Reign of Wrath (Dirty Broken Savages #3)(25)

Hannah is behind me, but then all of a sudden, she’s not. All of a sudden, she’s on her knees between me and Julian. She’s not the mother and strong woman I got to know before this wedding. Instead she’s just a kid again, her arms wrapped around herself while she shakes and cries.

“I said, come here,” Julian says in Lorenzo’s voice. He reaches for her, and something visceral in me cries out to not let him touch her. I try to reach forward, to move and block him from getting to her, but I can’t. It’s like I’m locked in place.

I look down, and there’s nothing holding me to the spot, but then suddenly I feel the phantom feeling of chains around my wrists and ankles.

“No,” I manage to croak out. “No, leave her alone!”

Julian looks up at me, his sneer still in place.

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved in my business!” he snaps, and there’s a split second flash of relief to hear he sounds like himself again. I never thought I’d want that.

My heart races in my chest, and I reach for Hannah again. This time, I can move, but as soon as my hand goes to touch her shoulder, it phases through it, like she’s not even there.

She turns to me with wide, terrified eyes, opening her mouth to say something, but before she can, she jolts hard, struck in the side by something.

“Hannah!” I scream. It’s my voice, but it sounds younger, more scared than angry. It sounds like me at sixteen, and suddenly we’re not in the alley anymore.

The dream shifts, and I’m alone in a room. I’m not tied down, but my body is sore and worn out. My wrists are scraped raw from fighting against restraints. I know the door to the room is locked, but I throw myself at it anyway.

From beyond the door, I can hear Hannah crying. The choked off sobs that mean she’s trying to hold the sound back, so I won’t hear it and worry.

I beat my hands against the door.

“Stop it!” I scream. “Leave her alone!”

No one seems to hear me.

Or if they do, they sure as fuck don’t care.

I don’t know what to do, but I know I have to do something. I can’t let them hurt her. I have to—

BANG!

The gunshot is loud, piercing my eardrums. And then there’s silence. I frown, trying to make sense of it, trying to think what could possibly be happening.

The room fades around me, and I’m back in the alley again. Hannah’s on the ground, blood seeping from her side, mouth opening and closing as she gasps for air.

It’s the scene from the wedding again, but Julian and Cody aren’t there this time.

Instead, it’s the other men. Lorenzo, Ivan, and the rest of them, in a circle around Hannah’s body. They lean in around her, like they’re going to touch her, and I lunge forward, feral and furious.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” I scream, already swinging, ready to beat them back with my bare hands if I have to.

But just like when I went to touch Hannah, my hands go right through them.

They all start laughing, and the sound is grating and cruel. For a split second, the alley blurs and almost looks like the house they kept us in. Lorenzo’s face shifts between being his own and being Julian’s. Hannah is both young and grown up, but always bleeding.

It’s so fucking much.

It’s overwhelming, and my heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. The cruel laughter gets louder and louder, and when I look down at Hannah, her mouth is moving, but I don’t have a hope of understanding what she’s saying. I can’t hear her over the laughter and the heavy thud of my own heart.

I put my hands over my ears, feeling so fucking helpless. Hannah is dying, and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t touch the men who hurt her. I can’t do anything.

I can never fucking do anything.

My eyes snap open, a strangled sound getting caught in my throat.

I’m in my bedroom, lying on my back in bed. My body is drenched in sweat, and my cheeks hurt from how hard I’ve been clenching my jaw. Just like in the dream, my heart is pounding so hard that my chest aches, and I can hear the sound in my own head, drowning out almost everything else.

Immediately, strong arms tighten around me. There’s a second where I feel like I should fight against the hold before I realize that I know those arms.

They’re strong, thick, and covered in tattoos. They definitely belong to Knox.

When I turn my head to the right, there he is, curled up in bed facing me. He’s not asleep, and he quirks a little smile at me when I look at him.

I can’t return it just yet, but the relief that floods me is like a balm after the horror of that nightmare.

Someone shifts on my other side, and I know it’s Priest, still in the bed where he was when I fell asleep.

Gage and Ash are in the room too, Ash sitting cross legged on the floor, fiddling with something in his lap, and Gage in the desk chair, looking at something on his phone.

Even the dog is there, curled up at the foot of the bed with his head resting on my ankle. That can’t be comfortable, but Jack Sparrow looks like he’s happy to just be there with all of us.

It hits me all over again that I’m not alone. Not with this or with anything else, and gradually that starts to calm me down. My heart rate slows, and some of the tension starts to bleed out of my body.

Gage catches my eye, looking up from whatever he was reading.