“I’m not going to the police. My dad can never find out about this.”

“This is bullshit! Why are you protecting that little that piece of shit?”

“I’m not!”

“You let him walk, he’s just gonna turn around and do it to another girl. He needs to pay for what he did to you.”

“I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting me!” she screams and backs away from me, heading for the door, but I make it there before her, slamming myself between her and the exit. “Get out of the way, Elijah.”

“No.”

“Move,” she demands, tugging on the handle beside me.

“Where you gonna go? Huh? Can’t go home lookin’ like you do.”

“I’ll go to Holly’s.”

“Holly lives with her parents. You go walking in there like that and the first thing they’ll do is call the cops. And the cops will call your dad.”

She flinches and lets go of the handle. I take her face in my hands, careful not to apply any pressure to her cheekbone.

“Stay here tonight, please? I won’t force you to do anything. I won’t tell anyone. I promise, just don’t leave.” I lean in and press my forehead to hers. I can feel moisture on my cheeks. My throat is all tight and itchy. Fuck! I haven’t cried like this since Mum and Lil died.

I’m sure she can feel me shaking with rage. Right now I wanna tear this room apart. I know she won’t tell me who did this, but she doesn’t have to. I know exactly who that little fucker is and I’m gonna take great delight in castrating him. Ana wipes the moisture from my cheeks. I catch her hand and press it to my lips, “I’m so sorry, baby girl. I should have been there. I should have—”

“Shh.” She tilts her head up to face me and presses her lips to mine. There’s something defiant in the way she kisses me, like she wants me to lay claim to her mouth again. “Help me wash him away.”

I think this is a fucking terrible idea but I can’t let her down again, not now, maybe not ever, so I nod and sweep her into my arms and then carry her into the bathroom. I run the shower and help her peel off her clothes.

When she’s stripped down to her underwear, she hesitates. I gently ease her hands out of the way and unclasp her bra, the scrap of lace falls to the floor. There’s a red mark over her left nipple; the flesh is raised, but not broken. She flinches when I touch it, and I slowly draw my hand away when I realise what’s caused it. The son of a bitch bit her. I close my eyes before I can stomach seeing the rest of the marks he left on her body.

“You don’t have to stay, I can take it from here,” she says and I can see from her expression she’s ashamed of the way she looks.

“Hey.” I tilt her chin up so she can read the sincerity in my eyes. “There’s never been a woman more beautiful than you, Ana.” I press my lips to her forehead and smooth my thumb over her cheek to catch her tears. “There never will be.”

I run my hands over her hips, slip my fingers under the elastic of her knickers and gently pull them down, past the bruises on her thighs and over her dirty feet. They’re soaked with so much blood that it turns my stomach; it’s all I can do not to bolt through the door and tear this town apart to find that little shithead.

He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as Ana, doesn’t deserve what he took from her. No one will ever be deserving enough of Ana Belle, least of all me, and yet here she is, trusting me with her heart, her secret, her safety.

I lift her into the shower and grab a washer from the towel rack. Stripping off, I join her under the stream, letting the hot water needle out the tension in my body as I hold her. I do as she asks and, with gentler hands than I thought I possessed, I help her wash away the stain he’s left upon the woman I love. I hold her in my arms and we cry together until the hot water runs out, and then I dry her off and carry her to bed. I hand her some sleeping pills and some Panadol for the pain and fold myself around her body until she falls asleep. Then I quietly tiptoe back into the bathroom, take the grate off the air vent and feel around until my hand comes to rest on the cool metal inside. Then I use Ana’s phone to make a call.

Chapter Twenty Two

Elijah

Five minutes after I ended the call with Holly her car had come tearing through the motel car park. She’d parked diagonally across two spaces, pulling up so hard she’d almost toppled me on my bike.

I told her what he’d done. She cried and sat down heavily on the bitumen in her fluffy bunny PJs. She looked like she wanted to throw up and, come to think of it, I kinda wanted to, too. She agreed to watch Ana until I got back and, much like Ana would have, she’d given me the third degree about what I was about to do. She screamed and ranted so loudly I thought she might wake Ana up, but whether it was the shock or the pills she was dead to the world, which was just the way I needed her to be.

