I never acknowledge invitations where my father is involved. Social events with him always end the same way. His big booming voice recounts all the ways I am a disappointment, and I go home humiliated and rejected.

Yet here I am, about to play the dutiful daughter.

The reality of what I am opening myself up for hits me like a punch to the throat, and I seriously consider starting my morning with vodka.

Then my work phone rings.

On an average Saturday we have one, maybe two call-outs, and we staff accordingly. For me to get a call when I’m supposed to be unavailable means today is not an average Saturday. I kind of wish I could ignore it because I could use all the time I can get to mentally prepare for my father, but someone needs help, and I’d actually be the shitty human being my father is convinced I am if I don’t step up. So I answer.

“Yes?”

“Georgia, I know you’re supposed to be off, and I’m really sorry to bother you, but I’ve got three out sick with the flu, you’re closest, and I’m fresh out of options.”

I glance at my watch and mentally adjust my schedule. “It’s all good. You caught me early enough. Text me the details and I’ll head straight out.”

I end the call and sigh. I had planned a morning of lazing in my pajamas and losing myself in a smutty book. Now I throw on jeans and a t-shirt and hope I’ll have enough time for a shower when I get home before changing into the cute little dress and strappy heels I bought especially for the wedding.

The text comes through as I’m scraping my hair up into a messy bun. I look at the message and text Laura back.

Eighteen minutes later, I arrive at my destination. It’s a decent neighborhood. Not the sort of place the average person would expect domestic violence. But there you are—spousal abuse doesn’t discriminate.

I pull the purple roller case from the back of the minivan and walk slowly toward the house.

The front door eases open a crack. She’s been watching for me, saving us precious seconds.

I wait until I’m near the top of the steps before speaking. “I’m with Billie Jean Cosmetics, do you have a few minutes?”

“Sure, please come in.” Good, that means it’s safe.

She opens the door wide enough for me to enter. She’s made a valiant attempt at hiding her injuries, but there’s no way to disguise a split lip and an eye swollen nearly shut.

No matter how often I see these battered faces, it’s a struggle to hide my horror. I suppose the day it no longer upsets me is the day I need to find a different job.

As soon as I’m through the door, I open my case and pull out a sheaf of black trash bags. “We’ve got ten minutes to pack and load the car,” I tell her.

“I’m ready to go.” She opens a door under the stairs and pulls out three large black plastic bags of her own. “I’ve been planning this for weeks. Can we just leave?”

The less time this takes, the safer we all are. “I’ll take the bags. You get the kids and follow me out the door. We’re going to walk straight to the dark blue van with the Billie Jean Cosmetics sign on the door and climb straight in. There are car seats already in there. We’ll have to move fast.”

Amy—they’re all known as Amy to us—goes into the living room and comes back with two small children. I know from the text Laura sent me they are aged three and four.

“Where’s your phone?” I ask.

“Right here,” she says, pulling it from the back pocket of her jeans.

“You need to leave it behind—turn off the ringer and put it somewhere he won’t easily find it. We’ll give you a burner phone when we get to Amy’s House, okay?”

She nods and disappears for a minute. “I put it in the rag-bag.”

I grin at her. “Excellent choice.”

I peek out the door and speed ahead, throwing the bags and my roller case in the back before opening the sliding door, ready to help Amy and the kids into the van. There’s the sound of screeching tires and a car turns the corner onto the street.

Amy’s face turns white. “It’s him. Oh God, it’s him. He’s going to kill us all.”

There’s no time for me to be gentle. “In. Now.” I nudge her with my hip as I hustle both kids into the van. I scoot in behind them and slam the door, locking it with the remote control before climbing forward into the driver’s seat. “Buckle them in as fast as you can and then get yourself strapped in.”

The car pulls up behind us, and the man jumps out of the vehicle yelling death threats.

“Stay calm, it’s going to be fine.” And it will. This is not my first rodeo.

I wait until the man is almost to the back of the van before I start the engine, slam the gearshift into drive, and jam my foot to the floor. I keep an eye on the rearview mirror as I speed down the street, slowing down just enough at the corner to avoid oncoming traffic as I hang a right.

