Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
His eyes burned with rage, and his hands balled into fists. He stood staring down at me, envisioning all the ways he could hurt me—I could feel his thoughts. A cold shiver went down my spine. A red mark had already started to form on his cheek where I hit him. I got a little satisfaction from that, but it was small.
So fucking small. I wanted to scream.
“You bi—” Dorian started for me, but someone appeared just behind him. She swung, hitting him in the back of his head, and unlike my hit—hers counted. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he whirled around, holding on long enough to see who’d struck him.
Dawn stood there, holding a pan in her hands. She was panting, but as he took a step toward her, she got him again, hitting him across the face and spinning all the way around from the force. She paused—her cheeks puffed out in concentration, her forehead wrinkled—then swung a third time. Right at his crotch.
Dorian fell, slamming into the cement of the parking lot.
Dawn looked back at me. “Cast iron skillet. Figured it was the best to knock him out.” She let go, and the pan fell to the floor with a clang.
I frowned, trying to make sense of everything. Sia’s words came back to me, “He has security guards on you.”
“Are you a guard?”
“No.” She grinned, looking almost ready to teeter to the ground herself. She raked a hand through her hair, making it more of a mess. “Just the building’s shut-in. It paid to be nosy this time, huh?”
I wanted to laugh, but all I could do was cry.
Liam…
I should’ve run. I didn’t.
I should’ve hidden. I didn’t.
I should’ve cried. I couldn’t.
I should’ve raged, thrown something. My hands never left my side.
I should’ve done something, anything.
But I sat in my apartment, and I waited. That was what I did.
Jake and Sia showed up not long after Dawn knocked Dorian out. She called them, and they came down. Jake called an ambulance, and the cops right after that, and soon the parking lot for The Mauricio was filled with flashing red and white lights and uniforms walking around. The police took Dorian into custody, but I had no doubt Cole would get him eventually. Someone found Ken and loaded him into the ambulance. Dawn went with him, crying because apparently she always brought supper down to him every Tuesday night. They sat and ate spaghetti together, every week for the last seven months.
The paramedics tried to take me with them, too, but I refused. They checked me over and couldn’t find any new injuries that alarmed them enough for a trip to the hospital, so I stayed back. There was a conversation I wanted to have. And I wasn’t moving until it was done.
So here I was, a few hours later, and I finally heard the elevator start. My panel beeped, and then the door opened. Sia and Jake had been here earlier, but I made them leave. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Cole arrived, and I didn’t want them here.
I had them leave my bedroom door open, though. I wanted to hear him coming.
And in a way, I did, but I didn’t.
I heard the elevator.
I heard when he overrode the code to open my door.
I heard the door open.
I didn’t hear him.
There was no sound—as he walked down the hallway, passing the kitchen, turning by the living room—until he was standing in my bedroom doorway. Suddenly he was just there, and even though I was expecting him, my heart still jumped in my chest.
This man, who stared back at me with a fierce light heating up his eyes, his hands balled into fists against his legs, didn’t look anything like the tender lover I’d heard whisper “I love you” earlier. No. I saw the killer I always knew was there, who I had witnessed myself, but it was more than that.
I searched for some guilt in Cole. I held my breath just a moment, and I saw it. I felt it.
I saw the rage barely blanketed under his control. I saw the ruthlessness in him. I saw the cold blood that someone with his life would need when they pulled the trigger, or when they had someone else pull the trigger.
My gut flared up, and I knew. He could’ve done it.
I asked, hoarsely, “Did your family kill my husband?” My throat barely worked, but I didn’t think it was because of Dorian’s hand. I blanched. I couldn’t hold back the real truth. I asked one more time. “Did you kill Liam?”
And I waited.
His chest rose as he drew in a silent breath. He never broke eye contact, and maybe that was why it hurt so much—because I saw it as I heard it. It felt like he was delivering my sentence when he said one word: “Yes.”