The Hunter's Daughter

Prologue

My name is Justine. I'm a seventeen-year-old rich kid. I live in the upscale part of Colorado Springs, Colorado known as the broadmoor.
I stood cleaning where the maids didn't clean. The liquor cabinet. If I was caught cleaning there, well I don't want to get into that. Then the front door opened and I jumped, knocking the most expensive bottle of scotch to the ground. I silently prayed that no one had heard the crash of the bottle breaking, but I wasn't so lucky.
"What the fuck Justine?" he yelled shoving me to the ground, "How many times do I have to tell you that you are not to touch the liquor! You are in for it now!"
I scrambled up from the floor and tried to get past my father. I may be the 'bad girl' at my school, but that was all a cover for what I actually went through. I wasn't tough when I wasn't at school or with friends, I was a punching bag. No one knew what happens to me when my father isn't on a business trip. It's because he blames me for my mother's death. Which, I guess, is kind of my fault.
"Aye, missy, you aren't getting away this time." he taunted me.
Then came the punches. First in the eye, then the knee to the stomach. Now I was on the floor getting kicked multiple times in the stomach before he turned and left. Most likely to go buy another bottle of the scotch. I lay there in pain, waiting for someone to find me. When no one did I got up and walked the mile to Maine's house.
"Oh my God. What the heck happened to you Justine?" Maxine's mother asked.
I pushed past her into the house and collapsed onto the couch in the entry room. I lay there trying to take deep breaths because I still haven't had the panic-attack I knew was coming.
Mrs. Baker moved to run her fingers through my hair as she sat down next to me and I instinctively moved my hands to block my face. That's when she realized that I had been abused. No one was supposed to find out. I got up as she was calling the police. My dad was a big-shot, I left as quickly as I could and went to my little hide out that I had found when the abuse had first started when I was nine. It was a little place in the mountains that me and my friend Marcus had found together before he was killed in a hit-and-run.
When I got to the hide out I started panicing. Then I turned on the cable that I had paid for a year ago. I watched the news and saw my face pop up.
"Justine Mikael hawson has been abused and is suspected to be hiding from her father Robert Hawson oil tycoon. If you know anything about her location please call local law enforcement." the news reporter said.
I turned off the TV and pondered my options. I could go to the police, but then if my father finds out that I had gone to the police I was literally a dead man walking. Then I heard a car pull up outside the cabin. I looked out the window and saw my brother's car. Dom came out of the car and walked inside.
"Justine, I heard on the radio. I figured you'd be here. We need to go to the police." Dom said. He was in uniform. He was in the Army.
"Dom, you know I can't. He will kill me. This time it's not even figuritavely. I mean it literally." I said.
"Well he already knows that the police suspect the abuse. Either way you are technically a dead man walking" Dom told me.
He was right. I had to go to the police. But then I will go into foster care. I can't just be thrown into the system. My dad was freaking important and I would be the target for kidnapping for ransom. Anyways, that's how I got to my situation in the police station that I am currently in.