Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 106404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“Look. I’m assuming you don’t want me to slice your friend, correct? I don’t want to kill her, but I will if you try to be a hero.”
I start to gag, and he continues talking to Charlie. “Here’s how this is gonna work.” He must notice my heaving and applies more pressure on my neck, which makes me panic.
“Charlie, when I ask you to open the door, you will and then you can go home to your family. Okay?” Her golden eyes look from mine to his. It’s amazing how calm she stays, her eyes alert but focused.
“Tell your friend to stop struggling. It’s pointless.” He shakes me.
Charlie looks at me then. “You can’t possibly think you’ll get away with this, do you? I don’t often say this, but she’s the woman of a Disciple. They’ll kill you.”
It’s almost as if I’ve stopped breathing. That was not a threat—it was fact. And even though he may not love me, Axel does want me. I relax slightly. That’s why she’s not freaking out. She knows they’ll come.
“Not if I kill her first,” he snarls. This does make her eye twitch, but otherwise her face does not change.
“You don’t live as long as I have by not being smart,” he states.
My heart drops. He’s insane and insane people can cause a lot of damage. I wonder if this is how my mom felt before my dad put the gun in her mouth. If she begged or didn’t even know. I like to think she didn’t know. That he simply walked up to her while she was getting my tutu ready for my performance and shot her in the head. Fast and painless.
But in reality she was standing. So, she had to know, meaning that in her last minutes, she was scared. That’s what gives me nightmares.
“Toni. I love you. You are my mate. I’ll put my seed inside you once I’ve sucked his out,” he whispers in my ear. It’s at this moment that the terror, along with the fact that I can’t die like this, kicks in. I swallow. The knife has started to feel warm and slick. Am I sweating?
“You tell my sister I have no hard feelings. But this is it. I’ll be disappearing.” I don’t know if he’s talking to Charlie or both of us, but whatever he thinks he’s going to do to me, I’ll die first. My mom didn’t have a chance to fight. She needed to leave years before, but I’m not her.
“I will,” Charlie says. “Anything else?”
He freezes, maybe he wasn’t expecting Charlie’s blasé attitude, but he tightens his grip on me and starts to drag us to the backdoor.
He turns to her. “I don’t like you. You stay!” he yells. “Stay! You stay.”
A cool air alerts me that it’s time to move. That and I know he’s here.
“Benny.”
That deep, melodic voice I love vibrates through me, and I take that moment to make my move. I don’t have five-inch-high heels on this time, but I do have the element of surprise and fifteen years of core training. I take my heel and kick back on his shin. He grunts, but it’s the sound of bones cracking that allows me to be free. I turn to see Axel is on the move, breaking his left arm. The knife clatters and spins on the floor as Axel takes over the room the way a king claims a land.
His sapphire eyes are like lasers. Danger radiates from him, leaving me breathless, and I wonder if I’m going crazy—all I want right now is to get on my knees and worship his cock.
He reaches for me and gently pulls me behind him. My brain is ticking like a clock’s second hand as everything seems to happen in slow motion.
I feel rather than see Charlie’s arms grab ahold of mine and Ryder escorting us both toward the door. Extending my arm, I try to reach for Axel.
As we pass, I see Benny. He’s in the corner, squeezing himself like a rat in between the dishwashing station.
“Lock the doors after them,” Axel says, removing his cut and shirt.
“You’re gonna die today.” He walks toward Benny and the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
Axel is going to kill him.
“Did you honestly think you could take what’s mine?” He stands, towering over a crouched Benny.
Power.
“Axel?” My voice sounds far away. He turns and our eyes lock for what I want to be eternity, though it ends in an instant. But in a flash, he gives me everything. I see him for exactly what he is.
And I want him.
Axel’s mine.
I want everything about this man who stands like a beautiful, fierce god about to unleash all his fury.
“Go.” He nods at Ryder who pulls me out into the bright sunlight.