This call is a little too close to my own neighborhood for comfort. Usually, dispatch tries to give us a bit of a geographic buffer.

The van is silent during the half-hour we spend zig-zagging through the city. I find it disconcerting for small children to be so quiet, but in my experience, not unusual. Once I’m sure we’re not being followed, I head over to the assigned safe-house and pull into the driveway.

The smaller, single door of the triple garage opens, and I drive into the empty space. As soon as the door is closed, my job is done. I’d like to say they’re safe, but statistically, it doesn’t look good.

The house-mother opens the sliding door of the van and helps Amy with the children while I unload their belongings.

“Good luck, and take care,” I say as I get back into the van.

She nods and gives me a small smile. “Thank you.”

I’m halfway to my apartment when my phone rings. I hit the button on my steering wheel to answer it.

“What’s up?”

“Any chance you can do another one? It’s an emergency.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“Come on Gee, this one is indigo and needs a detour.”

Well, fuck. A cop’s wife, she needs medical attention, and I just can’t say no. “Text me.”

I disconnect the call and find a safe spot to pull over.

As soon as the text comes in, I recognize the address, and my gut starts to churn. I’ve dealt with cop spouses before, but this is someone I know. Her dad and my father have been best friends since college. I was at her fucking wedding. I should back away from this one. But I can’t for so many reasons.

I get out of the van and pull the magnetic signs off the doors. This time, it’s better I don’t use my cover.

It only takes me five minutes to get there, barely enough time for me to come up with a plan.

I park in the back lane, grab my personal phone, and scroll through my contacts, hoping I still have a number for her. Bingo.

I hit the call button and hope.

“Hello?”

She sounds terrible. “Katie, it’s Georgia Black. I need you to listen to me. I’m parked in the lane right now, in the dark blue van and I’m going to take you to Amy’s House. I need you to open the back door for me so we can collect your stuff and go. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Grabbing a couple of black bags, I jam them into my pocket, jump out of the van, and walk briskly toward the door.

Katie’s waiting for me as I get to the top of the steps. She looks worse than she sounded on the phone.

“Thank you.”

“We’re going to talk, but not right now. Let’s get what you absolutely can’t leave. We’ve got no more than ten minutes.”

“Is he on duty right now?”

“Yes.”

Shit. That means he could swing by to check on her pretty much whenever the mood strikes. And if not him, then a colleague. “Honey, we need to haul ass. I don’t think we even have ten minutes.”

“I’ll get a suitcase.”

“No, that’s the first thing he’ll check.” I pull out the bags and hand her one. Let’s go. Must-haves, only.”

I follow her as she shuffles through the house to her bedroom where we go through her drawers and pull out a week’s worth of clothes. We don’t want it to be obvious. The longer it takes him to start looking for her, the better.

“That’s it,” Katie says after fishing a small photo album from behind the mirror of her dresser and dropping it into the bag. “He’s destroyed almost everything I value.”

“Let’s get moving.” We’re coming up on ten minutes and I’d rather not have another close call today. I take a peek out the front window before we leave. Coast is clear. “You need to leave your phone behind. Delete the call from me, and if you haven’t already, the one you made to Amy’s House, then turn the phone off and we’ll put it in a drawer on our way out.”

She shoots me a wry smile. “The call to Amy’s House was from a burner phone, and I deleted your call the minute we hung up. It’s set to silent and buried in the back of the drawer with the dishtowels. He’ll never look there.”

I smile. “Good girl.” I’m glad she’s been taking precautions and retained her sense of humor.

“Georgia?”

“Yeah?”

I look back to see Katie doubled over. “I’m losing the baby.”

Fuck. I had no idea she was pregnant.

I lead her out to the alley and help her into the back of the van where the windows are tinted.

