Hurt (The Hurt Series, #1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Hurt (The Hurt Series, #1)

  HURT

  Before we begin...

  Songs that Inspired HURT

  H U R T

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  THE END

  #HURT | www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com | If you enjoyed HURT, please leave a quick review!

  DID YOU KNOW?

  Speak out. | Protect victims, not predators.

  Other Books by Lydia Michaels

  Special Thanks

  PRAISE FOR HURT

  “Hurt is a masterpiece. Easily one of the best books I’ve ever read.

  I will never forget it.”

  —New York Times Bestselling Author Pam Godwin

  “A Home Run!”

  —Author Michelle Windsor

  “Raw and Beautiful! Hypnotic and Haunting! Hurt will absolutely WOW you!”

  —Blushing Babes Are Up All Night

  “A Masterpiece!”

  —Author Haylee Thorne

  “This is Lydia’s first dark romantic thriller,

  and I pray it will not be her last!”

  —AJ’s Book re-Marks

  HURT

  A Dark Romantic Thriller

  www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  Bailey Brown Publishing

  Thriller | Dark Romance | Suspense

  ©Lydia Michaels

  HURT

  Copyright © 2019 Lydia Michaels Books, LLC

  Editor: Allyson Young

  Cover Design: Lydia Michaels

  Photographer: Luis Louro

  USA | CANADA | SPAIN | EUROPE | NEW ZEALAND | AUSTRALIA

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9995236-2-9

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9995236-3-6

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  Before we begin...

  Special thanks to Amo, who helped bring my settings to life. Thank you for putting up with my countless questions and letting me view Scotland through your eyes and hear the culture through your ears. It was an absolute pleasure chatting, and your input has been pure dead brilliant.

  This book wouldn’t exist without the encouragement of my dear (sinister and brilliant) friend, Pam Godwin. You opened up your twisty mind and inspired me to be a little scared of the things my pen can do. You encouraged me to push a little harder—until it hurts. My admiration for you is huge, and yet my adoration is bigger still. For you, I do it ducimo.

  And lastly, I must acknowledge the beauty that is our First Amendment. This story took several years to finish. Its weighted message chipped away at me and required moments of reprieve. Sometimes the characters were so bruised and battered, they needed days away from my pen to heal. And sometimes there wasn’t time.

  My muse barreled in like a mechanical bull, breaking everything in sight without flinching, without feeling, leaving me, the author, emotionally scarred in the end. That seemed the cost of honesty, the price of genuine truth. Fiction has an inextinguishable actuality to it, the shadows between the lines.

  Tragedy does not end in a courtroom or a closet. It is not selective of its setting, which is why I chose to set half the book in a place so picture perfect, standing in the town feels like stepping into a postcard. The crisis isn’t where this story happens, but that it happens everywhere, leaving infinite scars, as unending as Pi. But we are more than numbers, and we cannot abbreviate the pain. HURT is told as, I believed, it needed to be told. Honestly, unflinchingly, and raw. But know, it’s going to hurt.

  WARNING: THIS STORY is categorized as a Dark Suspenseful Thriller and contains multiple scenes of graphic violence, non-consensual sex, and torture. It is also a love story.

  Songs that Inspired HURT

  Sound of Silence by Disturbed

  Possession by Sarah McLachlan

  Stay by Rhianna

  Enter Sandman by Metallica

  Uninvited by Alanis Morrisette

  Quiet by MILCK

  Bruises by Lewis Capaldi

  Personal Jesus by Marilyn Manson

  Psycho Killer by Talking Heads

  I Know You Care by Ellie Goulding

  Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy

  Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Ray

  Nothing Compares 2 U by Chris Cornell

  Rise Up by Andra Day

  Love Reign O’er Me by The Who

  May It Be by Enya

  Shape of my Heart by Sting

  H U R T

  THE HURT SERIES

  Lydia Michaels

  Dedication

  To my quill, my sword, my shield.

  To every Jane and Emily Doe who waited for a hero that did not show.

  For the voice that goes silent, not in fear, but in shame,

  My quill knows your name.

  For the knowledge that we can handle it, but they cannot, we swallow it down.

  You are fragile. You are strong. You are brave. You are not broken.

  And we hear you, though you do not make a sound.

  Your story remains unspoken.

  The casualty of a system flawed,

  We write, we hurt, we heal.

  The darkest fiction, printed in truth,

  We flinch away,

  We tell ourselves it isn’t real.

  For every silent sorrow swallowed, screams an infinite pain.

  For all the voices hollowed, that spoke only in vain.

  For you, my quill bleeds across the page in tragic, truthful rage.

  My quill. My sword. My shield.

