The sun was beginning to rise.

I hadn’t slept all night, not a single wink.

Holding Shelby tight in my arms, I’d done nothing but stare at her.

I’d counted her breaths, memorized the beat of her heart, and continuously run my fingers through her silky hair. And I did all of this while simultaneously plotting the death of a man named Damien.

I needed more information about who he was and how I could find him. I’d been on the verge of pushing Shelby to tell me more the night before but thought better of it. After watching her suffer through a panic attack, I knew I couldn’t force her.

She’d tell me when she was ready.

I only hoped she was ready sooner rather than later.

After hearing how she’d grown up and what her mother had done to her just so she could score free dope, I was on the verge of snapping a few necks. I’d never been a violent person, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I could end Shelby’s mother’s life without batting an eye.

The woman didn’t deserve to live after what she’d done.

Selling her own daughter for drugs on top of all the other stuff she’d already made her suffer through? Mother or not, she needed to be put in the ground.

And Damien—I still didn’t know who he was or what he’d done, but I was going to find out, and when I did, I’d likely need to dig a hole big enough to bury two bodies.

Knowing that someone had hurt Shelby made my blood run cold. How anybody could cause her harm, I didn’t know. She was beyond beautiful, had a heart of gold, and was an amazing mother. Even after all the stuff she’d endured, she was still standing when most people would’ve fallen apart long ago. Despite what life had thrown at her, she’d laced up her boots, dug in her heels and fought to keep going.

My girl was mighty. Fierce.

I was so damn proud of her.

“Tony,” Shelby’s groggy voice cut through my thoughts, “you awake, sugar?”

I ran a fingertip down the side of her face. “Yeah, baby.” Rolling to her back, she opened her eyes and looked up at me. A small smile spread across her sleepy face and my stomach twisted in knots. This is what I want to wake up to every day for the rest of my life. Throat thick with emotion, I choked out, “Morning, gorgeous.”

Rolling to my side, I cupped her face in my hands. I couldn’t resist waiting another second to taste her lips. My head dipped, and our mouths met. Shelby moaned in response and wrapped a hand around my bicep.

Licking along the seam of her lips, I beckoned her to open for me.

She did.

Sliding closer, she pressed her chest into mine. My hand slid from her hip to her lower back. Her tongue slipped into my mouth, and an electric current surged through me.

Jesus Christ.

When she wrapped her little hand around my hard cock, I ripped my mouth from hers. “Shelby,” I said, shaking my head. “Baby, I don’t want you to feel pressured into doing this again. I’ll wait. I don’t—”

She pressed a finger to my lips, silencing me. “I know you won’t pressure me.” Her trust filled eyes stared straight into mine. “It’s why I slept beside you last night. I knew that my body was safe next to yours.” She visibly swallowed, and I felt her hand shake against me. “I know you would never take something that I didn’t offer you. You’re not like that. Not like—”

She abruptly stopped speaking and slammed her eyes shut. Ice ran through my veins. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was saying. “Shelby…” I forced myself to stay calm, forced my voice to remain steady. “Is that how you were hurt? Did someone force you—”

My chest tightened, and my throat began to close. I couldn’t have pushed the words out if my life had depended upon it. To think that someone could have possibly hurt her in that way… I couldn’t handle it.

Shelby shoved at my chest. I moved back, knowing that she likely needed space. She sat up on the bed and pulled her knees to her chest. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she stared down at the comforter, a dazed expression covering her face. “I need to tell you a story.”

I moved so that I was sitting directly in front of her. I tried to take her hand in mine, but she shook her head. She didn’t want me to touch her. Not yet. “I want you to tell me everything.” I pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “But before you say anything, I need you to understand something.” She silently waited for me to continue. “It doesn’t matter what you’re about to tell me; I won’t look at you any differently. You are not your past, baby. It doesn’t matter how dark whatever you’ve been through is, you’ll always be my sunshine.” Her eyes filled with unshed tears. “Now, talk, sweetheart.”

Shelby reached over and entwined my fingers with hers. “A couple of weeks after the day I fought with Mama, this guy started hanging around. He was a low-level dealer, sold mostly weed, a little bit of X.” She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “He, uh, took an interest in me pretty quick. He was older, twenty-two.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “He seemed to like me. He’d come by every night, and we’d sit outside the trailer for hours just talking.” Silence reigned for a minute or so. “I fell in love with him,” she paused, “at least, I fell in love with who I thought he was. But the guy I thought I was in love with didn’t exist.”

