“Jax!” Juliet shrieked, and I wasted no time.

Yanking the door open, I bolted into the hallway and thundered down the stairs, fear filling my chest as I leaped and landed in the foyer.

Racing for the kitchen, I stumbled, feeling something hit my head, and then I fell to the floor.

I growled, yanking and thrashing at the handcuffs and feeling the sting of broken skin as I pulled against the metal.

“You’re dead!” I raged, planting my feet against the bottom step as I sat on the floor and used the leverage to push myself against the strain of the cuffs wrapped around the banister. “You better fucking kill me, because you’re dead!”

I gritted my teeth and pulled with every muscle in my body. I curled my wrists and felt sweat glide down my temple as I held my breath and pulled until my body was burning.

Juliet. He had her. My father fucking had her!

My heart thundered in my ears, and all of a sudden I was in the basement again. Powerless. A hostage. Forced.

When I ran downstairs, someone had hit me over the head. I wasn’t knocked out, but I was knocked off my feet, and by the time I’d been able to stable myself, I was handcuffed to the banister.

Blood trailed down my arms from where the cuffs cut my wrists, and I kicked the stairs, growling my frustration as I thrashed.

“I’ll kill you!”

“You know,” my father started as if he hadn’t heard me, “between your brother’s girl and yours, I can’t tell who’s got the better piece of ass.” He narrowed his dark blond eyebrows, thinking.

“The blonde is more athletic. Nice thighs,” he continued, his jeans-clad legs sauntering over to Juliet sitting in a kitchen chair in the middle of the foyer. Another man—a friend of my father’s, I assumed—had his hands on her shoulders, keeping her in place.

“But your little brunette here?” He ran a finger up her bare arm, and I clenched my fists, my stomach blazing like a bonfire.

“She’s petite but a handful in all the right places.” He smiled and turned to me. “My sons sure know how to pick ’em.”

I locked eyes with Juliet, seeing the fear on her face that was almost completely covered by her hair. Her cheeks were dry, but I could tell by the way she fingered her scar that she wasn’t okay.

My father’s blond hair had grayed over the years, but his blue eyes still pierced the darkness. Even though the wrinkles showed a hard life spent abusing his body, he still stood strong and muscular, and it made me sick.

I should’ve let Ciaran kill him in prison.

I breathed in and out, lowering my voice. “Touching her will be the last mistake you ever make. Don’t be stupid,” I said to his friend, a heavy-set man about the same age as my father, tall with greasy black hair.

Juliet started crying, and I shot my worried eyes to her.

“Please don’t hurt us,” she sobbed. “Please, Mr. Trent! Just—just let me leave Jax’s house! Please!”

I blinked. Let me leave?

And that was when I noticed it. The Gear I’d given her.

She hadn’t been holding her wrist and fingering her scar. She’d been holding her wrist, pretending to cower, as she used the fucking phone.

Holy shit. I hadn’t seen her dial, and I hadn’t heard it ringing—which I would since it was a speakerphone. Thank God she’d been smart enough to mute the sound.

I swallowed down my pride in her, afraid it would give us away.

“Please don’t hurt me!” Her shoulders shook as she clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Please! Just let me leave. I won’t tell anyone. Please let me leave Jax’s house!”

Her head hung low, the long strands of her chocolate hair falling around her and covering the fact that she was talking into her watch.

My father raised a knife, and I … my knife. I swallowed, realization hitting me. He had my knife. From my pocket.

He slipped it inside the V of my shirt that she was wearing and traced her skin with the blade.

I jerked, fighting the fucking cuffs. “Stop!” I bellowed. “Just let her go, and you can deal with me!”

He turned his head, regarding me. “What do you think I’m doing?”

The knife dipped down under the hem of the shirt sitting at her thighs, and I felt the bile rise in my throat.

No.

He was touching her, and I felt the fire on my face as I growled against the restraints, damn near ripping my goddamn shoulders out of their sockets.

“Fuck!” I kicked and pounded.

Tears blurred my eyes, and I gasped, desperate, because I couldn’t get free. Please not your hands. Don’t touch her with your hands. Please.

I let my head fall back as I threatened, “You shouldn’t have come here. It was a mistake.”

“No, no.” He yanked Juliet up under her arm and dragged her over to me. “Your mistake was in ignoring me.” He stared down. “There was a time when you needed me, and I helped. Now I want what’s owed to me.”

“I owe you nothing!” I shouted.

And then he held the knife up to her throat, and I sucked in a breath.

“Your arrogance is going to get her hurt,” he warned, and I saw a tear fall down her frozen face.

“Now we’re going upstairs to your little computer room.” He dug out a small piece of paper from his pocket and showed me. “And you’ll have exactly five minutes to access this account and transfer everything in it into this account.” He pointed with his finger. “At minute six, he starts having a lot of fun with her.” And he jerked his chin to his friend behind them.