Bury placed her down onto her feet and grabbed her shoulders. But, I wasn’t nearly ready for the sight to be had when he turned her around. Blood dribbled from her mouth as a bruise continued to darken against her cheek, right in front of my eyes.
“Look at her hands,” Bury said.
My furious gaze dropped to her fingernails and I saw that she had ripped some of them clear off her fucking nailbeds.
My vision dripped with red. “Tell me everything. Now.”
“There was a guy at the bar that wouldn’t leave her alone. Ramsey said he kept dodging her efforts to tell him to piss off, but politely. You know the shit girls do sometimes.”
I kept my gaze trained on Naomi as she stared at my chest. She had blood dripping down her neck, she was missing actual fingernails, and yet she simply stood there. Blank-faced. Not making a sound. No moaning in pain fell from her lips. No tears streaked her cheeks. None of her breathing was choppy, like she’d been crying on the way back.
She just stood there, seemingly lifeless. No yelling. No fighting. No arguing. No explanation.
As if she had given up on everything around her.
“What does he look like?” I asked as my gaze lifted to Bury.
“I snapped a picture of him before I got her back to the car. I sent it to your phone.”
I dug it out of my pocket and forced my gaze down to the picture. “Oh. That rat bastard.”
“Yes. That rat bastard.”
I turned off my phone and placed it back in my pocket. “Naomi, can you hear me?”
If she did, she didn’t make a move. No blinking. No nodding. No… nothing.
The anger I felt welling up within my body threatened to consume me, it was so great. I’d kill that motherfucker for what he’d done to her. Bury didn’t even have to finish the story for me to understand why she looked the way she did.
So, I scooped her into my arms and tried my best not to focus on how limp her body felt in my grasp.
“Bury?” I asked.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Round up the guys from the field,” I said as I made my way to the basement door, “we’ve got work to do.”
When I got downstairs, I perched Naomi on the closed toilet seat. I opened the mirror above the sink and pulled out some peroxide, some bandages, and a few cotton balls. I had to do something. I had to keep myself busy while Dutch and Troop got back to the house.
Because when they got here, we had hunting to get done.
After gathering everything I needed, I knelt in front of her. Her gaze stared squarely into mine, but she didn’t look to be home. It was as if her body were on autopilot, simply going through the motions without registering a damn thing around her.
I poured some peroxide onto the cotton balls before gripping her chin.
“He’ll pay for this,” I growled as I dabbed at the blood dripping from her lip.
She finally made a sound, and it was a scoff. “I didn’t think you cared.”
Her words lingered in my mind for a while, trapped between the two of us. I got the blood cleaned up enough to realize the bleed was inside of her mouth, so I folded down her lip to make sure she had all of her teeth. Her gums were split, so I discarded the blood-soaked cotton ball in favor of some plain gauze.
And after tucking a small piece against her injured lower gumline, I folded her lip back into place.
“No one touches what is ours,” I glowered.
That snapped her back into her body. “I’m not your property.”
I gripped her chin. “I never said you were.”