Now I’m sitting on my bike outside that fucker’s house. It’s still pitch dark outside, but it won’t be if I sit here much longer. I flip the kickstand down and quietly make my way around to the back of the house. What I’m about to do will get me sent away for a long time, possibly the rest of my life, but there’s no other option here.

Pulling out my lock pick I slide it into the back door off the kitchen. I’m a little rusty, but after a minute the lock gives way and the door swings open. I pray like hell they don’t have an alarm system because if they do, I’m toast.

I step inside and ease the door closed behind me, then I slowly make my way up the stairs. At the top I glance at the three closed doors and thank mums everywhere for buying stupid signs that read: Scott’s room, like the one I’m staring at right now.

I creep over to the door. It’s at the very end of the hall, so I have to bypass his parent’s and one other bedroom on my way, and I hold my breath and hope like hell this doesn’t end before it even gets started.

I breathe a sigh of relief when my passage goes without a hitch, and another one still when I carefully turn the handle and I’m met with no resistance. I ease into the room and quietly shut the door behind me, taking a minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

It’s obvious he’s here and not out abusing some other woman because he’s snoring softly. For a moment I just watch the rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps. I try not to think about what it will be like for his parents to wake and find their son dead in the morning, but of course as I stand in his childhood room surrounded by footy trophies, high school memorabilia and a poster of a half-naked woman bent over a V8 that looks an awful lot like my Ana, I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt for his family at what I’m about to do to their precious, sack of shit, rapist son.

I creep over to the bed, pull the gun and a strip of Duct tape from inside my jacket and place the tape over his mouth as I thumb the hammer and press it into his forehead.

His eyes spring open immediately. He screams, but it’s muffled. He’s not stupid enough to try wrestling the gun from me and I’m both thankful and disappointed for that. It takes everything I have not to blow his fucking head off right now, but I want him as shit-scared and fucking humiliated as she was, so I’m committed to seeing this through for Ana’s sake.

“Remember me, arsehole?” I whisper. It’s an effort not to scream in his face, but that really wouldn’t help my situation any.

Scumbag makes some desperate pleading noise in the back of his throat. His eyes are shinning with fear and I shift so I’m sitting on his chest and staring down into his pretty boy face that I want to fuck up every which way.

“You took something from someone tonight,” I begin and he shakes his head vigorously beneath my gun. I decide he can’t feel it enough and press it into his forehead a little harder which gets his full attention. He stills beneath me, except for the shallow breaths he’s taking and the sob that wracks his chest. “That wasn’t a fucking question you fuck-rag. I know what you did, you know what you did and you’re gonna fucking die for it.”

“Did you know she was a virgin?” I ask. I can see by the way his eyes widen slightly he didn’t. Not that it matters, really. Rape is rape. It’s still brutal and unwarranted, no matter what the circumstances, and men like him deserve to be strung up and castrated. He starts yammering again behind his gag and I pull back my elbow and slam it into his face. He screams like a little girl. It feels good to have an outlet for the rage so I do it again, harder this time. Then I press my hand down over his nose so his cries don’t gain any unwanted attention.

“This the first time you stuck your cock in a pussy that didn’t want it? Think carefully before you answer, you little fuck, because I will know if you’re bullshitting.”

He closes his eyes and very slowly shakes his head.

“You sack of shit,” I mutter and clench my jaw together tightly in order to keep from filling his groin full of bullets. “You’re lucky I don’t cut it off and nail it to your parent’s door.”

His eyes widen and he starts screaming again. He’s making too much noise so I punch him in the face to shut him up. Then I climb off of him and stand beside the bed with my gun aimed squarely at his groin. “Take off your pants.”

He shakes his head and I lean down so our noses are almost touching. “This 9mm may be small, but it’ll still blow a hole in your head. Now, imagine what something like that could do to your Johnson.” Scott’s eyes widen in terror. His nostrils flare wildly as he sucks in air and tries to plead with me from behind the duct tape. “So this is how it’s going to work: I tell you to do something, you do it. I won’t ask again, I’ll pull the trigger instead. Are we fucking crystal clear, or do I need to start shooting family members for you to get that point through your thick skull?”