“Baby…”

“Shhh,” she replied, pressing a finger to my lips. “Let me finish, sugar.”

I nodded, urging her on. “After a few months, he started getting possessive. He wouldn’t let me leave the trailer unless he was with me. Even when I got a job working at the dry cleaners, he would take me to work, then take me back home.” She started chewing on her thumbnail. “A lot of times he sat out front while I was working.”

I’d seen this sort of behavior she was describing in hundreds of perps while working in SVU. They were always the same: possessive, jealous, abusive.

“The first time he hit me was on my seventeenth birthday.”

My hands clenched into fists.

I was going to find him, and then I was going to kill him. Cop or not, the son of a bitch had hit my woman. Therefore, he was going to die.

“It snowballed from there.” The first tear slid down her face. It was the first time I’d seen her cry. “I tried to leave him; tried to escape, but I had nowhere to go. I didn’t know about shelters and other resources like that. If I’d only known then what I know now...”

My head was seconds away from exploding, but I had to know—“How did you get away?”

“The day after I turned twenty-two, I’d had enough. I was tired of being slapped around every other day. By that point, we were living together and had been for a few years. I don’t know what finally lit a fire under my ass, but I woke up one morning and decided I was done. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror, telling myself that I deserved better. I might’ve been born white trash, but that didn’t mean I deserved to be abused.”

She was killing me. “Baby, you were never white—”

Again, she pressed her finger to my lips, silencing me.

“I packed everything I owned minus the things that he’d bought me.” A humorless chuckle spilled from her lips. “Though that didn’t leave me with much. After I moved in with him, Damien wouldn’t let me work anymore so I was dependent on him for everything.” Climbing off the bed, Shelby walked to the bedroom window and peeked out the blinds. “Once I was done packing, I went into the living room and waited for him to come home.”

Silence filled the room.

Turning her head, she looked over her shoulder at me. “It wasn’t just about leaving him, ya know,” She nibbled on her bottom lip. “It was about standing up to him. It was about confronting him. I was tired of feeling weak. Tired of feeling like I’d lost my will to fight. That day, I promised myself that I’d never cower from him again.” She smiled. “And I didn’t.”

She spun around and moved to the end of the bed. Standing tall, she jutted her chin out and forced her shoulders to straighten. “Damien was irate when I told him I was leaving and as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, I was terrified. Still, I kept the promise I’d made to myself hours earlier.” A small smile played at her lips. “I didn’t cower from him. Not even when he hit me the first time.” Dropping her head, she stared down at the comforter. “Nor did I cower when he grabbed me by my ponytail and tossed me onto the bed.” Her voice was strong, steady. “I didn’t cower when he pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket and used it to cut my clothes from my body.”

Oh, fuck no. No, no, no. I shook my head. Tell me he didn’t do what I think he did!

Shelby’s eyes slid closed. Her hands began to shake. “I didn’t cower when he flipped me to my stomach, wrapped his fingers around my throat, and covered my body with his own.” Leaning forward, she placed her palms on the mattress and leaned down, pressing her forehead to the blanket. “I didn’t cower when he entered me against my will, violating my body, and taking something that I didn’t freely give.”

“Baby—”

She held up a hand cutting me off. “I did not cower even as the man who’d promise to protect me, to love me, held me down and used his strength to overpower and rape me.” Her head shot up from the mattress and her eyes crashed into mine. “He raped me, Tony.” A sob wrenched free from her chest. “Damien raped me!”

Raped me.

I’d dealt with countless victims—many of them rape survivors—over the years, but hearing Shelby confess what Damien did broke something inside of me.

The small hold I had on my temper vanished.

Grabbing the lamp from the nightstand beside me, I threw it across the room. It landed against the wall, busting the sheetrock. A cloud of dust and debris floated through the air, but I didn’t give a fuck. I felt like I was choking; suffocating. My entire body shook, and red bled into the fields of my vision. “Mother fucker!” I gasped for breath. “The son of a bitch will die. I don’t care what I have to do; I will end him!”

Unaffected by my outburst, Shelby continued. “I did not cower when the police kicked in the door of our apartment after a neighbor heard my screams and called them.”