  The fictional bea
st I slay,

  The monster we know is real.

  Chapter One

  Glasgow—Scotland

  Callan’s teeth clacked with a horrid smack. Precise pain exploded behind his eyes as a fire bloomed under his stinging skin. His face caught the brunt of the assault, flesh splitting and bones throbbing with familiar distress. Thick blood mixed with sweat as rivulets poured down his face.

  He spit onto the cement floor and waited for his vision to clear as the beast of a man pounding him like raw mince shuffled back to catch his breath. The buffeted sound of the crowd returned, their hungry cries surrounding the makeshift ring from all angles.

  Callan’s throbbing ears siphoned the droning noise in and out to the rapid tempo of his heart. Womp—womp—womp—womp... His skin pulsed to the beat.

  His head snapped back. Another blast to the skull. Blood gushed behind his nose, choking off his airway, drenching everything in the metallic flavor of defeat.

  Tripping over his feet, he forced his knees to bend, rewarded by several knocks to the ribs. Voices collided in a drunken slur of bloodthirsty chants.

  Launching forward, he dodged a fist and blasted a punch into the tender solar plexus of his assigned enemy. The blood-drenched tape over his knuckles did little to protect his hands, each crushing hit pulverizing his brittle bones and weakening his wrists. At this point, they swung like numb ham hocks.

  Adrenaline thrummed through his veins. He bunched and bounced like a bobbin on a spool, tethered by a thread to the unknown outcome of the match, prepared for anything—even death.

  Heart hammering like a bodhrán, he maneuvered closer, blinking through the opaque film of blood and sweat coating his eyes. No time to wipe it away. Even blinking cost him.

  His head snapped back, jaw vibrating, as pain exploded in his ears. The sharp burst spiked through his brain, blowing open his sinuses, and drilling to the base of his spine—tripping him on thin air.

  He spit again, never taking his eyes off his opponent.

  The dank air mixed with the tang of whisky and desperation. Boarded windows kept the moonlight out and a stale scent of abandonment in.

  Everyone in that deserted mill had something to lose. Or everything to gain. But no one had more riding on this than him.

  No guarantees. Win, lose. Live, die. So long as the right people got paid, no one gave a fuck who got hurt.

  A hasty lunge and a miss—bad timing on his part. A solid fist to the ribs whacked the wind from his lungs. It was the only warning before a storm rained over him. His opponent pelted him with fists, caving in his chest and hemming him to the line.

  While he’d always been a notably large man, his rival was fucking huge.

  They loved to do this, to cut off his oxygen, hoping he’d black out. If they couldnae get the knockout, they’d go for a collapse. But his ability to take a hit—the sort of hit that would drop an average man—had made him a legend.

  Stumbling. Battered. Breathless. He let his rival—and the crowd—assume he was done. The roars of excitement echoed every hit as they fell in a flurry.

  The enemy weakened with each blow, slowed with each swing. Callan gasped through it, wearing his opponent down as he gathered his strength like a tidal wave sucks into the ocean before letting go.

  The abuse chiseled away the man until only an animal remained. And then...

  Snap.

  Like a phoenix of rage, he rose from the ashes. Nimble, with unexpected agility, he drew back, wheezed in a breath of blood and hate, and hurtled forward, rushing his rival and lobbing his ravaged knuckles into his meaty face.

  When a man had nothing to lose, he’d do anything to win. No longer shackled by strategy, Callan unleashed.

  His skull throbbed with the beat of his pulse. The bastard tumbled into the crowd, tripping over his own feet, only to get hoisted back into the action.

  Tasting victory, Callan bared his bloodstained teeth like the devil about to take his prize.

  Something dark and inhuman shifted inside of him. Limitless. Unredeemable. Hungry. He cleaved into the enemy, throwing haymakers, ballistic and desperate. It’s him or me.

  A blow cuffed his ear, delivering a stunning swirl of black behind his eyes as the roar muffled. Swarming figures blurred.

  From the depths of his pain, buried beneath every ache and injustice, he scraped the filthy floor of his soul for every jagged piece of broken determination he could find. He unleashed everything.

  “He’s done!”

  “Knock him oot!”

  Jumbled chaos scattered his thinking like sparks flying from a blowtorch.

  “Finish him!”

  A calm stole through him as his civility disintegrated, sinking into the dark abyss of his soul where he dinnae like to dwell. Barbaric determination took savage hold of his actions, demanding he finish this.

  “MacGregor, destroy that scunner!”

  His family needed this win. But they also needed him.

  Gavin’s elfin face wavered in his mind, too gaunt for a boy of ten, but so hopeful. Innis’s beauty shined like a beacon, her ebony waves framing the delicate angles of her ivory face.

