hands tried to attack her body, and she resisted me savagely, desperately trying to claw at her own skin to rid herself of the demons that lay underneath.

“It’s okay, Charli,” I told her gently, trying to keep my voice calm for her even though I was worried myself. “It’s all going to be alright, just breathe slowly, focus on your own breaths. Look at me. Look into my eyes.”

I usually hated people staring at my scars, but as her eyes zeroed in on my unseeing eye, I felt calm like never before. I let her stare, and watched her pupils grow smaller and smaller until she was finally back with me in her truest form, without the monsters that threatened to devour her with every step she took. I saw them too, because they kept my own company.

“You’re okay,” I promised her. “It was just a bad dream. I promise it’s all okay now, babydoll. I’m here, and I’m going to help you.”

“Okay,” she whispered, and took one last shaky breath.

After that, it felt like a change had happened inside her. Breathe in, breathe out, and she was the Charli I knew so well. A smirk on her face, her eyebrows raised, looking at me as if she didn’t need any help at all.

“You can let go now, you know,” she said smugly, and I grinned at her.

“No, I don’t think so,” I told her, and her body settled against mine. I liked having her in my arms like that. I liked seeing the submission she’d been fighting so fucking hard.

“I want to check my email,” she said suddenly.

“What?” I gave her a confused look, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It’s the middle of the night. Who’s gonna be emailing you now, anyway?”

“Please,” she said softly, the tone of her voice something I wasn’t used to hearing from her lips. “Just let me check it, I’ll do it really fast, I promise.”

“If you want to.” I let her go, and she slipped from my arms. The second she was gone, it felt like she’d never even been there at all, and I hated it. A big part of me wanted to just pull her back and fall asleep with her curled up against me. But I couldn’t let myself do it. If Charli knew how much I already wanted her, it would end fucking badly.

She got my old laptop from the other side of the room and sat cross-legged on the floor, the screen of the computer turned away from me. Charli raised her eyes to mine, and there was defiance in her gaze as she glared at me.

“Do you mind?” she asked irritably, and fuck it, I wanted to slap that damn expression of her face.

I barely managed to give her a tight-lipped nod and got up from the bed. On my way out of the room, I sneaked a glance at the computer she was clutching in her hands so tightly. She’d been honest – the only thing I could see on the screen was her email provider, so at least she hadn’t fucking lied to me about that.

Leaving the room, I felt like I was letting her down for some reason. I really wanted to stay. There was obviously something going on, but Charli refused to talk to me about it, and I fucking hated it. If she really was serious about staying here with me, I needed her to submit completely. And as much fun as it was breaking her down piece by piece, I still wanted her to give me all of them on a silver platter.

Once I was out in the hallway, I found myself lingering, wanting so fucking badly to go back inside and ask her what was going on. But I forced myself to leave, walk into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of ice cold water. As I gulped it down, I tried to imagine what her nightmares could have been about. She wouldn’t talk to me about it, and I wasn’t going to pry. But damnit if it didn’t make me fucking curious.

I was wide awake then, and there was no way I could’ve gotten myself back to sleep. Lingering in the kitchen felt fucking useless, and before I could stop myself, I was standing in front of her bedroom door again.

A part of me wanted to fucking drag her out by her hair and make her sleep in my bed instead. But I knew I shouldn’t, knew I should keep my damn hands off. Yet I couldn’t resist.

I opened the door just a little bit, as silently as I could possibly manage. She was still sitting on the floor in that almost childish cross-legged position, my laptop placed on her legs.

I glanced over her shoulder to stare at the lit-up screen. A message was displayed there, bold letters catching my attention, Charli’s fingers drumming on her knee as she read through the email.

And then, I started to feel pissed off. She’d agreed to submit to me completely yet she was already keeping fucking secrets, and I didn’t want to have any of it. I was going to get to the bottom of it, and I was going to do it right then and there.

I stormed into the room, and before she could make a move, I’d snatched the computer off her lap and held it in my hands, looking at the message displayed on the screen.

Charli shrieked and jumped up at me, desperately trying to get the laptop back. But she was too short, and I held it just out of her reach, making it impossible for her to get it back. She clawed at my arms, but I didn’t give a shit. My eyes were fixated on the words dancing in front of them on the screen, and I devoured them hungrily, desperate for more information. So fucking needy to find out what she’d been trying to hide from me.

“Give it back!” she begged, but at that point, I’d blocked anything else going on in the room. Everything that mattered was right there, on the screen in front of me.

You fucking little bitch.

You’re thinking about telling him, aren’t you?

Mark my fucking words, little girl.

Beau Wolfe can never find out.

Don’t make me dig up your sister’s body and hurt her more.

Don’t make me fucking angry, whore.

My eyes found Charli’s and I looked past the tears blinding her vision into her soul. She was fucking desperate, and she was scared as hell.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked her roughly. “Who’s sending you this shit?”

“I… I don’t know.” She started crying, the tears finally falling and her body convulsing in desperate little sobs. This time, I didn’t make a move to help her. I just watched her body dissolve in a fit of tears and pent-up frustration until she crumpled into a little ball on the floor and cried for whatever reason she was hiding from me.

“I’m sorry,” she said desperately, and I could barely make out the words through her choking on her own tears. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to get in trouble. I didn’t want you to get in trouble too.”

It sent a pang through my chest, and I slammed the computer closed, making Charli flinch. I put it down on the window seat and walked over to her, pulling her up by her throat. She gasped and gasped and gasped, like she was never going to catch a breath again. I made her stand on her tiptoes and face me.

“Charli,” I said roughly.

There it was again. That fucking twitch, that nervous little move she made every single time I said her name out loud.