I knew she needed to get it out and I needed to let her. Calling on every ounce of self-control that I possessed, I took a step back. My eyes locked on my girl.

Once again, she stood tall. Her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs, but she was trying her hardest to appear strong and in control.

My gorgeous, brave girl.

“I did not cower when I gave my statement to the detectives, telling them exactly what he’d done to me.” She gritted her teeth together. “I did not cower when they accused me of lying. I did not cower when they shook their heads in disbelief.” Wrapping her arms around her body, she held herself tight. “Damien Black, son of Senator Reginald Black from Houston, Texas,” she said, in a mocking voice of what I assumed was one of the piece of shit detectives she’d spoken too. “He was a good boy, a fine young man. He could never do such a thing. That’s what the police said.”

More tears fell.

“I was the fatherless daughter of a crack whore. A white trash princess.” Her head dipped forward. “I never mattered.”

You matter to me.

Rubbing her hands together, she looked up and continued. “I fought him, Tony. Through the entire attack, I fought him. It didn’t matter much in the end, but I gave him hell, made it harder for him to take what he wanted. It was the first time I’d pushed back against him like that, and even though things turned out horrible, I’m still proud of myself. I may have gone down, but I went down swinging.”

My body twitched with the need to go to her. I wanted to touch her; needed to hold her, but I knew she needed space. If I tried to scoop her up in my arms right then, she’d pull away. “Shelby,” my voice was rough to my own ears. “When did this happen?”

Even though I’d asked the question, I wasn’t prepared for the answer.

“Exactly nine months before Lucca was born.”

It felt like someone had hit me in the gut with a two by four.

I took a step back; my shoulder blades met the wall.

She didn’t give me time to think; to recover before she marched over to me, a determined expression on her face. “You wanted to know me, Tony. Well, you’re about to see the most hideous part.” Pinching the hem of her shirt between her fingers, she looked at me with pleading eyes.

I could almost hear her saying, please don’t walk away.

“I can’t hide it from you anymore. You say that you want me, that I’m meant to be yours”—she choked on a sob—“I doubt any of that will still be true once you see how damaged I truly am.”

She took a shaky breath.

Then, she pulled her shirt over her head in one swift move.

My eyes raked over her torso, and if I thought I’d been mad before, it was nothing—and I mean nothing—compared to the rage that rocketed through me at the sight of the scars lining her stomach and sides. “Shelby...” My voice shook as I dropped to my knees before her. “... tell me.”

Holding my breath, I examined each of the marks.

Pink. Raised. Mostly lateral.

Knife marks.

That son of a bitch! If he did this—

“The police didn’t believe that Damien had raped me, but he was still arrested for assault and battery plus possession with the intent to distribute. Luckily for me, the DA was up for re-election so he nailed Damien’s ass to the wall over the drugs.”

“But not over what he did to you?”

She shook her head. “No. They didn’t care about what he did to me.” Her hand dropped to her stomach, where she scraped her nails over the marred flesh. “But I still managed to get a temporary restraining order before his daddy bailed him out. The bastard violated it within twenty-four hours of being released. After that, the judge revoked his bail and held him for trial.” At least the damn judge had some sense. “I didn’t have any money, didn’t have anywhere to stay so I did the only thing I could…” Shame washed over her features. “I was so stupid, Tony. I walked right back into that place; right back into the hell that I’d escaped just to move in with the devil himself.”

My chest felt like it was being cut open with a hacksaw.

Pure fucking agony.

“You went back to your mom’s?”

“It was only supposed… s-supposed to be t-temporary… I didn’t know about shelters or anything like t-that.” At that point, she was crying so hard she could barely speak. “I didn’t think I had any o-other options.”

I pressed my face to her stomach and kissed the scarred skin. She jerked in response. “Just breathe, baby. I’m not going anywhere. Take your time.”

Holding her hands over her face, she tried to take a deep breath. Tried and failed. “I was twenty-six w-weeks pregnant when Damien f-found me.”

Standing, I scooped Shelby up into my arms and carried her over to the bed. I had to touch her, had to hold her. Tucking her face into the side of my neck, I wrapped my arms around her and held her on my lap. “Tell me what happened, sunshine.”

She clutched me tightly. “It was a Friday night…”