Once I’m settled in the driver’s seat, it occurs to me that my phone could fuck this up. Jim’s a cop, and one I don’t doubt would cross legal boundaries to find Katie. My instinct is to head in the opposite direction of our destination, but that’s too obvious, so I head to a mall a couple miles away and stop at the edge of the parking lot. I look in my rearview mirror. “Hang in there, Katie. Just need to pull my sim card to make sure we can’t be tracked.”

She nods, and a minute later we take off for the clinic via the fastest route I can and still be sure we’re not being followed.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Everything today has gone to shit, and it’s all I can do to hold it together.

I pull into the back entrance of the clinic and roll my window down to hit the emergency button before climbing into the back of the van to sit with Katie.

“Someone will be out in a minute. How are you doing?”

“I’ll live.”

The door slides open to reveal a nurse with a wheelchair.

“Come on, let’s get you inside.”

I help Katie into the chair, grab her stuff, and catch up.

She’s wheeled into the private part of the clinic where we get her settled.

“This is where I have to leave you. Someone else will take you to the safe-house once you’re okay to be moved. Okay?”

“Can you stay for just a little while?”

I’m not supposed to. It’s against all our protocols. But hell, I’ve already gone against protocol. And my father’s got plenty of people to watch him get married, including the Boy Wonder. Katie’s got nobody but me to hold her hand through this.

“For a little while.”

“I didn’t want it,” Katie whispers, a tear trickling down her cheek. “Does that make me a terrible person? For this to be a relief?”

I consider Katie’s question for a moment. Not because I am unsure of my answer, but because I don’t want to fuck her up any more than she already is. I feel a strong sense of responsibility for her, even though we’ve never been particularly close.

Our relationship had been more about forced proximity on occasions when our fathers got together than true friendship. Not that it was any hardship to spend time with her. We actually got along really well, and I always had a good time with her.

It was more the resentment my father would instill in me afterward. Pointing out how perfect she was and demanding I be more like her.

Truth is, I did want to be more like her. She was nice, and pretty, and really funny. She was all the things I wasn’t. The things I’m still not.

That Katie and I weren’t closer is more on me than her. As soon as I was old enough and obstinate enough to convince my father to let me stay home alone, we were done. Even though I had wanted to hang out with her, I didn’t feel I could because that would’ve felt like I was giving in to my father’s demands and it was one of the few things in my life I had any control over.

My chest starts to feel too full as guilt settles in.

Even if the invitation to Katie’s wedding was a matter of social propriety, it had been an opportunity for us to reconnect. And it’s not like my life has ever been overflowing with friends. And fuck knows, she probably could have used another one, herself. Maybe if I’d been around, she would have got out sooner. Training and experience tell me I can’t take on that responsibility, but this is a situation I’ve never been in before, and nothing can change how I feel.

I swipe at the tear rolling down my cheek and try to focus on the positive. She’s safe. For now, anyway. She’s no longer carrying that ass-wipe’s baby. That’s huge. That means she can completely cut ties and he’s got no legal way to maintain a presence in her life.

Unfortunately, none of those pluses do anything to alleviate the pressure in my chest.

I have no problem soothing Katie's worry. “Honey you need to take care of what's best for you, and it sounds to me like you're better off having no ties to him at all.”

“But what kind of mother doesn't want to keep her baby?”

“What kind of mother would want her child to grow up in the kind of environment this one would have had?”

“I know in my head it's okay, but I still feel guilty.”

“Amy's House will help you with that. They'll arrange for you to get some professional help."

She nods. “I guess you’re wondering how I ended up married to a guy like Jim.”

“I’ll admit, it’s crossed my mind. But, only out of curiosity, not judgment. I need you to understand that, Katie. I will never judge. There is no shortage of guys like Jim. Upstanding citizens to the outside world, domestic abuser in private.”

“Yeah, that pretty much sums him up.”

She twists her hands in the sheets, turning her knuckles white. I take her hand in mine. “Squeeze however hard you need. I’m here for you.”

Nodding, she leans her head back and closes her eyes. She’s silent for a moment and I think she’s fallen asleep. She has to be exhausted.

