Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Margery stands and sidles closer, swinging her hips as if she can entice me. The guards step up and lift me to stand, then drag me to the bed. I roll and try to get up, but a sharp bite in my neck stops me cold. Another dose of drugs. Fucking great. What is she going to do to me while I’m out? No. I can’t let this happen. I swing my tied wrists around and roll, attempting to rise, stand. Hopefully upright, maybe I can do something. But all I manage is to rock back and forth, the room spinning around me.
I feel a weight on my lap and open my eyes, which I didn’t even remember closing, to see her straddle me. Thankfully, she’s still clothed, but I hate her contact with me all the same.
“No,” I say, trying to lift my hips to dislodge her.
Margery tuts, pressing down harder on my hips. Digging her weight in. “Calm down, Beautiful. We have a long night ahead of us, and I don’t want you worn out too soon.”
Bile rises in my throat again, and I roll my face to the side, so I don’t puke all over myself. I hack and spit, but nothing else. When I lie back again, panting, she’s frozen, standing over me, a look of disgust on her face.
I glare. “What? You don’t want me now that you’ve seen your presence makes me sick? Ask me why. Come on, Margery. Ask me why all I can think about right now is carving out your miserable, dead heart.”
Her voice trembles, shooting satisfaction through me. “Wh-why?”
The drugs are already settling in, and my mind feels so hazy at the edges. Once upon a time, I would have lived every day in this dreamy state. Not now, not with the memories of what she did to me, what she carved into me, so fresh. “Once upon a time, about eight years or so ago, you went for a little shopping trip. Do you remember what you bought?”
She stares in confusion and slides off my lap to sit on the bed.
With her weight gone, some of my sanity leeches back in. But it’s too late. One of us is going to die here tonight.
She doesn’t answer, so I continue as if she had. “You bought a scared, scrawny, starved sixteen-year-old boy in a cage. Do you remember that?”
Her eyes fly wide. “But…you’re dead. They told me you died.”
I meet her eyes and spit in her shocked face. “I did die that day. Trust me. Everything in that boy is gone now, thanks to you and your friends.”
32
SELENA
My hands shake as we get closer and closer to the meeting point. I shove them under my thighs to keep them still. If she’s touched him…If she’s hurt him…
“Is it up ahead?” Emmanuelle asks.
I glance over at him, trying to focus on what he said. “Oh, yes, it’s around the warehouse ahead. The farthest in the lot.”
We drive farther, only to stop short as three of the council guards step into the middle of the road.
I crane my neck to get a look between the front seats. “Shit. How did they know we were coming? Do you think she bugged my phone?” Her only chance would have been at lunch that day we caught up. But I didn’t notice anything. Not that I had been looking for something suspicious.
We slow to a stop. The other vehicle too. Then it’s all-out chaos between the guards’ guns and Emmanuelle’s goons.
I step out of the car, keeping to the side of it in case anyone wants to earn a pay bump by taking me out. As I get closer, I notice these three guards are wearing pins on their turtlenecks, and one is a woman. So far, there hasn’t been a single woman hired for the guard, and I know because I do the hiring.
“Excuse me,” I call from behind the safety of the vehicle. “Who are you?”
I hear a deep masculine laugh and know it immediately.
Kai.
He strips the ski mask over his head and rubs at the top, where it’s sticking up at odd angles. “I was hoping you’d figure it out. We’ve been here the whole time.”
I step around the car, march straight up to him, and slap him so hard my hands hurts,
The person next to him, still wearing a mask, grabs my arms to pull me away from him. I jerk from his grasp, giving him a glare all of his own. “You let her just take him? You could have killed them all. Anyone who wasn’t with you. And she wouldn’t be doing God knows what to him right now…” I trail off as a hot tear slides down my cheek.
The man releases me, another set of arms goes around me, and I’m face-first in a solid chest. Kai holds me tight for a few seconds until I get my composure back and then releases me. “We had to let her take him. We needed to find her base of operations. Especially where she keeps her servers.”