Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
I let the insult wind into my voice. I knew it was a provocation. I knew it would piss him off.
I wanted to.
I wanted to make him feel small and tiny and insignificant.
The way he’d made me feel my entire life.
So I pushed it. “But don’t worry. Logan has taken good care of me.”
“You don’t know a fucking thing,” he spat as a furious hand cracked across my face.
The sharp sting burned my cheek, but I gritted my teeth and refused to cry out. Instead, I lifted my chin again and prepared to fight it out because I was finished being forced into who I didn’t want to be.
That was right when a gun cocked at the back of Jarek’s head.
The ground tremored beneath my feet.
My dark defender.
“The lady is right.”
Logan’s voice was a blade.
Chaos.
My soul’s perfection.
Fury rustled through Jarek’s being in a livid tremor. It rolled through him, head to toe.
Logan grabbed him by the back of the neck the same way as Jarek had grabbed me. He angled him down, bending him at the waist so Jarek was turned away from him.
Completely at his mercy.
I didn’t feel a lot of that resonating from Logan right then.
Logan kept the gun pressed to the base of his skull as he leaned over him, and the warning ground from his mouth, “You can’t stand losing, can you, Jarek? It’s an embarrassment, you know, someone who can’t accept that they’ve lost. That they’re less. That what they want doesn’t count because in the end, they don’t count for anything.”
It was cool, hard rage.
Logan’s scorn was barely held in the violence I could almost visibly see illuminated on his flesh.
“But I guess you’ve always been a pussy, haven’t you? Hitting a woman? She’s right—you’re pathetic.”
Logan tsked like he was annoyed.
I heard it crack with the intent of death.
“She’s for my pleasure.” The words squeezed from between Jarek’s clattering teeth. “She belongs to me, and she’s coming home with me tonight. Where she belongs.”
A sound of pain curled up my throat.
Malachite eyes flashed to me. A promise. He would destroy anyone who believed it. Anyone who intended it. I was his treasure, the same as he was mine.
Logan leaned down so he could let the derision cut at Jarek’s ear. “For your pleasure? No. I give it to her, and she returns it to me. You were the ignorant fuck who wagered your wife. Now she belongs to me.”
“You forget who I am.” Jarek raged, though there was no chance of him breaking free of Logan’s powerful hold.
Jarek’s eyes latched onto me in a clawing of spite.
As if that would bring me to my senses.
Remind me of my place.
I wanted to spit in his face.
Fisting the back of his hair, Logan jerked his head higher.
Jarek writhed and flailed.
Logan leaned closer, and I could barely hear the words above the low strain of aggression. “No. I haven’t forgotten. I haven’t forgotten one single thing.”
Logan hissed it near Jarek’s ear. “Not one fucking thing. I think it’s you who has forgotten what my family was bred to do. Our calling card. It was you who came to us when a job needed done. You’d do well to remember it.”
“Fuck you, Logan. She’s mine. She’s always been. You’ll see.”
Logan tightened his hold. “You’re desperate, Jarek. I can smell the stench of it coming off you. I bet you don’t have anything left, do you? The way you came into that game like an arrogant prick? But I saw you sweating under it. What did you do, Jarek? Did you fuck up again? Lose it all? Only whose money was it you were gambling with this time?”
Jarek thrashed. “You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
“I bet you went crawling back on your hands and knees to Aster’s father like the neglected pup you are, didn’t you? Did you beg him to take me out? Try to pin me as a threat to the family? It’s funny, though, isn’t it, that Aster is still here with me? He must finally be catching on to who you really are. Does he know you’re here? Because the last I heard, you aren’t supposed to be.”
“Fuck you.” Hot hatred spilled from Jarek’s mouth. “It’s you who took what he wants. Where is it?”
The stones?
That’s what he was after?
Revulsion clawed at my insides.
Logan shoved him forward.
Jarek stumbled two steps before he tripped and landed on the ground. Logan moved to stand over him, and he kept the gun pointed his direction when he pressed his foot to Jarek’s back to keep him pinned. “Nothing of mine is any concern of yours. Aster no longer belongs to you. My suggestion would be that you quickly drag your sorry ass back to LA before you can’t.”
Then Logan stretched his hand in my direction. “Come on, baby. Let’s get out of here.”