Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 70628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out.”
A few moments later, the original guard, Buckley, returns with Wallace.
Wallace is smiling a snakelike grin, and that missing front tooth… I’d like to take the man who took it from him out to dinner. Better yet, I’d like to personally remove every other tooth in his skull.
But I calm my rage.
Aspen needs me to be calm, and I will be here for her.
“You have fifteen minutes,” Buckley says. He pushes Wallace down into a chair.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Wallace says. His voice is oddly high.
“Is that really his voice?” I ask Aspen.
“I don’t remember it being quite so high,” she says. “I wouldn’t have found him quite so menacing with that voice.”
Wallace’s smile fades.
“You must’ve been purposefully lowering your voice on the island,” Aspen says.
“What if I was?” This time his voice is an octave lower.
“Yes,” Aspen says. “That I remember.”
“Did you come here to gloat, bitch?”
Rage pulses out of me, from the marrow of my bones outward through all my pores. “Call her that again, and you won’t have any more teeth left.”
“Like you could do anything to me in here,” he says.
“Do you think any of those guards will stop me? They hate you as much as I do.”
He doesn’t reply.
Sure, the guards have to obey the law, but I have a feeling that behind closed doors, the rules get pushed onto the back burner.
“Ask him what you want to ask him, baby,” I say.
“Baby?” Wallace sticks with the low voice. “So she’s yours now, huh?”
“She was never yours,” I say. “So get that out of your head right now.”
“I remember a certain time when she was mine,” he says. “I remember enjoying myself immensely.”
“Enjoying yourself by beating up on a woman?” I clench my jaw. “Raping a woman? You really are piece of shit.”
“Yeah? Well I got a piece of her you’ll never have.” His gaze drops to Aspen’s breasts.
I stand then, my hands curled into fists. I pull him up by the collar of his jumpsuit.
A guard walks briskly over. “Everything okay here?”
“He threatened to pull my teeth out,” Wallace says.
“Yeah? Should I call a dentist?” The guard laughs.
“Aren’t you supposed to protect me from this asshole?”
“Sure I am. Out here in the open, anyway.” He turns to me. “Sir, I have to ask you to let this piece of shit go.”
I release Wallace and push him back down in his chair. “Sorry,” I murmur.
“Hey, I didn’t ask you to be sorry. I just said you had to let him go.”
I sit back down.
“Do I need to stay here for this visit?” the guard asks.
I shake my head. “I’m good.”
He nods and walks back to his place near the wall.
I just wasted five minutes, and Aspen needs this time. She needs this time to ask questions, get answers. Though I doubt this man will be forthcoming.
“Go ahead,” I say to her. “Ask what you need to ask. Our time is running out.”
36
ASPEN
My skin is crawling. I can actually feel tiny invisible creatures pecking at my flesh.
I remember those light blue eyes. That pasty white skin. I never saw his hair, but it’s the lightest blondish gray.
Completely colorless.
He really is an albino. That would explain his pasty skin.
“I don’t have all day, darlin’.” Wallace says.
“I’m hardly your darlin’,” I say. “But I do need some answers to some questions. Why? Why did Taylor, your niece, come to you?”
“I don’t think that I need to tell you anything.”
“I already know it was her. She and her partner, Nancy Mosely. She wanted to get me off the volleyball team so that Gloria Delgado could have my spot and Nancy could be her backup.”
“And why do you think I would care about any of that?”
“About whether Taylor’s girlfriend got my spot on the team? I don’t think you did care. I think you saw an opportunity to take a woman — an athletic woman—to your island boss.”
“Nobody on that island was my boss.”
Good. He’s admitting to being on the island. I wasn’t sure I could count on that.
“What made them think they could go to you to get me eliminated?”
“It didn’t happen that way,” he says. “It was at a family dinner, right before you all went to Manhattan for that game. Taylor just mentioned that you appeared out of nowhere and took the spot that her girlfriend was supposed to have.”
I force my voice not to shake. “I see.”
I’m angry. So angry, and I want to start sobbing. Sobbing for the woman I was, the woman I could’ve been.
But I steel myself. I won’t lose it again. This may be the only chance I have to talk to Wallace.
“So you went to her, then.”
“I did. I took her aside after dinner and asked her how badly she wanted you gone.”