  Incarnate hate for every suffered uncertainty spewed from him in a primal rage. The body beneath him slackened and stopped flinching.

  “MacGregor, yer gonna murder him!”

  The hushed shock of the crowd’s alarm penetrated his haze of savage fury, and his arms slowed. When nothing came at him, he staggered back, his heaving sides pumping like a bellow feeds wind to a flame, only the fire in his opponent’s eyes had died.

  He swayed back, panting and confused, as the world took a moment to spin to a stop. The other man lay bloody and still. Callan’s panic and paranoia churned into a frenzy of doubt, waiting to see him breathe.

  Balanced on the sharp prick of a needle’s edge, his existence teetered on his opponent’s breath. Though they were enemies in the ring, outside, they were the same.

  Unlike the spectators, they came from nothing and would do anything to survive. But if that breath dinnae come, Callan would have to live with that sin for the rest of his life.

  The gurgling rise of the man’s chest released Callan’s detained breath, and the crowd screamed.

  “MacGregor wins!”

  Disembodied logic gradually returned, each coiled muscle too tight to unravel, needing time to unwind. Over. It was over.

  Relief hit with the hardest punch that night. He shut his eyes, thanking Christ it was done.

  The medics rushed to the man on the floor, waving salts under his bloodied nose. Rhys pushed through the encroaching mob, shouting at those in his way, “Give us space!” He unzipped his backpack and hosed down Callan’s face with cool water. “You were fuckin’ magnificent.”

  Callan groaned, panting with shallow breaths, each one wheezing past his parched throat. His mate tended to the most urgent injuries, frowning as he examined the gusher above his brow.

  “Aye, yer gonna need some stitching.”

  Callan shut his swollen eyes as Rhys got to work. “Was it a good purse?”

  “Aye. And ye earned every pound. They’re all waitin’ te congratulate you. Already talkin’ about who ye’ll clobber next.”

  “No more for a while—if the money holds out.”

  Rhys paused from winding gauze around Callan’s ribs and gave a gapped-toothed grin. “Good luck tellin’ them that. Greedy bastards are already hankering for more.”

  It dinnae matter what they wanted, only what his family needed. He dinnae fight because he enjoyed it. Violence went against his nature. Or perhaps it was more honest to say violence was the part of his nature he’d rather ignore.

  Callan fought because nothin’ else paid as well. His pain bore a worthwhile profit, as a wealthy man’s crumbs could be a gutter rat’s feast. And he would feed his family well tonight.

  “You’ll need te ice those fists soon as ye get home,” Rhys warned, carefully peeling back the ruined tape from his swollen, split knuckles. The
raw flesh seemed to tremble over the bone.

  “Help me up.”

  Rhys took his arm and pulled. As his cracked ribs pushed painfully against his chest cavity, he winced and tried to offset the pain with softening knees.

  The moment he was upright, the spectators assumed he was fair game. “Bugger of a fight, MacGregor.”

  Gazing at the blurred figure, he only recognized the faint and fuzzy outline of a man. “Aye.”

  “Bring yourself by the pub later, and we’ll get ye a pint on the house.”

  Money could buy a lot of things but not his trust. With the push of gravity came the rise of bile. He tightened his lips and turned, vomiting a mix of bitterness and blood, hardly missing a set of leather shoes.

  He dragged his forearm over his wet lips and groaned. Rhys shoved a water bottle into his swollen hand.

  Callan swished the pungent taste away and spit. “Get me out of here.”

  “Aye.”

  Taking pay for voluntary acts of violence tarnished a man. He’d done such vile things inside this mill, even the polis feared approaching him. But it was all a means to an end, the cost of peace of mind.

  What a flowery crock of shite. As if his morality could be somehow spared. Sooner or later he’d either kill a man or get himself killed trying to win.

  Crushing Rhys with his weight, he leaned heavily on his mate as they navigated the crowd.

  The so-called gentlemen that ran these fights capitalized on pain. He hated and respected them. Lost a wee bit of respect for himself each time he fought, too. But at least he had a choice. His choice.

  Rolling his shoulders, he gingerly straightened his spine. A river of shame washed through him at the sight of winners celebrating the utter thrashing of another man. His gaze sifted through the throng, seeking the payout area. Those hollow holes left by rage would be patched with the money earned, money his family needed.

  “Another stellar win, eh, MacGregor?” As the high waned, the slightest pat on the back landed like a sledgehammer to the spine. Rhys saw it in his eyes with every wince, but couldnae force the crowd to move any faster. They all wanted a piece of the glory.