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)
“Please, Santino. What’s love anyway, without sacrifice?” She pressed her face harder against the bars. “Now kiss me and send me home the only way you can.”
Slowly, I leaned down and picked up the blanket, hands shaking, I rolled it up until it was tight, then I very slowly wrapped it around her neck. I tugged her forward with it and kissed her. Mouth hungry to taste her one last time, my body needy to prove to her that I was hers and always hers.
My desperation turned to searing agony as I kissed her slowly and pulled the blanket tight.
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “I’ll see you soon.”
I nodded. “Sooner than you know.”
“Meet you in the lighting aisle?”
“Keep the lights on, Katya.”
I pulled tight.
And the last bits of my soul left my body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn’t quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse.” – Frank Abagnale Sr.
Santino
The clock went off. The alarm filled the room. But I couldn’t look away from her lifeless body, lying on the ground as if she was just napping, when I knew the truth.
“Send me home the only way you can,” she’d begged me.
Whispered.
I wanted to beat the clock into submission, but it was on her side. It just kept ringing and ringing and ringing, reminding me of what we’d just done.
I wanted her to say something.
I wanted to say something back.
Maybe my father was right. In the end—I was just like him.
The sound of footsteps echoing down the cement floor didn’t even get me to budge. I just sat there and counted, one, two, three, four, five, six—the hallway was clearly long.
I remembered the room she’d been in with her brother. Given the longer hallway, I assumed we were on the main level of the lighthouse, but it was definitely the same place.
My dirty hands shook to wipe away the tears on my cheeks. The snick of a key in the lock and the squeak of the door opening filled the room.
I checked the clock and tried not to panic, I wasn’t even sure if I was capable of what I was about to do, but I would fight.
To my death.
“Where’s my bride-to-be—” Mattia stopped talking and stared at her lifeless form on the floor. “What the hell is this?”
“I killed her,” I whispered. “So you wouldn’t.”
“You fucking idiot!” Mattia came over to the bars and kicked them, then ran out of her room, ripped open her door, and ran back to mine. He charged me with a knife. I dodged the first stab, but the second connected with my hands before driving into my shoulder.
I stumbled backward. Then, with all the strength I had left, I kneed him in the balls, took his own knife and pointed it toward him, stabbed him in the chest, then knocked him out with my head.
Guards would be outside.
More would come.
I limped out of my cell, attacking the guard at hers, twisting his neck, and grabbing his gun. I fired behind me, taking out the other two guards, and rushed to her side and started chest compressions as fast as I could.
I glanced at the clock briefly.
We had two minutes left.
“Come on, come on!” I pounded her chest hard and gave her my air. It had been under five minutes. She’d just passed out, but she still hadn’t been breathing. She could be brain dead, she could be a lot of things, but I was the best, and I knew how to do a non-lethal strangulation, or so I thought. And she’d trusted me. “Damn it!” I pushed harder on her chest. We were running out of time. Guards would be there; she needed to wake up. “Wake up, sweetheart, wake up. I need you to open your eyes. I need you to breathe. Fuck, breathe!”
I exhaled into her mouth again.
She gasped against me with trembling hands and opened her eyes. “Are we dead?”
“Does this look like Home Depot?” I asked.
Her teeth chattered, and she threw herself into my arms.
“Time for that later, we have to go.” I pulled her to her feet just as two guards walked in, guns aimed at us. I shot the first in the chest as the other ran toward us.
My world turned bright then, it slowed, and in my line of vision was Katya, alive, breathing. My only thought was I could die now because she could live. I was taken to the ground.
There was no time left.
I had finally run out of it.
I fought back, but I was too weak, I shot him in the side, but he kept hitting me. I finally slid the gun toward Katya.