Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
When I nod, his brows draw in tight.
Time stretches out before us.
“And you came here looking for revenge?”
“Yes.”
“You were going to kill me?”
“Yes.”
The weight of my confession crashes around us.
His hands fist at his sides, and I see the anger simmering beneath a dark expression.
“All that shit about your stepfather—”
“Was true. He did do those things to me.”
“But he didn’t kill your mom like you said. She’s alive.”
“Yes, she’s alive. But everything else I told you… the rapes, the abuse, he did all of that and that is why I put three bullets in him.”
“You killed him?”
“I couldn’t let him get away with what he did. I thought you, of all people, would understand that.”
His angry gaze burns across at me. “And then you came looking for me to make me pay for Joey’s death.”
“Yes.”
The muscle in his jaw ticks. “Then why didn’t you?”
I can barely breathe. “Ares—”
“Why didn’t you follow through with your plan? Why start a relationship with me?”
“Because I wasn’t expecting—”
“You weren’t expecting what?”
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
A wild, tortured growl escapes him, and he stalks toward me, stopping only inches away. “What does that even mean?”
I look up into his beautiful, tormented face and feel the pain tighten in my chest when I take in the blazing eyes and handsome features. His hair hangs loose and falls in wild waves down past his shoulders. He’s never looked so beautiful, and it kills me to be so in love and so enraptured by the very man I should hate.
Tears well in my eyes.
“Before I came here, you were just a monster in a photograph. Then I saw you at one of your fights, and suddenly you weren’t that monster anymore. I kept coming back to watch you. I didn’t know why. It didn’t make sense to me that I hadn’t done what I was sent to do. All I knew was the need to know more about you, and I thought if I got close to you, I would understand it all better. Why you did what you did. Why I felt so drawn to you. But when I met you, I couldn’t stay away.” I sob. “Then I fell in love with you.”
He pushes me away. As if my words hurt him.
“Don’t talk to me about love,” he says, his voice thick.
“It’s true.”
He turns away but quickly swings back. “Do you even know who your brother was?”
“Of course, I do.”
“I don’t think you do. He did sick, bad things, Rory. Depraved and vile things that hurt people.”
I glare at him.
“Don’t say that.”
He’s wrong. Joey wasn’t depraved. Or sick.
That was Donnie’s style, not his.
“Why do you think I killed him?”
“It was a De Kysa hit.”
His expression smolders with unspent fury. “It wasn’t a De Kysa hit.”
He’s lying.
“I know he wasn’t a saint, but he didn’t have a depraved bone in his body, and you killed him. You were a hit man for the De Kysa. They paid you to kill him.”
“They didn’t pay me to kill him.”
“There were rumors that he did something to one of their family members—”
His dark, low voice cuts me off. “I said… it wasn’t a De Kysa hit.”
“Are you saying you didn’t kill him?”
“No, I killed him.”
My emotions explode out of me. “Then if it wasn’t a De Kysa hit, why did you take my brother from me?”
“Because he raped and murdered my girlfriend,” he yells.
I stare at him in stunned silence as his words spin around me.
He went to prison for his girlfriend’s death. He told me he was wrongfully accused. Now, he’s saying Joey was responsible for her death.
It doesn’t make any sense.
“No,” I say.
“He was a rapist and a killer, Rory. And Belle wasn’t the only one. There were others.”
I think about the boy who taught me to skim stones and how to tie my shoelaces and my anger erupts out of me like lava.
“Don’t you say that to me.” I point an angry finger at him. “Don’t you dare speak about him like that.”
“It’s the truth.”
I shove him in his chest, and because I don’t know what else to do, I start to pummel him with my fists. Not that it does anything but shoot pain up my forearms.
He grabs me by the wrists to stop me. Which, of course, I struggle against. But it’s no use, he is too big and too strong, and I’m no match for his strength.
“Listen to me…” His grasp tightens, and he speaks rapidly. “In the last couple of years of his life, Joey was involved with some pretty fucked up people. Real mean sons of bitches who did vile and depraved things. Joey trafficked young women for them… some of them who he raped and murdered. But before that, he and his over-privileged college buddies raped and murdered Belle. You might not want to hear it, but goddammit, it’s the truth.”