Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
“Fine.”
With shaking hands, I accepted both and stepped toward Victor.
The adrenaline and stress that’d granted me such power ebbed and waned.
The strength brought on by the sheer need to stay alive in order to protect the one girl I loved more than myself slowly faded now the end was near.
Not yet.
Please, not yet.
I could collapse the moment I was back with Ily.
The second I knew she and Peter were okay. That we’d won. That the jewels were safe…then I could pass out for weeks.
Sucking in a breath, cursing the unsufferable pain bleeding back into existence, I stood over Victor and commanded, “Put him on his belly.”
Victor’s eyes glowed with fury, his mouth hushed by a guard’s hand.
My lacerated back flushed with agony, already feeling the punishment he’d give me if I didn’t see this through.
He might be a monster but…so was I.
I’d become human thanks to Ily, but there would always be a part of me that was sick and twisted and just as vile as him.
That darkness inside me swirled and slobbered to get free.
I needed to let that beast loose.
I needed to hurt him.
Badly.
If only I was alone, I would take my time. I would extract retribution. I would do things I would never be able to undo.
That would have to wait.
For now, I merely did what was necessary.
I wished I could say that I hesitated.
That I was a better man than this.
But the truth was…
I was a Mercer.
And as the guards flipped him onto his stomach and held his kicking form down. As I kneeled on the back of his legs and shoved off his expensive shoes. As I rolled off his diamond-chequered socks and pressed the knife against his Achilles tendon…all I felt was satisfaction, perversion, ecstasy.
Victor screamed as I cut.
He sobbed as I hobbled him.
Left leg. Then right.
And as his tendons snapped and I took away his ability to run, I knotted his hands behind his back and wiped the red-dripping knife on my war-filthy jeans.
“Bring him with us,” I ordered, my vision fading in and out. “I promised his death to another. Let’s take him to the jewels.”
Chapter Nineteen
………………………….
Henri
BEN AND STEWART DIDN’T SPEAK as they pressed themselves against the narrow corridor walls and gave us space to pass.
Their eyes popped wide as the four guards carried Victor between them. He lay face down, hovering over the floor as two guards held his bound arms while the other two carried his bleeding legs. He moaned and whimpered, leaving a trail of crimson droplets as I led our strange procession.
Down the steps, out into the gardens, and toward the blazing fortress.
The night sky lit up with orange glowing flames and black billowing clouds. A few structural parts of Victor’s home had been targeted, making two corners sag strangely as if the entire place was a blow-up castle that’d slowly started to deflate.
Perhaps everything about this place hadn’t been real.
Maybe it’d all been a fantasy as surely as a blow-up bouncy castle about to be stuffed into a box and put on a shelf in a dusty warehouse. Everything that happened in those walls would be hidden. Every horrendous thing forgotten.
I can’t forget.
I won’t.
I’ll never forget.
My thoughts turned fuzzy, a cold shiver racing through my blood.
Ily…
If she was in there while the castle deflated, she’d be crushed.
She’d be stuffed into that box and shoved on that shelf far out of my reach—
I need to find her.
I tripped and almost fell on my face.
God’s sake, Ri, get a grip.
Shaking my head, I clung to sanity instead of exhausted daydreams.
Not real.
Keep it together.
Finish this.
Victor screamed behind the sock that I’d stuffed into his mouth. He thrashed in the guards’ hold. They didn’t even look at him. Holding him as if his dramatics were utterly inconsequential.
I almost suggested they put him down and make him walk.
The sinister part of me would happily witness him crawling, unable to stand because of me. I needed him to come face to face with the same level of despair he’d forced me into. The same humbling vulnerability. The same forsaken knowledge that for all his power as a man, I’d transformed him into nothing with just two quick flicks of a knife.
A knife I hadn’t given back.
A knife I clung to with a white-knuckled grip as if I could stab through the rest of these illusions and hack away the past six months.
I could almost taste the salty sea air of Devon and hear my mother’s groan of pain down the stairs. Perhaps I’d merely passed out after caring for her during one of her many rough nights and this had all been a nightmare.
The corners of the sky seemed to fold inward, deflating like the castle.
No.
Wait!
I stood taller, fighting away insanity.
I didn’t want this to be a nightmare.
I didn’t want her to not be real.