She opens her eyes again and looks at me. “I was kind of wild when we met. I’m a masochist and was pretty heavily into the BDSM club scene back then.” She pauses, obviously watching for my reaction.

I can barely hide my surprise. Never in a million years would I have suspected the sweet, goody-two-shoes Katie of my childhood is wild and kinky—just like me.

“Yeah, I know. Not what you were expecting at all.”

“True.” I say with a big grin. “But let’s just say you’re not the only kinky soul in the room, so no need to censor yourself. I’m fairly unshockable. You met at a club,” I prompt.

“Yeah. He was undercover looking for alcohol violations. He never played in public. That probably should have been my first clue he was a wannabe. He continued to come to the club after the investigation was over, and I wrote off his reluctance to play in public as a job thing. While he was undercover, he showed some interest in me, but not a huge amount, you know?” She looks at me, and I nod my understanding. “But when the investigation was over, he started pursuing me. By that time, he’d seen me in a number of really heavy scenes, and it was certainly no secret that I’m a hardcore masochist. I guess I was easy-pickings.”

I hold my anger in check. She doesn’t need that. But it makes me crazy when she blames herself. Instead I nod my encouragement.

“While he didn’t want to play in public, he was smart enough to take me into a private room at the club to play with me the first few times. He had just enough skill and charm to fool me into coming home with him. Even then, he was careful to push me only slightly past the limit. Enough that it really was abuse, but not so much that I’d be able to recognize it as such, especially given he’d do it when I was high on endorphins. An honest mistake in judgement, he’d call it. In the meantime, I was no longer attending the club. Why would I need to go to a club when he and I were exclusive? The only reason for that would be to fuck other men. Was that what I wanted? Was he not enough for me? His jealousy and possessiveness made it impossible for me to make him understand my need for a social life with like-minded people, so I gave up trying.

“Once I was completely isolated, he stopped holding back. And he’d always tell me he was giving me exactly what I asked for. Because he’d groomed me into begging him to hurt me. I’m a pain-slut, and he totally took advantage of that. It was his entire justification for what he did to me. I crave pain, so in his eyes, he was just giving me exactly what I wanted. Up until last night, he’d been very careful to keep my injuries within the bounds of what is covered by my normal clothing.”

Jesus. It takes a really bad-way-special kind of sadistic fuck to be that self-disciplined in his abuse. “What changed last night?

“I told him I was losing the baby. He accused me of getting an abortion. He wasn’t any harder on me than before, just not careful to keep the injuries under wraps. Turns out he probably didn’t need to.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Jim has a paramedic friend he’d bring in to patch me up. It was all a big joke between them. Chuckling to comments like, ‘got a little too amorous tonight’ or ‘a little carried away with the love-taps’ that kind of thing. Last night, when Jim brought him in, he just teased Jim about his aim being off.”

“Sweetie, that’s so awful. You know you didn’t ask for any of this, right?”

“Of course I did. I’ve literally begged for him to hurt me.”

“There’s a wide canyon between hurt and harm. And there is no self-respecting Dom on the planet, sadistic or otherwise, who would take his sub to a place where she was harmed, no matter how hard she begged him for it. Jim is a predator. He took advantage of your masochism and exploited it.”

“But—”

“Katie, there is no but. I know it’s going to take time to convince you that you didn’t do anything to deserve what he did. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t put yourself in that position. He tricked you in to feeling safe and then twisted your desires to suit his own sick needs. You are who you are, and somewhere out there is a sadist who’s going to treat you right and give you everything you need, including unconditional love and respect. You deserve nothing less.”

It’s going to take a lot more than a friendly chat with me to help shift Katie’s mindset, but now that I know what we’re dealing with, I can help Amy’s House set her up with a kink-friendly counsellor.

“I know you’re right. Somewhere inside, I do. But there’s always this voice in my head talking over that.”

“And with time, and by hanging out with people who will treat you the way you should be treated, that voice is going to get quieter and quieter. It might never go away completely, but I’m confident you’ll get to a point where you can ignore it. And I promise I’m going to be here for you however long you need me.”