“You better fucking start telling the truth right the hell now,” I told her. “I want to know everything. Open that pretty little mouth and speak, babydoll.”

She opened and closed her lips like a fish out of water, seemingly unable to tell me the truth. But I forced myself to grip her pretty swan-like neck just a little bit tighter, and she gasped for air that wouldn’t come. I let go a little and the words poured out of her like a dam had just been broken.

“I’m in debt,” she said. “My family… they owned a shit-ton of money to some people, but I don’t know who they are.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” I barked at her. “Details, fucking tell me more, babydoll.”

She clawed at my hand around her throat and I let her go, because as hard as I tried, I couldn’t watch her suffer like that. She stumbled away and dropped to the floor and I watched her, needing to get more information out of her. She was hiding something, and I wasn’t completely sure the family debt was the only part of it.

“My parents are both gone,” she said shakily. “But the debt is still there, and it’s transferred over to me. I’m the one who has to pay it now, but I have no idea who I owe it to. I only got two emails at this address. And they’re telling me to keep quiet. They don’t want you to know about any of it.”

She sobbed and I glared at her. There was more. I was abso-fucking-lutely sure there was more to the story, and she was putting on an act to fool me. But I wasn’t born yesterday, and I was going to get the truth out of my precious little babydoll, even if it meant I had to break her.

“Why wouldn’t they want me to know?” I snarled at her. “What’s any of this got to do with me, Charli?”

Flinch.

Barely noticeable this time around.

“Because…” She looked around the room as if she was trying to find answers to a problem she didn’t want to face. “They… they have something of mine.”

“Something of yours?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “What, they got your fucking cat or something?”

“No!” she ran her hands through her messy hair. I’d only just noticed her whole damn body was fucking soaked with sweat, dripping from the nightmare she’d had, her little nightie soaked through and through. I felt a strange instinct that made me want to take it off her, wash the fear off and put her in some clean clothes, then drag her to bed with me. But I made myself resist, and didn’t make another move until she spoke again.

“They have… M-my… my…” she stuttered.

I was getting low on patience.

“Tell me,” I said in a gruff voice, even I could admit sounded threatening. “Tell me right the fuck now, baby.”

“They have my sister,” she choked out. “They took her. They have her. I don’t know where. I don’t know what they’ve done. I think she might be dead.”

She dissolved in a fit of tears, choking herself on so much emotion it made me wonder how the fuck she’d kept this a secret for so damn long.

“They don’t want you to know,” she sobbed. “They don’t want you to know they took her. I’m never going to see her again, am I? They fucking stole her away from me!”

She bawled hysterically as I got on the floor next to her. I pulled her against me, that tight little body shivering against mine, begging to be consoled. I held her in a vice-like grip that didn’t feel much like a hug at all, but we both needed it. She didn’t resist me this time around, and I pulled her in close, holding her tight to my chest and making sure she couldn’t get away. Not that she was trying to. Not that her pretty little body could even manage it anymore.

I didn’t tell her she should’ve told me. I didn’t lecture here, even though the words were hot on my tongue and desperate to get out. I just wanted to know more.

“Your sister,” I said as she trembled in my arms. “When did she disappear? When was the last time you saw her?”

She sobbed so much she couldn’t even answer, and I pulled her away from me, shaking her lightly.

“Fucking let me help you, Charli,” I told her roughly, and she cried harder.

An angry little scream ripped itself from her throat and she started pounding me, her small fists hitting my chest over and over again, as angrily as she could possibly manage.

“Don’t call me that!” she screamed. “Stop fucking calling me that!”

Her fists pounded and pounded, and I didn’t even try to stop them. Instead I just stared at her hitting me and spoke up.

“What should I call you then? Charlotte? Is that your name?” I asked her, my voice strained.

“No!” she screamed. She was so fucking angry, her words being spat out, her fists hammering me. I could barely feel it with all the adrenaline pumping through my body. Could barely acknowledge the pumping of her fists all over my flesh. “No, it’s not my damn name!”

Maybe she had a fake one. Lots of girls at Empire Sin did, to protect their identities. I wouldn’t have been mad if she told me, but she just kept howling and hitting me.

I took her tiny fists in one hand, wrapping my fingers around them.

“Tell me,” I ordered her. “Tell me your fucking name. Tell me what’s going on.”

She took a deep shaky breath, her body trembling as she looked at me. Her eyes were raw, for the first time ever. I wanted to push her on her back and fuck her to pieces. To tiny fucking smithereens until she screamed and scrambled to gather the mess I’d make into something resembling the person she used to be. I wanted that cunt. I wanted that ass. I wanted her. Whatever the fuck her name was.

“Lucille,” she spat out. “My name is Lucille, Lucy, everyone calls me Lucy.”

She wasn’t lying.

She’d better not be lying.

“Fucking spread your legs,” I barked at her. “I need to look at your sweet cunt.”

She shook her head, tried to get away, and I pulled her back. Pulled her so tightly against my chest I could feel her vertebrae against my stomach.

“Spread,” I snarled, and her legs fell open for me. My hand lingered above her pussy and her body bucked, desperate to make contact.

“Beg,” I said, my fingers an inch away from her soaked cunt. “Beg!”

“No!” she screamed. “Fuck you!”

My free hand wrapped around her neck easily. So beautiful when she was choking.

“Lucy,” I breathed, and her body sagged as she whimpered. “Lucy, tell me the fucking truth or I won’t fuck you.”

“I want Charli,” she cried. “I want Charli. I want my sister. I want her back. I want to go home.”

I stared down at her tiny body and I realized she’d been lying to me. It all made sense, as if I’d clicked my fingers and all the puzzle pieces finally fell into place.

My grip on her throat tightened and my fingers descended on her flesh as she screamed for mercy.