Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
“Worried about keeping them out or me in?” I could hear him move, and then a perfect view of abs came into my line of vision, golden skin, dark hair. He was a monster in my eyes, so why did my body feel stunned stupid just staring at him.
“Sometimes…” He sat next to me, not touching me, even though I could feel the heat from his body. His low-slung joggers hid the bottom half of his body but his top?
An eyeful.
“Sometimes,” he said again, “it’s not the hero that makes the nightmares go away. It’s the villain because only the villain knows what it’s like to live in constant darkness and torment. Only the villain knows how to make the burn go away. While the hero works on trying to rescue you, the villain resurrects you.”
I gasped. “I lost my soul back in that room.”
“It’s not lost… it’s just a little bit broken… that happens when you have a twin, you know.” He ran the back of his fingertips up my face from my jaw to my cheeks before dropping his hand. “I’m not gentle.”
“I don’t think I need gentle,” I whispered, licking my lips. “I think I need a fight.”
“Shall I be your captor then? Shall I become the devil himself and let you take it all out on me?”
Tears filled my eyes. How could he see through me so well? I wanted to be the one who pulled that gun out. I wanted to hurt the one who hurt me. I wanted it so much that I didn’t even realize it until he said it out loud.
I wanted to kill him with my bare hands, make him feel my pain, my suffering.
“I’d hurt you.” But even as I said it, my hands were clenched into tight fists, blood pumped and surged through my body.
“I’ve survived worse,” he said cryptically, and then he put his hands on me. “I’m going to fuck you senseless, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m going to rape you until you bleed, and I’m going to make your brother watch again and again and agai—”
Horrified, I shoved against him, fought, and then screamed as I felt myself go back to that dark, bloody room, as the man who captured me morphed into Santino right before my eyes.
“Never!” I roared, biting at his hand, then his neck as he got closer. I kneed him between the legs and kicked beneath him. “Never!”
“Fight me!” He hissed. “Make me bleed!”
So I did.
Minutes went by as I screamed and fought as hard as I could. Yelling reached my ears, sounding fuzzy, like an out-of-body experience. Then the crash of the door getting knocked down jolted me out of the fog as I stopped screaming and fighting and looked up.
Santino had at least a dozen bite marks across his body, two on his neck, and a few on his fingers, He was bleeding from almost all of them, and they were already showing bruising. Tiny scratches were evident down his muscled arms, and somehow I’d managed to give him a black eye and bloody lip.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Andrei yelled.
Santino nodded his head to me in respect. “Good girl.” Then he stood and turned. “The pain needed to be set free, so I let her free it on me. She’ll sleep better now.”
He casually walked by Andrei like I hadn’t just used him as a human punching bag and left the room.
My door was on the floor.
Andrei was standing on it, arms crossed, eyes furious as he stared me down. “A warning next time so I don’t shoot him between the eyes for touching you?”
“It was his idea,” I said in a weirdly calm voice.
Andrei hung his head. “Of course it was. It’s a Sinacore tactic often used in order to gain the trust of some of the prostitutes we rescue who have been sold into the trafficking rings.”
“Say what?” I croaked.
“Another time.” He smiled sadly. “Ever think that maybe the heroes are the monsters, the monsters the actual heroes? This isn’t the world you think it is, Katya. We do bad to save those who don’t deserve the life they’ve been given.”
I gasped a bit in shock as he sighed and looked down at the door. “Damn, I have to go to Home Depot again, fucking hate Home Depot.”
A voice sounded down the hall. “Make Phoenix go with you like last time.”
It sounded like Nixon, and then the guy appeared in my doorway, looked from the door to me, then back to the door. “Was the door angering you?”
“No.” Andrei rolled his eyes. “And Phoenix and I sort of aren’t allowed back together after last time.”
Nixon’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “What the hell did you two idiots do?”
“Something not legal, let’s just leave it at that, but in my defense, the bird scared the shit out of me. It was a reaction!”